My first attempt at WILD....interesting result.

[diablo457]

Last night I decided to try WILD for the first time. Duration of attempt: 40 minutes The Preperation/Background In the last few weeks I've been practicing meditation and OBE attempts so I'm familiar with whole body relaxation, vibrations etc. I went to bed at 1am (damn computer games keeping me up ) and set my alarm clock for 6am as I usually wake up about 10-11. I had trouble getting to sleep at first, due to a combination of hot weather, and I guess some apprehension/excitement about the morning. After a while I finally got to sleep. The Attempt My alarm woke me at 6am, it's placed at the end of my bed so I have to get up to turn it off, stopping me from hitting the snooze button all day. I dragged myself up, turned it off, and returned to bed having trouble resisting the temptation to just go back to sleep. I know you're supposed to get up and do some math's problems for about half an hour but I didn't want to lose my sleepiness which usually happens if I'm up for that long. I just lay in bed with my eyes open and did a few maths problems to get my logical brain working. After a few minutes (I was being impatient), I lay on my back and relaxed my body. I'd become more awake than I'd like, especially since I have trouble sleeping on my back anyway (I usually sleep on my side, can WILD be done from this position?). I counted in my head..."1..I am dreaming....2 I am dreaming" I continued this for roughly 30 minutes, sometimes forgetting to count for a moment, often losing my place and just jumping to a random number. I didn't make it over 400 due to me losing my place several times. At about the 30 minute mark I realised I had a blocked nose which was also blocking up my throat, it was difficult to breathe and I had to swallow a lot to not choke, I considered getting up and blowing my nose to try to remedy it, or just calling off the experiment. I decided againt both, I'd spent enough time relaxing/counting now I didnt want it to go to waste. After roughly 40 minutes, something interesting happened. At this point I was getting pretty tired and starting to drift off to sleep. I felt like something touched my hand, I "jumped" at this, although my body didn't move, and next thing I knew I'd fallen in to a deeper trance. I made sure I kept up with my counting and just concentrated on nothing. The strangest part was, all of a sudden my nose/throat were completely clear! I could breathe as easily as I ever have in my life, all the while "floating" in a black haze, I felt quite out of my body. I realised I must be dreaming because in real life I would be having trouble breathing. I was very impressed by this effect but after about 15 seconds of my observing it, it all faded, my breathing became blocked again and I was fully awake. I looked at my hand and counted my fingers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.....looked away....counted them again 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I sat up and checked my clock a few times....6:40....6:40....6:40. I came to the conclusion that I wasn't dreaming, the strange thing was that everything, including my fingers and the clock were very wavy, I struggled to focus on them. I'm glad I had this experience and learnt a lot from it, I'll be trying again soon (possibly tonight although I don't want to disrupt my sleep pattern too much), baring in mind the lessons learnt below. Lessons Learnt - Go to bed earlier, rise earlier to avoid distracting sunlight/bird sounds - Get up for longer to wake logical mind - Try to remain calmer when sleep kicks in - If there's a physical distraction, e.g. blocked nose, deal with it beforehand, although it did serve as a good dreamsign of sorts. Thanks for reading! Edit: This experience has given me an idea. When you start to dream you essentially lose the feeling of your physical body correct? So if you were feeling something obvious when you were awake, such as cold or heat, then you could easily tell when you'd entered in to a dream. I haven't thought of anything that would be suitable yet. Something cold would melt and leave mess/could hurt you with prolonged contact, same with something hot. Any ideas?

[Yume]

I think you should go to bed at 10. Get up at 6 and that is 8 hours of sleep. Doom 3 gives me the neatest dreams.

[Clairity]

diablo457, I can relate to so much of what you've written about WILDing (I'm still working on what is the right amount of time to stay awake before falling back to sleep is too difficult). Great post (I love when details are given).

[blondeheroine]

I just attempted this morning. My problem was I was not awake enough and fell into a non-lucid dream while counting. In my dream, I wondered why I was doing this and went about regular dream activity in the environment I fell into. When I first began trying to lucid dream, I had those similar distractions. Mine would always seem to be that my eye would begin itching. Also, I just read on one of the tutorials on this site that you can try WILD from whatever position you are most comfortable.