is WILD even possible for me???

so i've had success with MILD and DILD. however other than counting 1 i'm dreaming 2 i'm dreaming while falling asleep i've had almost no results! the counting method has worked a few times but mainly like the dream becomes themed "i'm dreaming" and this makes me realize it's true later in the dream. not so much the intended ability to be thinking it awake and then notice when i slip into a dream. i've tried a bunch from here. like washing imaginary hands, when you feel the water you're dreaming. the playing the piano one. and a few others. i fall asleep absurdly fast and usually right into blackness with no recollection. therefore i generally remember beginning these exercises and that's it, next thing i know it's hours later and i'm awake remembering a non lucid dream. does anyone have any tips? how do you fall asleep consciously? also is there any risk of developing insomnia? like if you normally fall asleep instantly and you train yourself to stay alert at bed time is it possible that you simply won't sleep? i'm lost.

Try to keep a single thought (SILENT thought!) or image in your mind as you fall asleep. Notice how the thought/image becomes distorted and transmuted as you approach sleep. Every time the thought starts to change, just reset it back to the original (SILENTLY!). Eventually, after a few minutes of doing this, and if you're relaxed, you'll start to feel SP.

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Originally Posted by cmind

Try to keep a single thought (SILENT thought!) or image in your mind as you fall asleep. Notice how the thought/image becomes distorted and transmuted as you approach sleep. Every time the thought starts to change, just reset it back to the original (SILENTLY!). Eventually, after a few minutes of doing this, and if you're relaxed, you'll start to feel SP.

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cool thanx, when do i do this? after waking up from REM?

Ideally you would do it either during an afternoon nap, or more likely, after waking up from several hours of sleep. It doesn't matter what stage of sleep you woke up from, although you might find it slightly easier to WILD if you interrupt your REM. But ultimately, it doesn't matter much.

It should work as long as you've been awake for less than an hour or so. But the longer you wait after waking up, the longer it takes to get back into SP. To make sure it will work before you get too bored of trying, you really want to start trying to get back to sleep within a minute of waking up.

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Originally Posted by cmind

Ideally you would do it either during an afternoon nap, or more likely, after waking up from several hours of sleep. It doesn't matter what stage of sleep you woke up from, although you might find it slightly easier to WILD if you interrupt your REM. But ultimately, it doesn't matter much.

It should work as long as you've been awake for less than an hour or so. But the longer you wait after waking up, the longer it takes to get back into SP. To make sure it will work before you get too bored of trying, you really want to start trying to get back to sleep within a minute of waking up.

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thanx i'll keep that in mind. the thing is that when i wake up from REM and then try to WILD back to sleep i'm usually out in seconds and don't remember any transition... that's my problem:(

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Originally Posted by somniumrex

thanx i'll keep that in mind. the thing is that when i wake up from REM and then try to WILD back to sleep i'm usually out in seconds and don't remember any transition... that's my problem:(

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So stay awake longer. Get out of bed and walk around if you have to. Just experiment.

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Originally Posted by cmind

So stay awake longer. Get out of bed and walk around if you have to. Just experiment.

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okay thanx, i'll give it a shot. i've tried getting up and drinking water, going to the bathroom, etc. and that wasn't enough. then once i stayed up for an hour and a half and it worked beautifully although i think it was MILD and dream signs, not WILD. i'll try again with WILD.

still nothing! i think i'm just a DILD/MILD kind of person. does anyone else have the same experience and maybe know of a trick or something i'm not getting?

How many tries have you given WILD? Be honest. If it's less than 50, then you haven't really tried at all.

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Originally Posted by cmind

How many tries have you given WILD? Be honest. If it's less than 50, then you haven't really tried at all.

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hundreds, i've been doing LD practice for nine years off and on. i think i got it to work in the past (like six years ago or more i say "think" because it was a while ago, but i'm pretty sure) but i've had almost no luck with it whatsoever in recent times. MILD works for me but with mild success. i do lots of state tests but have few DILDs. WILD just seems like a good way to go as it is so direct and immediate. i slacked off on my practice for a couple months due to frustration. at the end of roughly two months of slacking but still DJing i had two or three incredible lucids and i'm trying to work backwards and figure out why this happened! before my slack period i did dream yoga for more than a month with zero results. then MILD with a few okay lucids and some half lucids and one really awesome one. then i quit and have these epic ones where i have amazing control and clarity of mind. basically i need to find my x factor! i try too many techniques and don't know which one is really doing the trick... suggestions? i'm guessing i should stick to one technique so suggestions other than that? like which technique i should go with or something or any feedback at all is welcome:) i probably need to be put up for adoption which is really funny because i have soooooooo much experience but i lack consistency! i need to learn some kind of regiment that covers all the bases and is focused and direct. otherwise there's no exact plan. i'm reading a lot of different methods and tips and trying to use what words like learning to cook a single dish from ten different cook books!

or whatever, i guess i'll just read EWOLD again...

Oh I didn't realize you've been trying for so long. Usually people come on this forum after failing a WILD just once and say they don't get it.

I think your problem is that you've been reading too much crap about lucid dreaming. A lot of stuff people say (and write in books) is just crap. There isn't a better word for it. And when you fill your mind with all the crap about dream yoga, and mantras, and stuff like that, you will fail. Because that stuff doesn't actually do anything.

I forget the scientific term for this, but it's when you do an action in conjunction with another action and you incorrectly attribute the results to the wrong action. So, say I blink 3 times every time I start my car. And I never try starting my car without blinking 3 times. I may start believing that to start a car, one must insert the key and blink 3 times. See where I'm going with this? Just because people do dream yoga, that doesn't mean the dream yoga did dick all in getting them into lucid dreams.

This also explains why lucid dreams come easier for you after "slacking". Because the "slacking" was allowing the useless crap to leave your mind, and the intuition took over.

You need to FORGET everything you think you know about lucid dreams, especially the mystical crap. Lucid dreaming is a physiological process. Beliefs, mantras, magical spells, etc. will not help you. But they WILL hinder you. And I do include complicated "techniques" as magical spells. Because that's exactly what they are -- spells. They're recipes that you blindly follow without truly understanding the underlying principles, if there are any.

Remember...lucid dreaming is a physiological process. Do you need to follow a set of instructions to ride a bike? No, you just know. If you need instructions to ride a bike, you can't ride a bike. Same thing goes for lucid dreaming. If you need to remember instructions, you won't be able to do it.

I'm rambling.

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Originally Posted by cmind

Oh I didn't realize you've been trying for so long. Usually people come on this forum after failing a WILD just once and say they don't get it.

I think your problem is that you've been reading too much crap about lucid dreaming. A lot of stuff people say (and write in books) is just crap. There isn't a better word for it. And when you fill your mind with all the crap about dream yoga, and mantras, and stuff like that, you will fail. Because that stuff doesn't actually do anything.

I forget the scientific term for this, but it's when you do an action in conjunction with another action and you incorrectly attribute the results to the wrong action. So, say I blink 3 times every time I start my car. And I never try starting my car without blinking 3 times. I may start believing that to start a car, one must insert the key and blink 3 times. See where I'm going with this? Just because people do dream yoga, that doesn't mean the dream yoga did dick all in getting them into lucid dreams.

This also explains why lucid dreams come easier for you after "slacking". Because the "slacking" was allowing the useless crap to leave your mind, and the intuition took over.

You need to FORGET everything you think you know about lucid dreams, especially the mystical crap. Lucid dreaming is a physiological process. Beliefs, mantras, magical spells, etc. will not help you. But they WILL hinder you. And I do include complicated "techniques" as magical spells. Because that's exactly what they are -- spells. They're recipes that you blindly follow without truly understanding the underlying principles, if there are any.

Remember...lucid dreaming is a physiological process. Do you need to follow a set of instructions to ride a bike? No, you just know. If you need instructions to ride a bike, you can't ride a bike. Same thing goes for lucid dreaming. If you need to remember instructions, you won't be able to do it.

I'm rambling.

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lol right on man. i can't say i fully agree with you but your feedback is helpful and appreciated! basically nine years ago i bought exploring the world of lucid dreaming by stephen laberge (all science, even explaining the science behind some of the "magic" stuff. probably the best and most well known book on the topic) and had pretty good success with MILD and a few other techniques in it. then over the years i've gone back and forth between practicing really hard to slacking and sometimes quitting completely. usually i pick up EWLD and re read it and have success again. instead recently i picked up a book on dream yoga and had zero success. so simplify is what you're saying basically?

you might be on to something because every time i've read EWLD and worked from it i've had fair success. and literally every other source has almost always failed me! i don't believe in the magic parts at all of dream yoga or whatever else. i've always read about them and tried to pick out the kernels of logical lucid dreaming technique. like in dream yoga you're supposed to pray to your "guru" or if you don't have one pick an ancient deity and pray to them... ooookaaaay... so what i took from that is a strong driving state of mind that is focused on the goal should do the trick. i'm not going to just blindly say "okie dokey i'll pray to random gods to lucid dream! perfect!" but i will try to find the real applicable practices inside these kind of "out there" practices.

other than that the dream yoga practice was telling yourself you are dreaming alllllllllll day long. so theoretically when dreaming you say the same thing out of habit and it's true! also there are things like falling asleep while imagining a glowing clear tibetan letter "A" in front of a lotus flower on your throat chakra. now i read this and see that it's basically a WILD technique, visualizing such an intricate thing keeps the mind somewhat alert as you fall asleep and so you should be able to retain the right amount of consciousness to become lucid. whereas the book i read this in gave magical reasons for this working and how the chakra links the energy body to the regular body blah blah blah and how it would effect dreaming i just picked out the real provable stuff. however i think you do have a valid point in that it's best to stick to one very scientific, down to earth approach that keeps it simple and requires no re thinking to make it so.

the bicycle example is a good one. a few tips and a straightforward approach and you should be riding in no time. but spin a bunch of crazy rules, methods, and reasons that aren't logical into it and you'll be scratching your head. stephen laberge actually says in the book that he had his first lucid dream, having previously only had them as a kid, after trying tibetan dream yoga as taught to him by a yogi! after this he came to the conclusion that he should take a more scientific approach but he still includes the applicable dream yoga techniques in his book. so there's some truth and logic to it but, like stephen laberge, i think going in the more scientific direction is the right way to go.

i don't think it's impossible that all the dream yoga and other stuff is real. it's possible that there's all this magical stuff and what not but that we just don't have the right equipment to study it yet. three hundred years ago the idea that we are all made of cells and that electricity runs through our bodies was unknown and if someone said it people would have said it was hocus pocus non sense but here we are. but without proof in this modern age i keep myself grounded in science and healthy skepticism. this doesn't mean i don't appreciate it though and i think there's a lot of good stuff to be extracted from that type of thing that will fit right in with the scientific stuff we love so dearly:) all in all in my opinion the most sound approach to lucid dreaming is the kind of stuff that is sound, scientific, and provable.