Knowledge about Sleep - How to Use It?

Hello my friends,

Over the past couple of weeks, I've work on Lucid Dreaming but wasn't able to attain lucidity. Nevertheless, I learned a lot about my sleep pattern, so it was no waste of time at all.

I made approx. 20+ WILD attempts but I could never see any images, get into SP or even fall asleep. In fact, I was unable to sleep after a failed WILD, so I was kind of going in the wrong direction.

On the other hand, if I let me thoughts flow - without the "you have to stay conscious and make your body fall asleep" - I fall asleep within 5-10 minutes. Anything that distracts me from that has proven to interfere with falling asleep.

I usually go to bed at around midnight and awake at around 5 a.m., then I fall asleep again for another 2-3 hours.

Haven't written down dreams for the last few weeks but I remember at least 1 per night. I don't know if that is really the case, but it feels like the dreams I remember occurred in the 2-3 hours after I've fallen asleep again.

Is this something we can work with? How can I use the information about my sleep behavior to attain lucidity or at least make more progress?

As always, any help is appreciated. (BTW, I highlighted the key points)

Tom

Well, you are probably trying to get lucid in the wrong way. Starters think that WILD is the easiest method because of how you are able to "controll" the situation and you dont rely in a "stupid low IQ" dream body to realise he is dreaming.
I dont say its not possible, its quite possible, but its really really hard for a starter. Some people might have a natural talent and can induse a WILD easily, even without the intention too. But lets face it! Thats just rare!!
What i reccommend, is to keep a decent amount of dream recall (when you start with lucid dreaming its ok if you dont remember 2 and 3 dreams a night. 1 is good for starters since most first LD's are achived through WBTB. Plus if your intention now is just to achive your first ld, dont be so afraid for dream recall, since first ld you are so excited that you wake up and remember it.Not with all the details , but you remember it better than other dreams. (In more advanced LD you will really need dream recall alot or else you will get stuck at the ld newbys)
1) Try WBTB : sleep , wake up after 5-6 hours and then drink some water or do what you want for a minute, and then go back to bed (while going back to sleep, thinking of your task:achieving a lucid dream , can be helpfull, but when i try it , i focus too much and cant sleep)
2) Dont try to LD if you dont sleep alot. If you get less sleep than your body needs (i mean if you have to wake up to go to school or to work or something) i woudnt reccommend trying . Trying at the weekend would be awsome
3) Dont try to LD when you are stressed
(4) Try to meditate a bit (5-15min) every day (especially if you have stress) and think about lucid dreaming while you do it

One thing that you might want to do is start recording your dreams each night, upon awakening. It may be tough, but from experience the quality of recall increases dramatically after you start recording dreams.

Waking up after each dream also significantly increases your chances of lucidity, otherwise you may forget you were lucid in the first place!

Since you fall asleep easily if you drift off, consider setting a reminder to play 10-15 minutes after you let your thoughts go (assuming you do this after 5 hours of sleep). If this reminder wakes you up, gently fall back to sleep with a clear scene in your mind (DEILD). Or, you may experience a WILD as you fall asleep again.

IIRC, the key to traditional WILD is gently letting most of your thoughts go while focusing the awareness on something, like the act of observing thoughts. This is when you experience the vibrations. From personal experience, if I just lay there looking for WILD onset clues, i'm getting more and more awake, which is counterproductive.