Thread: Having trouble relaxing my mind?

Okay. Last night I was going to attempt a WILD. However, I couldn't get to sleep! I fell asleep at 10:00 PM, and set my alarm clock form 5:00 AM, for a WBTB. However, I couldn't get to sleep at all the whole night because I felt "excited" that it may work. Because of this excitement when 5:00 AM finally came I hadn't slept much, was stressed, and over excited.

I am new, and I was wondering, does this happen when you are new? How can I prevent it? Does it just take practice?

Well, I haven't experienced something quite as extreme as that. But I have failed to fall back asleep during a WBTB a few times.

Check this class out: Dream Yoga (Sivason)

It might help you with relaxing.

A technique I use to relax my mind is visualizing a landscape(potential dreamscape) as vividly as I can. I then start bring the sense of feel into it, then smell and so on. For example, visualize you are walking down a beach, you hear the waves crashing, birds singing, you can feel the soft sand on the bottoms of your feet, you feel the slight breeze. Try to incorporate all of your senses into your visualization. Then what I like to do is bring a random person into the visualization, and start a random conversation with them, sometimes, at this point you could already be dreaming and they will answer on their own, but most times you have to make up their responses. Before you know it you'll be in a dream but make sure you can stay aware during the transition to a dream. It might be difficult at first to get a really vivid visualization, but the more you practice it the better you will get. Good luck, hope this helps.

I use this trick: I tell myself I'm just going to sleep normally and start WILDing after inner chatter slows down and I'm closer to falling asleep.