Quote:
One simple change has given me LDs pretty much at will
Sleep sitting up.
Not the whole night, just the latter half. What you need to do is sleep 3-4 hours in your bed, wake up (with an alarm) and go finish your sleep in a recliner or deck chair that has head and neck support.
I used to only LD once every few months, now I have them whenever I drag myself to the recliner (a few feet from my bed) in the middle of the night.
It works because your body, being exhausted, will easily fall asleep, but your mind senses (through the vestibular system) that you're in an upright position and so remains aware. The bottom line is that you're asleep, but the higher mental processes that are usually offline at this time such as planning, working memory, attention, problem solving, and self-referential mechanisms are prevented from being shut down. Most of these functions are located in the prefrontal cortex, so I'm guessing that specific part of the brain remains active while sleeping upright and shuts down while asleep in natural positions. Also, you don't go into the deep sleep stages, so you remain in the sweet spot between waking and coma-like sleep.
A few notes:
-Every single one of the LDs I've had from this method (which is more than 70 now) begins in a replica of my room (the place where my recliner is). As such, my room functions as the loading dock of my entire LD universe.
-This method produces LDs that are very high level.
-Make sure you support your lower back with a pillow. If you're not comfortable, you won't fall asleep.
-Also helps to have a pillow behind your neck so that you're facing forward like you are in waking life.
-The recliner/deck chair should be roughly at a 120-130 degree angle.
-Put the alarm on the other side of the room to make you get out of bed.
-If you're having a hard time falling asleep after waking up, I've found that sleep deprivation (30 hours+) works just as well with no need for WBTB. What you do in that instance is stay up for about 40 hours then go straight to the recliner/deck chair rather than your bed. This results in sleep paralysis which you can then convert into an LD. For some reason, going to the recliner in the first half of the night doesn't work without sleep deprivation (rem rebound?).
-If you have trouble falling asleep and don't want to use sleep deprivation, I guess you can only sleep 2-3 hours before WBTB. I'd still strongly recommend you use sleep dep if you can't fall asleep after 3-4 hours sleep, as I haven't experimented with 2-3 hours (because I fall asleep fine on 3-4).
-Whatever you do, don't turn on the lights. That makes it much harder to fall asleep. If your laptop/computer has to be on, download F.lux to eliminate blue glare.
-This technique has made lucid dreaming a choice for me. What I mean is that before I struggled and struggled with little to show for it. Now I simply ask myself, do I want to LD tonight? Y/N? If I'm too tired, have an early wake up or a hectic schedule the next day, I just decide that I'll LD the night after. If I'm not zonked out and don't have any commitments the next day, it's a go. I'm now on the choice side of the LD equation. I simply have them when I want to have them rather than just desperately hoping for them.
-You don't need an elaborate la-z-boy set up. It just has to be comfortable enough for you to sleep in.
