Thread: moments of waking

As far as getting back to sleep, that is a good time to use a mantra or counting. One use of counting or repeating a few words is thatit reduces the mental noise. The one thing you must avoid in any way you can whentrying to WILD is thinking about your real life. A day dream is ok if it has nothing to do with waking life, but still the content of a day dream may keep your concious mind chugging along. If you count, never worry about keeping your place. that is too rigid. Just count to ten over and over or some thing like that. I will just repeat "thank you" over and over.

As for the moment of waking, if you want to slip off to a dream, just start picturing a seen and drift back off. If you want to do WBTB simply start twitching and flexing one of your hands or one of your feet. The blood flow and nerve impulses will slowly wake you up.

right, counting might be good for me since my thoughts jump here and there so much and counting is a progressive thing easy to keep track of, so yea i hope that will carry me off to sleep. of coarse my goal is to become lucid and counting may only be good for sleeping.. or is it? are there any kind of key things i should focus on as i'm counting to up my chances of lucidity, or are the numbers enough?

i'll keep both tips on counting in a non-rigid way and avoiding daytime thoughts both in mind from now on.

lastly, i was wondering what the advantage of wbtb is vs drifting back off, besides entering in dream journal. do you find some people do better by staying in bed unstirred vs waking up more and moving around? based on heavy/ light sleeper types? i'm trying to figure out if getting out of bed is ruining my chances of lucid dreaming.

thanks by the way for your help.

Keep in mind though that when you are falling asleep, this will no longer be true "counting is a progressive thing easy to keep track of." You will loose track of counting. If you don't, then you are too awake. When you loose count, do not try to find it again, but just continue counting in whatever way, start from the beginning or at any random number, does not matter, just keep counting, without paying attention to whether the count is correct, because accurate counting does not matter at this point.

Oh, and my understanding is that it varies from person to person how effective WBTB is, and how long it is a good idea to stay up. I do know that 2 out of five of my lucid dreams this year were due to my staying up a while, and I would get out of bed, go to the bathroom, make myself some warm milk, spend some time on DV, and think about my intention to LD.

JoannaB is exactly correct about how the counting should go. Keep that important concept in mind. Never try to keep track. The way counting like this works is it keeps a tiny portion of your awareness intact, but so little of it that you fool your body into sleeping while some awareness remains. If you try to keep track, it requires too much awareness and your body may think you are not ready to sleep. When a state of dream or even serious imagery starts you can resume a somewhat higher level of thought (if you think the body is asleep).
As a rule I leave it to wether I am coming out of a vivid dream or not. If you can remember the dream you just left, stay in bed and attempt DEILD where you re-enter the dream state. If you do not remember the dream, you would likely fall back into unaware sleep, in that case get up enough to regain a bit of waking awareness. You will not be able to bring waking awareness into the dream, via WILD, if you do not take a minute to gain some waking awareness before you start.

"You will loose track of counting. If you don't, then you are too awake." i tried the counting last night and i found this is true.. i somehow thought i would be counting right into a dream. the highest i counted was 20 and back down but maybe i should count in the direction of the hundreds and if i get lost, wheel through any numbers i can like you guys are saying.

i guess i'm going to have to experiment with my wbtb timing. perhaps i should actually get up longer because in that time i feel the best reality checks are done.. maybe staying in bed doesn't help my intent or odds of lucid dreaming.. or i'm not experienced enough to do that yet. more to think about- i'll keep trying.

Originally Posted by sivason

JoannaB is exactly correct about how the counting should go. Keep that important concept in mind. Never try to keep track. The way counting like this works is it keeps a tiny portion of your awareness intact, but so little of it that you fool your body into sleeping while some awareness remains. If you try to keep track, it requires too much awareness and your body may think you are not ready to sleep. When a state of dream or even serious imagery starts you can resume a somewhat higher level of thought (if you think the body is asleep).
As a rule I leave it to wether I am coming out of a vivid dream or not. If you can remember the dream you just left, stay in bed and attempt DEILD where you re-enter the dream state. If you do not remember the dream, you would likely fall back into unaware sleep, in that case get up enough to regain a bit of waking awareness. You will not be able to bring waking awareness into the dream, via WILD, if you do not take a minute to gain some waking awareness before you start.

my top priorities now are to just count and in no particular order if i should loose track, and to gauge my recall of my last dream and either wake up to gain awareness or focus on the last dream and stay in bed. i feel these are things i needed to here as i couldn't quite put my finger on it before. thanks guys.
and now i also have a thread to refer back to if i feel i'm forgetting or unclear on something.