WILD problems not working

So, I have my radio on and I lay in bed meditating focusing on my breaths, and I tell myself "My body will fall asleep soon. My mind will stay awake." I do this almost every night. At least, it makes falling asleep easier, which is good. What happens is I go straight into deep sleep and I just have thoughts, its completely dark no dreams. I try to hold onto control and go into a dream but it never happens. I slip into a dream after blacking out. I've been trying this for a few months and its not working. Any ideas on what I could do to go into a dream? I can do it if I had a dream, woke up, and then I can say, "I'll just re-enter that dream", and its happened, I reentered the dream and was lucid. But this happened years ago and it was fun and all, but I want to do deep dreamwork and explore my subconscience dreamscape. Any advice?

Those times you re-entered sounds like you had successful DEILDs, and they are much easier than the regular WILD method. If you experience nothing where it's completely dark with no dreams, maybe you're attempting it too early in the night? Your dreaming mind is more active after about 5 hours sleep so it's usually the best time to attempt it. The problem also with your approach is that you might be focusing too much on the falling asleep process, which is keeping you awake whether or not you realize it (I've had probably 100 similar attempts). If I "try" to fall asleep, I can't fall asleep, even if I think I should. I believe a WILD requires you to just forget the process, and to give yourself some type of anchor to entertain your mind until your body has naturally fallen asleep (which should be easier and faster when you don't disturb the process with too much mental activity keeping you anchored to wakefulness). FILD has been very successful for people as a WILD variation if you're interested in reading about it, however if you're a beginner, DILD might be the place to start. Hope this helps a bit

Well I had a lot of lucid dreams 3 years ago, it was fun but in the past year I've only had three. Whats a FILD? Whats a DEILD?

gosh sorry for the late reply lol, but FILD is "Finger Induced Lucid Dream" and is a very successful method to WILD for many. DEILD is "Dream Exit Induced Lucid Dream". It normally is taken advantage of when waking up from a lucid dream or a normal dream, where you gather your awareness, don't wake yourself up too much, and re-enter the dream usually in a matter of seconds. At least that's how it was for me. It's basically like WILD without all the difficult preparation part because your body is on the verge of sleep anyway.

It sounds like you're trying to WILD at the beginning of the night, which is likely the reason for your dreamless sleep.