Hello all.

Came across this website while looking up HDTV on How Stuff Works. I read through the whole front page thing and, after one night of a very, very sucessful dream recall (almost 10 dreams? Almost 20 minutes apart at about 5 in the morning) I gave WILD a shot, which worked tremendously. Quite cool, the only problem was that the dream itself seemed as if I was looking through fogged glasses. The greatest part was knowing that I was going to wake up and doing the dream spinning thing - I found it was very hard to concentrate on doing the actual spinning, took about three attempts before anything happened. Anyways,

I have since tried LD again and I can't. I'm too tired. If I set the alarm later, I'm too awake, and earlier, I just turn the alarm off in my sleep, so it's not that. I get to the WILD stage where there's the whole tingly thing and such but then suddenly it's morning again. Kind of annoying. I know, I probably don't remember, but I always, always remember emotions when I wake up, even if I don't try wilds, and I just wake up feeling like a pile of bricks.

If you want, here's my personal technique for what I did that one night.

1) Set alarm for 4 in the morning
2) Bed at 10pm
3) Comfortable position, concentrate on breathing.
4) Here I imagine I'm floating on the very, very top of a large body of water, like a swimming pool.
5) I begin counting up to 100, concentrating on easy breathing.
Here is where I measure how sucessful I've been
6) Eventually I feel my fingertips on both hands break the water's surface. This is often accompanied by shallow breathing, and I suppose a rapid heart rate. That's when I fall asleep. For some reason I catch myself and do the deep breathing again, which counteracts the previous work done. Around now I fall asleep.
The night I had the LD, I had the feeling as if my arms up to elbows were immersed, then a huge sensation of falling backwards, as if someone had grabbed my shoulders and pushed them into the bed.

So far I've been getting good solid nights of sleep, but I don't remember anything at all. I've read the dream recall section of the forum but it's not much help. I'm going to try the finger thing when I wake up at 4 tonight, see if I can stop myself from sleeping before dreaming. If anyone has any suggestions, or just wants to comment, feel free. Cheers,

GD