I just can't seem to progress further into WILDS...

I have been trying to WILD for about a month now. I just cannot seem to progress further into SP.

I wake up about 4-5 hours into sleep...I know it is recommended 6...maybe thats the problem... I then get out of bed and stay awake for 15 min. I go back to bed...relax..then begin either using the counting method (1, I'm dreaming, 2, I'm Dreamin etc.) or the Alphabet Method (A is for apple, B is for Banana etc) I become very relaxed but I never seem to go farther into relaxation. I have never experienced the Hallucinations or full blown SP.

The closest I come is being extremely relaxed...then I just end up laying there for 40 min. never progressing. Any tips? Ideas?

once you feel really relaxed, try visualizing something, preferably something you do regularly. For me i imagine riding a bike. But do more than see it in your minds eye. Use all your senses, hear, see feel smell and possibly taste what it is your doing. I imagine peddling downhill on a bike, feeling the rubber of the grips on the handlebars, the wind on my face, and the sound of birds etc. as best as I can. Eventually you should start actually seeing feeling and hearing these things or you should start getting HI or maybe even a dream scene!

Thanks for the tip :) I will definitely try that. It sounds a lot more exciting..then just counting..1, I'm dreaming, 2 etc lol. Hopefully I will be able to WILD soon.

yea i've tried the counting and the breathing and the alphabet...ect. They never really worked for me. I always always go with visualizing something. One trick i found that helps me is to kinds plan out like a story of sorts and then try to see it happening in my mind. I think that in order to fall asleep u can't actually be aware ur falling asleep. U just have to catch urself in the moment that it actually happens. And ur in for a world of disappointment if u think 1 month is a long time. I went over 2 years before i started having WILDs regularly. U really have to be willing to work at it. U might not even know ur making progress cause it seems to take so long.
Another thing that I did when i got really tired of waiting, and this takes a fair amount of will power, was to just lie there. Basically i would lie down to go to sleep and not move, at all, until i reached a LD. Some times it would take 5 hours, sometimes i could not move until the sun came up, i got up, and tried again the next night. The idea behind it is that it will happen eventually. I don't know how true this is for others, but i think the #1 barrier of the WILD is expectation. You want it to happen sooooo bad that u actually stop urself from getting it. So by lying there, even if for hours, i didn't expect it anytime soon, i just knew it would happen when it happened. That alone took a good deal of pressure off of myself.
But again, for me, visualizing was really the only way to go. The story helped me forget what i was trying to do. The important thing for me was to recognize when the story seemed too real or when it took on a life of it's own, then i was dreaming. Also I should note that I have only experience SP once with this method, every other time i just went straight into the story/dream. And thank god for that cause the one time i actually found myself in SP it was scary as hell. Having lucids is so much better when u don't have to fear walking through the door.

Yeah TAC, i've been having the same problem. I can relax pretty well, but have only gone into SP once (and that was because I dozed off and then happened to wake up again during SP). But I agree that too much expectation can be a really bad thing for WILD. Of course, I've never really tried the visualizing method, so I that's something i want to try. I read on another post that it helps to focus on the buzzing/ringing sound in you ears (if you find that visualizing a scene is too stimulating to fall asleep to).