Sangfoot

Technique:Total sleep time = 8 hours.

Last night I gave a lot of effort towards WBTB to become lucid. I was reading a new WILD tips guide KINGYOSHI made and he talked about making multiple WBTB techniques in one night! For some reason I had never thought of this!

Normally I will try one WBTB after 5-6 hours of sleep. Last night a drastically changed up my technique. I set an alarm for 2 hours after I fell asleep, then 2 hours after that, then every hour after that. In all I made 3 serious WBTB attempts and 2 not so serious ones. For the 3 serious ones I got up out of bed and stayed awake for at least five minutes to make sure that I would not fall asleep to quickly. For the others I just turned of the alarm, made some quick dream notes, and went back to sleep.

First off let me say that overall I really enjoyed the experience and if nothing else I think it will help me by giving me more... experience. I will continue to try and do at least 3 serious WBTB WILD attempts for 1 week.

Now to analyze me results. My problems with WILD are the standard 2 problems. Either I fall asleep to quickly and lose conscience or I concentrate to much and can't fall asleep at all... until I give up and therefore fall asleep regular style

The WILD technique is a tricky thing. If you stay awake until you are very tired you will fall asleep to quickly. If you concentrate very hard and are determined not to give up then you fail because you can't fall asleep! Then, if you try to combine the two, and wait until you are tired then determine to try very hard and do the technique properly then at least for me I start to become very anxious and I just toss and turn throughout the night getting very poor sleep...

Then to make matters worse, when I determine to take the night off and just relax, I will become lucid!!

How do you win!?!?!?

I think that the answer is that it just takes lots of time and experience to learn your sleeping patterns, learn more about dreaming, improve your recall, and then learn what works for you. Time and Experience

Last night instead of really focusing on just becoming lucid I changed my goals to include learning more about how I fall asleep. How long does it take? Do I naturally toss and turn? How long is my REM cycle? If I wake myself up five times will I be able to keep falling asleep? What will that do to my sleep quality? These are the type of questions I am trying to get answers to because I think that they will lead me further down the road of the WBTB WILD.

My mantra last night when waking and when falling asleep was "RC ... did I have a dream? (record dream notes)" repeat mantra "Stay calm... stay relaxed ... now fall asleep naturally (with a calm intention to try and remain conscience)" repeat

This allowed me to wake and fall asleep many times throughout the night without completely ruining my sleep quality. And it resulted in a TON of dream notes... to be continued in part 2