Consistent WILDs through hard-work

[mongreloctopus]

When I first started out on this forum, I accidentally happened upon WILDs a couple of times and became quickly convinced that this was THE way to lucid dream. It's always nice accidentally 'waking up' in a dream, but I prefer to leave as little to chance as possible. I was always confounded by various problems in trying to WILD without having woken up in the middle of the night--my true desire was to be able to WILD essentially anytime. I eventually sort of gave up and moved on to other related pursuits, and then accidentally came upon a methodology that results in consistent, volitional WILDs. The first step to success is understanding what you are ultimately aiming for, in terms of the condition of your body and mind at the moment of WILD. To enter into a lucid dream from waking consciousness, your body must be physiologically asleep, while your consciousness is awake. This is pretty obvious, but the question remains, "how does one reach this point?" Sit some place relatively quiet, in a comfortable position, and focus all of your attention on the feeling of breath going into your nostrils, and then back out of your nostrils. Think about nothing else. If you are like I was when I first started this exercise, you will be unable to focus for even twenty seconds without some distracting thought, song lyric, memory, reminder, etc popping into your head. This ability, to focus your mind, is the single most important skill for lucid dreaming, WILD, and probably life in general. To succeed with my method, you have to practice this EVERY day for at least five minutes. When you realize that your mind is straying simply stop thinking about whatever distraction your mind is on, and return to your nostrils. This will probably be frustrating, and it will take a while to feel like you are making progress, but even being able to concentrate for a single minute without being distracted is quite a feat. Once you are able to hold your concentration for one to two minutes, you are probably at the point where you can succeed at volitional WILD, although the stronger your concentration power, the easier it will be. Once you have worked on this skill, it is time to put it into practice. Consuming caffeine, alcohol, or certain prescription drugs within 24 hours of your attempt will make it nearly impossible. THC is very unstable--it WILL decrease the time it takes for your body to fall asleep, but it can be very hard to maintain consciousness or concentration. I recommend at least 24 hours of purity. I haven't noticed much difference with foods, but I also try to avoid refined sugars as much as possible in general. Lie down in a comfortable position. I've only had luck on my back, although you may want to experiment with different positions. It's important to be comfortable, but if you do this in your bed, you may find yourself falling asleep too easily (due to our sleep-bed-conditioning). The following instructions are based on the concept of trance-meditation, so if you are familiar with that, do what you normally do. Otherwise, relax all of your body sequentially. There used to be a guide for 61 point relaxation on here, I don't know if it still exists, but this process is pretty self-explanatory: try to single out each muscle group and purposefully relax it, trying to remove as much muscle tone as is possible while conscious. When you have done this, focus on your breathing for a while to further your relaxation. Don't worry too much if you have irrelevant thoughts invading your mind, just make sure that you stay in control and don't get carried away with them. This is why you practiced the breath awareness. From this fully relaxed position, you need to begin tricking your body into falling asleep. This can be done several ways. Roll your eyes back in your head and keep them there, allow muscles to occasionally tick or spasm and try to feel yourself sinking backwards and downwards. Eventually you'll begin to feel a kind of tickling energetic sensation in your extremities. Try to focus on this sensation, and the feeling of it spreading up towards your torso. This is the pre-cursor to sleep paralysis. As this feeling spreads to your torso it will become more intense. It may feel as if though your heart is beginning to race, and you may feel suddenly very hot or very cold, and it may feel as if though you cannot breathe. All of this completely normal, and totally illusory. These symptoms of oncoming sleep paralysis were what caused me so much difficulty initially. I was dreadfully afraid of asphyxiating and would wake myself out of it every time. Concentrate on the feeling of energy throughout your body, allow your heart to race (even though it's beating at its regular rate, or a bit faster due to your excitement), continue breathing normally even if it seems to feel labored, and notice the very strange, psychedelic closed-eye imagery that comes on. It is common to lose it at this point and wake yourself out of it. It is this stage that most people describe as 'vibrations'. The vibrations can be felt as a kind of buzzing, or even shaking, or nothing at all. It's also common to hear wooshing, intensely loud tones, or even voices. The first few times it may be jarring, but you'll quickly get used to it, and probably even come to enjoy it. The hardest part is actually getting beyond this point. If you are able to maintain your composure through this stage, you may feel like your body is suddenly detached, weightless and floating slowly upwards. This indicates that your body is asleep and you are very close to success. Relax into this sensation--it is very pleasant. It is similar to the feeling of floating in salt water. It is very important to be relaxed at this stage, because it is quite unstable. From here, one can do one of several things. I am used to the rolling-over motion, so i 'feel' myself rolling to the side and consequently "out of my body". The idea is basically to 'move' yourself into the dream from this floating kind of suspension. This is a different kind of movement than with the physical body, because it does not involve muscles, but rather a kind of 'willing'. I can't, unfortunately, describe this properly, because there don't exist the necessary words--however, if you have had lucid dreams before, it is the exact same kind of 'will' that is required to fly, shoot fireballs, or do any of the impossible things that you do in a lucid dream. If done properly, you will find yourself in a dreamscape. Be careful opening your eyes, as I typically find that that action causes my physical eyes to open as well, resulting in a blurry kind of double vision. To fix this, I close my eyes and focus on the sensation of rubbing my hands together, exactly as I would to solidify a lucid dream. I have recently been experimenting with so-called astral projection, using this technique exactly, but I have yet to come upon any conclusive results. Much of this technique is similar to Robert Bruce's 'NEW' system, which I highly recommend to anyone who is able to get past the initial impression that he is another new-age charlatan dunderhead (he's not, actually). He goes into far more detail about how to stimulate yourself while in trance to make it much easier to succeed. If you have any questions, or want further clarification, I'd be happy to offer what knowledge I have. Hope this helps someone!

[Schmaven]

I think this was the most helpful WILD tutorial I've read so far! I'm going to try it tonight.

[Tara]

That was a great tutorial. Amazing stuff. Thanks a lot.

[Bechillbro48]

Great tutorial, most WILD guides are incredibly vague and unclear on the specifics, but this one isn\'t - it\'s descriptive and offers some great explanations. Kudos.

[i make it rain]

Have you had success with this in a non-WBTB?

[The Tao]

I like the way this is wrote out. I would recommend you submit it to the Tutorials section (PM an Admin and ask). This sounds like it has potential. I can reach the Vibrations easy enough, so I'm thinking this will be easy enough to accomplish. With me, the Vibrational stage seems to be light vibrations, but with me, I feel like my whole body is spinning around in circles, and at times, falling through my bed. At one point, I actually successfully WILDed through "falling". I was laying there, trying to wild, and felt myself falling, and "fell" between my bed and the wall, and without even thinking, crawled back into bed, and continued to try to wild. It was at that point, I realized what had actually happened. I already wilded. I tried to get out of bed, but just woke up . So, to those trying to WILD, pay very careful attention during the Vibrations and Falling sensations and stuff like that, as it can be very easy to miss the cue like I did.

[bcomp]

Hey mongreloctopus, nice tut! It's really helpful. Just one question though, how long did you practice concentrating? A month? Week? Did you work on clearing your mind multiple times a day?

[ZmillA]

nice details.

[Super FZL]

FINALLY! You have created what may be the best WILD guide I have ever read. Thank you very, very much. I will try this tonight and give you the credit if I succeed.

[Robot_Butler]

Great guide, octopus. I like the part about hard work

[ChaybaChayba]

Best WILD tutorial I've read so far. I'm of the same thought like you, that WILD is the way to enter lucid dreams, I practise WILD each night before going to sleep, and sometimes I take a nap for this purpose. WILDing might not be the easiest way to go, but in the end im confident it's the best way to go.. like you said, I also prefer to leave as little to chance as possible. Thanks a lot for the tutorial, very well written, and I'm sure it's going to help me out alot.

[TalkingHead]

Roll your eyes back in your head and keep them there, allow muscles to occasionally tick or spasm and try to feel yourself sinking backwards and downwards. Eventually you'll begin to feel a kind of tickling energetic sensation in your extremities. Try to focus on this sensation, and the feeling of it spreading up towards your torso. This is the pre-cursor to sleep paralysis. . Thanks Octopus.. I like Robert Bruce too. The part about keeping your eyes rolled back is interesting. I think this could definitely help me stay awake while my body goes to sleep. At what point though do you release your eyes?

[Cn]

I noticed a wall of text so I looked further down the page only to find very good comments! I'm going to read it and edit this post, it sounds promising. EDIT: Looks good, I shall try it.

[mongreloctopus]

Have you had success with this in a non-WBTB? yeah, that was the impetus for doing it this way--i wanted to be able to WILD without being forced to go through WBTB. WBTB makes it easier in a sense, because your body is already prepared to sleep almost immediately, and if you can keep your mind awake, it'll shorten the process by a hundred-fold. however, it is completely possible to WILD at literally any time. the key to this is a high enough level of concentration ability so that you can relax your body to the necessary level and subsequently put it to sleep. i will add, also, that in this pursuit, patience could not be more valuable--i have sometimes been lying in the same position for close to an hour before getting to the necessary level of relaxation...and sometimes it'll happen in under ten minutes. it all depends on what i ate and when i ate it, how much exercise i've been getting recently, and so forth. Hey mongreloctopus, nice tut! It's really helpful. Just one question though, how long did you practice concentrating? A month? Week? Did you work on clearing your mind multiple times a day? before actually beginning to attempt this particular way to WILD i had gotten very superficially into zazen, from which i adapted the concentration practice. it had occurred to me on many occasions that my ability to concentrate was horrendous, and every time i'd sit for a few minutes just trying to focus only on my breathing i would immediately become distracted. so, to answer your question, i had been doing this kind of practice probably for about a year or so off and on before i really got serious about it (i.e. doing it at least once a day for 10-20 minutes). before successfully WILDing like this i probably had been doing it everyday for about 3 weeks. once you set your mind (hah) to conditioning your mind to focus and concentrate, it goes really quickly. all it takes is a real commitment. aside from the times i sit down to specifically work on breath awareness, i also try, throughout the day, to avoid partaking in any internal monologue, dialog, day-dreaming, fantastication, etc. this is really difficult, and i'm still terrible at it, but have gotten to the point where i at least notice i'm doing it. you can easily come up with your own exercises for focusing your mind. just resolve to be in control of your mind, and the rest will sort of present itself to you.

[mongreloctopus]

Thanks Octopus.. I like Robert Bruce too. The part about keeping your eyes rolled back is interesting. I think this could definitely help me stay awake while my body goes to sleep. At what point though do you release your eyes? i basically try to position myself as much as possible as if through i were already asleep, mimicking as much of it as i can. as i fall asleep, i've often noticed that at a certain point when hypnagogic imagery is quite intense, that my eyes have rolled back somewhat. it's hard to find a kind of natural feeling balance where you're not forcing them uncomfortably, but i will say that at first it feels kind of weird to do this without it happening of its own accord. if you're doing it right, you'll soon forget that you did it, and your attention will be elsewhere.

[Super FZL]

I really want to try this...just 2 more hours.

[Tara]

I just read this yesterday and had a WILD this morning. My first WILD! I'm so happy.

[mongreloctopus]

I just read this yesterday and had a WILD this morning. My first WILD! I'm so happy. that is awesome! pretty amazing feeling, eh?

[Cn]

Quickly before I go to bed, how DO you roll your eyes back into your head? Do you keep your eyes closed and just look up as high as you can? That seems to hurt for me...

[mongreloctopus]

Quickly before I go to bed, how DO you roll your eyes back into your head? Do you keep your eyes closed and just look up as high as you can? That seems to hurt for me... yeah. don't do it to the point where it hurts. don't force it, just kind of look upwards. it'll happen on it's own anyway, and isn't such a huge part of the hold procedure...just an additional thing you can do to make your body fall asleep. if it's distracting, i wouldn't bother with it--physical relaxation is the most important aspect.

[Super FZL]

How long does this whole process take? I went 15 mins last night, thought I had it, and rolled out too early.

[Guru]

Thanks a lot!!!! I'll try it tonight. Did you practice any kind of meditation before attempting that? If so please state it.

[Toledous]

I tried it, felt my body tingling, then for some reason I had to swallow really bad, so I did, and that threw off the cycle. It was really hard for me to focus on dreaming when I had the window open blowing wind in and moving the blinds and the fan going, but its too hot to be without them.

[ChaybaChayba]

earplugs! I bought them, because I share a room with this guy who snores like a pig, it helps alot ^^

[i make it rain]

I had a WILD last night while pretty much doing your technique. It was right after I woke up from a dream. I didn't move so I was really close to falling back asleep. I was trying this other technique and it wasn't working so I did this. I would feel rushes of me getting close to sleep every few seconds I did this meditation. It worked very quickly and I had a pretty vivid WILD. Thanks.