dreaming awake

A friend of mine can dream without beeing asleep. He can switch in an instant into his second reality while he is still talking with me. I qustioned him very very precisely about how real that is. And as far I can tell it is as real as this world. He is not just imaging it, he is experiencing it.
That goes so far that he lets his subconsciouness mind read a book, while he is inside his dream reality and watches that as a movie. He says that many peaple can do that.
I didn't found anybody so far. Many can read subconsciously and imagine the scenes vividly. But nobody else actually sees the sceenes or feels the grass.

But since he learned it as a child he cannot remember what he did to learn that. He only remembers that he spend some time watching a painting. There he tried to make the leafes of a tree move, which eventually worked.

My hope was, if I learn to do lucid dreams with WILD I would find out how he is doing it. I make a short trip wake up and dive into another dream again. This works very well now. I have sometimes accidents where I can hear the real world from within the dream. Or I can choose which body I move (dream or real) without breaking the dream. So far so good.

Problem No1: I can do that training only once a week tops because it involves waking up early and staing awake for an hour. Which is bad if you have to work.

Problem No2: I can shift my attention from dream to real to dream when I am close to sleep. I just make it happen. If I was awake for some hours I somehow lack the intuition what to do. Some kind of contact or connection seems to be absent.

What do I miss here? I could do more WILD's till I figure it out. But with only one training session a week this could take years. So I'm in search for a technique which I can practice daily.

Has somebody similar abilities like my friend? Please tell me how you did learn that. Any Idea is welcome. (PS.: The 8 Things Site has gone 404 :( )

Hmm although i have never experianced something like what your explaining i know what your saying. I think that if you spend enough time in the dream would this would help your chances in completley understanding what your frined is talking about. I think DILD or MILD will help you sense you have to go to work. If your looking for a shorter faster WILD then i would suggest trying DEILD.

Thanks for the tip to use deild. I never though of doing it that way. I always assumed that we sleep the whole night through. At least the diagrams on the net about sleep cycles suggest that.

I will try to give me a suggestion to notice that brief moment when I surface during dreams.

Thanks :)