I want to Attempt a WILD (and Recover from a Dry Spell...)

I have tried inducing WILDs many, many times before in my 4 years of practicing lucid dreaming techniques, but I've never actually had one (closest I got was a few tingles... I always either fell asleep too fast or stayed away until I eventually gave up and went back to sleep normally). I didn't give up at that, though. I just decided that different methods work better for different people, and just because I struggle with WILDs doesn't mean I can't do anything else. That was about a year ago.
Since then, I have noticed that a great majority of my dreams are DILDs. The rest of them are from waking up in the middle of the night (sometimes naturally, most of the time I set alarms to help me remember more dreams) and going back into the "dream realm" just knowing that I'm dreaming 100%. Those are the best (but don't happen to me very often anymore).
Around November 2016, my ability to lucid dream with little effort (only writing in my dream journal, setting alarms 6 hours after I went to sleep and just turning them off and going back to sleep, and using mantras every night as I drifted off) started to fade away. At first, it was small. I thought it was just a bump in the road, but then I started only having lucid dreams once a week at the most. After about a month of that, I had none. Not much changed in my waking life, but something in my head changed my mindset a whole lot. I had several months of frustration because I couldn't lucid dream no matter what I did. I had one or two random ones during the several months of almost nothing, but I was barely aware. I could barely remember my regular dreams anymore.
Over the past few weeks, though, I've gotten a lot better. Lucid dreams are more regular, as I decided to start listening to hypnosis videos again. Jody Whiteley's 8-hour lucid dreaming hypnosis really helped me. LDs are starting to become more common again, but there's one big problem; any time I become lucid, I can't control anything. This used to happen to me before, but I eventually just got past it (after I had a non-lucid dream of being in a magic school, I knew I could do it, so it worked). Any time I do become lucid, my mind is all foggy. I plan on doing something, but I can't use "dream powers" for anything because they don't work.
Anyways, I've been thinking of giving WILDs another go. I'm thinking that if I can go in while I'm more awake, my mind will be more clear (or I can at least remember to use some simple techniques to make it that way). My main problems are that I don't know when to wake up, and I don't know how to stay awake long enough to induce a WILD. Like I said, my mind always drifts away, and if it doesn't, I focus to hard on what I'm doing/what I should do and keep myself up (but I have had some of those epic WBTB dreams that I mentioned from it... just rarely, though).
It's really frustrating, because I feel like I'm supposed to have figured out what works best for me by now, but I'm still stumbling through because most of the stuff that actually WORKS for me stops working after a few weeks/months.

*I should probably also note that I've tried using hypnosis audio on YouTube for WILDs to keep me focused enough to keep my mind awake, but the sound of words just distracts me and keeps me completely awake until I turn it off or ignore it*

Sorry for the really long post, I usually put off asking for help on forums until, well, I REALLY need help. :chuckle: Thanks for taking your time to read it, I really appreciate it. If you guys have any advice for what I should do to get past all of this and to further improve my lucid dreaming, I would love to hear it. Thanks again.

-Alli

Hi Alli!
I know exactly what you mean with WILD. It's very hard to go to sleep if you focus too hard, but very hard to stay awake if you let your mind wander! I can't really help you in the realm of "guides", but the most learning I've had is from the successes and failures of other lucid dreamers using this technique.
So, I'll tell you my experiences!

1. I recently found an app called Android sleep and it monitors your sleep patterns and pretty accurately finds your REM cycles based on the amount of movement you make in your sleep. This app will also let you set an alarm, and will prioritize waking you up RIGHT before a REM cycle (handy, right?). Of course, you don't need this, but it was a plus for me!

2. When getting up for WBTB, I've noticed that I get a little too awake if I stand up and walk around. So, I decided to sit in my bed and read posts on DreamViews or Reddit for about 30 minutes to make sure I'm alert enough to perform a WILD. If this seems to be too long, just shorten it! This technique may be seen as hard because everyone is different, but when you can hit it once, it's very easy to replicate.

3. I lay down and repeat mantras! I don't make it anything complex or else I will end up staying awake for hours. I keep counting while saying "I'm dreaming". Stay aware of your mantras because after a while of falling deeper into sleep, "15... I'm dreaming" will turn into "9... get a sword... 28... punch him in the face". This might be a ME thing, but this is a very good sign for me that I'm getting close! I'm starting to wander!

3.5 WILD isn't as strict as everyone thinks it is. You have an itch? Scratch it!! need to swallow? why not?! However, moving further into sleep, some of these itches are made by the brain to check if you are still awake. Fortunately, mantras and counting gives you something to focus on, so you won't even feel these sensations. However, if I have a need to swallow, I swallow it; this will probably only set you back minutes, or maybe even seconds.

4. A good way to keep from falling asleep is catching yourself when wandering; Yes, you are trying to encourage your mind to wander, but to an extent. A little too much wandering will send you off the deep end into sleep. After a little while, you may or MAY NOT feel sensations, and that is TOTALLY OK. Not everyone will feel the onset of REM atonia. However, there is usually an indicator that you are in your dream: one night, I randomly rolled over when WILDing without even thinking about it. I noticed because it was weird that I decided to move so far into my WILD attempts. With an RC, I was dreaming!

Hopefully my experiences will help you in your trials towards WILD lucidity! On the topic of dream control, you have to remember that you are dreaming and that you can do ANYTHING. A roadblock for beginners like me have been that things feel so real, so they must be. Wrong! If I felt like it, I can even walk through walls, jump off buildings, and one-punch man people in the face!

Good luck!
Danny

Thanks! I tried setting an alarm last night and trying what you said, but I was so tired that I totally forgot about my intention, turned the alarm off, and went back to sleep in under 10 seconds (haha, I didn't even remember it happening when I woke up this morning, just thought my alarm had malfunctioned).