Thread: Method vs Technique

Stephen Laberge coined the terms WILD and DILD. Here is a quote from his book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (He refers to techniques as "strategies" and methods as "types" or "kinds"):

In the last chapter we talked about strategies for inducing lucid dreams by carrying an idea from the waking world into the dream, such as an intention to comprehend the dream state, a habit of critical state testing, or the recognition of a dreamsign. These strategies are intended to stimulate a dreamer to become lucid within a dream. This chapter presents a completely different set of approaches to the world of lucid dreaming based on the idea of falling asleep consciously. This involves retaining consciousness while wakefulness is lost and allows direct entry into the lucid dream state without any loss of reflective consciousness. The basic idea has many variations. While falling asleep, you can focus on hypnagogic (sleep onset) imagery, deliberate visualizations, your breath or heartbeat, the sensations in your body, your sense of self, and soon. If you keep the mind sufficiently active while the tendency to enter REM sleep is strong, you feel your body fall asleep, but you, that is to say, your consciousness, remains awake. The next thing you know, you will find yourself in the dream world, fully lucid. These two different strategies for inducing lucidity result in two distinct types of lucid dreams. Experiences in which people consciously enter dreaming sleep are referred to as wake-initiated lucid dreams (WILDs), in contrast to dream-initiated lucid dreams (DILDs), in which people become lucid after having fallen asleep unconsciously (1.) The two kinds of lucid dreams differ in a number of ways. WILDs always happen in association with brief awakenings (sometimes only one or two seconds long) from and immediate return to REM sleep. The sleeper has a subjective impression of having been awake. This is not true of DILDs.

1. S. LaBerge, Lucid Dreaming: An Exploratory Study of Consciousness During Sleep (Ph. D. diss., Stanford
University, 1980). (University Microfilms International No. 80-24, 691)

Thanks for the response, but it doesn't really answer my question.

I too watched Giz' videos on this, and cringed at the insanely pedantic and outright misguided attempts he makes to "correct" someone for not caring to use the same terminology as he and a chunk of the lucid dreaming community use.

To the average person, whether you call your way to lucid dream "method", "technique", "plan", "way", doesn't make any difference, as long as the actual information and methodology you're providing is correct. The way he describes it makes it sound like he believes the terminology itself holds some objective truth, and not using it makes you "wrong" in some absolute sense, going as far as equating it to saying "5+5=11". These terms are just subjective categorizations of ways to lucid dream; no one is right or wrong, he's literally arguing semantics. The only value that comes from keeping to these is less confusion when dealing with people who themselves use them. To see him try to force this jargon onto someone else in this context is just ridiculous. And this is far from the only error he makes in his interactions with Koi. He time and time again strawmans what Koi says, and takes the absolute worst interpretation he can imagine to everything he says, providing zero charity.

The video in question.

Methods refer to the types of lucid dreams and techniques refer to procedures to have lucid dreams of one of those types.

I had the same question a while back. The way I understand it is as follows.

Method is either WILD or DILD. Basically an umbrella way of saying 'anything you do that is inducing lucidity within the dream' or 'anything you do that is entering a dream already lucid'.

Technique was used to refer to the finer points. Things like FILD, WBTB and the like fall under WILD, and things like MILD fall under the DILD method.

Though honestly it doesn't make a lot of sense to me since WILD and DILD are both in themselves techniques to achieve lucid dreaming. (Since WILD I tend to imagine a dreamer doing WBTB and going through SP into a dream, and DILD I tend to imagine a lucid dreamer doing reality checks.) I think that anyone trying to establish the difference is just trying to establish these umbrella terms; that everything you're doing on some level is either a DILD or WILD in one way or another. (After all, if you're not getting lucid upon entering the dream, or at some point during the dream, when are you getting lucid?)

I personally agree with Dark Passenger. The difference between method and technique isn't really important and beyond the point. In my opinion, anyone who ostracizes you for confusing the two is being pedantic and you shouldn't worry about them.

Thanks for the responses. I do think I understand what you guys are saying, though specifically I just don't understand why the terms couldn't be used interchangeably. Did whoever coined the terms WILD and DILD also cause the words Method and Technique to have special meaning beyond typical dictionary definitions when used in the context of lucid dreaming or something? Is it just popular usage? Am I misunderstanding the definitions of method and technique? Maybe something else?

I guess I'm looking for a bit of etymology or something? I'm specifically curious about the origin of why something like referring to WBTB as a method isn't considered proper usage, and if considering such a thing to be improper usage is even a popular opinion.

I'd say it's a matter of preference. "Technique" and "method" are essentially synonyms and can be used interchangeably. It is absolutely irrelevant which one you choose.

However, it would be wrong to call a DILD or WILD either, as they are types of lucid dream. This is an important distinction that is often overlooked.

I'd say LaBerge nailed it when using the word strategy to refer to the various approaches used to achieve either form of lucid dream.

If one uses the analogy of travel, DILD's and WILD's are destinations, whereas the techniques/methods/strategies such as WBTB, CAT, MILD etc. would be considered analogous with the mode of transport used to reach one's destination. You can see how misleading it would be to call a car a destination, or Paris a mode of transport. However, arguing over the use of the words "method" and "technique" is no less meaningless than arguing about the use of "vehicle", "conveyance" or "mode of transport" - they mean the very same thing.

That said, I appreciate that Giz was at least attempting to be precise in his own use of language, even if I disagree with his conclusions. I can also absolutely understand how frustrating it is when dealing with misleading characters such as Koi who do lucid dreaming far more harm than good.

^^ That. Also:

Perhaps in a sideways defense of what that youtuber said (I didn't see the video, and from descriptions of it here, feel no need to see it), I think that pointing out the difference between method and technique, where WILD and DILD are termed methods, might have more to it than just a bit of petty semantics.

It's been mildly troubling for me to notice over the years that WILD and DILD have been turned into techniques (it used to drive LaBerge nuts, too, BTW). This is not semantics, but a simple truth that might be valuable to dreamers, should they choose to own that truth.

As Daniel noted so well above, WILD and DILD are the two possible transitions to LD's. Their acronyms literally spell out that transition with their "I's" standing for the word "Initiated," (and not the word "Induced," BTW). They are not techniques at all, but the things at which we aim all our techniques (and machines, and supplements).

I think if a dreamer could come to understand that, when attempting a WILD or anticipating a DILD, they are using techniques that help them make a transition to lucidity, with the transition being WILD or DILD, they might have an easier time grasping the whole equation of LD'ing, and that understanding might make transitions to lucidity just a bit easier.

All that sounded a lot better in my head, but I think there really may be something more important than semantics in dreamers understanding that WILD and DILD represent the two types of transitions to LD'ing that are possible, and all the techniques represent the tools we use to make those transitions. Sometimes words do matter.