MILD: What am I doing wrong?

[Dawn.]

Last night, I tried to MILD. For my phrase I chose "I will recognize the next dream sign I see." I practiced it in my head during the day as well, just to make myself familiar with it. When I go to bed, I usually sleep on my stomach, but this time I decided to sleep on my back. (The reason is because when I fall asleep on my stomach, I wake up in the middle of the night with trouble breathing because I've been putting pressure on that spot for too long. I didn't want to ruin my MILD by waking up again, so I decided to sleep on my back. It wasn't uncomfortable either, after a minute or two I was fine.) So basically I just lay there motionless and repeated my phrase over and over again in my head, while I let my usual thoughts flow. As I felt myself lose consciousness, I tried to do visualize a dream scene, but for some reason I can't visualize well on my back. So I just kept on repeating the phrase to myself and tried to lie still as best as I could. After an hour or so, I realized that I wasn't getting anywhere, and that if I keep it up much longer, I would lose sleep. (I didn't get a good night's sleep the night before, and didn't want to spend too much time awake.) So I turned over on my right side and just lay there like I normally do. I even stretched my muscles a little. When I was still again, I began to feel this strange heaviness in my muscles, almost like SP but not quite there yet. Then I saw this really vivid image right before my eyes (I'm not sure if it was HI, or an actual dream beginning.) I tried my best to hold on to it, but I eventually lost concentration and opened my eyes. So I went to sleep normally, and had a normal night. Any thoughts of what I might be doing wrong here, or did I just get unlucky that time? What's the difference supposed to be between a MILD and a WILD?

[DarkLucideity]

If you can't tell the difference between a MILD and a WILD you haven't been reading the tutorials enough. MILD is a DILD method and WILD is, of course, a WILD method. In other words, with MILD you get lucid while in the dream, and in WILD you go into a dream lucid from the waking state. Sleep position and HI have nothing to do with MILD, because as long as you have dreams, you can MILD. The point isn't to enter a dream consciously.

[Shift]

WILD is a type of lucid dream where you enter the dream straight away from being awake, without ever losing consciousness. MILD is a type of DILD, where you become lucid in the middle of the dream. They're two very different things. Almost complete and total opposites. How much practice are you putting in during the day? If your memory isn't up to par, you can't expect this technique to work consistently I suspect your problems are letting your thoughts drift instead of simply focusing on your intention to remember, and the absence of visualization is really going to leave out a critical part of the MILD technique. The M in mild refers to that visualization. I suggest you read this and this, they should help

[Dawn.]

All right, thanks for helping Shift and DarkLucideity! You cleared up a lot of things.

[Kanious]

To me it's a bit impossible to MILD... Cuz i think "i will have LD" with will...So much will...And various times at the day and at bed... But i think...That i never had an MILD... I only had WILD's/WBTB's and spontaneous LD's... I need help too on this#