Lesson II, techniques overview.

I'm going to put down my biggest problem before I go into how I feel about the techniques based on it.

If I wake up too much after a night awakening, it takes me what feels like forever to get back to asleep. Even just waking up for five-ten minutes can put my sleep in danger. The later it is the worse off. I have to just give up and get up thirty minutes to an hour earlier than usual sometimes. If I toss and turn for a couple hours (and it's early enough) sometimes I can get back to sleep.

DILD: This is how I got the 10 lucid dreams I have. I don't think anything in particular caught my attention, maybe the feel of the dream, but I'd just suddenly realize "I'm dreaming!". Definitely would want to keep this one handy. Already am good at autosuggestion and visualization as well. I'd like to get better at dream incubation for sure.

MILD: Ditto. A problem I can perceive is staying focused on it as I fall asleep. And if I am too awake, I have lots of thoughts vying for attention that might pull my focus away. I can just work on my meditation techniques to calm my thoughts and refocus though?

WILD: I'd worry about getting too awake. The easiest way for me to fall asleep is to just let go of everything, but I worry that with this, I'd focus too much and just end up laying there forever until I give up...

DEILD: I've actually done this with normal dreams, and I like the idea of it, as long as my recall doesn't suffer too much.

Other:

WBTB: Again, I fear becoming too awake. I feel like I'd only be be able to wake up long enough to type down any dreams so that I am able to get back to sleep at all.

Dream Yoga: Been practicing the basic skill from sivason's class, where you pay attention to the noises around you.

SSILD: I quite like this technique...but I actually use it to calm my thoughts as I try to sleep, and it's been helping me. I'll focus on one sense until my thoughts start crowding in, before moving on to another. I worry if I actually tried to use it to induce an LD, the same problems as with other techniques would crop up. I know that you can actually focus too much on something, and the minute you give up, you fall asleep... So I guess it's about finding the right level of focus?

In any case, I do think the best technique for me for now would be DILD. Maybe I can combine it with WBTB once I'm sure I'll wake up more easily. Will consider MILD/WBTB as well.