Thread: Can't LD =(

Sorry for the long post =X. If you don't want to read it, you can jump to my questions in the end of it ^^.

I've tried to LD a lot in the past (some years ago), and never succeeded... last week I probably had one. I realized I started to question what was happening in my dream... that couldn't be "normal". Finally, in the 5th scene of my dream I just looked closely and said "Wait... I'm dreaming. It's a LD!!". I looked to the scenario: I was in a beach, and the sand was REALLY shiny; I looked around and saw an wood cabin, my friends (that were with me since the 2nd scene) and an old man (that was pursuing us since the 3rd one) -- this old man wanted to beat me, but he stopped once I noticed I was in a dream, like if he knew I was in control now and he couldn't hurt me. Then I thought "Well, if it's a dream, I can fly". I tried to fly, but I couldn't; so I pretended that there was no gravity and just jumped to let my body float. It worked, but after that I just saw myself going higher and higher quickly: the scenario just zoomed out until I finally saw the wall in my room, awake. That WHOLE scene didn't last even 5 seconds (and I have a feeling -- and I don't know why -- that it did last 4 seconds).

The weirdest thing is that when I realized it was a dream, I started to listen to a nice sound (after I realized it was a sound in Tropico 4 soundtrack, a game I've first played during the afternoon, some hours before going to sleep). I just read -- I don't know where -- that we can't hear music while LD. So I'm almost sure that I listened to that sound; but if I didn't, at least it surely did stay in my mind for hours after waking.

The feeling was awesome. So I googled for LD after that, and two days ago I found this forum. I've read a little of each technique, and kept trying DILD (I'm trying this since a week ago, before finding the forum), but it didn't work yet (I didn't expect to see it working so fast, but DILD doesn't look cool to me, so I quit it already). Since I liked CANWILD technique I decided to give it a try today. But I have some problems with sleeping that don't let me even sleep, much less dream or ldream.

First, I frequently suffer from insomnia. It takes me HOURS to fall asleep sometimes (other times I can't sleep at all). Only when I'm entirely exhausted I can sleep faster (but it still takes more than 30 minutes, usually).
Second, when I sleep, I usually wake up a lot of times during the night (3 - 4 times); some of these times I fall asleep really fast (5 minutes or less), but sometimes it takes 1 hour, or I even can't get asleep again; and so I can't know when I will be in a REM...
Third, I HATE my breath when I wake, so I need to brush my teeth before going back to bed.

When I woke TODAY (2 hours ago), I tried WILD (it wasn't a CANWILD since I didn't use the custom alarm), but applying the idea on CANWILD of not moving (I realized I had awakened the second I did, and didn't move at all, so why not trying?). But instead of falling asleep again, I just woke up totally while trying =/. So I came to my PC for a few minutes, and then returned to bed (since I'm still pretty tired); so, I tried WILD (in this tutorial dreamviews.com/wiki/WILD-Tutorial). Ok, I managed to relax my body, and focused on my mind. I started to count, slowly. My body started to feel the same way our arm feels when we sleep over it. It doesn't look like relaxing to me... my body was better before that feeling. But still I kept counting, imagining each number. For a moment, around number 165, my eyes destabilized and I saw a sunset, but less than 0.5 seconds after that I was again totally awake. I kept counting; the eyes, again, started to move from one side to another, and drawing some lines. But never for more than a second. I tried to imagine that beach I saw in my first LD, and draw the numbers in the wall of the cabin. But after I reached number 800 (it may have taken more than a half hour), I just quit.

My questions about WILD:
1. When you say the body will be paralyzed, what does it really mean? It means that if I try to move, I won't be able to?
2. What "Keeping the mind awaken" means, too? I kept counting, imagining each number, but when my brain wanted to put me to sleep and started to make me forget to imagine the numbers (just count unconsciously), I managed to remember that and start to imagine the numbers again. I don't think I will fall asleep this way =/.
3. Hallucinations... it's not clear to me. It happens even without you opening your eyes, or you only see the hallucinations (when they happen, of course) if you open your eyes? And can we even open the eyes during the process? Wouldn't it make us wake?
4. How long it takes until you finally fall asleep? And, for those who choose the counting technique to keep the mind awaken, which number you usually reach until you fall asleep or quit =P?

Thanks ppl =D.