Please Help! Cant LD!!

I need help, iv'e been trying to lucid dream for a while now and this is getting really frustrating. I read all the articles and I know what and how it works but that's not helping. This is what i'm doing...........I tried WILD, FILD, Astral Projection, and every other type of way to get into the LD stage. I lay in bed, relax my body COMPLETELY and let my mind drift while being aware I'm awake.

This is hard to explain but I will try my best. My starts breathing slowly and deeply, I dont move or swallow no matter how much itchiness comes on me. I dont move my eyes, dont swallow, dont do anything to disrupt this state. My body becomes heavy and I get to the point where I cant feel some body parts, BUT THATS IT! No hypnogogic imagery, no any signs of Sleep Paralysis.......nothing to suggest i'm doing anything correctly. When I try waking up in the middle of the night, that doesn't work either because I'm completely awake no matter how tired when I wake.

Yes, I know that LD takes a lot of time in practice, but I have no indication whatsoever that i'm doing anything correctly. Generaly I am a very strong willed person and when I put my mind on something I get it done, but this is getting crazy. Yes I also know that you cant have stress or think about LD too much while doing it because your body needs to be completely relaxed. But I cant enter SP no matter what. I just lay there for hours trying to induce an LD. NOthing is working and I'm willing to try anything.

Yes, I keep a Dream Journal, yes, I have tried reality checks. Nothing is working. I was wondering if I can get a VERY DETAILED description of what to do next, or how others induce their lucid dream.

Thank you

It sounds like the only approach you're working on are all WILDs, and WILDs are tricky. They are generally most successfully achieved by those who are already familiar with the "feel" of dreaming and lucid dreaming by building dream recall and achieving DILDs via daytime awareness work and nighttime WBTB and intention.

WILD success from bedtime is very rare (but not impossible) and you have to hold your awareness while your body is asleep for up to 90 minutes before a (usually very short) dream begins at your first REM cycle.

Dreaming is a very different sort of discipline from just about anything else. You can't scrunch up your forehead, work hard, get intense, and necessarily have any results. Lucid dreaming practice is about patience, persistence, and finding balance in between intensity and relaxation, and accumulating small bits of progress over (usually) extended periods of time (months, years).

How long have you been keeping a DJ? Do you recall dreams every night? About how much detail per dream? Do you feel "present" (like you're really there participating, as opposed to watching a distant movie) in your dreams? How often during the day do you perform RCs? How long are your moments of raised awareness during the day (that accompany RCs)? Do you generally pay attention to your days or do you float through on auto-pilot?

You mention trouble falling asleep after waking in the middle of the night. Middle of the night wakings is the most usual path to success in WILD and even some DILD approaches (MILD in particular, as well as WBTB), so learning to relax your body and mind on command is a *very* valuable skill to acquire in LD practice. It takes time and effort but is well worth it.

I strongly recommend that all beginners acquire and read ETWOLD (Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge) and follow LaBerge's recommended day and night practices. He lays out a great practice in easy to follow progressions of exercises (particularly his A Course In Lucid Dreaming is organized in this fashion). Sticking to them for about a month results in most people's first lucid dreams!

To help hold yourself accountable to your practice and to get individual feedback on your LD practice, I invite you to open a workbook in the DreamViews Academy (DVA). Either the intro class or the DILD class. If you really want to continue focusing on WILD [I recommend de-emphasizing this for now], read through Sageous's WILD class and post your WILD experiences there for feedback on his Lucid Dreaming Fundamentals Q&A or "WILD Attempts, what happened?" threads.

:welcome:

I recommend reading through all 7 parts of Sageous' WILD tutorial.(http://www.dreamviews.com/wild/13181...prep-part.html)

You could also try DIELD, which is a shorter and easier than traditional WILD.

Personally, I've had good success LDing by inducing and catching False Awakenings by relentlessly staring at the back of my eyelids until I fall asleep and then RCing when I wake up. This is my personal offshoot of SSILD. (http://www.dreamviews.com/induction-...eam-ssild.html)

Hope this helps! Good luck!

Welcome to Dreamviews!

It's great that you have read up about techniques. Try reading one more. This one explains why it's ok to move and swallow and scratch and why SP is not part of LDing.

Dolphin already linked some of the sessions of this long tutorial. Here is the whole thing WILD
Happy dreams!

Thank you everyone for the insight. I'll keep trying. SSILD sounds new, I'll try it for a week. If it doesn't work I'll try FILD. I'll keep trying. Thank you

I don't think I can add anything new to what the others said.

Welcome to the forums!