First Stab at WILD

[homieh4t]

To preface, I've dreamed semi-lucidly before learning about WILD, DILD, etc. simply by realizing, while dreaming, that I'm in a dream and then exerting some control over things. I've also experienced SP, but only immediately after waking up, and rarely, for about a minute at most. At any rate, the past few nights I've been trying to WILD. Last night I woke up (alarm) about 5 hours after falling asleep. I sat up for about 10 minutes, first going to the bathroom, then sitting at the edge of my bed and doing mental exercises to wake up a bit (18 x 23, capital of Guyana, etc.) Then I lay in bed, eyes closed, light off, perfectly still. After a few minutes of relaxing like this, my limbs felt a bit tingly and numb, but I wasn't sure if it was SP and was too afraid to try moving and find out. But at the same time, I got kind of excited about this and my heartbeat quickened. And this is where I got stuck for about 20-30 minutes and eventually gave up (and when I did eventually move to actually try just going to sleep, there was no SP). Is this normal? I feel like I'm stuck. Also, what do people mean when they claim they see "scenes" during hypnagogic imagery, etc.? Is this in the mind's eye or a sensation of actually watching it, like a movie screen? Thanks in advance to anyone who comments.

[homieh4t]

Just as an update of sorts, last night I tried FILD, and after about 30 seconds of that I did a nose RC and it worked! I'm a little fuzzy on what happened afterward, but I'm pretty sure that I got a little excited and then relaxed a bit after telling myself that if I failed I could just try again later on. After this I progressed into a semi-lucid dream (I say semi because it seemed more like I was watching a movie than actually taking part, but it was cool nonetheless, and I did feel some degree of control.) It's neat now that going to sleep isn't totally boring...

[The Dreaming Zombie]

It's neat now that going to sleep isn't totally boring... Yep, actually look forward to it now. I'm kind of in the same stage as you with the whole WILD thing. I can sit still but I'm still looking out for the best thing to concentrate on to take away my thoughts on my body. Last night I woke up at like 5am and was just like..."so damn tired...I'll WILD tomorrow night". But that wasn't the right attitude.

[LucidDreamer21]

For me, it helps if I take a shower or bath 30 minutes (I say 30 minutes because that's about how long it takes for your body to go back down to the normal temperature) before I go to bed. Then I read for 30 minutes before I go to bed. This seems to help me quite a bit. Of course, this is only useful if you're planning to a WILD before sleeping at all. I guess you could take one with the WBTB WILD method, but then you'd have to take one really late at night.

[homieh4t]

Last night I tried FILD again a couple of times, but neither one worked so I gave up and just tried to fall asleep. Eventually, at about 10:00 a.m. (I sleep 1:30-11:30 a.m. on the holidays, bit embarrassing) or so I had strange, but non-lucid dream. Then the scene changed, I was in Wal-Mart, and I was looking for a specific brand of shaving cream that a DC had used in the last scene in an attempt to verify that the last scene was a dream and not real. This soon led me to realize that this was a dream and not real (although I never did any RC's, I just knew). In the dream I got kind of gregarious, started slapping random DC's I met on the back and rubbing my hands together (which actually made for a very realistic dream, almost like being awake). At this point I decided to try doing something cool and call somebody I wanted to meet. I pulled out a "phone" (it was actually just my hand shaped like a phone, but I mimicked pushing buttons anyway and it kind of worked) and called some number. Someone picked up and I said "Hi, Sarah Chalke, please come over here. See you later." But at this point I kind of started to realize I was in bed, everything faded out, and I woke up . Still quite nice.