bluremi
Member

I may be zeroing in on an approach to WILD that works for me. I had my second successful WILD due to this approach. It uses a combination of a few established techniques that work synergistically to maximize chances of success:

1) DEILD: before falling asleep at night, repeat mantra to wake up and not move, while visualizing the same.
2) WBTB: Wake up after 6 hrs of sleep to use the restroom and have a drink.
3) Anchor: Rapid cycles timed to the breath keep me awake.
4) FFA: Forced falling asleep to sink deeper towards sleep

Last night I went to bed earlier than usual and as a result I woke up several times throughout the night. Every time I woke up I would perform a reality check and once I was certain it wasn't a false-awakening I would lie on my back and start cycles. The cycles are the same as the SSILD cycles (vision, then hearing, then physical body sensations) but each sense is only focused on for the duration of one breath. This gets you into a rhythm which eventually becomes automatic. At this point I would normally fall asleep since the automatic nature of the action would make me lose interest, until I discovered the adjustment outlined below:

1) Start cycles with strong intent and focused attention. Every few cycles throw in FFA for two or three breaths, just to create a faster but controlled descent towards sleep.
2) After a little while the cycles become easy to do and feel largely automatic.
3) At this point switch your attention from the cycles to observing yourself doing the cycles. You are passively watching yourself doing the cycles and watching for the moment when your mind wanders. This is a subtle transition, if you don't understand this subtle difference in mental action this might not be for you.
4) As you continue to do cycles you will feel your mind grow muddier and more confused, as you flirt with unconsciousness. This is a delicate balance. The only way to proceed here is to learn from failure. You need to get familiar with the very specific sensation of losing consciousness but retaining a tiny thread of awareness.

Getting back to last night, I noticed that as my mind drifted away visuals started to appear. If I "noticed" these visuals they would disappear again, because paying attention to them caused my mind to "wake up" slightly, setting back the process. When that happened I would just calmly resume drifting deeper, each time getting slightly deeper. Eventually I had a complete lapse in consciousness and when I came to I was walking down a green-carpeted hallway in an old apartment building. I immediately knew I was dreaming and started crawling around, feeling the floor and staring at the details to deepen the dream.

It turned into a nightmare after that, but because I was lucid I just observed the disturbing events without losing self-control or getting scared. It was unpleasant but definitely exciting and I do not regret having the experience.


I will continue to work with this method and if successful I will create a thread in the forum. I think my approach has some details that are missing from the other techniques posted there.

This worked for me last night, combination of CAN-WILD and FILD, let's call it CAN-FILD (Custom Alarm Noise - Finger Induced Lucid Dream). This is my fourth lucid dream, ever, even though I have been trying for years. I think the trick is to get the timing and the details correct. I had quite a long lucid dream, had no trouble with waking up right away. Below are details of how I got it to work so that it may benefit others who are struggling.

Alarm Clock
I have a droid phone, and it use it as my alarm to wake me up in the morning. I use a distinctive piercing alarm to get out of bed. The exact ring tone is not important, it's the math problems i have to solve to turn it off. I have been conditioned to wake the f!ck up when I hear this alarm because it doesn't go away until I do a few math problems on my phone. I do this because otherwise I have the problem others have evinced on this thread, where you sleepily shut off the alarm and fall unconscious again without noticing, or sleep through it.
I got the app Alarm Clock Xtreme Free, and programmed the alarm to slowly rise to full volume over 10 seconds, then stay there for 5 seconds before auto-snoozing for 11 minutes. That means the alarm slowly gains volume and rings for 15 seconds, not jarring me awake and causing me to move. If it doesn't wake me up it goes off again after 11 minutes, then just loops that way forever.

Timing
Went to sleep at 11:30 and set the alarm for 4 hours later, 3:30AM. I was actually woken by the auto-snooze alarm at around 4:30, so that's 5 hours of sleep. I imagine this will be different for most people so this setup takes the guesswork out of it. Eventually you WILL wake up with this great app.

Technique
Upon hearing the alarm I lay still and did not get excited. Imagine if the alarm just meant it was time for you to do your homework, about that level of arousal. I did not start thinking of all the stuff I would do in my dream, I didn't even think about dreaming. Empty mind, concentrate on your fingers. I woke up on my back with my dominant hand on my stomach. This is the hand I practiced twitching my fingers with, so I used it even though it wasn't where I'd prefer (on my side or under my pillow). I twitched the fingers very gently, almost too little to move. I did not count the seconds, just focused on getting the motion right for moment to moment. I did this until I heard a faint buzzing in my ears and a mild sense of dislocation. In retrospect this may have taken 10-20 secnods, max. Again, I did not track the time or count anything.
I lifted my other hand to my nose and tried to breathe, success. I opened my eyes and was in my room, but everything was very gray and indistinct.

I imagine this is where most people wake up. A great thing to do is to deepen the reality of the dream by palpating your surroundings. I looked down at my bedspread and started looking at it up close and feeling it with my hands, moving constantly and not focusing on a single spot for more than a split second. Basically crawling over it like looking for fleas. Within a few seconds my vision became crystal clear and my surroundings solidified. From there I had a very fun lucid dream, it lasted around 10 minutes I think since when I came out of it my alarm clock was about to ring again.


Great technique, can't wait to try it again. If you sleep with someone and can't bother them with your bloody alarm ringing every ten minutes throughout the night, get a comfortable pair of in-ear headphones and wear those to sleep. They sell stuff out there that you can wear without end and not hurt your ears.