Thread: WILD fail, any tips?

I tried WILD last night, woke after 6 hours, recalled a dream, wrote it down, came on dreamviews for 15 minutes or so then went back to bed. Tried the breathing method, counting '1 I am dreaming, 2 I am dreaming etc' tried for about 20-30 minutes doing this. Nearly entered SP I think, the edges of my eyelids were flashing white light and felt a couple of waves go down my legs but then I needed to swallow, which I think ruined everything!

Things I will do differently next time:
1. Wake earlier, maybe 5.30 hrs into sleep as 6 hours seemed to be right after an REM phase, where as far as I understand, it would be best to wake before REM.
2. Not stay awake for so long, maybe limit to 15 minutes as I did feel quite awake and after I determined WILD was a fail I had a hard time falling asleep again.
3. Try not to swallow or something!

Any other tips would be great!

Not swallowing and moving might work for some, but don't forget WILD is about to fall asleep, not to stay awake. So sometime you should try wilding while trying to fall asleep just normally, in other words swallow if you have to and move if your position becomes uncomfortable.

If you're new with WILD, I'd recommend trying it combined with waking up in the morning by a alarm that turn off itself, then it should be easy to enter SP.
I've done WILD at night quite a few times in my days and even I think it's hard from time to time. So I recommend going of in the morning or so.
If you can't relax properly, try it another time.

One question? Do you have a hard time falling asleep? Does it take more than 30 minutes for you to fall asleep? Nop, that sounds highly unlikely.
Just do the same thing you do when you try to sleep, just stay aware of what's going on.

And for swallowing, it depends for people. But I've made myself clear to swallow whenever I feel like it.
It'll ruin your chances of a successful WILD if you think about swallowing all the time.

Feel free to contact me if you need more help.

Moved to the WILD subsection

The key is relaxation, you should be aiming to fall asleep, not to enter SP, yet remain concious.
What Sava was describing seems to be a DEILD, which is a great method, don't worry about swallowing the more you think about it the more you will be distracted, just do it if you need to.

Good luck!

Not swallowing and moving might work for some, but don't forget WILD is about to fall asleep, not to stay awake. So sometime you should try wilding while trying to fall asleep just normally, in other words swallow if you have to and move if your position becomes uncomfortable.

I think this is good advice, I've come to the realisation that because I can never fall asleep normally on my back then I have no chance of WILDing on my back, after all you have to be even more relaxed than when you normally fall asleep, and I'm just not comfortable on my back. I was trying to WILD last night, everything was going smoothly, I was getting pre-SP signs, I was having lapses in attention/consciousness, but it wasn't happening, I realised I wasn't comfortable, and with that reaslisation I was suddenly wide awake.

So yeah try rolling over every 10-20 minutes of your attempt

Thanks for all the replies, before reading the tips here I tried exactly the same technique last night, again a fail. Tried for longer this time, maybe 30-40 minutes counting and breathing on my back. After that amount of time I did get quite uncomfortable and I think that became a distraction. I think the main thing I will try and take away from the tips here are to remain focused on falling asleep rather than focus on SP and also to get comfortable. So perhaps deviate from the WILD tutorials and try and just fall asleep as I usually would, but focus on remaining conscious while doing so? I was thinking that FILD might be an easier technique if WILD is causing me problems? Anything to suggest FILD is an easier technique for beginners as opposed to WILD?

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Originally Posted by Raijin

Thanks for all the replies, before reading the tips here I tried exactly the same technique last night, again a fail. Tried for longer this time, maybe 30-40 minutes counting and breathing on my back. After that amount of time I did get quite uncomfortable and I think that became a distraction. I think the main thing I will try and take away from the tips here are to remain focused on falling asleep rather than focus on SP and also to get comfortable. So perhaps deviate from the WILD tutorials and try and just fall asleep as I usually would, but focus on remaining conscious while doing so? I was thinking that FILD might be an easier technique if WILD is causing me problems? Anything to suggest FILD is an easier technique for beginners as opposed to WILD?

Thanks for the advice everyone.

This made me chuckle because it's so telling of how people view WILDing, "just fall asleep as I usually would, but focus on remaining conscious while doing so" falling asleep while remaining conscious is the basic definition of a wake initiated lucid dream, and yet people get all these preconceived ideas of how they should WILD and it's very difficult to break out of. I think it's where a lot of newbies get tripped up. It's all mind over matter.