Forgetting how to sleep

For some time, I've been attempting a WILD a couple of times a week. Every time, things happen roughly the same way (tl;dr: I always fall asleep very quickly, unless I attempt a WILD, in which case I can't get to sleep for a good 30-60 minutes after I've aborted the attempt).

Before bed, I drink a glass of water. When I go to bed, I fall asleep very quickly - usually in less than 5 minutes. At some time during the night, I wake up. I record my dreams in my journal, assuming I can remember them. If I haven't slept for at least 5 hours, I drink more water and go back to bed (again, falling asleep in less than 5 minutes); otherwise I continue. Lying in bed (sometimes on my side, sometimes on my back), I relax myself completely, usually with self hypnosis. I tell myself that my body is going to fall asleep while my mind stays alert.

At this point I've tried various things. Sometimes I lift the trance but stay relaxed; sometimes I stay in the trance. Either way, I try to keep my mind clear. I've tried focusing on my breathing; focusing on a the flame of an imaginary candle; focusing on the sound of the room's fan. Often I get bright flashes, and sometimes I try to focus on them. Sometimes I'll try a mantra; other times I'll count down from 100, including (or not) a brief mantra between numbers, sometimes counting with my breathing, sometimes not. Sometimes I'll try to visualize the dream I want to be in; sometimes I'll try to generate random, unconnected imagery. I almost never have trouble staying still: I can hold a position on my side or back for upwards of half an hour without discomfort.

It seems that no matter what I do, I end up waking myself up more and more. I'll usually still feel drowsy when I go back to bed (I'm only up for 5-10 minutes, and I don't turn any lights on). I know the first thing you have to do with a WILD is to fall asleep, and I haven't been able to find a way to fall asleep with any semblance of awareness. Any thought I try to hold in my mind seems to make sleep abandon me completely. Any drowsiness I had going back to bed quickly disappears.

Worse yet, when I abort one of these attempts (usually after 40 minutes to an hour), I've usually "forgotten" how to sleep altogether! Sometimes I'm able to get back to sleep after another 30-60 minutes of trying to get to sleep; other times I end up getting up for an hour and going back to bed when I feel tired again.

These nights aren't a complete waste: the few DILDs I've had have almost always been on failed WILD nights.

I know that falling asleep is a very personal thing, and that no one can give me a precise recipe. Even so, is there something obvious that I've overlooked?

I'm right there with ya. WILD is a tricky balancing act, no doubt about it. I wake up quickly unfortunately, I think this is less desirable than falling asleep "too quickly," since the results is usually much more lost dream time. On the other hand, WBTB for me for MILD is just: recall, journal, bathroom, bed. Even with just that, adding a few MILD reps in there, and I'm awake for some time.

Keeping a regular sleep schedule and getting exercise during the day helps....I'm still trying to get my schedule ironed out.

On my (mostly failed) WILDs I too ended up very awake. On my one short success I was more focused on the sleeping part than the awareness part: for me, and perhaps for you, erring on the side of unconscious sleep rather than staying aware may be the thing that makes it work. Sometimes you'll miss and fall unconsciously asleep, but for me that's better than laying there awake, because you still have the DILD possibility as a backup.

Like FryingMan said, make sure you are on a normal sleep schedule, if you aren't and you try to WILD it's hard to fall back asleep especially if you went to bed early and don't really need anymore rest.

Try not to use WBTB if you can't fall asleep easily, just use the classic DEILD/WILD approach. Which would be waking up and catching yourself before you move or do anything, lay perfectly still, and just let sleep paralysis hit you again. It should be pretty quick. Also I find that using mantras while trying to go back into sleep paralysis isn't worth it most of the time, just use the void don't let any thoughts, pictures, or sounds come into your mind. If you use mantras just do it a few times before you go to bed or during the day or maybe just a few times before you try to fall back asleep, whenever I try to use mantras while trying to sleep I just lay there for 30 mins+ Try to keep your consciousness at a minimum. It's also important to keep your breathing very slow so your heart rate is slow enough for you to fall back asleep easily. (If you are still going to use WBTB this will help)

Sorry if none of that helps I'm just coming back from a long break from this Forum, I'm a little rusty with my words :P

I have to say, Nazrax, now 7 weeks after my first response, it's spooky how your experience is so close to mine. Like a carbon-copy, almost EXACTLY the same. In early November I went on a WILD attempt marathon, about 3-4 nights in a row, whenever I woke up and it was close to or after the 5th hour after bedtime, I did a WILD attempt. Never got totally in to a WILD (got close, or perhaps even in, to a totally blank dream), but the result is that now my body / mind just does NOT want to go back to sleep after waking after the 5th hour. Not just on the same night as the WILD, but *every* night thereafter. Only when I took a 3mg melatonin tablet before bed did I get back to sleep after a 5th/6th hour waking for the last REM cycle before I had to get up.

I feel sort of stuck -- I'm not sure what to do. I've done just about all the things I've read about that are within my power. To-bed time is still not consistent, but is converging to plus or minus one hour, need to get that better but it's hard with a non-cooperative spouse.

It's really bizarre, because when I look back at my dream journal from about 3 months ago, I could go to bed at 23:30 and stay dreaming until 10:00 or even 11:00 sometimes. Of course, the environment was entirely different (quiet, dark, bed to myself, vs. light, noisy, shared bed), and I was doing nothing other than journaling and going right back to sleep.

I'm not sure, but it may be that I may have reset my sleep clock, like when doing CAT. If I could get back to sleep after the 5th/6th hour waking I could probably DILD very nicely due to CAT. For now I'm entirely avoiding WILDs and focusing on DILD and DEILD. I like attempting WILDs and I think I got really close to success, but something about falling asleep aware for me seems to leave a pearl of awareness that I have trouble turning off!

I've had some trouble sleeping this week, even though I haven't attempted a WILD in weeks. I'd wake up after a few hours, use the bathroom, record my dreams, go back to bed ... and completely fail to sleep. The last time it happened, the last thing I remember was trying to "observe" my thoughts without actually interacting with them: I tried neither to encourage nor to squash them. I think I tend to try to hold too tight a grip on my thoughts: either trying to force down one specific path, or trying to squash anything my mind comes up with. Given that this kind of "letting go" is a common occurance in WILD tutorials, I think I'm going to keep working at it and see if it A) helps with sleep in general and B) gets me a WILD.

Yes good point about letting go. When I'm able successfully let go of all thoughts I usually fall asleep fairly quickly. It's easier said than done sometimes, though, for those of us with active and "clingy" minds. This 5th/6th hour thing seems a bit different than that, though, it seems like my body just doesn't want to sleep more at that point. Many sleep guides say not to spent more than 20 minutes (some even say 10) falling asleep in bed, just get up and sit in another room for a while. In this way your mind is conditioned to learn that bed equals sleep, not wakefulness. And sometimes, the body may have already had enough sleep. But I've added regular exercise to my schedule so I'm doubtful that my body doesn't need more sleep. And if I stay in bed and toss and turn for a few hours I will get back to sleep for another sleep cycle.

What may also help is sitting in a chair and work on focusing intent and expectation about lucid dreaming, incubating dream scenes, thinking about your past dreams. I'm going to try more of this.

If you figure anything out, let me know!

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Originally Posted by Nazrax

If you figure anything out, let me know!

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Some success this morning! Same thing, woke at about 6th hour, recorded, and couldn't go right back to sleep.

I did eventually fall asleep though for a short time and had a quick LD!

Some things I did differently:

+ focused ONLY on relaxing, not on sleeping, not "trying to sleep". No technique other than perhaps concentrating on breathing, and really feeling relaxed on every exhale. Tried to make sure there was no tension anywhere. I found unreleased tension in my cheeks/jaw a few times. When I did this I got sleepy pretty fast and almost made it into a dream (not quite though, but close)

+ I imagined I was breathing dream gas on every inhale (like on an operating table) and I would be sleeping in 10 seconds

+ embraced (literally) my distraction, instead of trying to avoid contact with my wife I started spooning with her and fairly quickly fell asleep. It was the first LD in close contact with her. I resolved not to be frustrated by her presence in bed, but instead conjured thoughts of love, warmth, and comfort. I think this eliminated one of my subconscious tensions.

p.s. I think this is called "Paradoxical intent" -- the instant you stop "trying to sleep" is when you fall asleep! It's easier said than done however when trying to implement it. I tried doing it by focusing exclusively on relaxation, telling my self "on every exhale I'm getting more and more relaxed, going deeper and deeper..." helped.

For me, keeping my eyes unfocused is key to relaxing/sleeping. I've learned to notice the difference between looking at the back of my eyelids with my physical eyes ("focused", fairly clear dark black), and only my mind's eye ("unfocused," eyes relaxed, what I see is more cloudy/lighter greyish black with stuff floating around. I'm getting better and faster and moving from focused to unfocused. The way I found how to do that is to perform the audio focus step of the SSILD cycle: put all attention on hearing, this tends to unfocus my eyes. Some times I can slip directly into unfocused eyes, and sometimes I still have to put attention on hearing to do it. Figuring this out was pretty important.

Yea, I need to work on the relaxing without focusing. Even when I try to relax, I think I concentrate too hard on it.

Your point about the unfocused eyes is a good one. I find that I'm always focusing on something. I don't think I usually focus on the blackness behind my eyes, though it's certainly possible. More often, I focus on the white blobs that dance behind my closed eyes. Even if I'm trying to focus on sound, I still end find myself trying to focus my eyes on where the sound is coming from. I try not to do it, but that usually means pointing my eyes somewhere else, not just letting go.

I need to go back and read the dream yoga posts again. I think some of them talked about observing without focusing.

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Originally Posted by Nazrax

I need to go back and read the dream yoga posts again. I think some of them talked about observing without focusing.

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Now that sounds useful! I was wondering if it was too early for me to look in to dream yoga. Maybe it is, I feel like i"m starting to gain traction on the DILDs so I'm going to continue to focus there.

Dream yoga isn't so much a technique itself; rather, it's more a collection of exercises that enhance your awareness, making other techniques work better. I haven't really delved into it yet - it's quite a bit of work - but it looks worthwhile.

Continue having good luck, I had 4 wakings last night, (that means 4 times going to sleep!), including 3 in the later morning).
Interesting that I find it easier to go back to sleep in the late morning after sleeping and dreaming for a while than in the middle of the night (4-6 hour mark), I could have probably kept sleeping for several more cycles but had to get up and start my day.

Again, this is what I'm doing: mainly focusing just on relaxation, not "getting to sleep." Let thoughts pass by (had to do this several times, there are some major life things going on with me and my extended family right now). Imagine I'm inhaling "lucid dream gas" and will be asleep and lucid dreaming in seconds. Hugging my wife instead of trying to avoid contact, being happy in bed instead of being frustrated at all the distractions.

Nice. I actually had an odd experience myself last night. All day yesterday, I'd been telling myself "I will remember my dreams tonight" and "I will lucid dream tonight." The lucid dream part didn't pan out, but I ended up waking up after every sleep cycle, recording my dreams, and quickly falling back asleep, keeping my eyes unfocused and letting thoughts pass by. I've never written so much in one night ever :)

Saturday night, I tried a WILD for the first time in a while (listening to the DV podcast on WILDing got me excited about it again). I didn't succeed, but I was really pleased that I was able to quickly get to sleep once I aborted the attempt.

Later in the week, I should have more time to sleep; I'm going to keep using this in WILD attempts and see if I can get one :)

That's great. I'm off the WILD bandwagon for a while, other than DEILD. I get to sleep WAY better when I tell myself "I am NOT trying to WILD". Finally the thing that is constantly trying to wait for the transition and says "HERE IT IS! GET READY!!" has subsided, and I emphatically do NOT want it back, not for a while yet until I get my DILD / DEILD house in order.

Great news. Congrats on the sleep-after-WILD-abort, I'm just too nervous to try that again after two weeks of 5 hours of sleep and poor dreaming/recall. Also congrats on the full night of wake / record / quick-back-to-sleep, those are my favorites (LDs of course being the absolute favourites)! I transcribed my voice journal from last night, and counted 9 dreams (I count a dream as a scene longer than a fragment) and 5 fragments, my kind of night! Each scene was a bit shorter than I prefer but the variety was fun.

Eyes unfocused and letting thoughts pass by (NOT trying to force them out) is a very powerful relaxing technique, glad it's working for you!

Ah but WILD is so tempting....nah, later :)

I had a notable back-to-sleep success last night. The 5-6 hour mark continues to be a back-to-sleep challenge if I get up at all, even just quick bathroom break and recall/journal. I have a lot of recall at that waking usually so journaling (even just voice, and not getting out of bed) wakes me up.

Again I couldn't get back to sleep this morning at about the 5.5 hour mark (I had successfully gotten instantly back to sleep after a quick journaling at 2 and 4.5 hour marks). After about 1-1.5 hours of trying, I got up eventually, grabbed a quick snack in the kitchen, and tried again.

I wasn't making any progress, didn't feel very sleepy. I debated just getting up for the day but was not happy about that option. But I resolved firmly to perform my (noted above) sleep technique, and to keep my body and mind quiet and relaxed and to sink deeper and deeper, farther and farther, no matter what. There were noises from outside, and noises and movement from my wife, and I told myself over and over "these sounds and sensations make me more and more relaxed". I held my physical and mental relaxation and eventually slept! I woke once, noted some recall, and fell asleep once more.