Your personal WILD lucid dreaming attaining experiences.

So i'm trying the WILD every night now, when I feel relaxed enough. I am good at waking up in middle of night without alarms(I don't hear alarms in sleep, that is weird), whenever i want or need, so that's not the problem. The problem for me is that, when I wake up, i get on my back, and try to relax. I never get to the point where my body gets asleep faster than my mind and enters SP or my mind just enters the dream.
So maybe you guys could discuss, what should I do, what you do, your personal wild experiences and any general tips while trying this.
So far I've only got about 2 good semi-lucid dreams by MILD and DILD, but I want to do it by entering the lucid dream while already conscious.

I also have that happen where its impossible for my body to fall asleep before my mind.

What I did to make up for that is to skip WBTB completely and instead when I wake up in the end of a rem cycle I'll immediately start thinking about something to keep my mind occupied and basically go back to sleep still thinking that thought and I'll be in a dream.

So far it had worked like a charm, haven't tried any other method since.

Just a few notes I'll make.

Firstly: common misconception that SP is required for WILD. It's not. The goal isn't SP either. SP happens when you're already in REM, so it should very seldom happen during a WILD attempt. Don't try to go for SP, just try to go for a lucid dream.

Secondly: it's not required to sleep on your back for WILD. In fact, I recommend sleeping in your comfortable preferable sleeping position (if you find you fall asleep doing this, go for second most comfortable), since for whatever reason it just seems to work best for some.

I'm not sure if the problem is that you're falling asleep or staying awake, but the trick is to find the right balance between both. If you fall asleep too quickly, try doing some math problems in your head, or something else stimulating. If you're staying awake, do some relaxation techniques, like focusing on your breathing or thinking of a peaceful place.

Some tips from personal experience I have for you are:
Most important one (I can't succeed a WILD without this) is that you try to keep yourself sleepy. If you wake yourself up too much, you won't be able to WILD easily or at all. Don't move around much when you wake up, at the most roll over into a comfortable position (usually I tend to have to scramble for my sleep mask as well since it falls off overnight but I can't sleep without it, things like this are fine as long as you aren't wide awake). Usually I don't even dream journal when I wake up for a WILD. If you need to use the restroom, keep the lights dim and don't try to move around too much--it's okay to have your eyes half-closed just sort of stumbling your way down the hallway. You want to be aware, but not alert, it's okay if your mind goes weird random places so as long as you keep in touch with your awareness. Basically, you don't want to just be relaxed, you want to be practically half-asleep. This just makes WILDing much easier, and frankly I've never failed a WILD if I stayed in this state (but always failed it if I didn't it).
As weird as it sounds, don't think about WILDing either. Hold onto your awareness but don't do it for the WILD, do it just because. Think about your lucid dreaming goals or similar things like that. You don't have to actively think "oh, I'm starting to fall asleep," or similar things like that, you can just observe everything happening to you passively without thinking about it or judging it. I don't know what it is, but it helps.

To be honest I can't think of anything else, soooo... If I think of more, I'll let you know. :P I'm no pro at WILD, it's simply one of my main techniques even if I'm not the best of it, but let me and of course everyone else know if you have any questions regardless.

Well yeah, i know that SP is not required, that's why i said : "...or my mind just enters the dream.". But anyways.
Personally, my favorite position for sleeping is on my right side. I can fall asleep better in this position, but i can't relax unless i'm on my back(or it just takes a lot of effort to get comfortable on the side).
I've noticed that if on the next day, you have to go to school or something like that,when you get awake in night you tend to say: "gah... I'll try it on weekend, i can't do this now, there's school tomorrow, i need to sleep".
I guess I miss something on this whole WILD thing, but i have to find out what exactly. Can't wait till summer comes, so i can experiment A LOT.

Here are some things that seem to work for me very consistently:

1) While you WILD don't sleep in your "normal" sleeping position, if you do that there's a bigger chance of going unconscious like you normally do.

2) Don't sleep in a position that you can't fall asleep in; for me that's on my back, I just can't fall asleep on my back or it takes a huge amount of effort, so find a position that's not your usual position, but not an extremely uncomfortable one either, just a bit different.

Back when I first started WILDing I would go through the SP hallucinations and then onto dreamland, but now I never get SP at all, I just lie there, feeling my breathing until there's a sort of "electric", "numb" or "prickly" feeling in my entire body, at this moment I know I'm in a dream and SP. Usually everything is still black so I visualise my room and lo and behold I'm in a FA type scenario. This has never failed me, ever.

3) When I say concentrate on your breathing, I mean go into a meditative state. Download some of the meditation files from here. "Complete Meditation Instructions" should teach you what that feels like, not to mention it's very good for the brain in any case.

Hope this helps, good luck!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Memm

Here are some things that seem to work for me very consistently:

1) While you WILD don't sleep in your "normal" sleeping position, if you do that there's a bigger chance of going unconscious like you normally do.

2) Don't sleep in a position that you can't fall asleep in; for me that's on my back, I just can't fall asleep on my back or it takes a huge amount of effort, so find a position that's not your usual position, but not an extremely uncomfortable one either, just a bit different.

Back when I first started WILDing I would go through the SP hallucinations and then onto dreamland, but now I never get SP at all, I just lie there, feeling my breathing until there's a sort of "electric", "numb" or "prickly" feeling in my entire body, at this moment I know I'm in a dream and SP. Usually everything is still black so I visualise my room and lo and behold I'm in a FA type scenario. This has never failed me, ever.

3) When I say concentrate on your breathing, I mean go into a meditative state. Download some of the meditation files from here. "Complete Meditation Instructions" should teach you what that feels like, not to mention it's very good for the brain in any case.

Hope this helps, good luck!

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Actually you're right. It takes a lot of effort to get asleep on my back too. I mean everytime i try to Go to sleep at night on my back I just get almost numb, and then I pop out to my full awareness, so i roll on my right side and get asleep. That must be the cause when i try to WILD in early morning too.
I guess i could sleep on my left side, it's not too comfortable, but it's also not too uncomfortable.

Also, can someone write step by step little guide, to what to do, beginning from opening your eyes in 4:00AM to getting into dream using WILD?

Actually something that just came to mind:

I have successfully WILDed on my back, but only when I was very tired after waking up. This could actually be something to use! Basically the more sleepy you feel you are, the more difficult the sleep position to "compensate" and stay aware, perhaps on the other end of the scale if you wake up and you feel like you can't get to sleep at all, use your original sleeping position where it's easiest to fall asleep.

Just an idea. =]

Of course I think if you're good at just getting into that meditative state then position probably wouldn't matter as much anymore.

I agree with Maxis, that preserving the ability to sleep quickly is of maximum importance, but then I also tend to wake up *very* quickly in the middle of the night. Any mental activity, including journaling dreams for more than just a minute or two, can keep me up for an hour or two around the 5th-6th hour waking. Earlier than that, and oddly enough, later than that, and I get back to sleep quite easily. Earlier because I'm still tired/groggy enough, and later I think because of "sleep inertia." So since WILD requires generally about 5 hours of sleep beforehand, I need to very carefully manage my waking activities before a WILD.

My classical WILD experience is that with my fairly natural high level of awareness/waking at night, I need to aim more for unconsciousness than for alertness, just to try to land in the middle, at the WILD balance point. And I'm still trying, other than one quick WILD months ago I have yet to successfully pull of a full classical WILD (although I did have my first non-lucid to lucid DEILD a month ago).

*Moved to WILD