Thread: WILD - To Move or Not To Move

I've never watched these lucidology videos you're referring to, but it sounds like the guy has a very rigid technique. If there's one thing these forums can demonstrate clearly, it's that there is no "one size fits all" technique that works equally well for everybody, so I would be suspicious of anyone who claims otherwise. From what I've seen, we all end up devising our own homebrew of techniques that, for whatever reason, work best for us.

I've had dozens of successful WILDs over the years, but the process still remains mysterious to me. I've never been able to figure out why some attempts work and some attempts don't, but it seems like technique isn't the only factor. Sometimes an attempt seems very favorable, and I use all the techniques that have worked best for me in the past, and nothing happens. Other times I'm lazy and barely put in a half-assed effort, and have a great success. So there's something else at play, and I'm not sure what.

"To move or not to move" was something I wondered about for a long time, but in the long run it never seemed to matter much. My best WILD attempts occur when I can relax my body really effectively while keeping my mind really alert, and somehow fall asleep with that disjunction still in play (that's the tricky part). I'm not sure if moving or not moving makes much difference, since at worst moving will just delay the process of falling asleep... but as you've pointed out, not moving can also delay sleep if you feel uncomfortable. However, I find that delaying sleep for at least a little while is helpful, because it seems to help condition my mind to preserve that necessary spark of waking awareness.

If I had to boil down my WILD technique to the basics, it would look something like this: after a few hours of sleep, WBTB long enough to get your mind active, ideally reading or writing about dreaming (recording DJ entries is ideal, if you've dreamed earlier in the night) and set a strong intention to LD. On returning to bed, first lie down in a position that you don't normally sleep in, and relax the body as much as possible while keeping the mind active through counting or some other type of sustained mental focus. At this point I'll usually start to drift toward sleep, which becomes very apparent while counting because I lose track of the numbers, but then something almost invariably restores me to wakefulness (I've never understood why). That's the point where I typically "give up," turn over to the position that I find most comfortable to sleep in, and just fall asleep without any more fuss. At first I was really giving up, but over time I discovered that this is the point where, if my attempt was successful, I'll once again become aware of lying in my bed, wonder if I'm awake or asleep, and cautiously explore the sense of movement until I'm sure I'm engaging the dream body and can "get up" out of bed into the dream. I seem to be locked into a schema where my WILDs always begin in a dream version of my own house—it's different from most WILD techniques where you enter the dream directly. I think perhaps my mind finds the transition easier to achieve if it is less drastic.

So there's a description of an alternate WILD model that doesn't really worry about "to move or not to move," but focuses instead on achieving the right balance between mental and physical states. In the end I don't think moving or not moving matters either way, what you've got to figure out is what pattern of activities will help you fall asleep while preserving that little flicker of waking awareness in your mind.