Trouble getting my body into the right mode for wild

I attempted to have a WILD several times last week with no success yet. A couple times I tried early in the morning about an hour or two before I had planned on getting up out of bed. I did get up to get some water and use the restroom but I was still so groggy that I pretty much drifted off after a minute.

Another time I tried in the afternoon when I know my mind would have more energy. My mind was definitely making the full effort but my body just wasn't responding and I could feel that I wasn't going to get anywhere so I got up after about 10 minutes. The only time I got remotely close was an afternoon after I had a cup and a half of coffee surprisingly. My body was going numb and made it to some ever so slight hypnogogia and thought I had a good chance of dream entry. But then I just started going backwards in the process and before I knew it I had regained awareness of my physical body and didn't have the mental energy for another attempt.

Advice, tips, and comments are obviously welcome, but I would like to keep the focus on WILD and not other methods since WILD is the method that I specifically want to get skilled in at this time.

I just remembered, I am happy to say that I already corrected one problem I was experience. I was producing too much saliva a couple times and kept swallowing which kept bringing awareness back to my physical body and was proving to be an annoyance anyway. I realized that in my case it's a good idea to eat before attempting WILD so that stomach is satisfied and I'm not producing so much saliva.

When I first tried the various wake inducing methods (back in my teens) I had the same issues. It seems as if the issue is in the body, but it's actually a problem of the mind... The most important step for wake inducing methods is falling asleep successfully, so I'm thinking that you just need to relax a bit and forget about the step to step guideline - just try to start falling asleep as you're doing normally.

So basically when attempting any wake inducing method, just lay in bed, forget about how much you want it to work and all, and just relax (if you want you can even focus on the body part by part, until you relax all of it. It's not a long process - a few seconds on each part.) Then just start falling asleep - nothing more - like you do normally when heading off to bed. When you start feeling something like sinking into the bed or hovering above it - gather your focus on maintaining awareness (e.g. use a mantra, like "I'm dreaming"). By that point the body should be gone - just like you don't feel the need to swallow, or turn, or itch, when you normally go to sleep...

Some other advice - don't focus on HH and / or REM atonia / SP when or if they appear... Focusing on these only intensifies them until something jolts you up or tenses you up preventing falling asleep. Let these things play in the background... You should only focus on maintaining awareness as well as the anchor (which depends on the method, in regular WILD, it's either breathing or counting or a combination of the two). Also, by that stage you might see pre-dreams (HI) - short dream scenes... They will feel like you aren't really present there - so (if you're doing regular WILD) just watch them passively and don't try to be active yet. Wait for the real dream, you will feel like you are present there, just like in RL, so only then it's time to get active and do stuff (awareness affirmation, stabilization, dream control...).

To sum up, do it stage by stage: relax -> go to sleep like you would normally do -> when the body is not an issue focus on maintaining awareness and your anchor, and just passively wait (and watch pre-dreams if they appear) -> when it feels like RL, only then start being active.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Spock. I had another few "failures" to lucid dream since I wrote that post so I'll try out what you're saying next time. I want this badly enough where giving up has not and will not cross my mind.

Not "failures", steps towards success ;)
Glad to hear you're not giving up, but I didn't even think you were going to! Try to relax and have positive expectations (not only in respect to WILD, but everything lucid related). Just tonight I became lucid while sitting in a car, and I was like "ohh, really? Just yesterday I had two lucids!" I was so surprised and excited that everything started to fade away. To top that, I tried to salvage the situation by stabilizing, but thought "it won't work, it's too faded" - so of course it didn't work and I woke up... -_- Now, I know for sure that it wasn't too late, I salvaged before much more faded dreams, but this one just caught off guard... Just to show how much having the right mindset is important!