Failed WILD(?)

Hi! I was reading up on BillyBob's WILD tutorial: http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...ad.php?t=30783 and I decided I would try out the breathing focus method without a WBTB or anything. I first sweared "I solemnly swear that I will not move until I lucid dream or dream". Then I got in a good position and closed my eyes. My dad was playing guitar so I had trouble counting. At about 200 he stopped and everything was pitch black and quiet. I counted like so: "Breath; 'This is a dream' '1'", "Breath; 'This is a dream' '2'" and so on. When I got to around 500 I started to see ripples in the darkness of my closed eyes and my heart-beat went really fast. I saw a ton of images I was looking at earlier and faces and then it stopped. I thought about whether I entered the dream world or not, I could breath much easier than before but I could still hear my room. I decided to keep on counting. At around 700 I started to "seep" in to the right direction and lose complete thought of where I was pointing, etc. I also messed up when counting a lot then. I continued counting on to 1304 and I stopped because I knew I messed up as everything was normal again at about 750 and after 1304 I did a nose-breath reality check, looked at my hands, both counted 5 and checked the time a couple times. I wasn't dreaming. Oh and also, I could feel my body go into sleep paralysis at about 180.

Any ideas to what I did wrong? Thanks!

Very nice patience, I would probably get bothered/frustrated after counting for ages...

It sounded as if you did get some hypnogogia so you may have entered a dream - I used to sometimes have to "open" my eyes to actually enter it properly when I started LDing ages ago (you may have to fight off the uncertainty about whether or not you're still awake - that's messed me up a few times).

Also, you might not have been tired enough (i.e.become too active during the awakening/woke up too long after falling asleep). You definitely waited (more than) long enough for a WILD. The few WILDs I've had didn't take very long at all (but that's probably different for each person:cheeky:).

In saying this, I only LD irregularly so you might want to take what I say with a grain of salt, as more experienced LDers will probably be able to offer better ideas. ;)

Thanks, I was actually quite tired. Tired enough to want to go to bed at 11 and try a WILD. now I guess the problem is getting from SP to dream. Any ideas or links I should read?

'fraid I don't have any. If I was you I would search the forum once the search function comes back (supposedly it's been disabled with the new update).

Also, try having a WILD after being asleep for a period of time (5-6 hours). You don't really have any REM periods for a while (just over an hour) when you initially fall asleep so it would take patience and probably wouldn't be worth it to WILD straight away (due to this initial REM period being considerably shorter than later ones). Set an alarm for a few hours before you normally wake up (do this on a weekend or when you can sleep in a bit if need be), and attempt a WILD after 10 or so minutes into the WBTB. Do what you did in your first post and chances are that you'll have a WILD. :) Just be sure to try and get "how awake" you become during the WBTB perfect, as you don't want to just fall asleep nor do you want to end up lying in bed counting for an hour. :P Good luck with future attempts.