Hello people, I started getting interested in lucid dreaming a few months ago. The interest sprung from the movie Inception, as I’m sure is not dissimilar to many lucid dreamers. I’ve always been interested in dreams, and decided that conscious dreaming would be an exciting challenge. Also, I write short stories and figured read that lucid dreaming is great for coming up with ideas.
I have been quite diligent about attempting lucid dreaming, and have quite good dream recall. I can usually remember about 3-5 dreams a night, at least a couple of which are in great detail. A few nights ago I was even able to remember 12 dreams! (Of course, some of those were probably parts of the same dream, but whatever, it made me happy.)
Unfortunately, I have yet to achieve a lucid dream. So far I’ve attempted DILD, and have worked in semi-regular reality checks into my day. (The lock screen on my iPhone reminds me to do one, I thought that was a creative idea.) I’ve also tried WILD, but every time I try I fall asleep. If I’m lying down I fall asleep pretty quickly, so it’s always disappointing to have a nap and prepare my mind for WILD only to wake up a couple hours later, groggy and irritated that I failed WILD once again.
So yeah, I should probably stop ranting now. I just wanted to introduce myself and tell about my quest for lucidity. If any of you experienced lucid dreamers (or even inexperienced, it’s better than me) want to leave feedback that would be absolutely fantastic. I honestly can’t wait to have my first lucid dream and don’t plan on giving up any time soon.
Hello there! Nice to see more potential lucid dreamers coming to this forum.
You say that you’ve attempted DILD. If you are trying to achieve LD’s with this method, I would suggest you to increase your awareness. RC’s work, but they must be done with the right intention. If you do a RC, expect it to actually work. Don’t do them like if you knew, that it is the waking life. Always be skeptical of your surroundings, try to live as if it were a dream. If such living becomes a habbit, you are likely to get a bunch of DILD’s.
The other technique you chose is WILD. At first I must say that it is one of the most difficult techniques around here, so it is very normal to fail the first few, dozen (or hundred) tries. If I were you, I would start of with easier techniques like MILD or DEILD. Anyway, I’ll give you some advice on WILD. Make sure that you do it after 4,5 or 6 hours of sleep, or during naps. Never do it when you go to sleep in the night. The reason for this is that after 4,5 or 6 hours of sleep you enter REM sleep directly. WILD’ing during naps is also possible, since naps consist of mostly REM sleep. If you try WILD when you go to sleep in the night, you must be aware, that the first phase of dreaming comes only after 90-120 minutes, which is a long time to wait. So just pick the right time. Wake yourself up after 4.5 or 6 hours (using alarm or autosuggestion) and try WILD’ing. You might be too tired, so to prevent yourself from instantly falling asleep normally, you might stay up for a few minutes and read some LD’ing material or just get your mind ready for a LD. Then continue WILD.
As I said before, you might want to check out some easier techniques like MILD or DEILD. There are a couple of good guides here on the forum. Wish you good luck!
Don’t get discouraged because you failed your WILD!!!
It is probably the hardest technique, and I’ve been trying to perfect it for ages now. But I can feel that I am closer and closer to perfecting it:)
If I got discouraged by like a hundred failures I would not be where I am now. Just make it a regular thing before you go to sleep, what I do is I read up some LD4all before I go to bed, then like always I practice WILD. Don’t treat it like a chore, think of it as a hobby take joy out of being able to get further and further each night.
Well I just took a nap… I’d been reading the forums for about an hour beforehand, and then I went through some relaxation exercises. When random thoughts came into my mind, I tried to just observe them. Next thing I know, I’m awake in my bed an hour later. I wasn’t even that tired! Like I said, I fall asleep really easily; basically if I’m lying down I’ll fall asleep… I know WILD is the most difficult LD induction technique, but I just can’t seem to stay awake long enough to get anywhere!
Well im not a pro at this or anything, but I noticed that doing something that engages your mind helps to keep consciousness, for example try counting up to 50 or 100. make sure you stick to your goal, I wouldn’t advise choosing a high number because you will fall asleep before you get there because it is repetative
after you finished counting try to count up in 2’s or 3’s i like to switch over the activities because i find it not so boring and its easier to stay conscious. Also I practice my visualisation skills while im WILDing but not for too long because it is easy to fall asleep when you focus on something for too long
One of the most difficult aspects of WILD is that you need to find a golden balance between waking up and falling asleep normally. If you concentrate too much, you won’t fall asleep, and if you relax too much, you will fall asleep normally. It seems that this is your problem. As soul said, counting is a good way of increasing your concentration. That way, you will minimize the risk of falling asleep normally. You can also keep your concentration by thinking about one thought (i.e. “I am dreaming”) and repeating this thought as a mantra. It works in the same way as counting. Grab onto some mental activity to keep your mind concentrated.
Personally, counting doesn’t work for me, since it concentrates my mind too much and prevents me from falling asleep. I usually do WILD by passivelly watching the sights and keeping my mind somewhat lucid.
So I tried MILD last night. I came up with a sentence and said it out loud a bunch of times, then visualized a dream I’d had recently and me becoming lucid in it. I alternated between visualizing and repeating the sentence a few times. At first it went pretty well, but as I began to doze off I noticed my thoughts wandering to dream fragments and stuff like that. I always tried to bring it back, visualizing myself becoming lucid and saying I will become lucid, but then I’d wander again and notice several minutes later that I wasn’t focusing on MILD. It’s like I was partially asleep, and it would take awhile before I even noticed I was thinking about other stuff. Soon I fell asleep.
I remembered quite a few dreams last night, but unfortunately I did not become lucid in any of them. I’m going to try again tonight, but does anyone have suggestions for not letting my mind wander from the MILD routine? Thank you in advance.
Don’t force yourself into thinking about one sentence. While it is possible, I have tried thinking about Lucid dreaming in general. I just think about i.e. MILD, then WILD, then what to do in my next LD etc. And with these thoughs just fall asleep. Don’t expect MILD to work 100%, as it is based on luck somewhat. Anyway, it’s a good technique for those who don’t want to get a headache in trying to succeed in WILD.
Oh, I must disagree! it is possible to master MILD and get LD’s at will from it. It may seem there’s some luck to it, but that happens with any other tech as well in the beginning.
So far I’ve attempted DILD, and have worked in semi-regular reality checks into my day. (The lock screen on my iPhone reminds me to do one, I thought that was a creative idea.) I’ve also tried WILD, but every time I try I fall asleep. If I’m lying down I fall asleep pretty quickly, so it’s always disappointing to have a nap and prepare my mind for WILD only to wake up a couple hours later, groggy and irritated that I failed WILD once again.
I wasn’t even that tired! Like I said, I fall asleep really easily; basically if I’m lying down I’ll fall asleep… I know WILD is the most difficult LD induction technique, but I just can’t seem to stay awake long enough to get anywhere!
it is possible to master MILD and get LD’s at will from it. It may seem there’s some luck to it, but that happens with any other tech as well in the beginning.