Can't seem to direct my thought process...

Well, I’ll start off by saying that I am usually a very calm, controlled person. I make concious efforts to make sure I don’t come off as too hyper/insane/etc, because I don’t usually like it when people around me start acting that way, especially when they’re my cousins and little sister, who sometimes seem to be the very definition of ‘hyper’.

Now, the thing is, I’ve been trying at lucid dreaming for a few months now, and I’ve had 3 so far. While I realize that compared to some people, these are excellent results, it’s been a while since my last. I stopped to think, trying to figure out why I got three rather quickly and then stopped. It led me to the conclusion that I can’t seem to calm my mind after I lay down to sleep for the night; as soon as I hit the sack, my thought process starts bouncing off the walls, and I can’t focus on any one thing at one time. I tend to start thinking over the previous day, worrying about what tomorrow’s going to be like (I tend to be a ‘prepare for the worst’ kind of person), and random stuff injected in between. This isn’t exactly good for most techniques, which require focusing on one subject, like MILD (which was responsibile for all three LD’s I’ve had). I also noted that the three days that I did LD, were days where I somehow managed to keep my head working in a straight line.

My question is, is there any methods I could go about doing that would help me still my mind when I go to sleep? Not only does it seem to be giving me difficulty with LDing, but it’s keeping me awake, as well. I go to bed, and I won’t fall asleep for a couple hours.

All comments are appreciated.
–Lavos

(And I’m kinda tired at the moment, so please forgive any spelling/grammatical errors ^^)

Don’t worry, this happens to everybody. When you fall asleep your mind wanders and thinks about many things.

When you practice WILD, you have to focus again on your practice everytime if occurs: your mind wanders, you notice it, you don’t get upset and just focus again.

When you practice MILD or autosuggestion, it’s less annoying. First of all, when getting to bed, you practice a good relaxation method in which your mind focuses on something (relaxing one by one the different parts of your body for instance). Once you’re well relaxed, you can go into a deeper relaxation state by focusing on your breathing and counting up to 20 (or more if needed). Here you need to focus well and no be cought by random thoughts. If you practice this well, you’re calm and relaxed and near a sleep state.

Then you use this relaxed state in order to put the suggestion into your mind. The nearest to sleep you are, the better it is. You just have to repeat 20 times the sentence, believing it will work. Once you did this, you can fall asleep.

Thus you didn’t focus too much, you’ll won’t have insomnia and it’s rather easy to do cause you have to focus a short time.

I seem to be having the opposite problem, actually. I’ve been trying to stop myself from focusing on lucid dreaming at nights now, because it stops me from being able to fall deeply asleep and get a good solid 7-8 of slumber a night. I’ve gotten myself accustomed to being self-aware of my sleeping habits, including how I fall asleep, so I start focusing on that and because of it when I do finally fall asleep it’s always a very light, tumultuous slumber where I wake up every half hour and toss and turn before getting back to sleep.

It’s not that I don’t want to have lucid dreams (I’m still doing reality checks and wishing for the best), but if I have to choose between MILDing or WILDing at night which leads subsequently to losing both my ability to fall into a normal sleep and being able to recall my dreams in the morning and not choosing any lucid techniques so I can actually get a good night’s rest and not look like a drug addict in the morning from sleep deprivation, I’ll choose the latter. I just figure that my best efforts are shot to hell if I can’t even stay asleep long enough to experience a full period of REM or even remember any of my dreams in the morning, so healthy sleep has to be a higher priority than lucid dreaming.

Despite trying my best not to focus on anything and letting my thoughts bounce off the wall (which seems to be your problem, not your antidote), it’s been two weeks and my sleep is still absolutely horrible. At this rate I’ll die from sleep dep before I get a lucid dream (and this is a scenario where for all intents and purposes I’m trying to avoid an LD, so the odds are not good).

Anyways, this doesn’t solve your problem at all, but I guess I just wanted you to be aware of how good-for-you uncontrolled, rapid-fire thoughts can be when all you want is a solid block of sleep. It looks like you’re blessed enough to not have that conundrum, though.