I’ve just started using the WILD technique with some success but I’m curious about a few things.
So far, every time I’ve gotten into a dream the initial moments seem very “fragile” (as if moving too fast or not being careful will wake me up). Would any of you consider this normal, or is my brain, perhaps, creating an unneeded caution?
Also, I’m curious to know what lengths of dreams are possible when incubated by the WILD technique. As of right now, I’ve only experienced four dreams by this method. My dream time has ranged from a few seconds to around 4 minutes (which may have lasted longer if I wasn’t jumping around like a fool). What’s the longest any of you have been in a WILD?
My mind seems bent on the idea that this technique, although very capable of being incredibly vivid, may not be as stable as DILD’s where my body seems to be fully, and deeply, asleep.
Please, If you have any experiences that could help me change my view of this technique I’d love to hear them.
Thanks Ionflux
I find the transitions interesting too. I find that when I enter at least a partial sleep paralysis state I feel some odd sensations. I am interested to see what it feels like to enter a dream. I am going to set an alarm for about an hour after I should be asleep. That way if I fall asleep I get to try again and if I LD, I’ll be upset but I’ll try to stay in the dream, if that fails, I’ll try again. More practice I’m hoping after a success I’ll be able to repeat it.
@Ulver
I haven’t quite entered that state yet but I believe it is possible to increase how vivid the dream is, maybe by using WBTB or by focusing on the dreamscape more? but I don’t know I’ve not got there yet
This is a common problem that most people encounter when they first start to lucid dream. It usually happens because you get too excited or try and do too much too fast.
What worked for me was to anchor my dream as son as I became lucid. The next time you become lucid, stay calm then use prolonging techniques as soon as you become lucid ( I favored the rubbing hands technique) this should help you stabilize your dream. As you progress through the dream don’t over d it. Just go with the flow of the dream and just change little things at first. With a little practice and experience in lucid dreaming you will be able to change your entire dream environment at a whim. I have also used flying to stabilize dreams. The important thing is that you do not get discouraged. Keep practicing and before you know it you will have long intense lucid dreams.
In my opinion neither technique is superior over the other. Both will give awesome lucid dreams. Since you are making progress with WILD, my suggestion would be to stick with what is working. Most of the literature on lucid dreaming says that WILD is an advanced technique that will give you longer more vivid dreams. One book refers to WILD as “High lucidity”. I disagree. Figure out what works best for you and the long, vivid lucid dreams will follow.
I’m not sure if this is WILD but one technique that I’ve never heard anyone mention (strangely enough I found it in a fantasy novel) is forcing your breathing to slow down. Last night I tried this and I got within minutes of WILD, but I was impatient and just wanted to get comfortable and go to sleep. For me, I have to lay on my back with my hands on either side of me that way there is as little pressure on any part of my body as possible, not having heavy blankets is a good idea in my opinion. Then I start using a MILD technique (repeating “I will have a lucid dream tonight” over and over) just to get myself relaxed and in case I don’t succeed in WILD, MILD can be a fall back. Then, when I am relaxed, I visualize the place I want to be in my dream as strongly as I can (which for me is not very strong) and physically slow my breathing, while making it deeper. I also gradually make my breathing shallower. The idea is to be breathing no harder than you would if you were asleep, which should trick/force your body to fall asleep. I had an annoying problem where I would focus on my breathing too hard and go back to normal breathing. Has anyone else tried this method?
@ Graech
I have tried changing my breathing, I found it quite helpful to take a deep breath in at the start of relaxation. For me this naturally slowed my breathing for a while.
once im in deep sleep, my body goes numb, I hear voices etc but I dont see anything (HI). Well that may not be a problem, but what is, is that I can only maintain for 30 seconds or less in this state. I want to experience this for hours =D its a great feeling.
I try to do WILD when I just got into bed and I am thinking about every step that my body goes through, still need to work on that last one.
I have tried doing WBTB but havent succeeded yet. I always give up.
Is it possible that there is no SP?
My Body gets numb after some time, but I was never in a state where no movement was possible. Or am I just to impatient?
Is 1 hour too short?
Is WILD possible BEFORE sleep? Or only in the middle of the night?
Is HI only flashing light behind my eyes or is it more? Because if so, I have HI everytime i close my eyes, but it doesn’t get any further, if i try concentrate on these light i alway get headache and as soon as I think I see something appearing I have to move my eyes. What can I do?
And, is it normal, that, when I try WILD an OPEN my eyes there are flashing lights, too? Once i actually saw something like a shadow of a creature which wasn’t like a normal shadow and more like a shadow out of light. I thought it was menacing, first i tried not to freak out, but I couldn’t stand it for long so I moved and the “thing” was away.
personally i think that what people call SP when entering wild is not really SP yet, you might feel you can’t move but if you really try you can. But SP excists. Don’t worry if you don’t feel it when doing WILD though.
WILD is always done before sleep, you try to fall asleep consciously. It seems to work better if you have already slept and have woken up and then drift back to sleep again, but this time doing WILD. WILD is a tech that’s easy for some, and hard for others, so if you don’t succeed at WILDing don’t give up, there are plenty of other ways to become lucid.
HI can be anything, for me it’s more like images forming. Don’t try to concentrate too hard on it, it will only make you more awake. Find that line between focusing and losing concentration. It’s a bit like going with the flow but stay conscious of it.
when you see images eyes open, there is a name for that, i believe it is hypnopompic illusion. Some people experience that but it is not related to WILD.
Ok, I was trying WILD for the first time yesterday. I relaxed, breathed slowly, counted, saw the pretty lights, etc, etc.
Then my legs started going numb and suddenly my whole body started having pins and needles. I didn’t worry too much because I knew it was normal, but it kept getting worse. Soon it just became hard not to go into contortions.
Also, I kept at it for about an hour and I got no HI.
So how long does this phase go on for before I start getting HI?
Well, I had some kind of success the other night with attempting wild I think.
I woke up way earlier than expected, and felt in a perfcet state to try and refall asleep (I know it could be Wake back to bed) but. I laid down with my eyes closed, I focus on the imagery within my head, and I “pushed” away from my body.
Eventually I felt a difference in my consciousness, I started hearing a sort of static, and also like an old radio murmer, kind of like you see in World War 2 movies as they’re running by radios with rants going on. Then I became immeresed in that lucid blackness… sometimes I have a lucid dream but then it ends and I get stuck in the darkness and am unable to produce another dream.
At one point in this blackness I started seeing a little bit of my room, (a room where I dont live anymore, old hometown), and I saw a “demon” figure which If elt was an old hag type character because I was aware of my paralysis, and I told myself I had nothing to worry about, was just an annoying DC, but then it all faded and I was stuck back in the blackness. I forced myself to wake and I repeated this 3 times, all ended up with the transition to being completely within my mind, yet unable to day anything because of darkness!
I just have a few questions, i have found out about LD’ing a couple of days ago and i had to see what it was like. I read about it on the forum for quite a lot of the day and decided to try and use the WILD method.
I went to bed and relaxed myself and i counted every time i breathed out. I found it quite difficult to keep my mind empty (i found imagining all my thoughts where on a TV and switching it off quite good).
At around the 200 i could feel a numbness and a sort of tingling but i didn’t know if i couldn’t move as i was to scared i would have to start again if i did, so im not sure if it was SP. I then started to get really hot and my heart started racing, it was really wierd and slightly hard to breath so i tried to calm down by telling myself to relax and continued to count. It then went away and I started feeling almost like i was floating and not in my body but still connected as if I was tethered to my body. Then it went away but i didn’t see any images or anything so gave up.
I was mainly wondering if this was an OBE or the beginnings of an LD. I would also like to know if anyone thinks i was close to getting an LD or anything similar and I would happily accept any advice.
Sorry about the long post, i got a bit carried away, i would be grateful if someone could help.
Well, here’s my first experience with WILD. Any feedback is appreciated:
It was very strange. I woke up in the middle of the night and figured it was a perfect time to give it a shot while falling back to sleep. I made an effort to do a the “1 I’m dreaming… 2 I’m dreaming…” counting while going back to sleep. I do believe I hit that place of SP. It was a damned strange feeling of disconnect. It was sort of like my consciousness didn’t have a place if you get my meaning. Usually, considering we’re experential beings, “you” are where your body is. But for a while there, “I” was… well, to be honest I don’t know where in the heck I was, but it wasn’t where I normally am. I can see how that could be pretty terrifying. But for some reason, I was able to maintain calm, and be OK with the fact of it. Maybe because I’d already thought about all that, and so was expecting it, I was able to write it off as ‘normal’ and not panic. Leading up to all this, there was this tingly kind of sensation in my extremities, a heaviness in my chest and what felt like an increased heartbeat, and then this strange sensation that all there was, was thought.
That’s as far as I got this time around. For some reason I kept getting pulled back into feeling my body, and never saw any hallucinations or light or sounds or anything even approaching a dream state… just black. But theoretically, if I’m to believe what I’ve read so far, that state of SP will eventually lead to hallucinations, images, and then the entering of a lucid dreaming state. Is that correct? Perhaps I just need to ‘let go’ more?
One thing’s for sure though, it cut into my sleep. I feel really tired and a little strange today. I don’t think the sleep I got after doing this experiment was particularly good until much later in the morning. I’m sure I could have slept very well into the morning and felt much better for it, but I had to go to work. So, I guess this is the sort of thing to do on weekends. That said, when I finally DID manage to get to sleep normally after all this, the one dream I recall having (which was quite short, and non-lucid… I think) was themed exactly along the lines that I was hoping for when I had originally wanted to get to a lucid dream.
Thats exactly the same with me. I tried again last night and i could get my body to the tingly heavy stage but my head just wouldn’t go to sleep
It was really frustrating but i suppose i needed to be more relaxed…
The only thing i can recommend is lots of practice and try to be really relaxed
I would still appreciate some advice from the more experience LD’ers and WILD’ers
I suppose I’m not really an experianced LD-er or WILD-er as such but I have read and spoken to others that are and picked up some information.
@ Vichlatti
I’m guessing you mean Hypnogogic Hallucinations rather than HI as the “pretty lights” are actually counted as HI. Personally I think it will vary from person to person. From what I’ve read some people may not experience HH before they enter a dream.
@ 2colorcrayon
It does sound like you were very close. I have managed to reach the feeling surrounded blackness stage. I would guess that trying visualizing a scene would probably be the best thing to try.
@ Fleep
I have no experiance with OBE at all… there is a topic about it in the Beyond Lucid Dreaming Forum Click Here
If I were you that is where I would look for OBE/OOBE related information.
I’ve been trying to WILD at Night and I can usually get my body to relax pretty well like feel really heavey (sp?) but my mind is really alert (in a bad way if that makes sense) and I just lay there and i try to think about lucid dreaming but i dont feel tired or sleepy at all.
I apologize for the run on sentence, and thank you in advance.
Hello Ghost175.
I’m guessing you are asking for advice
Personally when I try WILD I find it is very helpful to clear my mind of thoughts, using a form of meditation. After being in this state for a short time I usually find myself falling asleep. This works for me every time unless I’m extremely active. I find my diet can affect how I sleep too, If I eat a lot of sugary food, it is much harder to get to sleep as I find myself feeling fidgety.
The feelings of heaviness do sound like SP or at least the start of it.
There is a thread about WILD that contains a lot of information: Here
There is also a page on different techniques which is good. Here
Hello, this is my first post as well as my first experiences with lucid dreaming. I have some questions that I wasn’t able to find answers for.
I’ve started using mostly WILD and done it a few times making little progress. I tried this a few times before switching to a combination of MILD, WILD, and WBTB, which I’ve done only a few times as well.
Basically, I go to bed at night using MILD. I wake up about 4 hours later (using an alarm clock), write down anything I can remember about my dreams, spend about 10 minutes reading up on lucid dreams, and then attempt WILD laying on my back. If this goes on for a long while with no progress, or I start to feel that I’m getting frustrated or unproductive, I switch to lying on my side and just try to fall asleep while using some MILD.
My questions are:
Is this technique to my benefit? Or could I be hindering myself by not focusing on one technique/technique combination?
How much time does this process generally take? Is it normal to feel for a very long time that nothing is happening(half an hour-ish)?
I usually find that when I lay down, my hands go numb almost immediately and everything else is slow to follow(I usually only get up to having a slight feeling in my legs. No other parts of my body have gone numb as of yet). I have trouble focusing on any one thing through the whole session though. For instance, I’ll focus on the numb sensation, but after a while it becomes less notable and I notice vague dots or images. After a while, those too fade and I hear the tintus in my ears and focus on that. Sometimes my breathing plays a role too when I involuntarily change breathing patterns and start snoring. Basically, I find that if I try to focus on any particular sensation too long, it starts to fade. Is it ok to switch attention every now and then?
Swallowing always throws me out of whack. I never really get an involuntary reaction to swallow, but after a while I get the strong sensation that I should swallow, especially as my mouth starts to fill with saliva. How should I manage this?
I don’t expect to master this in only a few tries, but these questions would help guide where I go with this technique. Any responses are appreciated.
I had exactly the same thing with swallowing, every time i felt the need i couldn’t stop concentrating on it and eventually had to swallow or i would involuntarily swallow.
How annoying?!
I think you just have to try not to think about it Easier said than done maybe?
I tried to WILD last night, and at one point, I think I either fell asleep shortly or became unconscious, but I remember regaining consciousness and having a weird feeling all over my body sort of like when your foot or hand falls asleep. If I tried to move something, it felt like it was stuck in place, and every time I breathed in and out, it felt like I was sort of “rising” out of my stomach. Is this normal?
but I’ll try to stay in the dream, if that fails, I’ll try again. More practice 
I’m hoping after a success I’ll be able to repeat it.
So, I guess this is the sort of thing to do on weekends. 
How annoying?!
Easier said than done maybe?