How do YOU do WBTB?

Almo · December 15, 2021, 8:46am

Myhellow all! Long time I hadn’t talk in here.
So, I wanted to ask you about WBTB. It is a technique that always made me curious but afraid at the same time. I’ve already tried it some times, but it always failed and, sometimes, made me wake up extremely tired in bonus. When I search about how to do it, online or in books, many says differents things and I don’t really know if I’m doing it right.
I havn’t done a single Lucid dream since July (not that I was doing a lot before), and since I am soon in a two weeks vacation, I decided that I should maybe take advantage of this break to tryhard my dream experience.

So, I want to ask you : If you are really familliar with WBTB, how do you do it?

When do you fall asleep? Do you have a regular sleep schedule? Do you work with alarm or something else? What time is it when you do first wake up? How many times do you stay awake? What do you do during this time? Does it works often?

I know the experience is different for everyone, but I believe this kind of information could help me crave my own.
I said I didn’t made a single LD in the last months, but I have noticed some teasing here and there. There was those tiles when I felt like I was becoming lucid, but it was the exact time I was waking up. The last hint I had was last week, when I had a big fever during the night. One time, when I felt asleep, I had a dream where I was in a bad situation and asked myself if I was in a dream (it didn’t go further than that). And I recall that my last LD was when I was at the hospital and I had great back pain during my sleep.
All those elements makes me wonder if, for me to get in a lucid state, I must have something calling me back to reality during the dream (that or having extremely vivid dream where I’m still somewhat aware of my condition)? That’s why I feel like WBTB might be a solution to this and that’s why I’m asking you about your experience.

Thanks

Marvin · December 15, 2021, 1:50pm

Hey Almo, indeed it’s been some time ^^

I can only reiterate your point about the wide spectrum that WBTB can take. I read several guides and topics and discussed with people and everyone does something different. So there seems to be no golden rule for WBTB.

I guess the important point is to influence your sleeping cycle correctly with it and set up your brain chemistry in a favorable way? Plus you can do some induction technique right before dreaming prime time (the last sleeping cycle(s)).

So to me it seems that you’ll want to wake up as cleanly as possible from a sleeping cycle (like at the end of REM) and do that naturally rather than with an alarm may be beneficial. Or it may not, so don’t get worked up over that. Then you’ll want to do anything that increases your chance of inducing a lucid dream and avoid everything that will prevent you from falling asleep again smoothly.

As for the effectiveness, unless you are messing up your timing badly, WBTB is pretty much guaranteed to improve your chances. And enough so to warrant the effort it costs, if you manage to tune it to your needs.

Ok, here comes my personal report. WBTB does not guarantee me lucid dreams and measuring its effectiveness is actually quite hard because I’m not a particularly regular lucid dreamer. I think I counted 31 lucid dreams this year so far, out of which 2-3 were after WBTB. I only made about 10 serious WBTB attempts though. Maybe about half of the LDs were spontaneous DILDs without intentional induction. Funnily enough, I also had 1 or 2 LDs before waking up for the WBTB. The reason is probably that I do MILD when going to bed also when I plan to do WBTB that night.

If I do a full commitment WBTB then I plan 1 to 1 1/2 extra hours of sleep. I set my WBTB alarm so it wakes me up about 2 1/2 hours before my final alarm. That way I am pretty sure that I wake up after my second last sleeping cycle. I’m pretty accurate with my timing and usually wake up naturally 10-20min before the alarm. Multiple times I woke up about 1 minute before the alarm. Then I have about 30 minutes awake, which leaves me with 2 hours for falling asleep and the final sleeping cycle plus a little buffer before my final alarm. If I commit to induction then I prefer not to be awoken by my alarm at the end of sleep because of the danger that it kicks me out of an LD

Like I said, I do MILD when going to bed in the evening. After waking up for WBTB I firstly write down dreams. In my opinion this is the first most important thing to do because it is easy, gets you in the mood (you can start incubating from a previous dream) and it’s the fundamental technique for anything dreaming related. Then I tend to my body (toilet, maybe drink a little, arrange by bed stuff so I can be comfortable). If I feel that I still have some time then I read something about dreams, mostly on LD4all, can also be DJs. I avoid social stuff like responding on messengers or to e-mails. I do pretty much all of that in bed (except the toilet part ). Then I finally go back to sleep doing MILD. I sometimes attempt WILD but never managed.

My biggest problem is falling back asleep. Usually I don’t fall asleep quickly enough. This could be because I spend too much time awake or simply because I’m too excited at the prospect of having an LD Sometimes I also fall asleep too fast because I’m too tired and then the induction technique isn’t effective. Another issue is that WBTB nights need to be longer than regular nights and the additional time I can only prepend to my normal pattern. That means I need to go to bed earlier than normal and shift a major part of my sleeping in an unnatural way. So sometimes I don’t fall asleep in time in the evening. I even cancelled WBTB a few times before even getting a minute of sleep because I lied in bed awake for too long.

The reason why I do this so rarely is because it takes a lot of time and it’s incompatible with my wife sleeping next to me. So when I’m on business trips I like to do it or when she’s sleeping out. Also it’s a big commitment and I like to do it properly and avoid messing up my night’s sleep.

I have another kind of WBTB that doesn’t work with alarm. I simply use a natural awakening at whichever time in the night it may happen. I usually wake up about two times each night, so those are natural occurring WBTB opportunities. But often I’m too tired and don’t follow through with WBTB. Instead I usually go back to sleep as fast as possible because otherwise I’m afraid my sleep well be wrecked and the next day I’ll feel horrible. But even without getting up and writing down dreams I can use these Intermezzos to do some induction technique. I want to make this a more reliable habit, but I still require some work on the way.

Almo · December 18, 2021, 9:47pm

Hey! Thanks for the kind and detailled response!

I guess it’s the good way to this, but I don’t know how… I am never aware of when I’m going asleep of when I’m awakening, so I don’t have any time marker to adjust… Should I try approximative values, or maybe the last time I checked the hour before going to sleep? Also, is sleep cycle the same for everybody? I ask that because I feel like I have different timing (I probably say that based on my dream remembering, which can be pretty inconsistent, even if Induction techniques help me a lot. What I know is, for every WBTB I have done, I tried every time Mild and it never worked… I guess if it’s not timing or just simple unluck, it’s probably the fact that I’m never awake very long (less than 5 minutes), idk.

To me, it looks pretty good. If we count on medium, then it is 2 LD by months (I don’t know if it happened like that for you though XD), I can’t imagine better XD

It happened to me regularly not so long ago, being able to wake up some time before the alarm I set up (even as you said, 1 minute before). I guess it was because of the stress of missing school. Do you think it is possible to accustom our brain to make us wake up at some precise hour?

Is it possible to learn when we enter and transition to a sleep cycle at a specific time? Or does some average values exists between humans? I ask that because you seem to know when you enter REM cycle during your night. How do you know that you have to wake up 2h30 before your final alarm?

Do you think that watching a screen can ruin the chances to get back to sleep in a short time? I’ve always read and been told some bad things about this. Also, what kind of things do you read? Personnaly, there is a particular dream journal on LD4all that I often read because of simillar dream intentions, it gets me in the mood. Do you think it’s appropriate?

Okay, this one is difficult I think ^^’ But how many times do you think you are awake in your bed doing MILD (or WILD) before entering sleep state?

I think that’s a bit of a problem to me everytime, even when I’m not doing WBTB (I wrote an entire topics on how my excitement for LD ruined my sleep ^^’

It was nice from you to share what you do for that. It is interessting to read what you have to say about this and how you deal with it. Sorry, I ask a lot of question and I ask a whole lot more when the first are answered ^^’

Marvin · December 19, 2021, 9:12am

On average a sleeping cycle will be around 90 minutes but it varies a lot per person and per night, depending on what physical condition you’re in and so on. I guess you can try to find out what your sleep is like by checking at what time you go to sleep and how much time has passed after waking up. This is especially easy to analyze if you have a rather light sleep and wake up in the middle of the night, maybe even several times. I noticed that my sleep adheres pretty accurately to a 90 minute cycle. Well, I’m German and like both accuracy and punctuality

That’s generally what regular sleeping patterns do and almost inevitably happens to most people who use alarms regularly. I wake up very reliably at the time of my morning alarm even when I’m not using it.

So you can also grow a habit of waking up for WBTB. Then you can do it naturally without an alarm clock. Although I don’t see any reason not to keep the alarm as a backup Also I’m not sure you’ll always want to wake up each night for WBTB. I think trying to sleep through the night should be the standard.

It’s simply a calculation based on what I intend to do while awake. It roughly breaks down to 30 minutes awake (DJ, toilet, maybe reading a little), about 15 minutes MILD and falling asleep and then 90 minutes for actual sleep. The rest is buffer to protect me from waking up by alarm. Since normally I would only need the 90 minutes for sleep, it means I need to go to bed 1h earlier on a WBTB night to get my overall sleep.

I also heard things like that, so if I can bide my time awake without it, then that’s good. But if I don’t recall many dreams and don’t have anything else to do, then I would go to bed after only 5 minutes already and that feels a little early.

That’s absolutely appropriate. I prefer to read things that get me in the mood. When it comes to DJs, I prefer very fantastical ones that really read like dreams indeed. That sets the atmosphere for my next dreams. Because even if I don’t get an LD out of WBTB, I will still have above average recall of the final dream and so I want it to be as interesting as possible in any case. Here’s an example that I remember on the to of my head that illustrates what I find interesting.

Not sure if I understand your question correctly. When doing MILD, then I will relax briefly (less than 5 minutes) and then incubate with MILD for no longer than 10 minutes usually, then fall asleep. But time spans are hard to estimate in this state of mind.