Reading many topic in Quest for Lucidity I realize that so many people have troubles with WILD.
I completely understand, as it’s a very hard technique to master; also, SP / hallucinations is seriously scary stuff.
However, during my personal Quest for Lucidity I came up with a variation of WILD that has become my standard method for LDing.
Essentially is a mix of WBTB + WILD, but instead than waiting for HI / SP, I visualize HI I choose to.
What happens after some time (the amount of time varies) is that my body falls asleep without me noticing it, I do not feel SP, and the HI visualization naturally evolves into a proper LD.
This technique has several pros at its side.
During the numerous LD’s I’ve had with it:
- My awareness is extremely high, my mind is working much like during WL
- Recall is very good
- Dream powers work awesome
- LD are usually very long - My personal scale is Short ~10-15 mins, Medium ~20-30 mins, Long 45-60 mins and over
- Success rate is high: if I have motivation and enough sleep time, I succeed much more often than I fail
- I do not feel Sleep Paralysis, never experienced it actually
- Extremely reduced FA incidence
- Visually they are as vivid as LD’s I had using different techniques
- Touch and hear senses work well
The only cons are:
- Taste / smell do not work well or at all - I suspect it’s because I normally do it in the morning hours, when I am not sleeping too deep
- Often times I can hear WL sounds while dreaming - it can be distracting or useful, depending on the case
When it happens, I usually count church’s bell rings to know the time and understand how much time I am left for dreaming and also know LD duration
Have a look at my 2016 DJ (LINK) to read results by yourself.
Note: I normally fall asleep very quickly < 5 minutes, I guess it contributes alot in making it so effective for me; I suspect that people normally requiring longer times could find it less effective.
So, what do I do exactly ?
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Do a WBTB if I feel I need it : toilet, rinse mouth, wash face, the usual stuff - I skip when I think I am aware enough
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Lay on the bed with my eyes closed in a comfortable position, but NOT the one I usually fall asleep in
I normally fall asleep on my side, so when I want to LD I lay supine (face upward), hands resting on my chest / belly or at the side -
Then I start visualization.
- This is like daydreaming, but in the night so let’s call it “nightdreaming”
- I usually visualize continuing the most recent ND, if waking up right after one, perhaps after recognizing a missed dreamsign (like mentioned by LaBerge for the MILD technique)
- Or from a common dreamsign of mine (e.g. office corridors)
- Or from a landmark of my LD adventures, usually my personal tower where I have souvenirs from some of previous LD’s, touching them or looking at the landscape from the top, or looking inside the portal
- I keep visualizing, doing stuff, looking around
- This is like daydreaming, but in the night so let’s call it “nightdreaming”
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Visualization turns into LD
This is the trickiest part to explain. The first time I did this, I had a ~1 hour LD in which I did so much stuff that I even partially forgot.
All during this hour I did wonder: am I actually sleeping and LD’ing or am I awake and just “nightdreaming” ?
At that time, since I could hear my real body’s breathe, I listened to it and it was very slow and heavy, so reassuring me that I should be sleeping, and diving back into the LD.So, how do I know I am actually LD’ing right now ?
- An obvious way to know is RC, but recently I linked that doing RC too often could be counter-productive.
- Another, less intrusive way is critically looking at the dream world.
When inside a proper LD, compared to the “nightdreaming” phase, images are crispier, colors more vivid, black is more black and less gray-ish, DC faces are more lifelike, everything is much more detailed; generally speaking everything looks so much better. - My recommendation is, just DO NOT CARE. Keep your focus on “nightdreaming” visualization, knowing that it will eventually turn into a LD and you will be just having fun
Disclaimer:
I am sure this is not something totally new, but on the other hand I have not seen a topic mentioning this specific path to LD, neither in the WILD topic / subtopics.
So I figure out I’d post it here, to help some fellow oneiroanaut in their Quest for Lucidity, and I named HVILD - Hypnagogic Visualization Induced Lucid Dream (as per naming conventions).
I am totally open to cancel the name if it’s already used or the same technique already had a name I was not aware of.
Any question / feedback, do not hesitate to post here, PM or e-mail me (address = forum nickname at tiscali dot it)
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