My personal experiences and problems with WILDs

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hello there!

This is my first post on this forum, but I’ve been hanging around here and the site for some time now.

I wanted to talk about my personal experiences with WILDs, and ask you what I’m doing wrong, or if you have any tips for me :smile:

So I have read a series of guides about how to do WILDs, and it feels like I’m slowly getting there. But unfortunately there are still some major obstacles I face almost every time I try.

Here is a short description of how most of my attempts go:

I lie down in my bed, on my back, and stop moving - trying to relax. This mostly goes fine and I can soon feel the sleep paralysis coming. (This numbness and tingling spreading over you body, I think that must be it?)

As the feelings get more intense, I get slightly excited, which sometimes disturbs the process…

A big problem that occurs in the early stages is also that I get annoying “itches” and feelings on different parts of my body, for example on one of my hands. This is often like feeling my pulse pound in the region, and it’s really annoying. On one day it is bearable and goes away again after some time, the other day it ruins the whole attempt.
There are also various other things, at least one of them occuring every attempt, which make me want to move and “fix” them. One of them would be having to swallow, or to scratch me on the nose… but I know that this usually destroys the attempt

Mostly I can get around those first annoyances (they almost always aren’t the real problem), and enter a deeper sleep paralysis. Then, something really strange happens:

As the SP gets deeper, I don’t see any hypnagogic images at all. However I start to feel as if I’m twisting around slowly and steadily, in varying directions. I get extremely excited by this. It is so exciting that I get, even when trying desperately to avoid it, adrenaline rushes and my heart starts to pound uncontrollably fast. On some days, this is so bad that it ruins the whole attempt.

If it doesn’t however, the feelings get even more intense: Suddenly, it seems as if I was dragged into an endlessly large, black space. Everything starts twisting even more, and now it feels as if my whole body was changing length and height periodically. I start falling deeper and deeper into this darkness. This darkness feels like when you close your eyes in a dark room, but just so much bigger. It is as if it would completely surround me! I would describe it as an absolutely amazing experience.

This goes on for a few minutes I guess, and then stops. At that point I feel as if I was about 70% disconnected from my body.

Now here is my main problem: I wasn’t able to get further from this point!

All of my previous attempts ended in me giving up, rolling over to the side and ultimately sleeping in. Sometimes this is because I was too excited, or because I feel physically uncomfortable.At the same time I start feeling a very strong urge to move. Then I just don’t see the point in continueing, because I think that I can’t get any further, and give up. On the next day I usually regret doing so.

I often read that the main difficulty most people have with WILDs is that they lose focus and slip into unconciousness. I have the opposite problem apparently, as I’m just overly excited and when I get the feeling that the attempt is failing, I usually give up and go to sleep.

So these are my previous experiences I gathered from 4-6 WILD attempts. Now, I wanted to ask you some more concrete questions:

  • After having read the ending part of my descriptions, how far do you think have I come to the target of having a fully asleep body and entering a dream?

  • What do I need to do to “finish” the attempt, when it seems to have stalled?

  • Are these sensations of twisting around and mainly the spreading blackness and emptyness unique to me, or are they common and described somewhere?

  • Where did the hypnagogic images stay?

  • Do you have particular tips for me about what I have to do to solve the problems which keep me from succeeding in having my first WILD?

I really hope that some of you might be able to help me with my problems :confused:

Thanks for reading and best regards,
Whiterun

2

Hi Whiterun, welcome :smile:

When do you do these attempts? Have you slept a couple of hours in advance?

3

Thanks for your reply,

So far I have always done them when going to bed at night or during the day instead of taking a nap.

I have read that WILDs can be extremely hard to get if you don’t sleep before doing them, but I thought you could at least reach the sleep phase without doing so.

The thing is that I just can’t do the get-up-back-to-sleep, in the night. It’s as hard for me to get up as it is to sleep in, unfortunately.

Do you think I can even ever succeed in having a WILD without sleeping before?

4

In theory it’s possible to WILD before going to sleep at night but it is extremely hard since you have to wait and stay conscious until you reach the first REM phase. This takes between 70 and 90 minutes counting from the moment your body falls asleep. So that’s a lot of black emptiness.
I’ve tried it so many times and now and then I still try to WILD before sleep but I have yet to succeed…

As for WILD when taking a nap. It’s easier to achieve success since you start to dream earlier than at night.

I still recommend you though to try to WILD in the morning. I know it can be hard, a lot of times I get up too early which results in not being able to stay conscious. And other times I get up too late which results in waking up too many times or not being able to sleep again. You have to find your own preferred moment of waking up and attempting WILD. For me the best moment is approximately after 6 to 7 hours of sleep. Because I need a lot of hours at night I sometimes can even WILD after 9 hours of sleep.

If you find it hard to wake up, you should try to wake up an hour later and see if that’s easier for you. By reading about your experiences so far, I think that you can achieve a success with WILD. Just don’t be too focussed and stressed about it because it takes a lot of patience. :smile:

5

Thanks for your encouragement!

I didn’t even think about that you can do it in the morning too, I always thought you’d have to get up in the middle of the night, haha!

Well, I’ll surely try again tonight and in the morning too - I’ll post here about how it went afterwards! :smile:

6

Okay, here is an update on how it went:

Tonight I again got pretty far, but after the SP was finished, all I saw was blackness for a long time and I got uncomfortable again, aborting the attempt.

This morning it unfortunately didn’t go too well, probably because I slept 9 hours xD
Probably I was just too awake and couldn’t get into the process again…

I’ll try after 6 hours of sleep soon.

7

The main problem you’ve had was the fact that you were doing your WILD attempt when going to sleep in the night. Don’t expect much success from it as it’s nearly impossible. Only a few people here have actually reached the REM phase, which comes after 90 minutes. Still, it’s a waste of time, because the first dream cycle last only for about 5 minutes. I don’t think it’s a good idea to waste 90 minutes to achieve those 5 minutes of an early stage dream, which is often non-vivid.
The most ideal way is to do WILD after 4,5 - 6 hours of sleep. You may wake up using an alarm clock or autosuggestion method. When you wake up at that time, you’ll enter the REM sleep instantly, without having to wait 90 minutes. Therefore, WILD will succeed here if you do it right. You may also stay awake for 10-20 minutes (do the WBTB technique). That, combined with WILD will grant you higher success in getting a WILD.
Another time when you can do WILD is during an afternoon nap. If you fall asleep during the day pretty easily, you may try WILD’ing. Usually the naps consist of REM-sleep, therefore you will reach the dream state pretty quickly.
Hope that helps. Good luck on your future WILD attempts :smile:

EDIT:
Also, that “uncomfortable” feeling you get (an urge to move, itches in different parts of your body) is your body’s way of checking if you’re asleep. You should refrain yourself from moving. If you move, or react to those itches, it will tell your body that you’re awake. That will ruin your WILD attempt. So try your best resisting it.

8

Thanks for your answer,

I see then, now I understand why trying to WILD in the night can’t work well

So I will attempt to get up a bit earlier and WILD after that, and also try so during an afternoon nap. I usually don’t take naps and mostly have a hard time sleeping in, but sleep paralysis seems to come rather quickly for me almost always. I’m excited to find out how it will work out!

9

Hi and welcome! One thing I’d like to add that wasn’t said already is that you shouldn’t completelly follow any guide. They are great to have an idea, but I think following them too much can have a negative effect. HI, for example. Most guides say “…and then you should get HI”, but you didn’t. Many people don’t get HI ever and can successfully WILD. Some people don’t feel SP (although it’s always there, of course :tongue:). What I mean is, the most important lesson in learning to WILD is to learn from yourself. Be aware of what you try and don’t try and what results you get.

As Paulinus said, rolling over or giving in to those signals lets your body know you are still awake and won’t enter a dream. This is true for many people, myself included. BUT. I simply can not fight the roll over signal when I get it. It can really be so unconfortable that it borders pain! So I usually just give in and roll over. I’ve noticed though that as soon as I do roll over I fall asleep increadibly fast. I used to rool over and think “oh well, WILD failed” and just give into unconscious sleep. But I started realizing that if I rolled over and stayed conscious only a few seconds more, I’d enter a LD! I haven’t have this happen many times (haven’t even gotten to the roll over signal that much), but I just wanted to give an example on how you can learn things by observing how you function and not getting caught up in the guides when they say things like “that will ruin your attempt!”

(Nothing against guides, by the way. :razz: It’s just that lucid dreaming and dreaming in general is such a subjective thing that it’s hard to write one that will be 100% true for everyone every time.)

Anyway, just keep experimenting! You’ve gotten some pretty cool results already :grin:

10

To expand on what Magnus said, I wrote a guide a bit back specifically talking about how you should adapt WILD to meet your own needs.

Here it is: Link to shameless plug

11

Thanks for your tips!

Yes, I’ve noticed that almost everything connected to sleeping and LDs seems to completely depend on the kind of persons involved.

I have done 3-4 more WILD attempts, and got different results. None of the tries worked, I always gave up, and that’s probably because I wasn’t tired / relaxed enough and got distracted a lot by the real world.

I wanted to ask you about a few old and new phenomena that tend to disturb my attempts:

Hard to keep eyes closed / open when trying to watch HI colors and shapes

I have noticed that it’s kind of hard for me not to open my eyes when I try to statically look at the shapes and colors appearing over time. Whenever I try to “look” at them, my eyelids tend to open only a bit and I start seeing my room.

This leads me to another question:

Is it “safe” to move, open and close your eyes, or is this likely to ruin the whole attempt?

Problems not “listening” to incoming signals / shifting focus away from reality

In two of my recent attempts, I got distracted a lot by sounds from outside (I tried it in my garden), and it seemed like I wasn’t really able to shift the focus away from the real world. Even if I tried not doing so, I always kept “processing” and thinking about what I just heard (which was 100% not a hallucination, sadly I didn’t get this far :blush:

Generally feeling uncomfortable

You said that the roll-over-signal is a test of your body to see if your mind is still awake and it’s not safe to enter SP.

Is it possible that a similar feeling like the roll-over-signal could be generally feeling uncomfortable with the situation? Like some feeling arising that tells you that it’s no use continueing, and you should just stop?

That would be some of the things I encountered just now.

Otherwise, I feel like I’m slowly getting further! And that much because of your advice :smile:

Thanks again and best regards,
Whiterun

12

One thing that disturbs me in WILD and always did is the saliva effect… damn the swallowing :smile:
Anyhow, my VILD/WILD technique seems to bring a solution to this problem but it’s hard to fully concentrate on the Visualization for so long until it becomes a LD.
(Nevertheless it damn sure worth it)

13

Hi Whiterun :content:

Yes, it’ll be significantly harder to do the tech if you’re worrying about your eyes opening. One thing that will help is reverse blinking. Open and then close your eyes quickly for a little while. After a bit, your eyelids will start to feel tired and it will help keep your eyes closed for the rest of the attempt.

Yeah, outside noises can be an issue, and so can HS. The best thing to do is to try to ignore it, but that’s easier said than done :razz:. If you do find yourself distracted, calmly put your mind back on track. Don’t fret about losing concentration, just keep bringing yourself back to your WILD attempt.

That comes a lot from the roll over signal. That is what makes you uncomfortable with the situation and gives you the idea that it’s no use to continue. The uncomfortable feeling is hard to shake. If you really can’t take it anymore, go ahead and get comfortable. It may make the process take longer, but it’ll sure make it easier. Just keep your movements to a minimum and whatever you do make sure to go back to concentrating once you have.

@Blucid: Ah yes… the saliva effect. Here’s my best advice: just swallow already. It will hurt your attempt more if you are stuck thinking “#(%& I NEEDZ TO SWALLOW BUT CAN’T” than it ever will if you just swallow. The trick is to not think about it. Just let it happen.