My WILD attempts. Feedback from experienced dreamers?

Quest for Lucidity
1

I’ve been trying WILD out for the past few nights. Prior to three nights ago, I had never attempted WILD. I’m sharing my experiences so far, in the hope that someone experienced with the technique can offer some pointers to help me tune mine :content: I’ve been listening to BWGen presets most times I’ve tried WILD.

On the first night, the art of staying perfectly still seemed almost unattainable - I’d feel like shifting slightly to get into a ‘better’ position every few minutes. No progress on this night whatsoever :wink:

Then on the second night, things started to get interesting. I was listening to a BWGen preset, and was relaxed in bed. I decided to try experimenting with visualising a computer game I’ve been playing a lot of lately. I found this much easier to visualise than the ubiquitous stairs that I’ve been reading about everywhere, and I felt things beginning to happen. A numbing sensation swept through my body. Shortly afterwards, I started feeling significant vibrations, and it felt like my heart was beating much faster and harder. Since I’d read about such things happening to other people on these forums, I wasn’t overly surprised, and kept my cool so as not to rock the boat too much. It was still an exhilarating sensation though :happy:

After a minute or so, I felt like I had reached some form of plateau - I didn’t know where to go from here. I had seen no hypanogic imagery, only the visualisations that I had created myself, so there was no obvious ‘enter dream here!’ portal. I decided to open my eyes and perform a reality test. I did, and discovered to my disappointment that I was still awake. At least I’d make some progress…

That attempt was made when I was first going to sleep. Later in the night, after six hours of sleep, I tried again. Given the sensations I had encountered earlier, I was fairly confident of success - adjacent a REM cycle and more tired than I was at the beginning of the night, how could anything go wrong? :tongue:

Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be that straight-forward! My throat seems sensitive lately - I found that breathing while I was attempting WILD irritated it, and every few breathes, I would have to either swallow or cough to get rid of the sensation. This was EXTREMELY DISTRACTING! :cry: :grrr:

I found it too difficult to continue on account of this, so I gave up on the attempt for that night.

Then last night, I ended up trying it three times - all after the important six-hours-of-sleep-attained mark. Each time, I would attain a reasonable feeling of relaxedness throughout my body, but I would never ‘take off’ - ultimately I’d get uncomfortable/frustrated and stop after 45 minutes to an hour. On my final attempt, I tried integrating three pointers I had read on these forums - focus on the spot in the centre of your forehead, pay attention to your breathing, and attempt to slow your breathing more and more. I attempted all of the above (though I found focusing on the centre of my forehead awkward), but to no avail.

If you’re still with me at this point, congratulations! My problem has been made evident. I seem to attempt WILD, get relaxed, reach some form of ‘plateau’ beyond which I run out of tricks to try, I encounter no hypnagogic imagery, and have no way into a dream. Has anyone got any ideas as to how to break out of this situation? Is making my own visualisations a good idea, or should I just stay blank and try and find some real hypnagogic imagery to gawk at? :content:

2

The only times in my life when I successfully WILD’ed were in the early morning. You know, when you wake up, see that it’s early, and fall back asleep. That is because when I tried WILD straight away after going to bed I always fell asleep. First, you have to relax completely. A mantra may help. Start relaxing your feet, then all the way up to the head. But move on only if the part you’re trying to relax is COMPLETELY relaxed. Then, after a while, you’ll see that if you think about something, you see it vividly, and that also applies to sounds: everything you think about feels more “real”. You enter…

-----------------------------------------Altered State-----------------------------------------

Now, start focusing on a thought but remember that you are going to enter a dream. Soon, the visualization will become more and more vivid until you feel that you have no more control of your body. You will feel numb and paralyzed. Keep thinking about what you want to dream of and you’ll eventually succeed. That’s what works for me.

3

Xine,
The Nameless One gave sound advice there, it’s very much easier to successfully WILD if you wake briefly after several hours sleep. In fact I’d say you will be wasting your time if you try it when first going to bed - it’s very hard to acheive a WILD this way.
I’ve recently had great success with WILD, so I’ll try to explain what works for me:
The first thing I would say is that you shouldn’t try too hard to relax. If you practice WILD when you have woken from dream sleep, relaxation will happen naturally. Trying too hard to relax, or trying not to move when you feel like moving is counter-productive and will just give you insomnia, so if you want to move or scratch or turn over just do it, and get comfortable.
You mentioned that you reached a state of numbness followed by feelings of vibration. This vibration sensation (sleep paralysis) is what you need to concentrate on, and if you can reach this state regularly, you can convert this state into lucidity 100% of the time by using a certain reality check and another simple technique.
When you feel these vibrations begin, give them all your attention. Allow them to develop and become more intense. You should soon feel as if a strong electrical current is running through your whole body. What many people don’t realise is that when you reach this stage you are already lucid dreaming (just without any visuals), and this is when you need to apply other methods. If you don’t believe you are dreaming at this stage, just pinch your nose shut with your thumb and finger. You should now find that you can breathe through your closed nose - if you can you are dreaming (of course).
A simple way to create dream visuals from here is by wearing a sleep mask at night. Once you experience deep vibrations (or when you have done the reality check if you feel you need to do it) simply remove the sleep mask.(you will be dreaming that you remove it of course, in reality it will stay over your eyes). This is a simple way to fool your mind into producing dream visuals, which will probably be of your own bedroom. Now you know you are lucid you can just get out of bed and go wherever your fancy takes you.
This method always works for me. If I can get to the deep vibration state, I can always become lucid by using these methods. Please give it a try, and be sure to post your successful excursions.

4

After all these good advices I can only say that for me, WILD becomes pretty much only possible when I wake up very briefly during the morning. It’s not WBTB, because I stay in bed. The sooner I start with this technique the more chance I have to succesfully WILD. Perhaps it is of some use to you also, good luck.

5

Thank you so much!the way you explained it i really understood WILD,and how to do it.Im definitly gonna try it tonight,now that it seems easier because of what you said.

6

nickspry’s and Xetrov’s advices are excellent, i’d say :smile: it’s how i do most WILDs: i notice myself waking up from a dream, don’t move at all and stay relaxed. I usally wild without getting any vibrations or HI. I try to ‘feel’ myself floating up and leaving my body. At first i feel stuck but suddenly i get a change in perception, and I feel loose from my body. and soon i’m detached and i’m standing in my dream room.
ALWAYS do a reality check when you think the WILD failed, you’d be surprised!
And you shouldnt keep yourself TOO aware, just the minimum required awareness to keep you awake. It’s a matter of balance. once you had your first successful wild, you’d understand it better. practice makes perfect! good luck! :smile:

7

I’ve done it at night and gotten quite far, I’ve gotten the numbness in my arms, legs ect. Not a numbness in which I could not move totally, more like one in which it takes a little extra effort to move. I got the swirling geometric shapes in my eyelids.At one point the darkness under my eyelids seemed to envelope me, like a black world… I ALWAYS get the vibrations,but the strange thing is, is that when I get these vibrations I check and see if I am dreaming, and I am always not dreaming. As a matter of fact just before I wrote this, I was doing a WILD and I got the vibrations all over my body and when they reached their peak, I tried to roll over into my dream…nothing, I was still awake.

I wonder what I must do next to get into the dream…

8

First off, thanks to everyone for the replies. I haven’t been around the forum much in recent months, nor have I had many opportunities to try WILD, though I’ve recently come my closest yet and I feel that next time I receive the opportunity, I will be successful in reaching a lucid dream.

Thats exactly what I tried recently. I was in full sleep paralysis at the time, experiencing hypnagogic sounds and some light hypnagogic imagery. This was the first time I had made it this far, so I was unsure as to whether I should wait and go with the flow, or try to take action myself to enter a dream.

In the end, I decided to take action, and attempted to roll into my dream - however, the attempt met with no success as I was still in my ‘real’ body which wasn’t going anywhere :wink: The attempt presumably broke me out of the process though, as I was awake within seconds.

Next time, I’ll certainly be more inclined to wait and see what happens. I’d say that when you’re capable of moving into the dream world, its likely you’ll know it, rather than thinking ‘Should I or shouldn’t I?’

9

No, you wont know. The transition from feeling your IRL body to controlling your dream body is extremely subtle. That’s why I imagine myself spinning around, it puts you deeper asleep while giving your mind control over your dreambody by rolling yourself out of your sleeping position. If you fail, keep spinning and try again in a minute, it might work sooner then you expect!

10

I stand corrected :content:

I’ll keep the spinning technique you mentioned in mind for my next attempt.