(Long read; if you don’t care about the technique, read just the last paragraph)
I’ve found a LD tech that works for me: In the rare cases when I have trouble falling
asleep, chances are good that I will get lucid either from DILD soon after dreaming has commenced, or better yet I will have ‘random’ WILDs that I wake up from and can then chain as long as I don’t move or get distracted.
I found this by accident after using earplugs and a headset with familiar music (electro no less) blaring in my ears, in a desperate effort to block out outside noises that prevent me falling asleep at all. It’s uncomfortable and takes a while and is probably not very restful, but it seems I can not only have WILDs this way, but daisy-chain them, and if I fall asleep instead, the music helps me realize I’m dreaming pretty reliably.
I just woke up from such a session, and I remember having the familiar vibrations once, amplifying them and ‘going with the flow’ as I always do when I get to that point, and then being dropped into a LD as per usual. After it was over (they never lasted longer than 40 seconds) I was in darkness for a short time, feeling my muscles stiff but staying perfectly still, until another dream would appear and I continued my shenanigans. In a couple of cases, though, I found my vision stuck in place. I would see something but could not move my eyes. At least in the latter part of this session, I was fairly alert as I chained the dreams, thinking about what I could do to prolong them, what I should record in my DJ, and even about making this post.
Now my questions are, what can I do to get into that alpha faster and start having my WILDs sooner? Any mental or physical exercises you can recommend? Remember this involves some mental and physical aggravation, heck that’s probably what makes the ‘technique’ work. Also, I realize the dreams are so damn short due to my own inexperience and excitement, but what is the limit for a dream in such an early sleep cycle (basically a power nap)? And can it really be extended from within the dream?