Quest for Lucidity with Sleep Issues

#1

I used to be able to lucid dream fairly regularly. I also used to be able to sleep whenever I felt like it. In the past couple of years I have struggled with insomnia as well as sleep paralysis.

Since I often notice in the past year that I am half awake I thought, hey this would be a great time to try the WILD technique. In the past I had never tried Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming. I had always realized within my dream that I was dreaming because things seemed off.

I was so tired by the time I tried to sleep that I forgot to even try WILD. I take medication to help me sleep and it had kicked in and basically I laid down and I was off to snoozeville.

I’m thinking that if I go to bed earlier, like right after I take my pills that the WILD technique might work better for me. Anyway, I had no lucid dreams but I had a nice night of rest so I can’t complain.

#2

i find many lucid dreaming autosuggestion techniques and visualizations to be very calming and help with sleep in general, to stop my mind from racing about a million random topics.

the best time to try WILD is usually after youve already gotten 4 to 6 hours of sleep, because your REM cycles are longer. when you first go to sleep your REM cycles are very short so WILD doesnt work very well. many people find the WBTB method useful for this reason, but you might try WILDing if you wake up in the middle of the night and are feeling too alert to just fall back into normal sleep.

for when you first go to sleep, id recommend trying some autosuggestion or MILD techniques. you can start your intentions to lucid dream when you first go to bed, which will help later whether you WILD or not :smile:

#3

I completely agree with what Obliverum says.

It could also be possible that the medication suppresses REM sleep in the beginning of the night. If it does, you might get more REM sleep towards the morning. WILD tends to work the best for me when I can barely stay awake, so maybe a WBTB in the middle of the night could help?

#4

Getting over sleep issues is a lot of trial and error. For me, Weed used to help me sleep, but supresses dreams. I recently quit, and have WICKED dreams now that they’re flooding back. But it took me years to finally be able to sleep semiregularly. Being on any sort of pills is going to change your brain chemistry a bit and the best approach is of course to not be on anything (easier said than done i know, I just don’t approve of pills or big pharma after going through an unpleasant testing phase of antidepressants.) However, other things that helped were exercising and eating healthy regularly, stopping the use of screens well before bed (at least an hour) and not giving up. I used to try and sleep until 2am and would give up and go watch tv and eat ice cream, but even staring at the ceiling all night is better than getting up and spending the night in front of a screen. Your brain needs time off, even if you can’t necessarily sleep. Good luck