I’m just glad I’m not alone! This thread is becoming a false awakening support group for me. Good stories from cytariel and Kelsondra. SSILD just seems to crank so many of these FA’s out for me. False awakenings seem like great entry points into lucid dreams but I am still such a newbie that I usually fail to capitalize. Reality check for goodness sake!
The problem is that these are often totally realistic with a minimal amount of dreamlike content. Luckily, my first FA presented me with a crazy green energy storm that tipped me off. But the rest have been too “real life” and fooled me: real-looking alarm clock times, me complaining to my wife that I’m having trouble sleeping, my kids coming into the bedroom to wake me up, my wife bringing me downstairs and showing me something on the internet…
Honestly, I’m so glad that I’ve never decided that I need to go to the bathroom in one of these things. I don’t know what would happen. I enjoy pushing the boundaries of the dream world as much as the next guy but let’s just not go there.
I am going to start trying this method properly but i have one question about it.
As its stated its best with WBTB i don’t feel i have the ability to get up for my normal time and then fall asleep while doing this, however i ALWAYS get up for the bathroom after awakening, what would you advise i do during WBTB, just go straight back to bed or stay up for a bit?
I want to get used to doing SSILD (maybe with MILD) every night/morning. I think I should meditate a bit too. The problem is my mind seems to wander way too much. I start the first cycle and before I change to hearing I’m lost in thoughts. If I’m lying on my side I might even just fall right asleep. So I guess I need a little more practice.
Anyway, about FA’s. I PM’ed cosmic.iron some time ago asking if he had tips for my premature awakenings which happen so frustratingly frequently in my LD’s and one thing he said in his reply that got my attention was about FA’s (which for some reason I hadn’t even considered). I just couldn’t believe the possiblity of these awakenings being FA’s! In most of them I’d just fall asleep and enter another LD, but that means nothing about it being or not an FA. Actually, if I was still dreaming it might explain how I entered another LD so quickly. I rarely RC when I wake up, but a week ago I remembered to do so when I had one of these awakenings and it was a FA! I even cried in the dream, thinking maybe all of these awakenings I’ve been struggling with for a really long time were actually FA’s. That would be something … revolutionary. So I REALLY want to get in the habit of RC’ing instead of staying still and trying to DEILD.
FA’ers of LD4all unite! Sorry for the wall of useless text
I used SSILD in order to induce another lucid dream last night. This was great fun as usual but I think that I fumbled the ball slightly. I was wondering what advice cosmic.iron or any others would have on the best way to address this particular scenario.
I had a false awakening (as often happens with SSILD) and wound up standing near the foot of my bed. The room was extremely dark but I could see the outline of my wife sleeping in bed. Most striking to me was that the alarm clock had gone totally dark. I thought that either the power had gone out or I was dreaming. I hit the nose pinch reality check and immediately became lucid.
The trouble that I had was that the room felt oppressively dark. That’s realistic for the bedroom in the very early morning but I was concerned about the stability of the dream scene. I rubbed my hands over my arms. This felt just as vivid as usual but the room was still terribly dark and growing darker.
I tried saying “increase lucidity” but I wound up just harshly whispering it rather than shouting it. I couldn’t get past the idea that I didn’t want to wake up my wife. Even though I knew that she was a DC, it still felt wrong to wake her up! The darkness kept gently descending until I lost the dream scene.
What say all of you? What should I have done differently?
Crawled around on the floor?
Run out of the room as fast as possible? (I did this during my first SSILD lucid and it worked.)
Stop being a weenie! Shout “increase lucidity” and just deal with an upset DC wife.
I’d say all of the above, item number 3 in particular, LOL. The other things I’d recommend:
Find a switch on the wall and turn on the light. Granted, the light may not get turned on, but “something” will. We discovered this neat trick through a lot of experiments conducted on our forum. When you flip the light switch, some part of your dream always gets turned on, be it the room, the other rooms, or some place outside. For example, we have seen night turns day, stars coming out, street lamps turned on, and even lightnings that correspond to each flip of the switch! After you do this, your dreamscape will become bright and stable.
Imagine a cliff behind you and step backward to fall into it. This is a very fast and effective way to change the dream scene.
Turn on your mobile phone and use that to light up the place… no I’m not kidding.
Grab and examine some objects closely. This works well on restoring your visions. Very handy for those dreadful instances when you experience a total blackout.
I am not very good at LD but tried it yesterday with immediate success ! looks promising.
My lucidity was low though and the recall is poor enough.
Gone to bed at 11pm woke up at 4.30am (no alarm, I often wake up during the night). I did stay awake like 5 minutes before doing the cycles like 4 or 5 times. Then I turn back to my favorite sleeping position, felt asleep and had 3 FAs, which I believe is quite a lot. I Managed to do RC on each one which made me becomes lucid. Unfortunatly, as said before the recall is not very high, and the lucidity seemed very poor compared to WILD.
Will try it tonight as well and see if the success rate is that high (look promising by seeing all reports on this forums as well as others !)
edit: I was about to forgot, some people reported nightmares which I experienced too using SSILD. Do you guys think it’s related ?
I’ve done this technique before I even knew it existed! The spontaneous lucidity it gives you in dreams is kind of bizarre… for some reason it makes you more rational during your dreams, leading to a greater chance of realizing you are dreaming. I haven’t done this technique for about a year, but I guess I will start doing it again. For me, the technique worked best when I went to bed at 10 PM, woke up at 4 AM, and then went back to sleep.
I went to bed at 00:20 and woke up at 3:15 (puppy crying). When I went back to bed I tried SSILD and I have to say this was probably the first time I’ve actually been able to do the whole thing correctly, that is, without losing track every 2 seconds . I did 5 cycles and whenever I lost focus it wasn’t really hard to get back on track and keep going. I didn’t see, hear or feel anything at all. When I was done I rolled on my side and tried to fall asleep as fast as possible. Next thing I know I got this lucid feeling and I do a nose RC. My level of lucidity wasn’t the best, but it was pretty vivid and stable. I think what made it less awesome than it could have been was the fact that my DR hasn’t been that great recently, so it feels like I forgot many parts. It was still great, though!
My results with SILD (why 2 S anyway?) are in my DJ. In short, I don’t know what to think, it’s incredible. All of a sudden I find myself in SP, ready to enter a dream, probably after a bit of sleeping too.
I have seen hundreds of report, and based on what I saw there shouldn’t be any relationship between SSILD and nightmares. One possibility, though, is that sometimes after performing SSILD one may suddenly enter SP or an SP-like state while asleep, and for some that can be a little scary and may turn into a nightmare as lucidity fades.
I tried this the night before last and last night. The night before last I woke up at 5:15 and did WBTB for about fifteen minutes before doing this method. I did it and was able to concentrate well, but I wasn’t able to fall back asleep before 6:30, when I had to get up. Last night, I woke up around the same time and tried it without WBTB, figuring I would be able to fall back asleep better. I wasn’t able to concentrate as much, but I got through the exercise and tried to go back to sleep. However, I wasn’t able to fall back asleep until about 6:15, and when I woke up at 8 I hadn’t remembered any dreams that may have been influenced by it.
Please read carefully the bottom section of the article, which describes the reasons for not being able to fall asleep. Also, do not “think” about falling asleep. If you are worried about it you may just get what you fear for The cycling actually works very well as a way to make you feel very sleepy, if conducted correctly.
I did SPs before, this its likely not to induce nightmares when it does happens to me, not affraid ! It must be out of a coincidence, I think.
I tried it again, twice. The first time I thought I could get rid of the 5mn awake step but I almost felt asleep failing at doing even 1 cycle
The second time I respected all the steps you mentionned and had 1 FE in which I managed to do an RC and became lucid again (but I lost it )
Woke up in the middle of the night, feeling kind of bumd out cause I did not recal even a hint of a dream. Then decided to try this and went to sleep. Then I woke up again later. again nothing…
However, I tried it again and fell asleep after doing it for so long…
WHOW! I had entered the most vivid dream of my entire life. I was in my hous and after a while water started to pour out of the walls, they even stood on fire. I did a nose check and a hand check but both didn’t work. I just stood there saying:“this must be a dream, but how can it, it’s all too real.” Then I decided that if it was a dream I could fly just as the dream was collapsing, I remeber telling myself: “SSild is Awesome!” I actually didn’t wake up but had at least 3 more dreams before I woke up, but I had to sacefice those to write this one down as good as possible, it was over 3 pages long! So thanks a lot for this teqhinique, will try it again tonight
I’ve been trying this technique very casually for maybe a month now. I hadn’t been having any success, I’ve fallen asleep during cycles, after them, been too awake some nights and tried to shift into a WILD a couple of times after seeing things during the cycles.
I wake up during the night almost every night and so like I sometimes do I decided to give the technique a go. This time I see things during the cycles. I heard voices, vivid images appeared in my head. Normally I’d think “I can WILD here, lets do it.” but this time I decided to just to keep going with the cycles.
I think I made it to the third cycle when I fell asleep. I then found myself in bed and instantly knew I was dreaming, so I sat up and checked my fingers just to be sure and that was it. It wasn’t a WILD since I know I was asleep for some time.
Instead I think it worked for me because by not trying to WILD I didn’t become too excited and I was able to fall asleep. I had the longest LD I can remember thanks to this technique.
Later that same night I had a FA but didn’t realize… so I still have some work to do.
I’m curious to know if many other people actually see things during the cycles. Usually I don’t see anything before I fall asleep (which I understand is perfectly normal) but I don’t seem to have any success when that is that case.
Probably just need more practice
Congratulations! It is common to see things during the cycles. In fact, the cycles are designed to bring you deeper into the “state” very quickly. It works much better than focusing on one sense for extended period of time. You did the correct thing this time – this is the reason I said in the article that we should NOT treat it as a WILD technique! That being said, you can indeed use the technique for WILD once you become more proficient with it. Have fun!
I already sent cosmic.iron a PM on my results, but i thought that perhaps other people might want to know.
I am used to getting SP and this technique is making me more familiar with it, therefore I am less afraid when it happens. The first night I used SILD I got SP twice. The second night I used it I got what cosmic.iron believes was a FA with SP or a hybrid of awakenings. Whichever it was, it led me to have a very awesome lucid dream! I flew successfully for the first time
I was content with the lucid dream, so I didnt try the technique again until a couple of days later. Trying SILD again, I had a FA and also SP. However, this time I didnt convert it to a lucid dream successfully.
Anyways, I just want to say that this technique is awesome and it works great! With more practice, I think it will be even more successful. I just want to add that, since it important to sort off “fall asleep” while doing this technique, it would be good to know what your mind does when your start to fall asleep. Personally, I know I am doing well with the technique when I start losing focus, space out a bit, and go back to doing the technique. When I space out again, it is more vivid than just random thoughts, and I know I’m close to falling asleep and doing a successful SILD!
Good stories from cytariel and Kelsondra. SSILD just seems to crank so many of these FA’s out for me. False awakenings seem like great entry points into lucid dreams but I am still such a newbie that I usually fail to capitalize. Reality check for goodness sake!
. I did 5 cycles and whenever I lost focus it wasn’t really hard to get back on track and keep going. I didn’t see, hear or feel anything at all. When I was done I rolled on my side and tried to fall asleep as fast as possible. Next thing I know I got this lucid feeling and I do a nose RC. My level of lucidity wasn’t the best, but it was pretty vivid and stable. I think what made it less awesome than it could have been was the fact that my DR hasn’t been that great recently, so it feels like I forgot many parts. It was still great, though!
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