Thank you anticanticamper, I have been toying with similar ideas but I’m too lazy, LOL. Building a dedicated web site is no trivial task 
Hey cosmic.iron, thanks for replying!
In some ways I am glad you were not there to immediately answer my question because it would probably have made me more worried and stressed about minutiae! In your absence I have had to work things out for myself. The past few days have given me an opportunity to work the technique out for myself. Unfortunately the technique has not given me any LDs. I have experienced a significant jump in recall and dream vividness but I am not sure where to go from here. I have applied the tech over four nights and each night I have experienced a jump in recall. On a couple of occasions my mind has drifted, another couple my mind has become more alert and I’ve a little time to get back to sleep (I did RC, they weren’t FAs). I am now sure I am doing the SSILD correctly. Not sure if I should combine it with another technique.
I agree with that. Could you - cosmic.iron - ask the LD4all people if you could create a sub-section on this site just for discussion about SSILD? I know that people are doing experiments with the approach; they are combining it with other techniques. I am planning to do some experiments myself and don’t know if the avenues have already been pursued by cosmic.iron and others. For example, if, when I start to lose focus during SSILD, I tried to incubate a dream scene (such as flying above Mount Everest) would I be more likely to successfully incubate that dream if I do SSSILD?
Oh, there are so many questions to ask and experiment with about SSILD. For example, what happens if you skipped hearing and tried to imagine tastes instead? Would you dream about eating?
Just wondering, has anyone done the entire Betty Erickson hypnosis technique (Described here: wellspringreiki.com/wellspringhypnosis.htm ) during WBTB to see if it has the same effect as the SSILD here? (They are both similar.)
I’ll give it a try!
Just got an idea on how SSILD works…maybe. If you look at the Betty Erickson hypnosis technique ( wellspringreiki.com/wellspringhypnosis.htm ) with that, you don’t do suggestions during the hypnosis itself, but you state your purpose before the hypnosis. With SSILD, it looks on the surface like there isn’t a suggestion, but there actually is - we know our intention is to do 5 cycles of awareness. If we fall asleep before we reach the five cycles then our brain carries our intention to complete 5 cycles into sleep and that, in some way, makes us lucid?
Probably bollocks, but let me know what you think.
Are people still having success with SSILD? It has never worked for me.
Actually, cosmic.iron did make a post dedicated to nothing but success stories with SSILD just to prove that it does work 
. You can find it here: clicky
Thanks Rhewin!
Maybe that will help me work out what I’m doing wrong - even though I know I’m doing it right! 
The thread on DV also has collected quite a few dozen success cases. If you could provide me with a more detailed description on how you did the exercise, maybe I can help diagnose.
I woke up for WBTB at 4am. I did the techniques and found myself starting to drift off to sleep so I woke a little and continued seeing/hearing/feeling. I was getting “lost” (which is good, yes?) and then suddenly became more awake. I wondered if it was FA so did a couple more seeing/hearing/feeling to see if it was a dream but they felt the same as before. I went to sleep. I woke up later and pinched my nose but I was not in a dream. I went back to sleep and nothing happened and I woke up later as normal.
Sounds to me you are doing it correctly and are actually very close to success. I suggest delaying you WBTB for one more hour, say 5am. Once you start drifting off it’s ok to do one more cycle with slightly more focus. After that you should allow yourself to fall asleep ASAp and do not attempt doing the cycles at the same time as that may keep you awake.
Okay, it’s good to know I’m doing the right thing! I will experiment with a slightly later WBTB time. Thanks Cosmic.
So I’ve tried this 2 nights in a row without becoming lucid. However, my dreams have been much more vivid and realistic. Most of them seem to be bunched up in the hour or so before getting up (like a chain). Both of these things make it hard to determine when/if I’m dreaming.
Though this mornings dream was mundane it was realistic enough that some part of me may not have wanted to accept that it was a dream as it was a little overwhelming.
Now that I think about it…the reason the dream was different is because I was more aware of my senses! I could see and hear more than usual.
That’s a great thing! Even if you didn’t get lucid, you’re a lot closer than you were before (and also, dreams can be VERY increadible even without lucidity).
And welcome to LD4all 
Thanks! This topic is what brought me to the forum.
WILD, WILD… It feels like such a controversial technique, of course you will never have 100% success with any techinque, but it surely can be very useful wonce mastered, I’m convinced. Getting it to work is the big problem, I didn’t have a chance to this day, I simply do not how to simutaneously fall asleep while keeping myself aware.
Bleant…I know what you mean. The past three days I’ve had the nuttiest dreams in the last 30 minutes of sleep. I typically wake up when my husbands alarm clock goes off and lay there for a minute until he goes into the bathroom. I lay there awake without getting out of bed…just thinking and probably wondering if I can have a dream in 30 minutes. Next thing I know I’m in a dream! But I never feel myself falling asleep or notice the transition. I don’t know how I can NOT be lucid then.
So I haven’t bothered trying to LD in years, and admittedly my dream recall is horrendous, but after finally acquiring a decent digital recorder (after my old one kicked it I couldn’t be bothered to keep a written dream journal) I’m going to give it another shot. Came back here to find that some new techniques have been discovered, which is pretty exciting.
I really like the idea behind this technique; mostly the casual, relaxed part of it; no counting, no trying to stay completely still… those were always the things that killed me with other techniques; trying to focus hard on something just tenses me up and makes it hard for me to sleep anyway.
I sort of gave this a limited trial run earlier when I lie down for an afternoon nap; though I found myself doing the little sensory rotations for more like 30-45 seconds just because I was so tired my brain didn’t want to shift gears more often. By the third set I found myself losing focus and pulling myself back-- that was when I started seeing more than darkness on my eyelids, light and shapes and I think I made out a few complex forms, a birds head and some other faces. I found myself not wanting to leave the “eye” phase after that, because focusing on hearing and feeling was less interesting, but I forced myself to anyway, and pretty much immediately lost consciousness.
If I had any dreams, I didn’t recall them (but then I’m still very out of practice; I fully expect this will get better with time), and it didn’t help that I was sharing a bed with a rather restless person who seemed to be dreaming about kicking things, hah. It was a very brief nap.
But I am wondering if I should have stayed focus on those changing visuals on my eyelids instead of forcing myself to continue the cycle?
Regardless, I found this to be an extremely relaxing technique; even if I wasn’t trying to LD, I think I still would use something like this just to help me sleep. I love it in that it’s mentally engaging, without requiring any active effort, like watching a really engrossing movie.
I’ll try to keep you updated on any future inevitable successes 