Maneda, sorry for the late reply. Yes you should have focused on the visuals. Basically when you notice any sensations becoming real and pronounced, you will want to stay focused on it. The visuals will usually become larger, clearer, animate, and may eventually envelop you. SSILD is not designed to work right away while you are doing it, but it does seem to help deepen the state with each cycle; therefore, it is not uncommon to experience a WILD with it.
I like what you said here. It is precisely the correct way to do SSILD. Many people simply do not realize this though I will have to remember what you said here. Maybe I will include it in my revisions.
I’ll either give this a shot tonight or after I’ve worked on improving my recall a bit more. Thanks much! I foresee that the avoiding rational thoughts or thinking about the technique part will be difficult for me, however.
These last few nights I’ve been attempting MILD after about 5 hours of sleep and I cannot get back to sleep, even without a WBTB (despite total silence and darkness and no stress). Perhaps, however, as Maneda said, it will help with getting to sleep!
I’m the sort of sleeper that finds it extremely easy to wake up after a dream and record it or do a WBTB but very hard to get back to sleep afterwards.
EDIT:
Night 1 - I went to bed around midnight and got to sleep around an hour later. I woke up at 6am but with only a few fragments of a dream in my head, as it has been for the past few days. I went through the procedure 5 times I think. By the 5th cycle I noticed a few odd outlines on my eyelids and a veeeery slight ringing sound. I also notice I twitched a hell of a lot haha. I got back to sleep half an hour or so after finishing that (can’t do much better than that I’m afraid) and had a normal dream which I remembered with slightly more detail than I had been for the past few days.
Night 2 - I got to bed at about 11pm. It took a little while to get to sleep again(this has become more common since starting with LD stuff). I woke up at some point, but felt as though it was too early and my REM time hadn’t even started (couldn’t remember any dreams or anything, and felt as though I hadn’t really slept yet). I next woke up later in the morning and went through the SSILD procedure 5 times. This time I did not notice any shapes or odd sounds. After that I went to sleep slightly quicker than Night 1. I then had another normal dream, but remembered a few more details of it than last night’s.
Night 3 - Same as last night, except I had more difficulty getting back to sleep afterwards, and this time didn’t remember any dreams at all, which hasn’t happened in a while. I think to take LDing slower and practice my dream recall before moving onto induction techniques. An interesting one nonetheless so thanks!
I tried it last night, and I woke up at 1 (I set my alarm for 4, but got up at one for some reason) after going to sleep at 10. I tried going through the motions, and I think I got into the trance, but I could NOT get to sleep. It took until 4:00 to get to sleep! So now I’m banned from waking up in the night from now on.
I know this wasn’t a side effect of this method, just a coincidence, but what’s done is done.
This sounds like a very exciting method. Congratulations to both cosmic.iron and the method’s users on the many successes so far. I’ll be sure to try this the next time that I awaken after the appropriate length of time or manage to snag an afternoon nap.
Then clearly this is the technique for me!
I experience mild tinnitis (a very soft ringing in the ears in the absence of real external sounds.) I doubt that this will foul up the technique in any appreciable way but it’ll be interesting to see how it goes. Hey, maybe it’ll even help!
Thanks for taking the time to post this up and help out with so many questions.
Total success! I can’t believe that this technique worked on the first try.
I was so sure that I had screwed everything up. My concentration had wandered a few times during the sense cycling but once I tried to get to sleep I felt kind of wired. I wound up “giving up” and flopping over to my stomach so I could get some shut-eye.
After a little tossing and turning, I started hearing a weird noise from out in the hallway. I went into the hall to investigate. When I looked back into the bedroom, I saw this green-hued “energy storm” had gathered in my bedroom doorway. I walked back, curious, and pushed my way through it. It felt like walking in the open on a very windy day.
Realizing that I’d had a false awakening, I pushed my finger into my palm for a reality check. Needless to say, the reality check confirmed everything for me and I took off at a run toward the window to try flying.
The dream was quite stable. It seemed to last 10-12 minutes and required no intervention. I was quite aggressive throughout the dream, trying flying, falling from an enormous height, and conversing with dream characters. I even informed three of them that they were a part of my lucid dream and got three unique, very interesting reactions.
I don’t yet understand why this technique works but so far it is amazing. I can’t thank you enough for sharing it! I hope it keeps delivering like it did last night.
Glad it worked for you, and I should thank you for trying One thing to note – do not concentrate too much while cycling. Letting your mind wander is desirable as long as you don’t fall into sleep in the first couple of cycles. Always do a reality check upon waking up after doing the exercise because SSILD is extremely good at producing totally realistic FAs. Congratulations!
I have time to sleep in the mornings now and the last few nights I’ve been waking up in the early morning (probably because of the sun and noises) and then I feel it takes a little time to fall asleep again. I can’t believe I forgot to try SSILD I’ll try it again this week, as usually I would just fall asleep…
Thank you for the advice. I think you pointed out something very important that I need to work on. After my initial resounding success, I’ve managed to try this three more times and had a couple of extremely interesting results (although not further LDs yet.)
First, I think I am concentrating a little too hard. I often wind up “amped up” and have trouble getting back to sleep. I have even had the strong, very weird sensation of sinking into the bed. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I tried to “amplify” this strange feeling but could never really convert it into the dream state or an OBE. I just felt a little “detached” but kind of didn’t know what to do next. I’ve never performed a WILD and frankly had not prepared for this to happen. Thus, I was without a clue as to what I was doing. Cool experience, though.
Second, I am still a real beginner at dealing with false awakenings and it is showing. This technique has created several ultra realistic false awakenings that I missed. I mean, like me dreaming for 20-30 minutes at a stretch about trying to fall asleep, complaining to my wife that “I can’t get back to sleep”, thinking my baby son is crawling around in the bed with me, you name it. Even the dream alarm clock gives me realistic results when I look at it! Somehow I just don’t quite think to reality check or look at the clock twice. It’s like I’m afraid I will “make it too hard to get back to sleep”.
Such a great technique. I’ve got a lot of issues to work out but I’m really enjoying the process. Is SSILD something that you still use yourself? Or now that you are in the thousands of LDs (!!), can you just lucid dream if you get bored sitting on the toilet?
Based on my observation, after performing SSILD for extended period, your mind and body gets into a state that is quite easy to invoke a WILD/OBE. This happens at two stages:
Immediately after performing extra cycles, say, 6 or more. You are still awake, may even have trouble falling asleep, but you are actually very close to getting a WILD.
The first time you wake up after the exercise. It is likely that you will wake up into a realistic FA. However, sometimes you do wake up into reality, but your body/mind is at such a state that with minimal effort you can enter a WILD.
You can try the following method to trigger the WILD at the aforementioned stages:
Relax your head
Focus a bit on the hearings. If you hear ringing noises try to increase it. When it becomes loud enough you can do an RC and get up.
Assuming step 2 fails, concentrate on your hand and try to move it without using muscle. At the same time you can also imagine the motion of raising your hand to reach for your nose for the nose pinching RC. If all goes well you should be able to raise your dream hand and grab your dream nose, LOL. At which point you can simply get up and enjoy your LD.
Nowadays I use SSILD extensively myself with very good result. My routine is this:
Sleep for 5 hours, get up for 2-5 minutes.
4-6 cycles of SSILD.
Go to sleep.
Upon first awakening (regardless of it being an FA or real one) perform the above technique to enter a WILD. I have 100% success rate with this one.
Prior to SSILD, I used a form of customized WILD. I was pretty good at it… although not so good that I can do it on the toilet, but there are times I could enter an OBE from being fully awake within a minute or two. I’ve also done it successfully in noisy environments such as on an airplane. However, these days I prefer SSILD over all other techniques I’ve used. It is simpler, faster, more relaxing (the WILD I used actually demands quite a bit of concentration and seems to consume a lot of mental and sometimes physical energy), and produces good results.
Great stuff, my friend. Thanks for taking the time to lay it all out. It’s nice to know that even if I get too buzzed up/tranced I still have the chance to bail out into a WILD.
I love that even when I botch things up, something cool happens every time with this technique. So long as I remember to drink that tall glass of water right before bed (for the “bladder alarm clock”) I know that I’ll be ready to go.
The amount of people to whom this method had proven successful was the reason I decided to try it out yesterday. I went to sleep at around 2 AM and set my alarm clock for 6:30 AM. I woke up and came on LD4all to read some articles, I then did the cycles for a couple of times and went to sleep. Next thing I know I’m sitting on my bed and doing an RC for God knows what reason. I happen to be dreaming. There were however some problems with controlling the dream but I’ve had those in all of my previous LD’s for some reason. It wasn’t long before the dream started slipping away and I ended up awake. Or not? I didn’t check whether it was a FA or not. My fault. Nevertheless, an awesome method.
I’ve been using SSILD-method for the past week and I like it. I don’t know how it works, but the first night I recalled about 3 vivid dreams and the second night I had an FA. I had a WILD and a half since starting this method and I had a semi-lucid dream last night.
The first couple nights I was able to get through 4-5 cycles before my mind went wandering but now I lose focus around 2 cycles in. If nothing else, this technique makes me very relaxed to the point where I don’t want to move my body, even though i do have a hard time drifting to sleep.
Do you mind sharing this WILD method? I can achieve WILD but it’s very hit or miss. Each time I’ve just “happened” to wake up in SP, so Im curious about how you do/did it?
So, I tried this night, without much success, except for SLIGHTLY increased dream recall. I went to be at around 1 am, set my alarm for 7 am, and I woke. I laid down on my side and focused on my sight, then my hearing, then my touch. Sometimes, I would kind of drift off, and then start it again. After about 2 repetitions, I would start dozing off and coming back to start he exercise again. At times, I felt tiny tingling in my legs, but that’s all. I eventually fell asleep. Am I doing anything wrong? I just wanna know because I’m gonna be using this technique for the next few days and I wanna make sure I get it right. Thanks!
Last night I tried this and I couldn’t even get through ONE cycle without losing my train of thought. Does this mean that it’s taking less time to get into ‘trance’ now that my mind/body is somewhat accustomed to this method? In other words, is it unnecessary to press through, since maybe I’m already there? Or do the fewer cycles lessen my chances of being successful?
Try to get out of your bed and stay awake for at least 5 minutes. When you have difficulty completing the first 2 cycles, it is a sign that you are not sufficiently awake. Of course, if you finish the 4 cycles in a hurry without ever going into the trance, you have awaken too much.
KimokaJane, your problem is the same as brian’s. Try to awake yourself a bit more before the exercise. You are also right that you have become somewhat accustomed to this method, which is a good thing. This means you can get into the trance much more quickly and less likely to lose sleep afterward.
I remembered to really try SSILD this morning. I woke up, went to the bathroom, and then tried it on my back, as on my side I usually just fall asleep before 2 or 3 cycles. I was able to do 5-7 cycles, even though I did get distracted a lot. After that I rolled on my side to fall asleep but it took me some time. I got a LD which had lots of low or semi lucidity, only a couple moments of decent lucidity. It was pretty stable and ok in terms of vividness. I’m just glad I didn’t wake up right away Anyway, the quick WBTB and a couple MILD mantras could have helped, but I want to try it again.
I have a question about “where” you’re supposed to look at. There’s the blackness behind my eyeslids, but then there’s this “place” where when sometimes I’m trying to fall asleep I get some random images/ideas pop up. Should I focus on this second “place”? or is it just the physical blackness? The same question goes for the hearing.
Another thing is you say you like this method because it doesn’t need much energy/effort, but to me I feel I do need some effort . Is this only because my mind drifts so easily?
Congrats mattias, Im my opinion I would say on HI but not too much, not interfering them, just gently observer them, just like WILD, even though you are not doing WILD and you will fall asleep after a few cycles I believe that this could either transform into WILD or you will just maintain higher awareness through the process which could also result into LD… At least in my opinion, you can experiment with both scenarios…
Alright so second night with this technique and no success I’m gonna keep trying though! If I can master this then it would be a lot easier to LD in my opinion. Just one question: During WBTB’s I literally drift off during the first cycle, sometimes before finishing the sight part of it. Do you suggest finishing at least one cycle, or can I just let my mind take me wherever it wants to, whenever?
I will have to remember what you said here. Maybe I will include it in my revisions.
I’ll try it again this week, as usually I would just fall asleep…
Anyway, the quick WBTB and a couple MILD mantras could have helped, but I want to try it again.
. Is this only because my mind drifts so easily?
I’m gonna keep trying though! If I can master this then it would be a lot easier to LD in my opinion. Just one question: During WBTB’s I literally drift off during the first cycle, sometimes before finishing the sight part of it. Do you suggest finishing at least one cycle, or can I just let my mind take me wherever it wants to, whenever?