Tried it again last night, and this time I did the whole thing. Problem is I think my sleep these past two days has been deeper than normal (which may even not be a problem as my main problem with LD’s is waking up to quickly ).
Anyway, I did it on my back, as I can almost never fall asleep on my back and thought on my side I’d just fall right asleep. After I was done I rolled over and took some time to fall asleep. At a couple moments I wandered a bit and couldn’t remember which step I was on . I started feeling vibrations very faintly but had a terrible itch which made them go away. I’ll try on my side tonight and see what happens.
I actually got a few low lucid moments, but getting lucid isn’t that hard for me, so it’s hard to say how much SILD helped there. I’ll try it for a few more days and see how it goes. I want to see if this tech can get me lucid more consistently and also see how it affects my LD’s in terms of vividness and stability. I did realize better DR in terms of quantity of dreams. I guess I just don’t remember that many details because I didn’t write them down right away.
It’s okay to scratch you know Seriously, the whole point is to get as comfortable as possible so you can quickly fall asleep. Therefore if you feel itchy then you should definitely deal with it quickly. Don’t worry about the viberation, it will come back quickly, and if it doesn’t, you will get it later after you fall asleep.
The itch is also very likely an illusion. This may happen if you stay completely still. Your body uses this as a probe to see if you are truly asleep. There is a technique on DV that takes advantage of this, but it is extremely hard. The probing becomes so intense that most people just give up. You can stop doing SILD and focus on staying still, and if you are lucky you might move past the probing stage and experience the wonders of falling asleep from a waked state. However, this in general is not compatible with SILD because you will naturally become very tense while doing it.
Well another night gone by, this morning I was not in the right mindset at all. Something was upsetting me from the night before and I couldn’t concentrate very well. Still, another increase in DR and vividness is pointing me toward trying for a while longer XD
Thank you Rhewin, for your continuos support! next time pls let me know more details on how you were doing it so I might be able to help you diagnose. When you say you couldn’t concentrate well, can you please clarify? Do you mean concentrating on the repetitions?
Cheers
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Very interesting! I just bookmarked the link so I can read it more carefully later. It is indeed VERY similar! The idea of SILD originated from some WILD technique I always used in the past. While working with people on the forum we streamlined and refine it together. The primary goal was to retain the success rate while taking away those “intricate” parts so it’s easy for people to learn. We did a lot of experiments and the technique went through several revisions in the past few months.
I’ll pay more attention tonight to give better feedback. By concentration issues I mean I tried to go through all the steps but my mind was drifting back to an issue I was having. It was an almost sleepless night for me, you see, so trying to focus on one or two things at a time wasn’t the easiest thing. Everything seems in order for tonight, however.
well i tried this when i woke up in the night last night and woke up this morning with great dream recall, and i noticed that my attention to detail had highly increased when reading my dream journal writing. no lucidity in this dream.
however i tried again today when having a morning nap after taking my kids to school. when i woke up great dream recall again and a few short lucid moments in two seperate dreams. awesome i will be sure to try again tonight. thankyou!!
I read the link carefully. The resemblance between the two methods are astonishing! Thank you for pointing this out. This for sure will shed more light and give us more insight on why this works and how to further improve it!
So here I will post my progress from last night and next 6 days!
1st night:
I went to bed around 11pm and set an alarm at 3:20am. By some of my calculations my next REM stage should be around 3:30 but this time I didn’t get up for WBTB, I just thought that I will perform tech and go to sleep.
Well, I was very tired and I think that my first mistake was setting alarm, it waked me too much but I wasn’t sure if I could wake up using autosuggestion because I was very tired so alarm was needed. Once when I was up I felt that I was to awake but I did the tech anyways. After a few repetitions I was getting awake even more. Which takes me to my second mistake which was that I was laying on my back. The story is pretty the same as mattias described his night. Then after some time I rolled over but I was just to awake and I started switching positions and everything went bad! From that point I don’t remember almost any dream but my DR is bad anyways…
Now I know my first few mistakes and I will try to avoid them this night. If you have any more advices please feel free to share them!
2nd night:
Nothing, just a few fragments of one dream and that’s it. I’m putting this tech and quest on hold because my DR is a mess and there is no foundation to trying this without decent DR. When things change I will post here again… But I think I will try this tech whenever I get up for WBTB and if I get some results I will post…
3rd night:
Success. I’ve done SILD after 8 hours of sleep, only one repetition and after 10 hours I did SILD again with 3 or 4 repetitions and I had a lucid dream! After that one I did chaining and had another one!
I see. As long as the thoughts don’t become too rational and analytical it’s generally fine. Just resume from where you drifted away or start all over again. Anyway, good luck tonight
I’m sorry it didn’t work for you this time, but you summed it up well. One thing to bear in mind is that while doing the repetitions do not do it too systematically… don’t focus! Allow your mind to drift away is always better than concentrating. Also in step 3a don’t stress your eye muscles since that may be the single biggest reason that’s causing difficulty to fall asleep.
Just a question…is it necesarry to do it from head to toe?
Because the first time I decided to try it I could only recall that I had to scan for body sensations and I did it from toe to head instead…
The next day I noticed it actually said from head to toe so I did that instead…
But I would personally say that from toe to head seemed to have much more effect…or at least a different effect…
And when I switched (back) to “from toe to head” I also immediatly noticed a change…
Because everytime I reached my head I noticed I dozed off more and more (with quite big leaps)…
It somehow felt more natural to do so…as if I was following “the information flow” as it was travelling through my body and thereby gathering sensory data…untill it finally reached the end station (the brain) and thereby finishing the cycle in a natural way…
Going from head to toe seemed less effective to me…I did feel becomming more sleepy but not the same way as doing it the other way around…
It felt like I was more pushing it which would (could) increase the risk of becomming more awake instead…
Quickly falling asleep after it was certainly MUCH easier with going from toe to head anyway…
Don’t know if it has any significance…
If it was just a coincidence or a personal preference or if there could possibly be a (subtle) difference between the two…
So I decided to post these findings anyway…you’ll never know right?
Interesting question! When I wrote “head to toe” I wasn’t really being literal… but you did raise a very valid question and your findings might have some significance! I’ll go back to my forum and ask them to do some experiment on this.
Hello there. I’m very new to lucid dreaming and I’ve never had one before. Im not familiar with all of the methods, but I stumbled across this one and it looked perfect for me. I have a few questions that I’ll ask in a short answer type format so itll be easier for you to respond to my multiple questions.
I have an early morning class, and for that reason I’ve only gotten 4 hours of sleep almost exactly. I always take a nap after my class. When I lay down to take a nap, I seem to get in this mode where I can’t move my body but my mind is still active. I forgot what this is called, but I feel very closer to lucidity at this point than any other point. My question here is, would it be alright to do this method when I lay down for a nap, or does it have to be right after waking up in the middle of the night or something?
Also for the whole “sound” aspect, I have a fan that I sleep with every night because I like the noise. Is this ok to have going on when trying to do the sound part? I’m used to the sound because I’ve done it my whole life, so in theory I could try to focus on every little sound that the fan produces and still get the same result, right?
Nap is a great time to practice. What you experience is Sleep Paralasis. This usually happens as a leftover of REM during which your body is paralyzed. Since you only had so little time to sleep, your body needs to make up for the amount of REM you skipped. Thus, when you nap you almost immediately enter REM instead of going through the typical NREM-1, NREM-2 stuff. This is why it’s so easy for you to experience SP. You can really take advantage of this, with or without using the SILD method. Of course, combining SILD will greatly increase your chance.
As for the sound, it is usually better if the environment is quiet so you can hear the inner noises. I suspect this is important just as you are not supposed to do the exercise with your eyes open. Your situation with the fan of course is unique, so I don’t want to rule out the possibility that it might work for you. I guess we will have to find out by experimenting with it.
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. I started feeling vibrations very faintly but had a terrible itch which made them go away. I’ll try on my side tonight and see what happens.
Seriously, the whole point is to get as comfortable as possible so you can quickly fall asleep. Therefore if you feel itchy then you should definitely deal with it quickly. Don’t worry about the viberation, it will come back quickly, and if it doesn’t, you will get it later after you fall asleep.
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