Senses Initiated Lucid Dream (SSILD)

Quest for Lucidity Article Space
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The simplest way is to just look for any sensations that’s out of ordinary. You can scan for it following certain order, such as from toe to head or vice versa, or you can simply do it randomly. I usually pay closer attentions to these areas though – toes, fingers, abdomen, and head.

If you are not afraid of being too alert thus losing sleep, then you can try moving your hands, feet, or head with your mind without using muscles. Given the right circumstance they may actually start to move in a pretty wild fashion. In this case you know you are going to experience a WILD (no poun intended). However, you don’t want to strain yourself in order to achieve this effect. Just in your mind mimic the sensation as best as you can. Even accidentally using your real muscles is perfectly okay. The key is to just DO IT! As long as you don’t wake yourself too much.

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Problem with MILD is the affirmations which are difficult to get them right. SILD is simpler. Just remember, don’t push yourself. If it works that’s great, otherwise you should enjoy a good night of sleep because you will have plenty of opportunities in your life to experience LDs. That’s the kind of mentality you should have, and then the method will work wonders for you. :smile:

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Hey Cosmic .Iron,
Welcome to this forum,
I have quick short three questions.
a) Is it mandatory to sleep immediately after doing two-three rounds or we can sleep afterwards?
b) Should i silence the thoughts in my mind while doing these cycles or can i ignore thoughts and also whether can i ignore thoughts of excitement, which sometimes prevents me from falling asleep quickly, after doing these rounds?
c) Should i look for real sounds/ sensations etc while doing the rounds or should imagine sounds.sensations?

Thank you!!!

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a) It is not mandatory. In fact, personally when I sometimes double the number of repetitions, then afterward my mind/body will be prepped into such condition that I can just create an OBE with a simple intention while being wide awake. Of course, this takes practice so I don’t want to recommend this. In general though, the quicker you fall asleep the better.

b) You absolutely don’t want to silence your thoughts! Those thoughts help put you closer to the trance. As long as they are not too rational and stressful you will be fine. While emptying your thoughts is an essential skill for meditation and often suggested by many LD techniques, SILD is designed to be just the opposite. Those random thoughts are your friends, not your enemies! Don’t waste your mental energy to try to kill them! Let them grow and go with the flow! :smile:

c) It matters not. It’s the action that matters. Whether or not you hear anything is not important, as long as you tried to hear them.

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I’m sorry if this has been asked before, but does it matter in which position you do the steps? I for one lose my concentration very easily when I lay down, so I’m thinking about trying this in another position, like sitting.

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I suggest a position that’s comfortable, but not your typical one used to fall asleep with. I’m not sure about sitting… but you are welcome to try :razz: One more thing, don’t “concentrate”! You should allow your mind to drift away. Keep your mind on a leash but not a tight one.

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Just a quick update for me last night.

I tried this out and got zero results, which was rather upsetting. I went to bed around 12:30am and set an alarm for 5:00am. I immediately awoke from the alarm when it went off, rather excited to see how this works. When looking through my eyes, almost every time I saw nothing. Around the 3rd or so time however, I saw a man counting what looked like money by a counter. More than likely a cash register counter.

When I listened, every time all I heard was the ringing in my ears, and external noises of animals hitting things and trees outside.

When feeling for sensations across my body, I only felt tingling from time to time in like my toes, and I was a little bit heavy after the 4th cycle. I did it 5 times because I drifted off during one of them.

Now after I tried going to sleep, I had the hardest time getting to sleep actually in a while. It usually only takes me a minute or two. Since I noticed I wasn’t going to get to sleep for a while I used a “scene” in my head that always helps me fall asleep quick. It’s weird. I imagine myself homeless on a bench waiting for the bus, and a friend comes and offers to help. By the time I get their house I fall asleep. Every time. Well, not this time! I laid there for awhile, and when I woke up this morning, I had no dream recall whatsoever. :sad: :sad: :sad: :sad:

While I was trying to fall asleep though I felt like my body was rocking back and forth and it got extremely rapid at one point, especially in my head. With a vibrating numbness too. I was laying on my back.

I didn’t open my eyes throughout every cycle and when I tried to go to sleep. Were they only supposed to be closed during the vision cycle?

Edit: Oh, I just remembered to say this. I normally sleep with my AC on at night because when I was a child I always had a fan running. The unit is in my room because we redesigned half of our garage into a bedroom. I turned it off last night though because it drowns out most of the noises outside (animals, trees, etc). Maybe that’s why I couldn’t fall back asleep…

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Update…

I wasn’t able to fully do the technique. I set my alarm for the usual time, which last night was close to 4 1/2 hrs after going to sleep.

When I tried to do the technique, I ran through the steps only twice, and for some reason, I told myself “I think it’s working…” and just fell back asleep. I end up doing this with a lot of techniques. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I’m tired.

No recall… At all.

I AM going to try this again tonight. In fact, I’m going to try until I can induce a lucid dream.

I had a quick question though:

I was thinking about using Melatonin tonight before I went to bed. I haven’t used a dreaming supplement yet. Do you think taking a supplement along with using this technique would be useful or have no effect?

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Seems like we both had the same issue, Dave. /:

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Dear Lief, reading through your report it occurs to me you might have missed many opportunities to experience a perfect WILD and OBE.

The time you actually saw picture is the first sign of getting into a WILD. You see, it’s normal for the first few repetitions to not feel anything, but usually each repetition will bring you closer to the correct mind/body state then you will start to get sensations. When you do experience strong and distinctive sensations like this, you should immediately cease the exercise and focus on the sensation instead. By focusing on it the sensation will increase, assuming you are not getting too excited and break out of the trance. In the case of yours, the image you saw will eventually become bigger and brighter. At which point you should be able to do a nose RC and it usually will work. Or, you can try reaching out to the scene and that usually will allow you to zoom right into it and becomes a dream.

Another place you missed an opportunity is when you felt the rocking sensation and some vibrations. Again, you should have stopped the exercise and focused on increasing the sensation. When the range of the movement becomes bigger and bigger, you are already in a perfect condition to experience an OBE. Just do a quick nose RC and you should be able to roll out of your bed.

Don’t despair, as you become more experienced to these sensations you will eventually be able to grab them. You are actually on the right track judging from your experience.

About losing sleep… typically when doing SILD, we do not expect to experience any sensations. That’s right, you heard me correctly – we ARE NOT striving to experience anything while doing the exercise! It’s the action that matters, not the result! It is perfectly fine for you to not feel anything. Just finish the cycles, become plenty relaxed, and drift to sleep as quickly as possible. LDs and OBEs will come automatically at later stage. If you do it in this fashion, these exercises will actually help you sleep! On the other hand, if you focus too much on the sensations, you will become too eager and tense, and that will result in difficulty to fall asleep afterwards. In your case, it’s even worse because you were literally on the verge of WILD and OBE and you broke out of them :smile:

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Well then, that boosts my mood up a lot! I’ll try setting an alarm and doing this again tonight and post back on here in the morning. If I see or feel anything intense or vivid, I’ll hold on to it like you said. I didn’t know it was as easy as doing an RC when it gets intense enough. Thank you for the help! :smile:

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Please take a look at the reply I gave to Lief. Many of the answers apply to you as well :smile:

I think you were right that you may have been too tired for this to work. Two repetitions then fell asleep usually is not strong enough. Also it’s usually better if you get out of your bed for at least 5 minutes before doing the exercise.

I suggest you not to mix the exercise with other techniques… at least not until you have experienced some success. Certain techniques are just not compatible!

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So you suggest getting up for a couple minutes? I thought I recalled earlier that you said even moving the slightest muscles could possibly wake you up too much…

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You see, each of the 3 steps by themselves is a traditional WILD technique. Staring at hypnogogic imagery is a very typical way to generate a WILD. Once you start seeing things, focusing on them will increase their intensity. As the picture becomes intense (especially when it becomes animated), it’s time to do an RC and get up. Doing this usually results in an OBE. You can also wait a bit longer, and then try to reach out to the scene such as grabbing something from it. This will put you right into an LD. Waiting yet longer the scene might actually envelope you and automatically forms a dream around you. This of course, is not recommended because you may get too excited during this process and cause the sensation to go away.

The SILD cycling, compared to the individual technique, has the advantage of moving you deeper to the trance a lot more quickly and causes less stress. I have to emphasis again though – do NOT go after the sensations deliberately! If it happens it happens, but do not go after them! :smile:

[mod]Double posts edited together :tardis:[/mod]

After you wake up from the alarm, you should get up and stay awake for 5 mintues. Some people don’t want to do this because that may cause them difficulty to fall back to sleep. You should experiment.

The “not moving a single muscle” is from a different technique, LOL! While doing SILD you should feel as comfortable as possible, and if that means moving a bit then by all means do it! If you hava an itch then feel free to scratch! While feeling body sensations you can even move your fingers using muscles (that’s basically the FILD method). SILD is very forgiving :smile:

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Will do :cool:

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Cosmic.iron,
This may be connected or unconnected from this technique, but how do I keep my cool while experiencing Sleep Paralysis? This is one aspect which I think I fear. Is there any possibility of minimising effects of Sleep Paralysis and yet, able to enter a dream, fully lucid? I am easily experiencing SP almost every night but FEAR is what prevents me from experiencing it. I think, if I am able to conquer this aspect of mine then I ll be able to experience full lucid dreams.

Note: Yesterday while going to sleep, tried ur technique, although did only one round. Woke up in the middle of the night (Around 3:00 AM when its usually my REM period) with strange sounds and numbness in the body. though couldn’t remember any dreams. This technique looks promising. Hope you ll post more techniques to our benefit.

Thanks.

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This method be used without the 4-5hrs of sleep? Also if I were to awake 4-5 hrs into my night how long do I need to be awake untill using this method. All in all I’m excited to go home and try it, I think I’ll use it as my primary when I initially go to sleep, I work nights so I don’t know if that might enhance it.

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SP is nothing to be afraid of. For us LDers it’s actually a blessing. Of course, if you experience SPs frequently then it’s probably a health issue. You might need to improve your physical condition as well as adjusting your schedules.

One more thing to note: do not mistaken OBE sensations with SP. It is not unusual to get an OBE when doing SILD. When that happens you will experience vibrations, ringing noises, falling sensations, and etc. Don’t be afraid. It means you are succeeding!

Without 4-5 hours of sleep the method will not work very well. In general, 5 to 10 minutes staying awake should be enough. Any longer than that may cause difficulty to fall back sleep. I personally just get up to empty the bladder, then go back to bed immediately.

[mod]Double post edited together. Please use the edit button instead of stacking posts. :mattias:[/mod]

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report cosmic.iron! Huge success!
This has been my first lucid dream in a long time.
Tough my situation was kinda strange, in that I almost skipped a night the day before, then I only slept from 4am to 8:45am and got up for class. After that, I got back to my place at 4pm and just went to sleep again, by accident. Not sure at what time I began sleeping but it was at least later than 4:30pm and I woke up by 7:30pm. Then I eventually went to sleep about at 2:30am.
This is where the quest begins, as I went to sleep because I was kinda tired. I lay in my favorite position for comfort, and while I had completely forgotten about SILD, I noticed that my eyes weren’t really “seeing” anything. Yes, my eyes saw absolutely nothing. It wasn’t darkness, but then it became so when I noticed it. Then I realized I was seeing nothing with my mind, not with my eyes per se. This realization for some reason made the sight go back to normal and then I was watching my closed eyelids, and that’s what made me recall SILD. I decided to do it, and that it was better to ignore the eyes as I had accidentally done the eyes part, or so I thought. For some reason, I just felt like moving on to breathing, because I could. Then I almost dozed off, but noticed I was once again seeing with my mind, but this time it was a dream image that I was interacting with using dream hands. I often think of this when I go to sleep, but the realization that it was there broke it.
I was now uncomfortable, and thought, as much as I shouldn’t move for the falling asleep value, I wanted to be comfortable, as SILD stresses that above all. Also I just wanted to. I switched position, and then focused on noises. I heard normal ambient sound, tough nothing in particular or nothing interesting. I planned on doing more repetitions, but I fell asleep during the sound one.
Now I was in the dream, and it felt real time, tough I was not lucid, it was just a dream. Thing is, I did not recall this as if I slept and then woke up with a random memory out of nowhere from waking up (what bad recall usually manifests itself as) Instead, it’s like my conciousness stream went from awake > dream > wake up. So going one I eventually realize the dream is a dream, tough not sure how, I do. I do not wish to go into to many details about the dream in this long enough post, but will skim over it. I decide to use my newfound freedom and power to explore the world, but then the dream develops a plot and someone wants to catch me. I fear that if I am caught something bad will happen to the dream world (which is nonsense) or that it would wake me up. So while I still retain weak lucidity, I run from my pursuers, who anyway either find me or are alerted of my doings by the citizens of my dream. I still keep my lucidity, reminding me I am dreaming, and mostly trying to escape by way of mirrors, but am always interrupted. There was a moment where I felt the dream was really long and I wanted it to end, as much as I realized it was a ridiculous statement. Mostly because I had fear of not recalling clearly the many events that happened in this seemingly super long dream. There was a moment when I might have almost lost lucidity, or maybe I did, don’t know but then woke up by a snore of myself. I was still in the dream mindset, so I checked if it was a false awakening while realizing the vast difference between this weak but long dream and waking life. After confirming my waking status, I was still kinda doubting if I was awake, but eventually got convinced because of the vast difference in sensations and my constant room plus lack of powers and reality checks. So I then try to chain dreams but since I already moved a bit after waking up I think it failed. Or maybe my REM was pretty long alright. Also after having woken up my body felt kinda numb.
But overall success! I will continue to try this wonderful thecnique.

And for anyone who asks, I’m no expert, but I think the most important thing in this technique is to fall asleep comfortably!

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Success!

3rd night or better to say morning was a success! Ok, here’s the story:

I wasn’t actually going for WBTB because like I said in post where I was keeping my progress that I need to work on my DR so my first awakening was around 6 am and I was awake only a minute or so and then I did only one repetition of SILD. Next awakening was around 8:30am and then I did like 3 or 4 repetitions but also without waking up entirely or getting up.

After that I started to hear voices, that was very close to a WILD but I just let myself to fall asleep. Next thing I know I was looking at my bedroom window, it was a classical FA, it was so realistic but again I heard some voices but I knew that this can’t be true because I was alone in the house and on my window I saw this. Then I knew for sure that this was a dream because I can only see a sky and part of the roof from my bed where I was laying. Then I did a RC and I had 7 fingers and the story goes on…

After that LD I awake again but then I thought I could just chain this dream with another so I remain still and I just let myself to fall asleep and I was again in another LD.

So I have one question. Even though SILD is very similar to WILD until the part where you fall asleep one thing I don’t understand. You said that by doing SILD we prepare ourselves to have LD later… How exactly we prepare ourselves?! My initial thought was similar to situation where WILD fails, we were still keeping some level of consciousness on our body sensations or hearing and then we could realize that what happened next is a dream. But in SILD we fall asleep very fast so what kind of preparation do we actually do by doing SILD!? :content:

Oh and it WORKS! Thanks man!