Yes you can open your eyes after the cycles. Just don’t keep them open for too long. 
What would you like to know about the 3rd component? It’s really very simple – just direct your focus/attention to your body, that’s all. It can be certain part of your body or the whole, doesn’t really matter. You can in fact think in terms of focusing on different axis – Visual --z-axis; Hearing – x-axis; Body – y-axis. Let your attention glide through these axis and you will be fine.
I tried this technique last night. As I was doing the cycles I randomly went into SP. I thought, “Oh, I’m in SP, I guess I’ll just WILD from here.” As I am waiting to enter a dream, the SP sensation changes. I start to feel growing pressure all over my body. It becomes increasingly painful until I feel like I’m being crushed by a stramroller. I try to bear it but eventually I can’t take it any more and I break the paralysis and sit up 
. The pain immediately disappears, of course. I will try again tonight.
It appears that you might have tried too hard. SSILD uses a very “lazy” approach and you should stick to that in order to achieve optimal results. Do not focus too much on the sensations, and do NOT try to stay completely still. When you try to stay still, you often become tense and that will keep you from falling into sleep. It also tends to cause SPs and various weird sensations, many of which are extremely uncomfortable.
Man, it’s been a while since I’ve last lucid dreamed, mainly because of irregular sleeping patterns (damn you school). I’ve just found motivation to start LDing again and it seems that I’ve found the perfect technique to start with.
I’ll try it whenever I wake up, hopefully tonight
Will report success(If any) 
Nice, it did the job. I didn’t really do the exact steps, rather, I remembered to do it just before I fell asleep, I was already in SP at that point so there was no point in doing the steps 
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So a very summarised version of what I did in the LD:
I was on a small floating snow island in space where I learned ‘Super Sight’. Then I woke up, decided to do an RC and realised I was still dreaming. Drank lucidity pills and tried to extend dream time. Summoned a door from the ground and made it change shapes. Got carried away and woke up.
I’m still not fully used to SP, I don’t think I will lol 
For those interested, here is the full dream:
[spoiler]So, you know how SP is. Loud sounds, I could see faces and all sorts of stuff, I was just waiting impatiently for that ‘moment’. All these creepy things became more and more intense and soon… silence. I was ready to enter a dream.
I tried to enter the north pole, or atleast, somewhere snowy. It was pretty difficult at first, I kept visualizing that I was somewhere cold, with the snow blowing against me and stuff, you know, but I still saw darkness.
A distinct sound soon entered my ears though. At first, it was muffled and quite hard to make out, but excitement ran over me once I realised it was the sound of snow, compressing as my shoes tread over them. Slowly but surely each of my five senses ‘phased’ into the dreamworld. I could feel my feet, and soon, my legs traversing the snow. Then, I could feel the weight and warmth of my clothes, and the freezing cold winds that blasted at me. Lastly, bracing myself to fully enter this dream scene. I opened my eyes.
It was very blurry at first, everything was surprisingly, or rather, disappointingly calm. I could see the outline of the goggles that I was wearing. After awhile my dream eyes adjusted and the snow blizzard that I felt earlier wasn’t there anymore. In front me was a wall of snow, literally, like a brick wall except made of snow, about 6 feet high. The sky was eerily dark, it was a mix of bright purple, blue, white’ish yellow and dark blue. Basically imagine you’re looking at space with all those galaxies and nebulas. There was an opening on the wall, of which I entered to see the other side, half expecting to see mountains of snow far in the distance, but it wasn’t exactly that. The ground just… ended. I was on an island of snow floating in space. I really wanted to go exploring and and have some sort of adventure but here I am stuck in this place.
I went back to the wall of snow to take a closer look at it. Unfortunately I started to lose lucidity. My vision blurred and I was phasing in and out of consciousness.
In a dire attempt I said out loud, “Increase lucidity”.
For a second, everything then just became clear… too clear. It was like some sort of supersight. The detail on the snow was amazing, I could see each individual flake of the snow, but then it was accompanied by an extreme headache and loss of clarity afterwards. It didn’t help when I kept doing it on other objects haha, I lost lucidity soon afterwards.
I woke up, feeling mildly angry. I cursed for a bit, ranting about how I could’ve done things better. Then it hit me… what if I was still dreaming? Nah it couldn’t be… Well it couldn’t hurt to try. I raised and looked at both of my hands, counting my fingers. 1, 2, 3, 4 ,5. Check. 1 ,2 ,3… 4?? BOOM sudden realization! I’m still dreaming!.
I was now in some sort small green room with a few furnitures here and there, but this time, I was determined. It felt like I just passed a test given to me by my subconscious and I felt awesome. Everything was clearer this time round too, it really did felt like real life.
“Okay, I need to get there*, but first I have to make sure I don’t lose lucidity again”, I said, noticing how different my voice felt in a dream, “and then i’ll start spawing a door or something”
(*For those wondering, I was referring to a place, a dreamworld to be exact, that I’ve been meaning to get back to, and it’s probably the reason why i’m trying so hard to LD …)
I tried every trick I could remember, shouting ‘increase lucidity’, looking at details around me. Eating a ‘lucidity pill’. Just to make sure I was ‘anchored’ in the dream. I then remembered how Writerscube would control how long he dreamt for.
Pacing around the room I stated, “Okay subconscious, 2 hours of dreamtime, and umm… 6 hours of sleep”, unsure if it would work or not.
“Well, time to start”
After cycling through different ideas, I decided to try creating a door. I readied my self and looked at the ground in front of me. Like some sort of summoner I raised my hands, attempting to ‘pull’ a door out of the ground. It was very difficult and tiring so I stopped and looked at my progress. There was only like this bump on the floor, not very promising 
I took and step back and tried again, this time in a more relaxed manner.
A large door was rising from the ground. Excited I tried to alter the shape, making it wider, smaller, etc. I realised that the key to using dream powers is to not to do consciously, in a sense. It was more like knowing that it would happen. The more I tried to consciously alter the door, the harder it gets.
Anyway, at this point I sort of got carried away. I ended up just changing the shape of door and lost my original intent. It soon resulted in me waking up.[/spoiler]
I have done ssild the way it was outlined in the first tutorial for the past three nights. I became lucid on two of them. I may try using this slightly revised version, but for now I’m just going to say “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
I’ve been in LD “training” for just over a week now, working on becoming more aware in WL, doing LaBerge reflection/intention, RCing a lot during the day, and setting intention for dream recall at bedtime. I’ve been shooting for starting MILD once I get enough DJ entries and start doing well on the LaBerge prospective memory exercises. I’ve journaled successfully dreams from one or more dream periods every night once I started to intend to recall, some with a lot of detail.
Yesterday I read about SSILD 2.0 here and decided to give it a try if I woke up in the middle of the night. I went to sleep last night with the usual intention to wake up and remember my dreams completely. I went to bed around 00:00 and woke up around 04:00, I didn’t move upon waking [normally I toss for a bit before remembering I should stay still] and recalled a few scenes and jotted down keywords in my journal. Then I decided the time was right to try SSILD, so I got up, went to the bathroom, rinsed out my mouth, and got back in to bed. I was out of bed for no more than about 3 minutes but felt very awake so I didn’t want to stay out of bed any longer. I did the cycles, first about 6 quick ones then about 4 slow ones, and tried going to sleep. During the cycles I felt fairly relaxed but didn’t feel at risk of falling asleep. After the cycles, I was highly alert and awake still. Several times I tried changing positions, doing a few more cycles, and so forth, but I just remained incredibly alert and awake. I periodically performed RCs several times (not too frequently to wake me up more) to make sure I wasn’t in FA. I eventually noted the time at about 0600, still very awake. I did not do any relaxation (61 point or tense-relax) because the SSILD guide mentions not to do any other techniques since they can interfere (does this also include relaxation techniques?).
I finally drifted off to sleep at some time and woke at 0800, thinking I had no recall but eventually recalling a few short scenes from the morning dream period but knowing I had forgotten a lot. Normally (in the last week since I started spending effort on recall) my recall is best from the last morning period so that’s sort of frustrating.
Maybe WBTB based systems are not good for me – I generally fall asleep quickly at bed time but if I wake and become alert during the middle of the night I can have trouble getting back to sleep until very late morning (like happened here). Although I will note that in the last week I’ve woken several times around 4-5am to do a quick journal and had no trouble going back to sleep. Any mental activity that’s not relaxation focused tends to keep me up, as seemed to happen with SSILD.
Or maybe I just had “one of those nights.”
Another possibility is that two days ago I’ve moved from a vacation-environment (not working, in nature, dark nights, very quiet, fresh cool/cold air, no bed partner) back to city life (working at office job, street lights partially illuminate room, noisy cars on street outside, stuffier warmer room air, bed partner whom I’m trying not to bother when I wake and journal). I’m using ear plugs for the noise but I think I’ll get a sleep mask to cut out the extra light.
Anyway, I think I’ll stick with my LaBerge program as it makes a lot of sense to me and doesn’t actually seem all that “difficult.” Exercising prospective memory seems like a highly valuable approach. I thought SSILD sounded “too good to be true” and for me it looks like it is. Mabye that’s premature and it will change down the road, we’ll see.
I’m very interested to hear any comments/suggestions!
thanks!
First, thank you for trying SSILD! What you encountered was a fairly common problem for people who are just starting to experiment with SSILD. It is hard to say exactly what the causes are – cloud be too much excitement, too much concentration, and etc. This problem gradually goes away as you become familiar with SSILD and in fact often becomes the other way around – you fall asleep too quickly! Thus my number one advice is – don’t give up, do it for a week and it won’t bother you anymore.
There are also a couple of other things to do:
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Do NOT focus on spotting/causing sensations. For example, many people try very hard to actually see things during the first step, and all that does is causing strain. You should not care whether you see things or not, it’s the action that actually matters.
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Reduce the number of cycles.
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Lie in your favorite sleeping position so you do not have to turn around after performing the cycles.
I hope this helps. Happy dreaming!
Hey, I just wanted to pop in and ask if this would be a good method for new lucid dreamers?
Thank you very much for your response! I will definitely try it in the future. Now I need to catch up on my sleep after a bunch of awake WILD-attempt nights. I’m starting to see some results with MILD so I think I will focus on that for a while, and maybe try to sneak in a quick WILD as in the case that I realize I’m just about to fall asleep and see if I make it, otherwise just fall asleep and hopefully DILD .
The whole thing was DESIGNED to be easy and effective for new dreamers. It tried deliberately to stay away from delicate mental exercises, relaxation techniques and other stuff that are very difficult for beginners. So the short answer is “yes”, it is a very good method for new lucid dreamers.
Well I have tried it for the past two nights, with decent results.
I use an alarm designed to wake you up without jarring you out of sleep, it starts very quietly, and gradually gets up to a more intense volume. I usually wake up about fifteen minutes before it even starts to go off, for unknown reasons.
These results are using it at the beginning of the night solely as a way to relax and to improve DR (I read a few posts saying it improved theirs)
Anyways, the first night I tried it, I got an FA (Wasn’t accustomed to RC’s that first day though, so I didn’t RC) and a decent dream, so impressive results having two recalled dreams on the second night of practicing LD’ing
Last night when I tried it, when I woke up the first time, I had an EXTREMELY vivid dream, but when I tried it mid-way through the night I got barely any recall at all.
Anyways, I went through all that to ask a few questions. One: For my DJ I use my iPad set on the lowest brightness so it doesn’t wake me up, or hurt my eyes at all, as my only desk lamp is very bright, and it usually wakes me up very well. Should I continue using that system, or would a physical journal still be a better choice?
Two: I know you said that your thought wandering was a natural thing, just to bring it back to the cycles when you remember what you’re doing, but it seems my mind wanders off very easily.
Three: I tend to be fairly good at controlling excitement, so I don’t wake up too much from that which is a good thing, and I find not expecting anything to happen extremely easy, but I seem to wake up a bit TOO much during the cycles, and it takes me five-ten minutes to fall asleep after the cycles. Is this normal? Or should it take less time?
Four: How many cycles should I do to start off, and then what are reasons to increase/decrease the amount of cycles?
Five: How quickly should I do the quick cycles (Each part of the cycle, like how long on sight, how long on hearing, and how long on touch?), and how slowly should I do the slow cycles?
Hopefully, none of these questions were answered in the tutorial and I just neglected to see them, but thanks in advance for the response 
I have decided to try lucid dreaming again. I tried it ages ago and didn’t manage to have the success I wanted.
I decided to try this last night, but it took me ages to get to sleep after doing the cycles, I think this messed up any hope of getting a lucid dream. Any tips?
You need to give me more details in order to help you diagnose. BTW, were you attempting SSILD right after you went to bed?
What book are your writing cosmic Iron
It has been postponed indefinitely, LOL.
I tried SSILD three times so far. The first two did not work, the first was at night before getting to sleep, so it did not have too many chances from the beginning, the second time was before an afternoon nap, and it didn’t work. Last night it was the first time I tried it in the morning, after 3 hours of sleep and then 3 hours of being awake (insomnia problems), when I knew that I was probably about to finally get back to sleep. I didn’t fall asleep right away, though. I remembered that it didn’t matter, it could still work, and the result was that I had 4 lucid dreams in a row (so 3 false awakenings in which I realized I was still in a dream), very clear all of them, very lucid in all of them. The only downsize is that after the forth, when I finally got up, I could not remember as many details as I usually remember from just one lucid dream. However, still good recall and vivid memories.
Thanks for all your posts and explanations about this, cosmic.iron!
Thanks cosmic will start testing tonight. WBTB part will have to wait for a while due to the meds I’m on. 
The SSILD method is very effective. I think the key is that the method turns people into hypnagogic state fast, as it emphasize an easy manner instead of focusing.
I tried it last night and achieved 2 LD without failure.
Both of them were wake-initiated although the tutorial claims that DILD may occur.
However, this method did cause false awakening.
Both of my dream began with waking up in bed. Though I could quickly recognize the abnormal parts. Also, I have to mention that the pinch-nose reality check gave false result in one LD.
Thank you so much for making this tutorial. I’ve been trying to get an LD for months now using various techniques, but didn’t get anywhere with them. I’ve tried various combinations and experiments but nothing worked.
Then I gave this technique a try last night. After the cycles it was real hard to get to sleep, I think it was because I was focusing too much on the various sensations and trying to “grapple” onto them in the hopes they’d turn into a lucid dream. They didn’t, and I eventually gave up and went to sleep normally.
I had a regular dream and I suddenly thought to wake up from it(not lucid at this point, just part of the dream, and my memory is kinda fuzzy in this area anyway) and once I “woke up” I did a reality check and BAM! I “woke up” in a LD!
Here’s hoping I can get some more through this technique.