[color=green]Hello fellows,
I actually have found WBTB the best way for me to LD. I do this almost every night. Set my watch to go off cause it’s quiet and won’t startle me to much, I just sit up and play guitar quietly for a little bit or listen to a cd, then just lay down again and start picturing a dream in my head, after a little bit I fall asleep and slip into a dream, because I’ve been thinking about this dream, It is the dream I was thinking of, and I just do my usual RC and I’m all set to explore and have fun all night.
WBTB is worthless for me. If I’m up for more than 15 minutes, I’ll be up for at least 4 hours afterwards. This hapenned to me this morning, I woke up at 4:00 hoping to fall back to sleep by 5:00, but of course sleep never came. To add to the situation, I have eating disorders, and get absolutely starving if awake for more than an hour and have to eat a dinner-size meal. I’ve tried all kinds of herbal tea concoctions, meditations, relaxation techniques, sleep aid pills, PM cough medicine,etc…nothing works. It seems for some reason that when I wake up during the middle of the night, its tougher to fall alseep than it would be for me to take a nap in the middle of the day. Any ideas? Suggestions? I would REALLY appreciate other peoples methods on how to fall asleep when using WBTB. I know how effective a method WBTB is, from experiences with it from when I was a child. Also, it’s nearly impossible for me to do MILD or WILD in the morning hours because of this. Can someone PLEASE help me? I’m desperate here…
Lately I’ve had to get up earlier than is natural for me to bring my mother to work a few times. (she has a knee problem right now that prevents her driving)
I am very… protective of my sleep and I prefer not to compromise my natural sleep for anything if at all possible. I thought, however, that I could turn this stumbling block into a stepping stone by reading the forum a bit before returning to bed and then trying for a LD.
This didn’t help. I had trouble getting back to bed. I found by trying this that it didn’t really help my LD attempt at all. I think that I experience more HI when I go pee during the night and see my “DREAMING” sign on the wall opposite me Also, waking up early for this just resulted in my usual stuffy head headache feeling that comes from messing with my sleep. Perhaps I should try WBTB at a different time, maybe during the night more?
Well it depends what time you go to bed and what time you wake up.
If you, for example, go to bed at 11pm, and wake at 7, thats 8 hours, so then you could probably plan to wake about 5:00-5:30, read about LD’s and whatever, for about a good 30 minutes, then go back to bed for another 1-1.5 hours sleep.
If you can only manage about 5-6 hours sleep a night, then maybe WBTB is not the thing for you until the weekend comes and you can sleep in further. in this case maybe WILD/MILD is a good idea for weekdays (or if you need to get up weekends too).
Just a note, when you wake up, try and always think about your dreams, as a first thing to do. Sometimes I awake because the phone rings and I must answer, or because someone wakes me and talks to me. I find that if I talk to someone straight after I wake up, and then try to think iof what dream I had, it is much more difficult to remember.
I go to bed at around 12-12:30 and I get up around 10-10:30, sometimes later. I wake up naturally whenever possible. I also got rid of my phone, because it made noise when someone called, even with the ringer off. The cell phone and voice mail combo has been great :> I really optimized my sleep schedule for LD without knowing it
I really like what you said about trying to think of my dreams first thing after I wake up. I think I will try this, as well as just taking a minute to wake up whenever I have a small awakening in the night, so that I can achieve a kind of mini-WBTB thing.
To be honest I was never a big fan of WBTB until recently. I have always practiced WILD at bed time and found I was able to do it. But one night I woke up in the middle of the night after a failed WILD attempt. I went right back to sleep with my WILD method and moved into the dream state so easily and quickly that I could hardly believe it. I did not like WBTB for the same reasons others have mentioned. Mainly, the fear of not getting back to sleep. Now I still do WILD at bedtime but when I wake in the middle of the night I only stay up for 2-3minutes. Just enough time to go to the bathroom and maybe write a sentence or two in my dream journal. This might be a solution for people who are afraid to do WBTB out of fear of losing sleep.
Right, I’ve just started to WBTB/MILD, and have nearly reached an LD. But I have a little problem that is bothering me.
I can’t stay up for half an hour. Well, i could, but it wouldn’t be nice. At most, I can usually get nearly 20 minutes - not bad, but I’d rather have a full half hour.
The reason why I don’t like it, is becuase I have trouble reading (I read slower then I normally do) and I’m freezing cold. I thought about pulling my duvet down to keep me warm, by the noise I’d make worries me. As does the fact that the warmth may put me back to sleep…
Personally I like falling right back asleep after I wake up. I usually try to stay up long enough to remember the dream, pick a dream sign, and then set my intention.
If I’m up for much longer I find that I end up staying away for at least an hour, sometimes more. Interestingly enough if I do end up staying away for an hour or two I am almost always going to have a lucid dream.
Even this morning I always had one, I could feel myself falling asleep and then got too excited (it’s been a while for me) and then woke myself back up.
So I’m not sure that staying up 30 minutes is absolutely necessary, it may help you, but I wouldn’t worry about it that much.
You have to experiment a little to determine the best time period for you to stay awake while doing WBTB. If you’re having troubles of staying awake, do this: as soon as you wake up, get up without hesitating and go to the bathroom. Wash your face with ice cold water (preferably do this once every ten minutes or so). Works fine with me.
If you’re having a cold during WBTB, you could move to a warmer room, and read LD related books or browse the forum, before going back to your bedroom.
Hm doesn’t sound ideal… Perhaps you can set a large bowl of water inside your bedroom? Then you don’t have to go to the bathroom… Or you could move your bed to another room
Have you tried going right back to sleep? Staying up only a few minutes to memorize your dream and do MILD. It might not work for you but, on the other hand it might be a solution to your problem.
Normally I stay awake for 20-30 minutes. Sometimes more (if I’m motivated ). If I’d stay awake for hours I don’t think I could fall back asleep, unless I’m really really tired… But due to school I can’t do it anyway. How much one has to stay awake for good results depends from person to person, but I wonder if there’s an overall optimal time period to stay awake in order to have the best results (in general ofcourse).
Well I’ve tried 5 minutes so far and didn’t get a lucid dream. I used the MILD technique and ended up having a dream in the location of the dream scene that I was replaying.
I wasn’t lucid but I was controling some aspects of the dream environment with my mind, i.e. filling bottles of booze back up. I’ll see what 10 minutes does.
Also, waking up early for this just resulted in my usual stuffy head headache feeling that comes from messing with my sleep. Perhaps I should try WBTB at a different time, maybe during the night more?
