I’ve tried going WILD a few times now but the results have really been discouraging me. It seems when I try going to bed and invoking the WILD technique, I send my mind into a half-awake half-asleep torpor that usually lasts all night where I experience shallow fever-type dreams. It’s like I try to go to sleep with the intention of maintaining my conscious thought into the dream state, but since I’ve never done that before my brain can’t wrap itself around the concept and as a result it just goes to sleep and then wakes itself up again trying to maintain consciousness in an endless cycle.
It’s really disconcerting and blows my dream recall (not to mention level of exhaustion) all to hell in the process. Admittedly, last night I had a weird little hypnagogic hiccup where I heard myself saying “Derrrrr!” really loudly for a few seconds, and I woke up halfway through the night in a tingly-bodied daze where I realized that I had fallen asleep on my back and not moved for four hours, which meant I must have been getting somewhere because if I had truly fallen asleep I would have been tossing and turning like cyclone.
Have any of you experienced this accidentally programming yourself into this half-sleep state, and if so, found any fixes for it? It may be that I just need to make myself get used to the process, and indeed this unusual state may mean that I’m actually getting somewhere (as opposed to trying WILD and just falling asleep as if I hadn’t done anything). I typically try to sit in a meditative posture beforehand, clear my head of everything, and then do a little autosuggestion before going to bed and then visualize myself climbing down a flight of stairs from the 100th floor of a building, imagining a new scenario on every floor and taking in every detail before reading the floor number on a plaque and continuing down. That might be too complicated for an ultra-novice like me - maybe I should simply count and see where that gets me. Any input would be appreciated.
I havnt experienced that Spamtek, when I WILD for a long time and dont get to sleep it leads to bad insomnia. The wierd thing is, I have nothing to do during the night, so i restlessly lay there all night doing nothing. About 6 hours pass and im still in bed doing nothing. Al of a sudden, eyes open, I begin hallucinating. I see a house on my cieling, a person floating in the air and grass growing on the bed. I close my eyes and all of a sudden I enter a dream in seconds, fully lucid. This is a horrible way to get LDs but if your an insomniac id try it, what else you got to do in the middle of the night lol.
I completely agree. While it s completely possible to do WILD at bed time (my first WILD was at bed time) lots of new people have trouble with it. It seams it is easier if you use the WBTB method to learn WILD first than try at bed time.
If WBTB is not an option for you for whatever reason than I would suggest that you set a time limit on how long you will practice WILD each night. Say if you do not fall asleep in say an hour then get up out of bed for 5-10 minutes then go back to bed and just let yourself fall asleep naturally.
When I took a nap yesterday and attempted WILD, I heard the sound of a little girl singing, but couldn’t make up the words. It was funny though, because it sounded like, “We are the champions” and I immediately started singing the song in my head. I find songs help me concentrate.
Yesterday night while trying WILD I think I felt vibrations. They felt more like waves, actually. But my heart started beating very fast so I fell out of it.
When I woke up at 5:30AM, I had the weirdest sensation. I was so light, and I didn’t feel like I was in my body. I can’t really describe it, but I thought that I could definitely go into a dream. Anyways, I rolled over (attempting to go into a dream) but ended up actually rolling over, and the “light” feeling disappeared. What was that light feeling?
Answers and feedback would be very appreciated. Am I doing something right, or wrong? And also, I haven’t had any HH.
Is it ok to try WILD for naps? For some reason i was really tired, so i was like, ok… I will try this. So, I sat there, counting, and i began to feel really heavy. My arms, hands, feet, and legs mostly. My eyes began to feel…weird. Not hurt, just feel more tired. Then, i began to see like, flashing light (like a strobe light). And i continued counting. I kept seeing like flashing colors, and weird shapes and stuff. But when I tryed focusing on them, My eyelids would open up where the colors were, and i would see a vague image of my night table. Am I even close to doing the right thing?
Floating feeling = somesthetic HH.
You probably mean that you don’t have HI. Hypnagogic imagery is not necesary in order to WILD. Some people have them, then they try to enter into the hypnagogic image. Some people don’t, they have auditory or somesthetic HH instead. When you have HH, it means that you are in the hypnagogic state and you can try to roll over, just like you did.
Hi Madshadow,
Yes it’s possible to WILD during naps. It’s perhaps even easier. You probably saw phosphenes. You have two possiblities: you focus on them, try to make them look like 3D blobs and wait they transform into an image. Or you just continue to focus on your practice (for instance counting) until you have HH.
If it were me, I would normally just continue practicing (counting or whatever) and let myself go deeper until I am pulled into the dream. This is a passive entry technique.
However, yes you can: roll, pull, climb out of your body into a dream. But you don’t do it physically you imagine yourself doing it. This would be an active entry technique.
Both work, so try the different techniques and see what works best for you.
You could try one of two things. Just stay focused on the method (counting or whatever) you are using and try to let go of other thoughts and feelings. Don’t even pay attention to the floating feeling and it will just happen.
Another option would be to stop counting or whatever and focus on the floating sensation and try to imaging yourself floating down. This is a good way to deepen your trance and ultimately enter a dream.
Stay focused on the induction method you are using. Be aware of the HI but do not get caught up in them or think about them. Eventually you will start to see shapes then flashes of images then even a moving picture. However, if you pay too much attention to the HI you will either fall unconsciously asleep or you wi get a sudden flash of intense HI that will jolt you awake.
Ok, excuse my poor grammar if there is any. I just “woke up”. I tryed doing WILD again. But this time it was a bit different. I stayed in my bed, and counted. I began to feel heavy, as if there was a weight on my whole body. When i breathed in, it felt like my chest was really working hard to do that. Then i started feeling tingly randomly at random points on my body. My mouth began to feel like it had novacaine in it, and my hands and arms felt like they were “falling asleep”. I began to have a pain in my shoulders. And i was sweating. I counted up to 700 when there was just a lot of pain, but i said i would continue to 1000. So i got to about 800-900 and i started seeing dots, kind of like a tv screen static stuff. And i tried to focus on them and turn them 3d and such, but whenever i did, my left eye would open slightly. Is that supposed to happen? I noticed that whenever i rested my eyes, it would always kind of open up. This made if harder to focus on anything. At 1000 i rolled over, hoping something would happen. But nothing did.
Since i didnt have questions in that, i will post them:
Well, im just wondering if there should be pain, if i should sleep with less covers. Should i mix the Breath counting, and the stair walking? Im also kind of achy now. Plus, whats with my eye? If it does start to slightly open, should i let it be, or force it shut? Are there any tips on using this anymore? Im planning on going back to sleep, doing the WBTB thing, and doing WILD before i go back to sleep then. Does that seem good? Thanks for any help.
Edit-
So, after wbtb, i stayed up for about 30- 45 minutes, wrote in my DJ, and went on this site. Then when I tryed to do WILD to go back to sleep, i wasn’t tired enough. I was just very restless. Next time, should i even bother with WILD? Because I found a dream sign, remembered my dream, and i feel that i could easily have done MILD, but because i started WILD, it left me restless, and not tired. Was this because I stayed up 45 minutes?
(Before i start, i wanna mention that ive been doing a jigsaw puzzle recently of a semi-nude homer simpson layered over the same pic over and over again)
Erm, i tried the WILD method again today and managed to get my whole body numb, feeling like it was all twisted up. I then began to see the jigsaw pieces, not very clearly, like i was looking through dirty glass that was liquefied and sloshing over the pieces .
Everytime I WILD my whole body gets numb (I see that as a good thing) and I’m very relaxed, but after a time the area around my face and chest keeps me awake. That sounds crazy but, it’s like that area feels like totally awake, everything is relaxed, but not there. I think it has something to do with the hotness, because I can feel every breath and it’s even worse when it’s hotter. I just can’t relax that part and it keeps me awake for hours.
Okay, I think I made some progress with my WILDs. When I do it in the afternoon or early evenings (as a nap), I now get intense abstract HI after a mere minute. These stay for while then, sometimes quite long, but then simply fade away and I’m where I started!?
What could I be doing wrong?
think I’m getting really good at keeping my body completely still, to the point that it’s the most comfortable way to sleep. Do any of you feel the same?
When the body is falling asleep, do you ever get the feeling like your hands are moving? Last night I felt like my fingers were moving and my hands were falling off my chest… or whever I had my hands at the time, and this sensation caused me to want to move my hands back into position, but I knew my hands weren’t moving so I didn’t fall into the trap of waking my body up.
.