Oh lookie i’m posting after Q. I feel special.
Um, I’ve tried WILD again, and I’ve worked out I just can’t do it. I’m too fidgety. I can’t lie still for more than 5 minutes. I start to itch in the face or arm, and you sure can’t relax when you’re itchy or a fly is attacking you. Also, i just become uncomfortable very quickly, it’s not the bed I’ve just always been like that. Am I stuffed for WILD because of these, or is there a fix?
Well, I’ve been trying WILD, but it hasn’t been working. So the other day I don’t even feel like trying, I go to bed. Next I find myself awake in bed. All of the Sudden I hear thud thud thud and it gets faster and faster, the next thing I know I’m on a roller coaster. Sadly, I woke backup…probably was too excited. I tried saying I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming but it still didn’t work. 
Any ideas how to not get excited, and how I even got into a lucid dream without trying. 
When wilding, do you leave your eyes open ore closed, i see hyphawhatnot imahes with them open but should i close them when trying to wild?
Making post short: I close them, it would be kinda hard to fall asleep with opened ones.
Note for the holidays : Do not try to Wild after eating alot of turkey it simply will not work, as I found out lastnight much to my own vexation.
hahah
despite your advice Venus ill probably still try tonight
Hello.
I attempted WILD multiple times last night… and failed at all of them.
Just as a thought… I have a problem falling sleep sometimes. I find that starting to daydream – not the same thing as lucid dreaming however – makes me fall asleep in a few instants (or I lose consciousness, one of the two).
First series of attempts… I relax, all is well. I stay aware, all is well. I hear sounds, panic, heart beat rushes, and wake up.
I must have tried that 3 or 4 times.
Second attempt… I put a stuffed animal in my hand. I imagine that, when it leaves my hand, it will remind me to become lucid. I start to daydream, and fall to sleep instantly. Except I didn’t become lucid… I woke up this morning… >.<
Third attempt (this morning)… I relax, stay aware… Takes too long, start to daydream and fall asleep.
Thinking back on attempt 2, it was a nice try, but if I don’t feel my hand, it’s going to be WILDly ineffective.
Where am I going wrong? Thanks…
Stopping daydreaming is hard 
. I guess you have just to stay aware and concentrated for longer. Counting, etc, can help you to. Wait until you will get hallucinations and SP. Then you can try visualize things, for example that stuffed animal. Try to move your dream hand to reach it. When you will touch it ( really feel the touch) , you will be dreaming.
But I could be wrong 
. I am not a WILD expert.
mm.
How can I stay aware without staying awake? It’s going to take some practice -.-
All things worth having are worth working for.
What is your method, Duck?
That is the key to WILD. You have to keep your mind awake, while you let your body go to sleep. 
If there was an easy way to explain how to do that, then everyone would be WILD’ing.
If it doesn’t work for you with daydreaming, then you need to try something else. Yor first attempts sound like they were closer. Lots of people hear sounds, and have rapid heart beat and become panicked then woke up. You may just have to learn to remain calm when that happens to get WILD to work. They say that the rapid heart beat is just in your head. The begining of the switch to dream input from real life input. Some say it is your astral body trying to leave your real body.
I have never had the rapid heart beat, or SP for that matter. I do get HI, with some sounds, but mostly just relaxing my body while keeping my brain awake with relaxationg and meditation techs. It works for me, except for right now I am having a long dry spell.
You just have to find out what works for you.
don
I’ll try WILD again tonight.
Daydreaming seemed to be a key in VILD, a method I looked at recently… but it keeps me awake ;( …
If I was close, I should try again.
When im drifting off to sleep, i usually go to feel more and more relaxed.
Im getting to almost not feel my limbs at all, but i can move.
When i do this i say “im gonna wake up at 4 o clock” or whatever im autosuggestin.
Then i sometime feel im getting a little closer to sleep, or sometimes not.
However , after some time i feel kinda not sleepy at all. Then it is a question of time, i move 1 arm, and all the relxiness goes away.
Then it happends that i turn over and over for ages before getting to go to sleep
Some questions :
WHat should i do to reach the dream ?
How can i fall asleep faster when i fail ?
Is this affecting my sleep greatly? (damaging)
Here are some of my experiences after a month or so of trying to WILD:
1) Trying to WILD when first going to sleep
On the first few attempts, I tried counting. I usually got rapid heartbeat and irregular breathing after a few minutes. This got better in later attempts, mainly by changing my breathing technique (this was also mentioned somewhere in one of the earlier parts of the BIG WILD topic) and also by getting used to the strange feelings of deep relaxation.
The result of these attempts was a state of very deep relexation, in which sometimes hours seem to pass almost like minutes. However, I could not fall asleep while lying on my back, so I would eventually turn over.
After the first attempts, I often was much too excited to fall asleep and stayed awake for hours. In later attempts, I would slowly drift into sleep and even see HI (faces, detailed but very small scenes) occasionally. I also experienced a floating feeling in which there was only my mind and darkness. I could not feel my body at all. 
This, as well as the HI, made me jolt awake, with a very confused feeling (asking myself: “Wow, what the hell was that?!” 
).
Up to now, I have not managed to get into a dream this way, neither ND nor LD. However, the attempts did seem to have an overall positive effect on being able to have LDs in the morning following the attempt (if only through “WILDing inside a dream”, see that topic for details).
Also, If I do not try too hard at getting anywhere, they do seem to have a positive effect on being able to fall asleep. After 15-30 mins of applying the technique, I am much more relaxed and don’t have as many thoughts which keep me awake.
If I am very tired when going to sleep, I tend to get to the HI stage and the floating feeling much easier, but the images and thoughts are very confusing and I never see any coherent scenes which I could enter. I eventually drift off to deep sleep.
I think the problem here is, I keep myself too awake, or I eventually fall into a phase of dreamless deep sleep. I am just too far from dreaming at the beginning of the sleep cycle, so this will probably not work for me.
2) Trying to WILD in the morning
This is a completely different experience. In fact, I do not have to do anything to relax before attempting to WILD in the morning. I often wake up, go to the bathroom, then return to bed and get into a comfortable position and try to drift back into sleep without losing awareness. Since counting keeps me too much awake, I like to focus my awareness on something tiny (like a glowing gem floating inside or above my head).
If I do not drift to sleep immediately (which tends to happen more often than I would like), I usually experience HI. These HI can be very detailed, fully colored and normal sized scenes. However, I am usually not able to enter them and they fade into darkness again after a couple of seconds. I then drift into a ND quickly, which may become a LD later on.
Autosuggestion shortly before the onset of HI seems to help a lot with inducing LDs. I get most of my LDs in the morning after having woken up once or twice. There has only been a single attempt so far where I was actually able to enter a scene and interact with it lucidly, at least for a very short time.
The problem here is probably that I tend to drift off into NDs since I am just too sleepy.
3) Trying to WILD during a nap
I have also tried this in the morning while being on a train. I just closed my eyes, listened to music and tried to relax. I also get quite detailed HI this way, after 15-20 mins, but I do not lose awareness of external sensory input either.
Once, I saw a computer screen in front of me and noticed I was actually reading ld4all forums. 
I then remembered that this could not be because I was sitting in a train, and surely enough, the HI faded and I woke up. 
I think WILDing in naps during the day would be possible for me, but still difficult since it is difficult to lose complete awareness of the real world. I also seem to have some problems with the concept of sleeping deeply and dreaming in a train full of other people. 
Still, it is always fun to experiment!
So, what I think I have learned about WILD so far is this:
a) You have to fall asleep to have a LD, no matter what the technique may be. You won’t be dreaming if you keep yourself awake for hours. Don’t do it! If your WILD attempt does not seem to lead anywhere after about 30 min, roll over and try to fall asleep like you usually would. If you get too excited, this might keep you wide awake during the whole night, which is not good at all and will disrupt your sleep cycle. Also, you need to be aware of, but indifferent towards HI and strange feelings. If you are too surprised by them, they may cause you to wake up again.
b) WILD attempts are always worth the effort because you suggest to your SC that you want to dream, become lucid and also to have a successful WILD. Even if they do not work, they may result in LDs in any number of ways (remembering you were expecting to dream, dreaming about doing WILD, doing RCs etc.).
c) It makes a huge difference whether you attempt to WILD when first going to sleep or in the morning, after just waking up. Falling asleep is much simpler in the morning. It does not require a lot of effort to enter a dream if you have already slept for a few (3-6 is optimal for me) hours. The only problem is becoming lucid, but again, attempting to WILD seems to increase the chances.
So, to answer your questions Petter (if I have not already done so):
Most importantly, you have to fall asleep. 
If you can, try to stay aware, but also convince yourself that you are going to become lucid. It works. 
If it is really bad, try not to think about dreaming at all. Follow your usual routine to fall asleep, get into a comfortable position in which you usually fall asleep fast and empty your head of thoughts. If all else fails, take a break from everything related to lucid dreaming for a day or two.
I think WILD attempts at the beginning of the sleep cycle can disrupt your usual sleep cycle badly by keeping you awake through the whole night (it has happened to me a few times). This can be damaging if you cannot sleep late in the morning.
Solution: Either do not attempt to WILD if you have to get up early the next morning, or limit your attempts strictly to a reasonable length (like 30 min at most), then go to sleep normally if you are not making any progress (lying in bed completely relaxed but wide awake is a dead-end situation since you probably will not fall asleep).
=/
I am growing very frustrated with WILDing…
I have been trying for several months now…
But no matter what happens, I can never recognize the HI. I have seen so many posts where it claims that HI includes swirling colors and random flashing dots…
But usually after an hour or so, the most I ever see is a fuzzy black darkness…
I try to not concentrate on anything except for counting, and I do WBTB… But nothing ever happens…
I also have another question. On most nights after I wake up, I feel as if one of my lungs has disappeared. I can’t inhale very well… This happens at about 5am after I have woken up. So, being frightened, I usually just try to normally sleep, fearing suffocation… The odd thing is, once I wake up in the late morning, I can breathe fine. Is there any explaination for this?
What would be a good range for the amount of time it takes to fall asleep for attempting WILD?
Simba:
It sounds like you have SP.
I don’t have SP, because I can freely move…
Simba, you might be experanceing somatic HH. Part of your body feeling numb, or in a postion that you know it is not can be somatic HH. It is not as common as HI, but also something that happens.
It is also not nessasary to have HI in order to WILD. Most people do have HI when they try to WILD, but not all.
I would say that the most important part of WILDing is keeping your mind awake while letting your body go to sleep. Different people have different expeances with WILD. I have never had SP, however I have had somatic HH. I do have HI, but I can never enter it. I always have a short blackout, then I am in a dream and lucid when WILD works for me.
Vrathal, I would say that 15 to 30 mins would be a good time for trying WILD. If you don’t have any success after 30 mins, you probly wont have any. There are some people on the fourm however, who say that they had their first succesfull WILD after over an hour of trying so you do have to decide for yourself.
don
What does SP feel like?
I have not been in SP during my attempts of a WILD but sometimes my body feels like it is starting to float or like it is being pulled to a side like i was being sucked into a vacuum on my left side. Also when I get up after trying WILD it feels like my arms and legs are heavy and hard to move or move slowly for a few seconds. Also what do you think i should do to stay aware/awake but not to awake?
SP feels like you cannot move. 
You still feel your body and can move your eyes and look around, but all commands for movement of other parts of the body are ignored. Some might say it feels like being “trapped” inside your body. But it does not have to be scary if you know that it is harmless.
I’d say that is a good sign. If you can stay in this state long enough for a dream scene to form, you’re there. Experiencing SP ist not a requirement.