Hello. i’m here with yet another problem.
apparently WBTB is the easiest way to get lucid coupled with MILD…
Well i’m one of those people who have great difficulty going back to sleep let alone trying to have an intention(mantra?) repeating at the back of my head. ive tried it once, I woke up at 5ish and read about LD for slighly less than an hour, when I back to bed my mind wandered off and I never got to sleep for about 45 mins and during that time the hour or so reading about LD I did stopped having an effect, and I never got to lucid dream however I had my second false lucid dream (a dream in which I dream that I am dreaming a lucid dream) any help/advice? I am under the general impression that one needs to be tired? what if one ceases to be tired and ones thoughts wander of to the far reaches of ones imagination and ones hour of reading about LD goes to waste?
How long did you sleep before you awoke?
I don’t think you can expect WBTB to work everytime, but having a false lucid dream shows that you were close, so I see that as a good thing.
You have the same problem that I do. If I stayed up for an hour I would never get back to sleep. Try not to stay up that long. Figure out how long you can stay up and still get back to sleep. Then get good and relaxed. When you do your mantra just repeat it say 20 times then let go of the thought and go back to sleep.
When I do WBTB I don’t stay up more than 5 minutes. Sometimes I don’t do WBTB at all.
4,5 to 6 hours usually works, because you pass the first REM cycles. The later cycles contain more REM sleep, and that makes it easier to get a lucid dream since it takes a shorter time between falling asleep and getting a proper dream.
If you have trouble getting to sleep after a longer session, don’t stay up as long. Just read for fifteen or twenty minutes and then go back to bed, performing MILD techniques.
Biggest thing: don’t work too hard at it. After suffering from very poor recall for a week of trying VERY hard to remember, I finally just relaxed last night. And I remembered two or three dreams, one of which almost became a lucid dream. I know your problem is with LDing, not recall, but the same principle should apply.
That is an important point that I also want to stress. MILD is a form of auto suggestion so you don’t want to push it too much. Repeat your mantra only until you can do it for 20 times without thinking about anything else. Then let go of the thought and let yourself fall asleep.
LOL That is a good point. Even though the book says 20 times I can’t think of a single time where I used MILD (or other auto-suggestions) that I counted how many times I did the mantra. To be honest, I just repeated it over enough times until I felt my intention was set.
The point is that the number of times you repeat the mantra is less important than how you do it. You want to be firm in your intent and keep it simple.
One is grateful for all your help. However, I’m still a bit dubious on this thing about setting your intention becuase inevitably your thoughs will wander, you’re happy that your intention is set so you start to fall asleep but your thoughts still wander off, its unavoidable… or is it?
That’s ok. Once you have “set your intention” you are supposed to then let go of the thought. That is how auto-suggestion works. As you fall asleep of course your mind is going to wander. You do not have to keep that thought in your head until you fall asleep.
Also keep in mind that this may not work in the first or second try. Auto-suggestion takes time to sink in.
It is also important that you be in a deeply relaxed state when you do your mantra.
So:
Use some sort of progressive relaxation technique
then, repeat you mantra until you feel you have set your intention
Then, let go of the idea and let yourself fall asleep.
however I had my second false lucid dream (a dream in which I dream that I am dreaming a lucid dream) any help/advice? I am under the general impression that one needs to be tired? what if one ceases to be tired and ones thoughts wander of to the far reaches of ones imagination and ones hour of reading about LD goes to waste?