Hi koala,
You are welcome, and good luck.
I had not o much sleep lately, so no real progress.
Hello all,
Long time since I posted here, but that doesn’t mean I have been sleeping all the time 
, well I slept a little bit (thank God) 
I have kept practising, each night, every other night strong practise, the other nights just 5 minutes practise and getting more sleep. And I dare to say now that it worked. I have a rate of 1 LD every two nights now!
Here the history of my LD’s:
No LD’s for at least a year
18/10: started WILD Practise
11/11: First very short LD
25/11: long LD (first LD I posted here, in this topic)
08/12: long LD
10/12: shorter LD
12/12: very short LD
14/12: long LD
I guess I finally have a hang on it since 8th December, since then one night no or very low practise (keeping up with sleep) and one night with practise (I always loose some hours of sleep doing this, it is not yet very easy to me) with LD as result.
Conclusion: practise gives results, but you need to be very stubborn, never give up, coping with a lot of demotivation (its not nice to have nights of practise without results, but keep up the spirit), and believing that you can do it (I think this is the most important).
BTW I still never have real SP, even if I wake up straight from a dream. I believe I get in SP while getting Lucid (I have these strange feelings while I am already inside a very low quality dream and trying to move my dreambody), but I never consciously feel this SP. As somebody stated here earlier, it is not necessary for LD, very true.
And please don’t ask me precisely what I do each night. I discovered that it depends very much on who you are, tips of some were often useless to me, tips of other were usefull, you just have to discover, experiment a lot, and see and remember what is helpful for you and stick with it.
Anyhow I can say that whatever I do, I still experiment with many kinds of techniques, I once come to a point where I feel “now I feel LD is possible” and then I try to dissociate my mind/attention from my body, including my head (having my attention somewhere outside my head, above, aside, under me, sinking in my cushion, …), If I start to early with this, it is not working and only keeping me awake.
Good luck, and keep practising, no matter what, don’t ever give up, it’s worth it.
I will test this out and see if it works for me too, thanks for sharing! And congratulation on getting your LD’s.
Cool, good luck!
Thanks for sharing. I found this very useful since I also have trouble reaching real sp. (I have years of intermittent practice with trying to reach sp for astral projection.) I can reachthat numb state pretty easily but have only very rarely and very shortly been able to feel anything besides that numbness. I will keep trying. Thanks for the encouragement.
Hi buttercup,
Yes keep trying to wild or astral project, I think there is not so much difference. But don’t try to reach SP to hard. According to me there are people, probably like you and me, who just almost never experience SP conciously. We experience it anyhow, you can’t dream without SP, but my SP only starts when I am already in a dream, I feel it at that moment, and that is perfectly ok.
Maybe it is little harder to project yourself out of your body without this SP, but there are other possibilities. I have read that you can turn a LD into an OBE, and vice versa, so if you focus on getting lucid, you are training the right way to get OBE. The only difference is the focus on where you project that dream/astral body, in a dream or in your normal surroundings.
I have no experience or knowledge about AP or OBE and don’t even now if it really is so different from lucid dream (I will only have this knowledge once I experience it myself, and I am very open for it), but what I do, placing my attention somewhere completely outside of my body, which helps me a lot, is kind of an AP technique, isn’t it, and it works very well, once you get used to it. It helps me to project myself in a dream (I am only familiar with this) without going trough SP. That’s what we all want, isn’t it? Projecting our consciousness in a state where we can function and be aware without a physical body.
Good luck.
thanks foryour support. at this point my goal is lucid dreaming. the ap was intermittently inmypast. I agree that ld or pre ld state must be similar if not exactly ap.
So last night I flittited in and out of this numb state. at some point I became aware of a pressure on my chest. that was encouraging even though I am still not convinced it wasn’t just my sleep position. The only problem is that damn itching!!! I also tend to think “hey I’m starting to hallucinate!” as soon as any image pops into my mind’s eye. of course that makes it stop immediately. I think you are right, I am trying too hard. I should have also kept in mind the goal is NOT yet ld at this point.
something I have noticed though is that when I am slipping towards sp, I become aware of what I can best describe as white noise. focusing on this background noise helps me move towards sp.
Thanks for putting up your method, dreamystivi. Over the past 2 weeks I’ve made and tried my own adaptation of your method with another one involving vibrating alarms. This morning I had my first WILD, and I don’t think it would have happened if I hadn’t read this thread
Cool, that background noise is indeed a very good thing to focus on. Maybe try to focus only on that, and ignore what you feel in your body, even if it hints you are approaching SP. I don’t know about you, but my biggest problem is getting to much fascinating to what is happening, that keeps the thing that is going to happen from happening
When I manage to just ignore everything even lucid dream approaching signs, only focus on the thing I am focussing on (mostly awareness somewhere outside my body), this helps greatly to let my body fall asleep and with some luck stay aware and get lucid.
@catfish
Great, that makes me happy, and yes I believe the same, reading things here on the forum has big effect on our lucid dream achievements, that’s why I like to share and like to read what others share.
Please tell us little more about your variation? How do you produce these interval alarms, what kind of intervals do you use, from what time you start with this? I am very curious, and probably not only me.
Cool,
At the moment Wilding without any external device is working again for me, but I am sure there will be times when this diminishes again, and then I will try out your method.
Good luck with your method and please keep us updated (in your thread off courses).
I am curious to hear more about maintaining awareness outside the body. how exactly would one do that? I have found its very much all or nothing by me. Either I drift towards a deep sleep or I stay in a semi awake state in varying degrees of consciousness. Sometimes I can spend over an hour in this non sleep meditative state.
I had a period of stress and less sleep, although I kept trying a little bit, I wasn’t succeeding in Wild anymore, but now having Christmas holiday, it came back, two successfull WILD’s per night the last two nights.
Buttercup, I will do my best trying to explain. If I focus on my body, or my breath, I get to excited when I begin to feel something and thus loose my focus, so I try to focus somewhere outside my body, and also outside my head. And ignore everything that is happening in my body and head, ignoring the strange tingling feelings, ignoring the sounds, even ignoring the visuals behind the eyelids, just focussing my attention somewhere outside my head, it depends and sometimes I switch little bit, above my head, or beneath my head, just little bit, not to much outside my head. How, very hard to explain, I think I use what I know anout Buddhism and the notion of just being aware that you are aware without being aware of something, only being aware of the fact that you are aware, breing aware of awareness itself, although I can’t actually do this, just trying it places my awareness in some sort of meta position, like looking at my mind, from a little distance, if I can hold onto this feeling it Is like I am aware, but not of something particular, but just aware, and this give a feeling of being aware outside of my body, which helps me to fall asleep keeping some awareness.
But as I mentioned in a previous post, I think: I should not start with this out of the body awareness to early. I first have to relax my body enough, at his stage it is ok for me to look for sometime to the visuals behind my eyelids (have not so many), or count a little bit. It is only when I am in this sleep meditative state, as you describe it, seems very familiar, that I can start doing this. And off course I should prevent to fall asleep, sometimes with force, like opening my eyes wide open for some time if I feel I tend to drift of to sleep in this stage. So first of all try to get in that body numb mind awake state, that’s how I call it, not focusing on falling asleep at all, this is for the next stage (the awareness out of the body stage).
So my WILD technique is:
- Short WBTB (only 5 minutes awake, little stretching, toilet)
- Relaxing, but almost forcefully staying awake, getting to that body numb mind awake state.
- Placing awareness outside of body, and let myself fall asleep, keeping this awareness, if I feel I can’t fall asleep very easy, keeping this awareness rather vague, just trusting it will come back stronger as soon as I see a dream is forming
If I get to awake, in stage 2, I often do some short SSILD cycles, that always helps me to relax my to strong awakened mind, before I go to stage 3.
In stage 3 it is important to have a very laid back attittude, nothing is important, no feeling is worth enough to give attention, except the feeling of that awareness that itself is not aware of something only about awareness itself. I guess this helps me to really disconnect from my expectations, from my fascination for things that I could get aware off, from my body, and thus brings me finally to sleep with something (that doesn’t keep me awake) to hold on to.
Good luck and feel free to share your thoughts, experiences or other questions about it.
I just recently got back into lucid dreaming by doing the WILD technique since it usually brings in more results than any other technique I’ve done. I’ve had about 4 WILDS before and have also done chain dreams where I would wake up and then resume the dream again, that was pretty cool.
WILDs for me is quite simple. I usually do it right when I sleep but because sometimes my parents are watching TV when I’m sleeping at 9:30 PM (I wake up at 5:00 AM; early bird always gets the worm) I sleep two hours or so because that’s when my house is actually dead quiet and no one is watching TV or doing anything distracting. Once I’m awake I keep my mind clear by just focusing on my breathing, trying not to think of anything. After a while my body falls asleep (can’t feel anything on my arm or legs) and suddenly have these weird feelings (my body feels like its floating or flipping over), I then let my mind run through a bunch of things, usually imagining a scene or doing something crazy. This step is the most trickiest part to get right, if I fail at it then two things can possibly occur: my body wakes up and I have an insomniac night because my mind won’t clear up or I fall into the dream without realizing that I’m dreaming but the dreams are really vivid.
The key is to constantly stay AWARE. I have to pay attention to the images that are forming in the darkness while focusing on my mind running wild. If I get too into my thoughts I usually jump straight into the dream without realizing it, but if I focus too much to the darkness I wake up. It’s kind of complex of how this works for me and I have to keep them both balanced, it’s like trying to listen to a class lecture while daydreaming at the same time.
When I perform the technique correctly I usually get one image suddenly appear in the darkness while I’m feeling a strong tingling sensation at my finger tips and hearing this weird buzzing noise. From what I’ve experience the images do weird things. Once I saw a image slide into my view and started to play like a movie, next thing you know it I’m in the image and now I’m dreaming. Other times I see an image appear in black and white which then turns negative to purple and black, shatter into a hundred bits and then liquidate into some type of portal. It’s really weird but an amazing experience.
It became easier to WILD once I realized what was my process of going into a dream. The dreams are extremely vivid and sometimes I forget that I’m dreaming when halfway through it as I’m taking part of the action. The things that I have to keep in mind is to stay aware that it is a dream and not overreact as I’m going through the transitions.
This is frustrating. I feel like I am doing everything right but only on a couple occasions have I come close to SP. Even then it was very slight and never any of intense hallucinations others describe. I feel like I read everything and know exactly what to expect but all this does for me is prevent me from being able to sleep.
Anything further I’m missing?
While I haven’t succeeded at WILD except once a long time ago by accident, my attempts at WILD do at least help me get to sleep! So maybe you’ll find the following helpful.
I don’t even bother with attempting to achieve SP - I don’t think I ever have. The closest I get is that feeling of warm heaviness from having done a relaxation visualization/meditation (“My toes are going to sleep… I will be dreaming soon… my feet are going to sleep…” etc.) and sometimes a slight “buzzing” that goes away if I focus too sharply on it.
[Edit: Er. Oops. I got to this thread via the “Recent Discussions” links, so I only saw your post at first. I hadn’t noticed that the point of this whole thread is a version of WILD that pays special attention to SP. So I may be a little off topic here. My apologies!]
What I do is, after consciously relaxing my whole body, I then physically focus my vision on the inside of my eyelids. Then I try to relax my eyes so they don’t feel like I’m squinting at the tip of my own nose 
I watch the play of light/dark and the colors-I-can’t-name fizzle around. I’ll consciously observe it, thinking to myself “Oh, it’s mostly blue today” or “Neat, a sort of network of yellow squares”. Basically, I’m letting that physical sight distract/hypnotize me until, before long, some sort of HI appears.
This is the kicker: For me, the HI generally arises from those vague color-and-light displays inside my eyelids.
Whatever HI that I get, I will imagine myself interacting with it. For instance, I often see cartoonish faces with big exaggerated expressions; I’ll imagine talking with that person and finding out what they’re shouting about. I’ll try to keep “This is a dream, I am entering a dream” in constant awareness.
This is the point at which I generally fall asleep. But at least getting to sleep means I’ll be dreaming soon!
Thanks that is really helpful. When you use this method do you enter a lucid dream? If i fall asleep with this method i never become lucid.
Finally! This has been my goal for so long, every time I try and post asking about getting into SP people say that it “shouldn’t be my goal.” I will definitely try this!
Honestly, it hasn’t so far - but, in conjunction with the WILD technique, it’s the method I continue to try!
My one WILD success was spontaneous; I haven’t managed it on purpose yet.
One thing I just realized I have been doing wrong is deep relaxation breathing. This actually impedes progress towards sp. What you need is shallow breathing which reduces oxygen to the brain. I finally understand why trying to do WILD makes me so alert.