WILD via meditation (personal experience)

Quest for Lucidity
1

Hello LD4All people! I’ve been away for…maybe a year? Probably more, sadly. I’ve been straying from the land of dreams lately, but enough of that.

Last night I decided to go to bed early, spent about an hour reading, and randomly decided to start some chakra meditation that I could barely remember because I felt a need for some sort of meditation. I think I started that around 11:45 pm.

Anyways, I was just a little ways through the meditation when I somehow noticed I was falling asleep. I didn’t want to leave the meditation half done, so I put a lot of mental effort into staying awake while staying perfectly still for the meditation. I managed to finish the meditation in this state, but started feeling…odd, towards the end. That’s when I realized what was actually happening, I was starting to fall asleep while conscious. Excitement, the bane of lucid dreamers everywhere.

At that point, I was starting to see a sort of three dimensional space forming in my vision, and I’m quite sure I was close to dreaming. That faded and for the rest of my attempt, I could hear the sounds of the house amplified (which was vaguely frustrating and distracting). I spent a good hour longer perfectly still, keeping my mind aware, and felt various sensations, from numbness to not being able to tell where my hands or arms were to a sense of being twisted. I eventually had to give up because I was getting a headache.

Ah goodness, this looks like my old posts, wordy and overly descriptive. XP Good to know I’m still me.

Anyway, anyone who has actually had more success with WILD-ing, how close do you think I came? It was interesting because I’ve tried using this method via meditation in the past, but never got anywhere with it. I’ve never managed to hold myself awake like that before.

2

Interesting, sounds like you were pretty close can you describe the meditation technique? Perhaps paying more attention to the visuals next time might help you enter the dream-state.

Personally I love to meditate just before sleeping for this very reason. That and it just suits me better than doing it during the day.

3

Mmm, the meditation is more about feeling than visuals actually. Visuals naturally came to my mind though, of course.

The basic idea is to imagine the feeling of energy coming through your feet and up your legs to the different main chakra points (if that’s the right term), starting from the lowest, and rising to the crown chakra. At each point you build up energy and then open the point. I remember the technique suggesting opening the point with imaginary hands, like you would open up a homemade roll or something of that source, allowing the energy to flow into it. I don’t recall the technique saying to close the point again, but I sort of naturally imagined it happening, I guess.

If you’re interested, you could probably look up more accurate information on the chakra points (I remember that there are 7 and I have a general idea as to where they are, but not much else) and no doubt many meditations involving them. I don’t think that the meditation was necessarily what got me so deep into sleep while conscious, but that it was effective in keeping my attention while not require too deep of thought, perhaps.

Also, having quickly peaked at some information on dreaming after about a year or so, I can see why the WBTB method might be more effective than WILD-ing directly from wakefulness. When you first go to sleep, you have to stay conscious through three stages of relatively dreamless and deep sleep before REM sleep begins, which commonly seems to be an over hour long process. However, the longer you’ve been sleeping, REM sleep becomes more common, while the other stages become less so. So waking up a couple hours into your sleep and falling back asleep, you might be lucky and drift directly into REM sleep. It’s kind of interesting to be able to link different lucid dreaming methods to actual information regarding sleep. :content:

Regarding this, and the fact that I had been in a meditative state for about an hour at least, it seems likely that I had gone into one of the deeper stages of sleep, and would have needed to keep it up for a little while longer. Shame I didn’t think of this before, or I might have kept at it. It is certainly not a simple task to stay still and relaxed, mentally and physically, for so long.

4

That’s true, at least in my experience. Meditation was not essential for your experience but it helped you to stay aware as you were moving through those dreamless stages as you describe them because WILD’ing is nothing more but knowing how to fall asleep properly. The utter key is maintaining the consciousness/awareness as long as you need to let your body fall asleep.

That’s why you might come across a lot on the statement: Mind awake, body asleep. Only fault with that statement and which at the end leads to not being able to achieve WILD is taking it to literal. One is keeping his mind awake all the time so he can’t let his body asleep and therefore dream. But if you train yourself to let the awareness gradually fade as your body gradually falls asleep then WILD becomes nothing more then knowing how to fall asleep.

And of course I would advice to do this after few hours of sleep. Doing that when first going to sleep is actually not so productive as you know it already…

5

Thanks Kirby for description of your technique also what dB_FTS said is helpful :smile:

I’ve done plenty of different meditation techniques in the past which is why I asked. At the moment I’m using holosync recordings which synchronizes the left and right brain hemispheres. Helps me meditate deeper than a zen monk! :happy:

6

Sometimes when I meditate* while in bed, I may come near a state where I am almost sleeping. Sometimes I will just fall asleep (and when that happens after meditation, sleep will be nice and smooth) but other times I may feel odd too. I dont know exactly how to explain what it feels like, but its strange, like if I myself was not myself and things are perceived in a different way.

*I forget to add this note: when I meditate, generally I am refering to Vipassana meditation; briefly means to be mindful about your bodly sensations (specially breath).