WILD: General Hints

I find I’ve found only very little advice for WILD in Steve Leberge’s books, probably because he never managed to do it himself. As a result, I barely know how to begin with it. There must be more theory to it than “meditate while falling asleep.” I try to focus on HI, but I never remain awake long enough for them to become very vivid anymore.

There are many topics about WILD. In fact, WILD is the most discussed method here.
You can find WILD topics on the forum, or the home page.

I want a general list to see what options I haven’t tried yet.

Things I have tried:

  1. counting
  2. focussing on my breathing
  3. vipassana
  4. binaural beats
  5. waiting for hypnagogic imagery to occur
  6. trying to remain awake through willpower
  7. repeating a mantra such as “I am dreaming” to remember that I am, currently, upon the brink of falling asleep.
  8. visualization, in order to attempt to induce HI.

Nothing worked so far. When the HI came at all, it was apparently spontaneously, in my more schizotypal episodes, but even if it was the last thing I could remember before falling asleep, I never became lucid.

I think visualization or dream incubation, i don’t know the right term,
could be more effective than a mantra, visualize something or ‘‘daydream’’
is more interesting than repeating a mantra which with all due respect is
somewhat boring.

That’s a very good idea, Paroimia! That’s quite an important nuance from the visualization I tried: when I visualized, I usually just tried to visualize anything I could think of, and as long as I was busy visualizing it didn’t matter — which was also a little boring in the end, and quite ineffective. =/

Another positive side of dream incubaton is that it’s interesting to practise that during the day, even I don’t succeed in achieving lucid dreams. That would in turn improve my motivation which has been my most important issue with lucid dreaming, since it ramps up and down — and because I’m better at daydreaming in down periods, it would help get my motivation back up at those times.

And yes, a mantra is quite boring, and I find the process itself has to be interesting for me to be able to hold on. That’s why I’ve decided to dispense with MILD.

If you didn’t read the HOW guide on ld4all, please do.

I have a much higher success rate through Mild, as most beginners do. The thing that is appealing about Wild, is you can go right into the dream. Make sure that you are not thinking a lot during Wild. You have to stay aware, but very calm. Maybe you should try binaural beats.

Hm, Im curious about the Binaural beats. Do you just listen to them as you go to sleep or? And could anyone point out a link to a good mp3 designed for WILD. I would like to try it myself. :smile:

Most binaural beats cost a lot of money, unless you would torrent them. Lifeflow is a lot cheaper than Holosync: project-meditation.org/lifeflow.html
Another cheap way to get binaural beats is to program them yourself with Neuroprogrammer: transparentcorp.com/products/np/

There’s plenty of other programs out there, some of which may be free, but don’t trust I-Doser: it’s sham.

Don’t listen to binaural beats all night, or it will interfere with your natural sleeping cycles. I speak from experience: it’s bound to make you depressed the next day.

Would sleeping 5-6 hours, then go back to sleep with binaural beats on and try to WILD untill I wake up next time and then go back to sleep normally without the mp3’s work? :meh:

Yes. WBTB has proven to be the best technique for me. But for some reason, I keep failing to just wake up and stay awake. I keep getting up in the morning and find that I’ve turned off my alarm in my sleep, or still half-asleep, without even remembering.

I find it tricky to continue WBTB anyway when I’m at home. My mother is an extremely light sleeper and the house is extremely creaky. This regular discontinuity makes it hard to turn WBTB into a habit. I’ll try meditating against the headboard so I don’t wake anyone, but I don’t fully fall asleep either.

I could still doze off in this case, though: any suggestions as to how to avoid this?

After that, I could continue meditation lying in bed until I fall asleep. When I’m tired, focussing on hypnagogic imagery is relatively easy, but should I just passively focus on it or should I also try to control it? The more I try to control it, the harder it gets to see the hypnagogic imagery. I guess I could try to increase my level of control as the imagery becomes more vivid; first I’d just focus on the HI until there would be enough of it to control it without disrupting it by concentrating too hard.

How do you best control HI anyway, though? For some reason, although I can be very good at imagining things, I’m not very good at it when I try to imagine something. :neutral:

I guess it’s much as in lucid dreaming itself? I could wait until I see an image, then hang on to it and try to imagine the scene in which the image occurs, upon which I could try to direct it where I want by moving through the scene.