HVILD - Hypnagogic Visualization Induced Lucid Dream

Reading many topic in Quest for Lucidity I realize that so many people have troubles with WILD.
I completely understand, as it’s a very hard technique to master; also, SP / hallucinations is seriously scary stuff.

However, during my personal Quest for Lucidity I came up with a variation of WILD that has become my standard method for LDing.

Essentially is a mix of WBTB + WILD, but instead than waiting for HI / SP, I visualize HI I choose to.
What happens after some time (the amount of time varies) is that my body falls asleep without me noticing it, I do not feel SP, and the HI visualization naturally evolves into a proper LD.

This technique has several pros at its side.
During the numerous LD’s I’ve had with it:

  • My awareness is extremely high, my mind is working much like during WL
  • Recall is very good
  • Dream powers work awesome
  • LD are usually very long - My personal scale is Short ~10-15 mins, Medium ~20-30 mins, Long 45-60 mins and over
  • Success rate is high: if I have motivation and enough sleep time, I succeed much more often than I fail
  • I do not feel Sleep Paralysis, never experienced it actually
  • Extremely reduced FA incidence
  • Visually they are as vivid as LD’s I had using different techniques
  • Touch and hear senses work well

The only cons are:

  • Taste / smell do not work well or at all - I suspect it’s because I normally do it in the morning hours, when I am not sleeping too deep
  • Often times I can hear WL sounds while dreaming - it can be distracting or useful, depending on the case
    When it happens, I usually count church’s bell rings to know the time and understand how much time I am left for dreaming and also know LD duration

Have a look at my 2016 DJ (LINK) to read results by yourself.

Note: I normally fall asleep very quickly < 5 minutes, I guess it contributes alot in making it so effective for me; I suspect that people normally requiring longer times could find it less effective.

So, what do I do exactly ?

  • Do a WBTB if I feel I need it : toilet, rinse mouth, wash face, the usual stuff - I skip when I think I am aware enough

  • Lay on the bed with my eyes closed in a comfortable position, but NOT the one I usually fall asleep in
    I normally fall asleep on my side, so when I want to LD I lay supine (face upward), hands resting on my chest / belly or at the side

  • Then I start visualization.

    • This is like daydreaming, but in the night so let’s call it “nightdreaming” :tongue:
    • I usually visualize continuing the most recent ND, if waking up right after one, perhaps after recognizing a missed dreamsign (like mentioned by LaBerge for the MILD technique)
    • Or from a common dreamsign of mine (e.g. office corridors)
    • Or from a landmark of my LD adventures, usually my personal tower where I have souvenirs from some of previous LD’s, touching them or looking at the landscape from the top, or looking inside the portal
    • I keep visualizing, doing stuff, looking around
  • Visualization turns into LD
    This is the trickiest part to explain. The first time I did this, I had a ~1 hour LD in which I did so much stuff that I even partially forgot.
    All during this hour I did wonder: am I actually sleeping and LD’ing or am I awake and just “nightdreaming” ?
    At that time, since I could hear my real body’s breathe, I listened to it and it was very slow and heavy, so reassuring me that I should be sleeping, and diving back into the LD.

    So, how do I know I am actually LD’ing right now ?

    • An obvious way to know is RC, but recently I linked that doing RC too often could be counter-productive.
    • Another, less intrusive way is critically looking at the dream world.
      When inside a proper LD, compared to the “nightdreaming” phase, images are crispier, colors more vivid, black is more black and less gray-ish, DC faces are more lifelike, everything is much more detailed; generally speaking everything looks so much better.
    • My recommendation is, just DO NOT CARE. Keep your focus on “nightdreaming” visualization, knowing that it will eventually turn into a LD and you will be just having fun :wink:

Disclaimer:
I am sure this is not something totally new, but on the other hand I have not seen a topic mentioning this specific path to LD, neither in the WILD topic / subtopics.
So I figure out I’d post it here, to help some fellow oneiroanaut in their Quest for Lucidity, and I named HVILD - Hypnagogic Visualization Induced Lucid Dream (as per naming conventions).
I am totally open to cancel the name if it’s already used or the same technique already had a name I was not aware of.

Any question / feedback, do not hesitate to post here, PM or e-mail me (address = forum nickname at tiscali dot it)

Wow, this kind of sounds like what I did the other day, it was actually my second LD, but my first time to actually try and have it happen.
Do you lay in a position that isn’t your normal sleeping position to help you stay awake longer. I remember that I to did this, don’t remember why, but it wasn’t how I usually fell asleep. I just laid really still and after a while HI started happening in a way it never had before, them some mega vibrations that kept increasing. I just waited for them to slow and did a RC and woke up in a LD in my bed. Do you know if my timing of the RC after the vibrations is what kept me from going into SP? I really don’t want to experience that and seems I just got to skip over that part.
I did wake up in my bed scared during my LD, these two boys were trying to scare me and I told them to leave but they wouldn’t, so I just got up and left myself, walked down my hallway, and boom, I was in a club/resturant basicly feeling like I was in a lucid playground and began my journey.
Any input or do you think I did your method?

Thanks for your answer !

Yes, it seems like you definitely did something similar.

I often start feeling numbness on my hands, rarely at my feet.
Since those sensations are quite mild, I easily manage to just ignore them, keeping focus only on the ongoing visualization.

Also, instead than doing RC, I just keep myself busy all the time, e.g. walk downtown or in a forest or in my dream house, look at people, or objects, or look at myself in a mirror, touch objects etc.
At one point, the images / sensations become strong and detailed enough that I surely know I am inside a LD.

Oh! It seems that HVILD can be very useful to me! (I feel like im having some problems with WILD lately! :gni: )

Im always stuck at the “waiting for the dream to start” stage, so I think that this could be the solution to that problem! (And you have had LOTS of WILD s so I must try it too!)

Im going to start using this tech so wish me luck~! :heart: :happy:

I really hope it works well for you :happy:

Do not hesitate to write here or PM me, if you wish for any clarification :smile:

Happy lucids !

I think you’ve coined the technique HVILD right