Ever since my first good WILD, I have been trying to have another WILD, but I haven’t managed it yet. Up until now, I have been having trouble with staying concious whilst falling asleep, but the various techniques I have been trying either just keep me awake until I get sick of trying them and then I just give up and fall asleep or just stay awake frustrated.
However, the technique which shows the most promise for me is the counting and saying “I’m dreaming” or something like that.
The two other main ones which I’ve unsuccessfully tried are:
1 - Concentrating on my breathing. I find this keeps me too concious and too aware of my physical body, so I find I don’t fall asleep doing this. I get extremely relaxed (I often use breathing to help me relax in the day) but I just don’t fall asleep.
2 - Sounds. The most recent one I tried, was where I made a CD featuring a sleep induction brainwave sound acompanied by a background sound like slow waves, and then once the brainwave sound faded out, the waves remained. I found the waves would wake me back up again. I don’t know whether I should have had the volumes set differently, but anyway, this method didn’t quite feel right anyway. Too forced? I don’t know.
But anyway, back to the other method which I think shows potential.
Counting whilst saying “I’m dreaming.” Although I haven’t had another WILD by using this, I feel I am getting closest with this, plus this was the method I used the last time I was sucessful. What I have noticed with this method, is that it seams to keep my mind almost just aware enough. I notice that my brain is somehow able to perform this function whilst simultatiously drifting off towards all kinds of random pre-sleep images and thoughts.
I tried this method this morning, and several times got to the light vibrations and felt myself drifting away whilst still slightly concious. This all somehow felt much better and closer to getting a WILD than what I had experienced with the other methods.
I even developed a certain rhythm to say it in, to help keep it going better. It goes like this. Think of a bouncey rhythm, and then say it in the rhythm like this:
1-I’m-dreaming-and-2-I’m-dreaming-and-3-I’m-dreaming-and…
19-I’m-dreaming-and-20-I’m-dreaming-21-I’m-dreaming-22-I’m-dreaming-23-I’m-dreaming-24-I’m-dreaming…
29-I’m-dreaming-and-30-I’m-dreaming-31-I’m-dreaming-32-I’m-dreaming…
Do you see what I mean? I put the and in there just to keep the rhythm on certain numbers where sylables in the number are different, for example, 20 has two sylables (twen-ty) whereas 21 has three sylables (twen-ty-one).
The idea behind this is simply to create a better flow, to enable my brain to do it more automatically and keep going without being distracted by the random images flying round my head.
Additional Notes:
I set my watch alarm for 4am, I have been varying how long I stay awake for to see what works. I often find that if I stay awake for too long, I just can’t get back to sleep. Sometimes I read for 10-15 minutes (or until I feel tired again). Sometimes I just go and take a pee and get straight back into bed. To be honest, I haven’t found much difference really. The only difference being that if I stay awake for half an hour or more and go on my computer or something, I find it very hard to get back to sleep. But staying awake for 10-15 minutes reading or just taking a pee and going straight back to bed, there seams to be no difference, the reading just delays attempting WILD.
…and finally:
I think I’m going to keep trying with WILD as opposed to other techniques, because I much prefer the idea of it. Previously, I got so sick of constantly doing reality checks to have a DILD or whatever. Personally I much prefer the idea of WILD, and I’m optamistic that I will be able to do it again if I keep trying.
Ed.