WILD sounds nice, but...

As a former researcher and practitioner of this technique, I have to say it varies per person. But you need practice, and patience. ^.^ I quit cuz it was scary.

I’ll post more later

Hi,

Okay, I’m new, and while I LD heavily, mine always come/came naturally. So thats my caveat – lack of experience with this technique – but I just do not get how a WILD induced lucid experience is lucid dreaming!

Dreams are the mental images that occur during REM sleep. Lucid dreams are self-awareness during REM sleep.

Lucid participation in a WILD induced image is definitely something, I’m sure, but it seems more like a technique my therapist taught me which is inducing slight hypnagogic/self-hypnosis, and then seeking and querying your inner self helper. (if you want to know more, just ask, but for now I consider it off topic, but no its not the same as asking “whassup” of a dream character :wink: .)

So IMHO, a WILD Image, whatever it is, is not self-awareness during REM sleep, because unless you are seriously (days!) sleep deprived, you don’t enter REM sleep immediately on falling awake (awake? I mean asleep. I get so confused about the difference. Um, seriously :cool: . )

So WILD lucidity is not lucid dreaming, I think.

And I don’t think this is just a semantic difference, either, I think these are fundamentally diferent FELT experiences.

To provide an explanatory example, I never knew about Reality Checks until I found this site. Several nights ago I was in a dream, looked at my hands, and my left hand kind of melted. My {dream] jaw [figuratively] dropped, and I went wow! I’m dreaming! And then went off about my dream business. This was a low level lucidity that I had never experienced before. Usually I just POP into lucidity, and its like I am totally awake, but I can hold on to the dream.

Which is to say, this new lower level of lucidity is cool, its lucid dreaming, but it feels very different than the lucid dreaming I’m used to.

And when its a self-induced trance state – I just can’t see how its comparable to true lucid dreaming. Which doesn’t make it trivial or unimportant – but it does make it a different sort of thing.

I think. ?

I’m not sure what you mean, but when WILD is done successfully, the person stops feeling their real body and goes straight into a real dream.

What is “true” lucid dreaming?

You don’t enter rem right away. You sit there for like, two f-ing hours! And what you experience are not just images, for those are hypnogogic. You experience a FULL ON DREAM. Same lucidity as I ever had using anything else. I will defend my former technique ^.^

Thank you Remot

Hi,

Please, I’m not attacking either the technique or the validity of the experience. Really, I’m asking, because I don’t know, and it seems like a different thing to me…

What is at “true” lucid dream? Like I said, one answer is – a dream is the body of images that occur during REM sleep, lucid dreaming is self-awareness during REM sleep.

Which is not to say that there are not a wide variety of lucid experiences that are powerful, valuable, etc. But I was wondering out loud if they are not variations on the theme, rather than the thing itself.

I’ve done a WILD sort of technique before a few times, and had a very powerful experience, but I don’t consider it lucid dreaming. I consider it something else in the spectrum.

But the fundamental reason for my post is to ask, because I haven’t given this experience as much focused thought and tabulating as many of you have.

SG

As far as hypnagogic hallucinations, what i get is the weird sort of color blobs (i cant figure out the color either, im thinking like a range from light blue to deep purple). Wow, it takes me forever to get sounds (if at all). But when i try to pull a WILD, i get in real deep, beyond blobs to actual form. I forcibly create and imagine what it would look like for me to get up, walk around my room and mess with stuff in my room, walk out into the hall, around house, mess with stuff there, etc. Progressively i get more and more deeper, it feels more and more real and i forget about my body. Its hard to do this at first but it gets easier and faster with time and experience, it just takes a lot of initial work and patience. At least for me :tongue:

One WILD that i can remember actually was pretty low lucidity. Strange, i never realized this but my spontaneous LD’s (recog of the dream feeling) seem to be the most lucid for me.

I’ve had LD’s where I simply become lucid for no reason in the middle of a dream, and I’ve had WILD’s.

As I understand it, a WILD is simply where you remain conscious as you fall asleep and go into a dream, where a normal LD you become conscious after you’re already in the dream.

For me, a few seconds after WILD into a dream, it’s no different than a normal dream.

Daedalus

=> First don’t expect anything while practicing WILD. Everyone experanceses WILD diferently.

=> Just allow things to happen don’t force anything.

=> The part about WILD that everyone misunderstands is that you don’t have to be alert as you fall asleep. But really you want to pick one small thing to focus on and only pay attention to that. You have to let everything else go. Ignore everything else. You have to have only a slight awareness to crossover.

Check out the big WILD topic part 11.
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I’m in the same boat as you are stuntgoddess. I have LD’d many times but it has always come without me trying, and the “popping” as opposed to doing a “reality check”

I have my own theory about it…I think that some people, for various reasons, actually do things like reality checks and WILD without thinking about it. I don’t know a whole lot about the subject as I just stumbled onto knowledge of lucid dreams this week even though I’ve had them off and on for about four years.

I don’t see how you can say using WILD is not the same as Lucid Dreaming tho. The experience and end result is the same, although the order is messed around a little to allow you to have more control over the frequency of your LDs. In a lucid dream, something “pops” in your conciousness. Whether this comes naturally or whatever, most often its a reality check of some sort. From my experience all WILD does is keep your conciousness just awake enough to be able to “pop” itself in almost all the time…resulting in more frequent LD’s than with the RC poppage method.

I got a good bit of experience with WILDing…stumbled into by accident a few years ago and just now know the name for it. I could never get to sleep, so I eventually developed this relaxation technique to get to sleep where I would think about “nothingness” Kind of hard to explain…I guess its like…when you look into a dark room, your eyes perceive nothing, although the room is there. Likewise I’m thinking into that same perception of nothingness, while my concsciousness still managed to be there. This allowed me to get to sleep easier, but because I unknowingly was keeping my consciousness awake on a very basic level it “popped” me into the LD.

I never knew or thought of doing all the things I now know are possible however, and basically all I did was talk to people and explore my dream orld in comfort because I knew there were no consequences.

I’m now working on the flying stuff, but run into the problem of waking up do to excitement…but I didn’t manage to make it about two feet off the ground last night so I’m happy :smile:

Dreams are not restricted to just REM sleep. Dreams can and often occur right at the onset of sleep. I’m sure many people can share stories of being woken up while trying to fall asleep, and remembering a short dream they were in before being disturbed.

WILD is my favorite technique and dream addict is correct that you do dream in NREM sleep. However, you will find people who practice MILD, DILD who can LD at will. All the techniques work and no one is superior to the other in my opinion.

My two cents:

WILD is a true lucid dream because when you wake up in the middle of the night you are able to slip into REM in just a couple minutes.

ALso for WILD you are just staying consious as you fall asleep. In the sense of it being a trance, it is not as you DO enter REM sleep.

And yes I am a MILD freak but I have practiced it have have LD’s at will with that one.

Lucid participation in a WILD induced image is definitely something, I’m sure, but it seems more like a technique my therapist taught me which is inducing slight hypnagogic/self-hypnosis, and then seeking and querying your inner self helper. (if you want to know more, just ask, but for now I consider it off topic, but no its not the same as asking “whassup” of a dream character

I’d like some more detail on that, if possible, please.

I am experienced with hypnosis and no the light trance you are talking about is not WILD. I suggest that you read the big WILD topic or better yet try and do a WILD. You will clearly see that it is not the same thing as what you are talking about.

Happy Dreaming

BTW- People do dream in non REM sleep.

you can enter REM straight away if you wake up and then go back to bed after you have been asleep for 6 hours or so so WILD is probably best used then.

Well, yes that is the easiest time for people. Mostly because you are already very relaxed and can slip through the hypnogia faster that way. However WILD can be done at any time.

Beat me to it, c-mon…
I was going to say that once you have slept for an hour or more, it is possible to go back to sleep and dream straight away (whether doing a WILD or not).

The phases of sleep can be an interesting read and are related.
I’ve managed to WILD (no paralysis) quite a few times, once even from a waking state in the afternoon or evening (did a variation on the relaxation technique in ETWLD).

WILD can be done anytime. There are many people who do it at bed time without prior sleep. WBTB is just easier but, it is not the only way of doing WILD.

milod - How successful are you at WILDing anytime you want? (Just curious.)

I have had good success with bed time and WBTB but not great success with naps. That is my major weakness. No matter what I do I just can’t WILD with a nap. I either get stuck in the hypnoia or fall asleep which some times results in a DILD. I think the problem is that I don’t get to practice napping very often. My goal is to eventually learn to LD completely at will.