Problems with Salivation

Lately, I’ve begun attempting WILD. Everything usually goes pretty smoothly to the HI and suddenly I become very conscious of my need to swallow the saliva that has collected in my mouth. What’s worse is that once I’ve done this, it tends to stick in my throat. I end up having to move and restart everything.

Any tips that can help me overcome this. I’ve been focusing on putting my attention on something more stable than my breathing (which is often the cause of the problem).

Don’t you hate that! geeze, it’s so annoying.

sounds like you are doing the best advice I think, and that’s trying to not focus on it.

I would make sure you drink plenty of fluids through the day, and stay well hydrated. It’s very easy to be dehydrated and not realize. This may help your mouth stay properly moist.

You should try a few different sleeping positions, and find one that allows you to swallow more easily if needed, or a position to just let your mouth hang open.

I think you are already on the right track, and should learn to redirect your attention. I would suggest counting your breath, but you mention that focusing on your breath seems to make it worse. Maybe you can try try a fan in your room to focus on, or a clock’s tick tock.

It’s annoying at first, but you can reduce that problem a great deal with practice.

Also you might try listening to the ringing in your ears.

DeMoN likes his post count :o

I have the opposite problem. My mouth gets extra dry. You could try focusing more on a repeated “Mind Movie”

It’s a classical problem with a lot of relaxation techniques too ( in yoga, meditation, etc. ).
If you want to feel your breathing, you can feel it in your chest and abdomen, not in your nose and throat.
The best is not to focus on the problem. Don’t think it’s a big problem and it will disappear progressively.

I get the same need to swallow, but it only happend when I try to WILD when going to bed. WILD works much better when you have slept for a few hours, and it happend much faster. The best way to WILD is to not move when you wake up during the night and then you just have to focus on staying awake.

I usually don’t even notice the SP or any of the other annoying things if I manage to WILD after sleeping a few hours. I just try to focus on staying somewhat awake and when I get HI I only focus on that and then the HI starts getting more vivid and suddenly I’m in a dream.

For me it’s quite hard to keep my focus on the HI but lately I have had quite a lot of success with it. For me focusing on HI and being able to WILD from that is sort of like having a daydream. You have to stay completely focused on the HI scene without loosing consciousness and falling asleep. And you should also not think about the real world.

And the need to swallow will go away with practice, just try to not think about it. And if you can’t you could try swallowing before the SP/HI gets intense and then you might not need to swallow for atleast a while.
Good Luck :smile:

Dm7 wrote a good post about WILDing and I think it was in the big WILD topic, she kept going in and out of SP for several hours.

That’s exactly when the problem occurs. I never noticed it using MILD, but because I’ve got nothing better to do when going to sleep at night, I use WILD. Ever since then, it’s been exactly as you described.

I’ll drink a couple of glasses all through the day. I wonder if it might be a new problem, because up to about last week I was doing that regularly anyway.

Salivation and the need to swallow really sucks. Once I started getting conscious about it while trying to relax on my bed it got worse, and worse and I had to keep swallowing all the time. Sort of became a compulsive disorder :sad:

Had it for a few weeks, but much better now. Really ruins the relaxation and concentration.

Best thing as said is not to think about it, but that’s easier said than done :cry:

For me… my mouth goes completely dry when Im close to sleep, unless I move it alot…

And wouldnt drinking alot make this problem worse rather than better?

i’ve found that concentrating on my body inhibits my WILD.
(i can’t WILD, had one accidentally)

you must focus on your HI, or toughts or something like that…
try to visualise something, listen to something, look at the blackness (or HI) in front of your eyes…

you could try some mantra or something, but when i use mantra’s i often synchronize them with my breathing (and thus concentrating on my body)

i think with practice you can let your attention on your body go and succesfully WILD…
i’m willing to practice too but my dream recall is messed up due to a random wake up/bed time…

(you really should have the same bedtime every day)

sweet dreams,
Isaac

It’s really a problem; I sometimes cannot fall asleep because of this thing for an hour or more, even if I am not going to have a WILD or something. But I, like JaRoD, noticed that with WBTB/WILD such things interfere much less than in the evening. It is at least true for me, though I am not sure it was not a coincidence… I am by no means a WBTB guru. :shy: So, if you never had such problem before, you can just leave WILD attempts to morning. But I think it would be rather difficult just to swallow the saliva and switch the attention to hypnagogic imagery or something else… At least, I never was able to… The problem is that salivation is controllable by the brain, but only half-controllable. You can start it, intentionally or just having thought about it, or about food, or about your mouth, – but you cannot stop it intentionally. While a person is swallowing, s/he naturally thinks about it, as long as there is nothing better to think about, and it this second a new batch is already coming, so a sort of cybernetic positive callback appears… :sad: For me the only way to get out of it is sacrificing half an hour of sleeping time and switching to something more absorbing. It can be reading a new book (not a cookbook, naturally), or watching TV, or thinking out a story with a big dialog and performing it in my mind. The main trick is to go back to bed having completely forgotten why on earth you had had to leave it.