Thread: Totally Beginner, can't fall asleep

There are many induction techniques and not all of them involve a mental effort while trying to fall back asleep.

But if you are trying what you mention, try to make sure you are implementing those with a component that is relaxing or meditative. Whatever you do, your main focus is to relax, and a mantra or visualization should be the secondary focus (at least try it this way). Your sleep itself is still the most important component of lucid dreaming.

For example, try breath in and out slower and slower every time, don't rush it. focus on your inhale and exhale. with every exhale feel like your head is sinking further into your bed.

Binural beats can definitely help fall back asleep.

LucidSage covered the main points.

When you read the directions for MILD or other approaches for attaining LDs, they usually start with the instruction: "1. Relax". This is really important and should not be skipped. I know my own attitude in the beginning was "yeah, relax, blah blah blah, c'mon let's get to the good stuff..." and paid the price with many wakeful nights doing SSILD and/or MILD. However most guides fail to state what most LDers in training eventually come to find (after much initial insomnia): that the relaxation is not a stage to be performed and forgotten, but rather it must be maintained all the way to sleep along with any mantras/visualizations/etc. Because, if our minds are too active, we can't fall asleep.

So try to fuse the relaxation together with the MILD/SSILD mental activities, alternate between them, or if you can, hold on to and even deepen the relxaation while performing them. It takes practice, for sure, to get good at this, but leaning how to sleep while slightly mentally active is an invaluable skill for LDing.

Originally Posted by LucidSage

There are many induction techniques and not all of them involve a mental effort while trying to fall back asleep.

Can you point me one that I could use?

Originally Posted by akaFTS

Can you point me one that I could use?

You can do MILD just at bedtime or just during the day.

Thanks for expanding FryingMan, good stuff.

akaFTS, if you want you can also try guided audio (whether before sleep or after waking up mid dream and going back to sleep). The cd from Stephen LaBerge's original book on lucid dreaming has a track with a sort of guided sequence that both primes you for a lucid dream as well as being so relaxing that will help you fall asleep. That one has work great for me.

I'm sure there are others as well.

I am on board with the OP. I've tried WBTB and WILD a couple of times and I just can't get there. If I want I can sleep, but I fail at doing these tutorials. I just sit there RELAXING, but I try to stay awake, I feel weird sensations as it seems my body is disconnecting. I do the roll sensation. I've tried a bunch of things, but I end up just sitting there awake.

No offense, but the tutorials and explanations don't help much. It's like "relax, but stay alert, fall asleep, but stay awake...". It's like someone trying to explain something that has no words. It only makes sense if you've done it already.

I'm going to stick with DILD for now, going from wake to REM seems really complicated and frustrating.

I am totally with you regarding the conflicting instructions. I never understood the stay awake while falling asleep thing. The one I always found silly was something that went like "keep your mind awake while letting your body fall asleep". Your body doesn't fall asleep, sleeping and waking is a function of the mind, so that is a bit ridiculous.

For now, stay with what works for you or at least what feels easier to do (whether it worked yet or not). But if you do find yourself woken up from a dream in the middle of the night, give this a try: take 30 - 60 seconds to run through details from the dream, trying to recall as much as you can in about 30 seconds and then imagine yourself falling back asleep into that dream and being lucid and aware in that last scene you woke up from. After that, let go of all effort and just go back to sleep like normal. (30-60 seconds is just arbitrary numbers indicating a short time. it can be 20 seconds or 2 minutes etc')

But again, the important thing in this experiment, is to go back to sleep normally in a way that will allow you to actually fall asleep again.

The frustration with tutorials, etc. comes from the fact that WILD is a very unnatural act that our minds and bodies are programmed *against* doing. Dreaming is so personal, nobody can "get in your head" to give you fine tuning advice while you're doing it, so the tutorials at best will seem vague since that's all that they *can* be. They're just general guides to hopefully get you close to the right place in your experiments, and then when you experience things for yourself, you can continue the fine tuning in ways that makes sense to you and works for you. Some people just don't "get" WILD -- I haven't yet myself!

I had this when I first started out. I think it's quite normal. You need to try and let go a bit more, I know it's exciting waiting for a lucid dream to happen but if you're too excited you'll just get insomnia. I would try more WBTB if I was you, it's much easier to get back to sleep if you get up in the middle of the night and your body wants to go to sleep.