Hi there guys its me again. I've started averaging an LD a night now, and I am able to remember roughly 1-3 dream a night. I just want to state that the first thing I ever attempted for lucid dreaming was WILDing, sadly with little knowledge I attempted WILDing without WBTB for about a week.

After that week of failure, I started reading in-depth tutorials on this forum, I noticed a lot of my mistakes with WILDing, including the absence of WBTB. From there I've been trying on and off, still with no success. I'm very much worried of two facts, firstly that my initial week of failure has had substantial impact on my WILD dry-spell and secondly, that I am still WILDing incorrectly.

My method as of now is to wake up at 4:30pm which is roughly 5 and a half hours into my sleep cycle. I stay up for about 20 minutes, seems to be a good time, anything after that and I become too alert. Then I lay on my back and perform the Tense/Limp Relaxation Technique which works wonders. I used to start counting instantly, which I've now discovered is a mistake, now instead I wait and let my mind wander, problem with me, like others, is that I don't have any audio or hypnagogic queues for when to know I've hit stage 3 of sleep.

Its worth noting that I once accidentally rolled over when I woke up and think I experienced a semi-DIELD. I saw a hypnagogic pattern in my head and felt SP. From that experience I know what SP feels like, so even without the queues the second I feel the vibrations confirming SP's onset, I begin my count. The problem is I'm often easily taken aback my hypnic jerks and I am very easily distracted by the feeling my breathing is stopping, even though I'm relaxed and not panicking or over-excited I feel it hard to remain distracted, this whole conflict seems to keep me far too alert. Coupled by the fact I'm worried about being too alert . More often or not I just get annoyed by the fact I'm not reaching SP and just roll over and sleep.

I'm just looking for some more detailed information on what each stage feels like, I know it differs from person to person, but its hard for me to know when to perform my count. Plus I cannot for the life of me, keep myself distracted when I notice my breathing (its fine when I don't pay attention to it). Also are there any tips on what a good count or method of distraction would be, I struggle with visualizing a dream-scene, yet I still feel counting is insufficient; if you guys could share your methods and success that would be awesome