I found something interesting this morning.

I tried a FILD, which is one of those "keep yourself awake 'til dream time" WILD techniques, and it didn't work. I gave myself about 2 or 2 1/2 hours to do it from the time I feel back asleep after waking myself from the first 3 1/2 hours of sleep. (I remembered snippets of a dream from just before waking from that...nonlucid, with lots of space images due to my Google Sky space dream incubation before going to bed.) The closest I got was getting into this weird semi-dream state with vague images, vague words, and me making this repetitive sound like a small animal in distress. My throat was dry as a desert by then, and I was soon no longer comfortable to try to sleep, and it was just about time for me to get up for a second WBTB anyway. So, I got up, drank, peed, played on Google Sky to try to re-incubate an image of space flight to dream with, and went back to bed about 30 or 40 minutes later.

Then I started having hypnagogic images or short dream sequences of being on this tippy boat, and feeling my body tip as the boat tipped and turned. And then I started to wonder if those tippy feelings might be the distortions of sleep paralysis. So I decided to "surrender" to the physical sensations, and I started to feel those strong tingling sensations that precede my rare WILDs. I repeated to myself that everything I was about to see was a dream. And after a few minutes of waiting for the dream, initially crude and hypnagogia-like with the imagery being weak and almost breaking up when I tried to get up and do stuff, to stabilize, I eventually got myself on a lucid dream journey that ultimately led to my having a satisfactory space flight experience. Good enough to knock it off my lucid goal list this time.

So...I'm starting to wonder if REM rebound after a long, failed WILD technique could prove to be the basis for a WILD technique (or general LD technique) in itself. Because, thus far, I've never been able to WILD except when I felt that tingly onset of sleep paralysis first. And for that, my body has to be particularly desperate for REM sleep and fall into it quickly after falling asleep. I think the FILD attempt may have worked by allowing me to enter light stages of non-REM sleep and preventing me from reaching REM, leaving me groggy and setting the stage for a REM rebound after a WBTB.

I might try this again a few times and see what happens. Hopefully, if I get repeated good results, I can one day write a tutorial on "How to Turn a Failed WILD into a Successful WBTB" or something like that.

I know I had at least one other lucid off of a long, failed WILD attempt, but it was not a WILD, it was a DILD of a WILD.