brian8u123 wrote:
Alright so second night with this technique and no success   I'm gonna keep trying though!   If I can master this then it would be a lot easier to LD in my opinion.  Just one question: During WBTB's I literally drift off during the first cycle, sometimes before finishing the sight part of it.  Do you suggest finishing at least one cycle, or can I just let my mind take me wherever it wants to, whenever?

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dB_FTS was correct in his advice. Also you should stay awake a bit more before doing the exercise. While drifting off is desirable it should not occur during the first couple of cycles and should not prevent you from finishing at least 4 cycles.  

I tried this with WBTB, and it was great succes which means i had a lucid dream . This will be my new main technique, for me it works really great and is so much easier to fall asleep after this + takes less time to execute then WILD or MILD.

Just got a question, during second night of SSILDing I had a FA, and it happend 4 times in row, so it was rather bad. Everytime scenario was the same i sat on the brink of my bed, did RC, boom, black screen, FA again. Shouldn't i got lucid after RC? Is there anyway to prevent chain-FA?

          Current LD goal(s): Create Dream Workshop and upgrade it over summer.  

Hey! I've been kind of out of the loop on trying to get a LD since I moved and got a new job, but I've been trying it again and tried SSILD last night. But I did it a different way than what was said to do and got an interesting result.

First I started off with a mantra telling myself that I would wake up at 2 in the morning so I could do a WBTB. It's been working for me lately so it happened no problem. Then I decided to go through a couple cycles just to get myself used to them, I knew nothing was going to happen so I didn't expect anything to.

That's when I had 2 FA's in a row (almost like cytariel but without the blackout) where I woke up, turned on my lamp (though there wasn't any light which should've been a nice little sign that I was dreaming), grabbed my DJ and started to write my dreams. Then I realized I was dreaming, woke up but went into another FA.

The thing is no matter how many times I remind myself, write it down, I can never remember to do RC's when I'm awake so I obviously didn't do one in my FA.

          Current LD goal(s): To have an LD  

I am going to start trying this method properly but i have one question about it.

As its stated its best with WBTB i don't feel i have the ability to get up for my normal time and then fall asleep while doing this, however i ALWAYS get up for the bathroom after awakening, what would you advise i do during WBTB, just go straight back to bed or stay up for a bit?

Thanks
          Current LD goal(s): have more and lengthier LD's.  

I want to get used to doing SSILD (maybe with MILD) every night/morning. I think I should meditate a bit too. The problem is my mind seems to wander way too much. I start the first cycle and before I change to hearing I'm lost in thoughts. If I'm lying on my side I might even just fall right asleep. So I guess I need a little more practice.

Anyway, about FA's. I PM'ed cosmic.iron some time ago asking if he had tips for my premature awakenings which happen so frustratingly frequently in my LD's and one thing he said in his reply that got my attention was about FA's (which for some reason I hadn't even considered). I just couldn't believe the possiblity of these awakenings being FA's! In most of them I'd just fall asleep and enter another LD, but that means nothing about it being or not an FA. Actually, if I was still dreaming it might explain how I entered another LD so quickly. I rarely RC when I wake up, but a week ago I remembered to do so when I had one of these awakenings and it was a FA! I even cried in the dream, thinking maybe all of these awakenings I've been struggling with for a really long time were actually FA's. That would be something ... revolutionary. So I REALLY want to get in the habit of RC'ing instead of staying still and trying to DEILD.

FA'ers of LD4all unite! Sorry for the wall of useless text  

Lucid Wolf wrote:What say all of you?  What should I have done differently?

Crawled around on the floor?

Run out of the room as fast as possible?  (I did this during my first SSILD lucid and it worked.)

Stop being a weenie!  Shout "increase lucidity" and just deal with an upset DC wife.  

Something else?-------

I'd say all of the above, item number 3 in particular, LOL.  The other things I'd recommend:

1. Find a switch on the wall and turn on the light. Granted, the light may not get turned on, but "something" will. We discovered this neat trick through a lot of experiments conducted on our forum. When you flip the light switch, some part of your dream always gets turned on, be it the room, the other rooms, or some place outside. For example, we have seen night turns day, stars coming out, street lamps turned on, and even lightnings that correspond to each flip of the switch! After you do this, your dreamscape will become bright and stable.

2. Imagine a cliff behind you and step backward to fall into it. This is a very fast and effective way to change the dream scene.

3. Turn on your mobile phone and use that to light up the place... no I'm not kidding.

4. Grab and examine some objects closely. This works well on restoring your visions. Very handy for those dreadful instances when you experience a total blackout.

Hope this helps.  

Very interesting technique !

I am not very good at LD but tried it yesterday with immediate success ! looks promising.

My lucidity was low though and the recall is poor enough.

Gone to bed at 11pm woke up at 4.30am (no alarm, I often wake up during the night). I did stay awake like 5 minutes before doing the cycles like 4 or 5 times. Then I turn back to my favorite sleeping position, felt asleep and had 3 FAs, which I believe is quite a lot. I Managed to do RC on each one which made me becomes lucid. Unfortunatly, as said before the recall is not very high, and the lucidity seemed very poor compared to WILD.

Will try it tonight as well and see if the success rate is that high (look promising by seeing all reports on this forums as well as others !)

edit: I was about to forgot, some people reported nightmares which I experienced too using SSILD. Do you guys think it's related ?

Regards,

Alexkid  

Note to self: SSILD is awesome.

I went to bed at 00:20 and woke up at 3:15 (puppy crying). When I went back to bed I tried SSILD and I have to say this was probably the first time I've actually been able to do the whole thing correctly, that is, without losing track every 2 seconds . I did 5 cycles and whenever I lost focus it wasn't really hard to get back on track and keep going. I didn't see, hear or feel anything at all. When I was done I rolled on my side and tried to fall asleep as fast as possible. Next thing I know I got this lucid feeling and I do a nose RC. My level of lucidity wasn't the best, but it was pretty vivid and stable. I think what made it less awesome than it could have been was the fact that my DR hasn't been that great recently, so it feels like I forgot many parts. It was still great, though!  

alexkid wrote:
Very interesting technique !

I am not very good at LD but tried it yesterday with immediate success ! looks promising.

My lucidity was low though and the recall is poor enough.

Gone to bed at 11pm woke up at 4.30am (no alarm, I often wake up during the night). I did stay awake like 5 minutes before doing the cycles like 4 or 5 times. Then I turn back to my favorite sleeping position, felt asleep and had 3 FAs, which I believe is quite a lot. I Managed to do RC on each one which made me becomes lucid. Unfortunatly, as said before the recall is not very high, and the lucidity seemed very poor compared to WILD.

Will try it tonight as well and see if the success rate is that high (look promising by seeing all reports on this forums as well as others !)

edit: I was about to forgot, some people reported nightmares which I experienced too using SSILD. Do you guys think it's related ?

Regards,

Alexkid
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I have seen hundreds of report, and based on what I saw there shouldn't be any relationship between SSILD and nightmares. One possibility, though, is that sometimes after performing SSILD one may suddenly enter SP or an SP-like state while asleep, and for some that can be a little scary and may turn into a nightmare as lucidity fades.  

Okapis Rule wrote:
I tried this the night before last and last night.  The night before last I woke up at 5:15 and did WBTB for about fifteen minutes before doing this method.  I did it and was able to concentrate well, but I wasn't able to fall back asleep before 6:30, when I had to get up.  Last night, I woke up around the same time and tried it without WBTB, figuring I would be able to fall back asleep better.  I wasn't able to concentrate as much, but I got through the exercise and tried to go back to sleep.  However, I wasn't able to fall back asleep until about 6:15, and when I woke up at 8 I hadn't remembered any dreams that may have been influenced by it.

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Please read carefully the bottom section of the article, which describes the reasons for not being able to fall asleep. Also, do not "think" about falling asleep. If you are worried about it you may just get what you fear for  The cycling actually works very well as a way to make you feel very sleepy, if conducted correctly.  

Hi,

Thank you for your support cosmic.iron.

I did SPs before, this its likely not to induce nightmares when it does happens to me, not affraid ! It must be out of a coincidence, I think.

I tried it again, twice. The first time I thought I could get rid of the 5mn awake step but I almost felt asleep failing at doing even 1 cycle

The second time I respected all the steps you mentionned and had 1 FE in which I managed to do an RC and became lucid again (but I lost it )

PS : sorry for my bad english though, I am french

Regards,

alexkid  

I've been trying this technique very casually for maybe a month now. I hadn't been having any success, I've fallen asleep during cycles, after them, been too awake some nights and tried to shift into a WILD a couple of times after seeing things during the cycles.

I wake up during the night almost every night and so like I sometimes do I decided to give the technique a go. This time I see things during the cycles. I heard voices, vivid images appeared in my head. Normally I'd think "I can WILD here, lets do it." but this time I decided to just to keep going with the cycles.

I think I made it to the third cycle when I fell asleep. I then found myself in bed and instantly knew I was dreaming, so I sat up and checked my fingers just to be sure and that was it. It wasn't a WILD since I know I was asleep for some time.

Instead I think it worked for me because by not trying to WILD I didn't become too excited and I was able to fall asleep. I had the longest LD I can remember thanks to this technique.

Later that same night I had a FA but didn't realize.... so I still have some work to do.

I'm curious to know if many other people actually see things during the cycles. Usually I don't see anything before I fall asleep (which I understand is perfectly normal) but I don't seem to have any success when that is that case.

Probably just need more practice  

Hey,



I already sent cosmic.iron a PM on my results, but i thought that perhaps other people might want to know.

I am used to getting SP and this technique is making me more familiar with it, therefore I am less afraid when it happens. The first night I used SILD I got SP twice. The second night I used it I got what cosmic.iron believes was a FA with SP or a hybrid of awakenings. Whichever it was, it led me to have a very awesome lucid dream! I flew successfully for the first time

I was content with the lucid dream, so I didnt try the technique again until a couple of days later. Trying SILD again, I had a FA and also SP. However, this time I didnt convert it to a lucid dream successfully.

Anyways, I just want to say that this technique is awesome and it works great! With more practice, I think it will be even more successful. I just want to add that, since it important to sort off "fall asleep" while doing this technique, it would be good to know what your mind does when your start to fall asleep. Personally, I know I am doing well with the technique when I start losing focus, space out a bit, and go back to doing the technique. When I space out again, it is more vivid than just random thoughts, and I know I'm close to falling asleep and doing a successful SILD!    

          Current LD goal(s): Find Spirit Animal  

My mother turned into a nut. I was eating nuts and panicked cause i thought i ate her.

Brain why didn't you react!
          Current LD goal(s): Reach a level 5 lucid dream  

I tried this method this morning and I ended up falling asleep almost immediately as I started! I'm kinda new to this stuff, so I'll keep trying to be more focused. Any suggestions to make sure I don't just fall asleep before I can do a few cycles?

          Current LD goal(s): Some sort of lucid result  

This is great! Definately giving this a shot tonight!  

I tried this last night but I fall asleep after few seconds without any result. I decided to try it again this night. Do you think that if I drink some swings of cofee before I return to bed it will be better?? Or I couldn't be able to sleep??

          Current LD goal(s): learn something about myself  

cosmic.iron wrote:
ghanemhaithem wrote:
but why does it work   ,i don't seem to understand the point of it,anyways,this tech is going to have a place in my program,we shall see  

if i may ask,what was your name in DV ?
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Let me give you one theory which I like the most (I'm not saying it is THE theory. After all, we know so little about these things in general, so it is always better to stay curious and modest than pretending we know it all.)

First let me provide a brief overview about the Focus Point model of our consciousness. Our consciousness is a vast and seamless "entity" (for lack of better terms) which covers a wide spectrum of "areas." These areas include our waking state, dream, everything in between and beyond (higher state of consciousness). Just like how camera lense works, "focusing" on an area makes that area appear clearer, and other areas become blurry. Once it's completely in focus, it becomes the focal point of our "self-awareness". In this model, falling asleep and entering dreams is essentially the result of our focus shifting into the dream area. What we typically see as a slow and gradual process (falling asleep) can in fact happen in an instant if you could manage to shift your focus quickly. Whether or not this has any scientific basis I truly do not know. However, through years of practice I can indeed do this shift "manually" and sometimes extremely quickly -- shifting from complete waking state (with small degrees of controllable physical movements still present at the time of shift) to other states in mere seconds. One interesting state is the intermediate state between waking and dreaming. In this state, our self-awareness is no longer confined in our physical body, but it has not yet entered the "dreamland" and assumed a "dream body." Instead, it exists in pure intangible, shapeless state. Under this condition you can proceed to form a dream deliberately, or re-focus to move to a higher state of consciousness. This state is also extremely "fragile" because with but the slightest focus change you will return to the physical. In fact, it is not uncommon to be able to feel and command both the physical and mental at the same time, and that can produce some truly amazing results! Okay let's not get carried away, LOL. Anyway, because our physical input and output are not fully "shielded" from us at this fragile state, our "attention" can be rather easily distracted. For example, sudden sounds, abrupt change of ambient lights, physical touches, and so on. When they happen we inevitably "pay attention" to them and as a result we change our Focus Point back to the waking state.

As you can see from the above, the way to move our Focus Point around is by "paying attention". If we pay a lot of attention to the physical then we remain physical. Likewise if we pay more attention to things beyond physical then we are moving the focus point of our self-awareness toward them much closer. That, is the theory behind SSILD.

During the SSILD cycles, the first one is almost entirely loaded with the physical. You stare at the blackness behind your closed eyelids, that is physical. If your room is not completely dark you may even see the outside light, and that's even more physical. You listen, and your ears are filled with outside noises -- fans humming, wind blowing, and all that weird stuff. You try to feel and all you could feel is your bodily sensations -- blanket rubbing against your skin, some itches, and that horrible backache, etc and etc. However, as you do more cycles, you may start to notice that these external sensations begin to fade, and some "internal" ones begin to appear. The more you cycle, the more attention you are paying to the internal sensations, and less attention are being paied to the external/physical ones. And that, moves your focus point closer to other areas in your consciousness. Think of this as a gentle massage of the mind. You are loosening the grips of the physical and warming up your mind for the more fun stuff.

Then you fall asleep. There are now more chances for you to become lucid in dreams because you have brought more focus/self-awareness with you. Or you may wake up into a false awakening. I suspect this is due to the fact that we all wake up multiple times at the end of each sleep cycle, and immediately fall asleep again. Since our focus point has shifted away from the physical so much during the exercise, when we briefly wake up we don't have the necessary physical input so our mind simply makes it up for such occasions and immediately goes to sleep again.

Sometimes we do just wake up for real. However, our link with the physical world is still very loose due to the exercise, and thus we have much better chance to manually shift our focus at this stage. This is very powerful stuff. Once you can utilize this, you will almost be able to achieve 100% success with the technique.

Additional note: I always encourage doing SSILD in totally relaxed, lazy manner, and allow your mind to drift into a trance. The trance allows you to relax very quickly and divert your attention from the externals. People often run into problems with SSILD because they try so hard to bring out the sensations, and all that does is to glue their attentions to the external ones. Traditional meditation/relaxation techniques do not mix in well either, because focusing on relaxing your body is effectively, well, focusing on the physicals.

I hope this explains it rather than causing more confusion, LOL. Again, I must stress that this Focus Point model is just one way to look at this "consciousness" thing, and by no means I'm pitching it as a "fact". It will be a lot more useful if you simply treat it as a "tool". And in that case, it works wonderfully.

Ps. My DV forum user ID is "cosmiciron". I no longer participate there outside the scope of SSILD related discussions.
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i read it,and now,it's time for some questions  

1-you said,The more you cycle, the more attention you are paying to the internal sensations, and less attention are being paied to the external/physical ones.

but,as we are cycling,aren't we paying attention to our external/physical sensations every time we start a new cycle,you did said that we have to at the blackness behind your closed eyelids....etc,we keep doing this in each cycle,right?

or we are supposed to do something else after internal sensations  begin to appear?

2-how many cycles i'am supposed to do before going to sleep,and if i don't notice any internal sensations,should i just keep on going till i do?

3-you said that i should just use it as a "tool",does that mean that i can have success with it even if i don't know the Purpose of it.

thanx in advance   ,and sorry if i caused any Disturbance.  

Hey, I have a question if you don't mind.

So, I continued doing the SSILD technique, and had a few more lucid dreams and FA. However, I am now pretty convinced that when I do SSILD I either get SP or get SP in a FA. Its pretty confusing lol. So far, I have had successful lucid dreams with this technique when I have SP with a FA, but there are sometimes when I have SP with FA but can't exit my body. The normal techniques I would use to exit SP into a lucid dream/OBE don't work all the time when in a FA and I was wondering if you have any suggestions as to have a lucid dream with the FA and SP seeing as how its pretty complex. Thanks in advance!

          Current LD goal(s): Find Spirit Animal  

Lucere2157 wrote:
Hey, I have a question if you don't mind.

So, I continued doing the SSILD technique, and had a few more lucid dreams and FA. However, I am now pretty convinced that when I do SSILD I either get SP or get SP in a FA. Its pretty confusing lol. So far, I have had successful lucid dreams with this technique when I have SP with a FA, but there are sometimes when I have SP with FA but can't exit my body. The normal techniques I would use to exit SP into a lucid dream/OBE don't work all the time when in a FA and I was wondering if you have any suggestions as to have a lucid dream with the FA and SP seeing as how its pretty complex. Thanks in advance!

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A false awakening is just like a lucid dream, so an SP within an FA is essentially an illusion which is no different than being unable to fly or walking through walls. The method I find most effective in this situation is to focus on another place or object. For example, you could focus on the doorway of your room. A few seconds later you will find yourself standing in front of it!  

DaveTheJoker wrote:
I posted this on the other forum but I don't think you saw:

Quote:

    This morning I attempted SSILD again. I woke up at 7:00AM after 6 hours of sleep. I stayed awake for about 20 minutes, walking around the house and such. I went back to bed already feeling tired, but not too tired as I couldn't get my repetitions completed. During the repetitions I felt eventually felt an odd feeling, but it wasn't very . I am not sure exactly how many I did, but I think I did at least 4. By then I was so tired that I stopped and rolled over and went to sleep. I woke up at 12:12PM remembering 3 dreams, none of them lucid.

    The only slight trouble I have had performing the technique is that my eyes are very twitchy when I try to stare at my eyelids. My eyes refuse to cooperate and move around so I can't stare. I think this might be related to the fact that I have abnormally shaky hands, arms and such. Anyway, it is difficult to look at my eyelids when my eyes are zooming around in random directions, refusing to stay still. I am no sure how to make them stop, because thinking about it only seems to make it worse.

  

I was thinking maybe it is possible that I am having lucids/FA's and not remembering them, so I was thinking about setting an alarm maybe an hour after doing SSILD, what are your thoughts on that?

    Thank you very much for your help and I know soon I will succeed with this technique.
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Can you help me out a bit more?  Thanks.
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Okay... the eye problem. It indicates several things:

1. You are using your physical eyes. Do your eyes twitch like that when you are sleeping normally? I guess not, right? Then you should do exactly the same. Just relax, don't focus your physical eyes. You are seeing things through your mind's eye. If you feel you are still stretching your eye muscles then just quickly move on to the other sensations.

2. You are under the wrong impression that you should remain motionless, as with all other techniques. With SSILD you should do whatever that makes you feel comfortable. If that means roll over a couple of times, scratch that itch, swallow, or whatever, just do it!

3. You are trying too hard and expecting to see immediate results. If you don't feel like you are seeing anything, that's PERFECTLY normal! You are not supposed to see things until your focus shifts away from the physicals (see my length posts above). You should not have any expectations throughout the exercise.

Becoming lucid in later dreams can happen frequently, but they are not guaranteed. You should pay close attention to the awakenings after doing the exercise. It is very possible that they are FAs. Even if they are not, you should immediately do a few more cycles which might give you a WILD or DILD in the dreams that follow.  

I have done this exercise 5-6 times in total and have had a lucid dream on the same night twice. It may well be a technique that works for me after all.

Although I often have found myself forgetting where I am in the exercise and drifting away a bit, I have not noticed any peculiar imagery, sounds or sensations yet. In addition, I haven't fallen asleep instantly after doing the cycles yet; I may well try doing one or two more than usual (I tend to stop at 4) to see if that puts me in any more of a trance.

Thanks for the post on the 'Focus Point' model. I suppose when the science isn't there, it's necessary to make somewhat bold theories like this.

          Current LD goal(s): SSILD/ADA/RCing throughout August  

First try and i got an LD !   it was unstable and short, but still longer and more stable than my other LDs  

and, this is the first tech that actually worked for me, other LDs i had was my own experiments that didn't work well  

Thank you for sharing this technique.

I'm very new to LD (about a month ago). All this time mostly I only use WBTB since it's the easiest technique for me. I ever use WILD tree times and I dropped the tech since it make me awake more and then it kill my DR due to lost of time to sleep.

My DR is still at horrible state so MILD and other tech related are out of question.

Yesterday I stumble on your thread in DreamView about SSILD and try it on my WBTB session. I only through the cycle 2 times and then let my mind wander (since yesterday I didn't make myself understand more on what being said in the tutorial and what I understand the most is not to force it, just lazily observe). Because I thought I need to focus to only one sense and not three of them but I did those three sense anyway.

The result is I recall 2 dreams. One was almost lucid because I thought I want to plant some blue weed that I saw in the dream so the weed would also grew in my dream. Thinking about dream in my dream is rare for me.

I would stick to this technique and see the further result.
          Current LD goal(s): Want to talk to my subconsciousness  

Nivv wrote:
Just to let you know, I did the technique this morning. I didn't really get to sleep afterwards, but I went into SP not once, not twice, not three times, but four times in total. On the last two of these I was able to step into a lucid dream for a few seconds. On all occasions, however, I was woken up by external noise.

I have had these bouts of SP before in the morning, and am interested in finding out what it is that lets me be aware of it so easily. I just doze off without paying much attention to anything and then feel a bit of tingling which, once noticed, develops into full SP. SSILD could well help with getting into this 'mode'! I'll keep at it.

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By repeatedly focusing on the various senses, SSILD seems to bring heightened awareness within dreams, as well as making you more sensitive to the sensations felt while falling asleep. On previous page there are couple of posts in which I was discussing the theory behind SSILD. Maybe you will find that interesting.