cosmic.iron wrote:
Somnium Viator wrote:
Sounds interesting I think I'll give it a go tonight

Edit:

Success! My first proper LD! It happened in strange circumstances though   managed to get through about five cycles and then my alarm went off. (I'd managed to use the MILD technique to wake myself up for WBTB and forgot I'd set an alarm as well  ) anyway I was annoyed cause I thought I'd stuffed up the whole process, so I just decided to try WIlD but that I don't think it worked because my LD was a DILD. Another thing was that I had an FA right after it faded, but that was still a cool experience for me  

Anyway, awesome technique! I can't believe it worked first time for me  

Here's my recount of my dream if you're interested: http://ld4all.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=674393#674393

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Congrat!  The FA is an indication that SSILD somehow kicked in even after the interruption as FAs are frequent side effects associated with the technique.  No matter how real it may feel I suggest doing a RC as soon as you wake up after the exercise.

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I usually do a reality check when I wake up I was just excited that I had my first proper LD  

Am looking forward to trying this technique again tonight!
          Current LD goal(s): Have a conversation with my SC & learn to WILD  

AJ wrote:This happens to me a lot, how about whenever you have a LD you also do a RC? That will help catch FA's.

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Good advice!    Now that I've actually had a proper LD I can do it  
          Current LD goal(s): Have a conversation with my SC & learn to WILD  

Kelsondra wrote:
I tried this technique last night and didn't get any progress, although I had an interview to go to today and was stressing about that. I'll try again, going to have a nap soon.

I do have a question about focusing on the sounds. I never heard anything no matter how hard I focused, is this ok?

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As I always said, the proper way to do the exercise is to not focus on getting the sensations such as hearing actual sound.  If you focus too much on trying to experiencing the sensations then you may lose sleep and never get into the trance, which is the state that your mind begins to wander and you constantly forget to continue the exercise.  Next time do the exercise more slowly, without counting the time, and do not restrain your thoughts.  

I would like to try the SSILD technique. First of all, Cosmiciron, thank you for posting and sharing your technique. Unfortunately, I am very fastidious person, which means I have to analyse something to death before I feel confident to attempt it! Please answer my issues.

Question 1: Is it correct to say that this is the sequence you do:

A: Look beyond eyelids, 15-20secs

B: Listen to sounds in head, 15-20secs

C: Observe bodily sensations, 15-20secs

D: Look beyond eyelids, 15-20secs

E: Listen to sounds in head, 15-20secs

F: Observe bodily sensations, 15-20secs

G: Look beyond eyelids, 15-20secs

H: Listen to sounds in head, 15-20secs

I:  Observe bodily sensations, 15-20secs

J: Look beyond eyelids, 15-20secs

K: Listen to sounds in head, 15-20secs

L: Observe bodily sensations, 15-20secs

M: Look beyond eyelids, 15-20secs

N: Listen to sounds in head, 15-20secs

O: Observe bodily sensations, 15-20secs

?

Would it mess things up if I did the visual focus, then the listening focus, then accidentally went back to the visuals?

Would it mess things up if I accidentally did, say 7, repetitions instead of the recommended 4 or 5?

Question 2: Because I am so fastidious, I wonder what part of the body to focus on at when observing bodily sensations. Is it okay to just scan up and down the body vaguely, or should I systematically pick out a part at a time (fingers, abdomen etc) and focus on that for some time?

Question 3: Will it ruin the process if I do one of the focuses for under 15-20secs? And suppose I focused on bodily sensations for over 30 secs - would that mess things up?

Question 4: Is it okay to practise this technique during the day? Not to try to achieve LD, but to know the process so it will be easier to do in the middle of the night?

Thanks. Hopefully cosmiciron will be able to answer these questions, but if anyone else can answer them from their own experiences with SSILD, I'd love to hear that!

          Current LD goal(s): Fly faster  

SnakeBelt wrote:
I would like to try the SSILD technique. First of all, Cosmiciron, thank you for posting and sharing your technique. Unfortunately, I am very fastidious person, which means I have to analyse something to death before I feel confident to attempt it! Please answer my issues.

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Hi SnakeBelt, for SSILD to work properly you need to get into the "trance".  In the trance state your mind begins to wander so much that you frequently pause/resume the exercises.  Thus, the orders and timings are not important.  In fact, doing the exercise "systematically" almost guarantees failure.  As I often said, the only thing you should focus on is to lose focus.  You don't want to finish the exercise in a few minutes in an orderly fashion while your mind stays clear and alert.  You want it to last a while due to momentarily losing and regaining consciousness.

As for scanning the body sensations, you can do it either way, depend on whichever feels most natural.  For example, you can scan up and down for sensations such as tingling, itchiness, numbness, heaviness, and etc.  Or, you can simply focus on specific body parts such as the fingers and toes, head, abdomen, and so on.  Some people even focus on more external stimuli such as the weight of the blanket.

Practice the exercise during the day is not very useful, except during afternoon naps  

Hey cosmic.iron, thanks for replying!

In some ways I am glad you were not there to immediately answer my question because it would probably have made me more worried and stressed about minutiae! In your absence I have had to work things out for myself. The past few days have given me an opportunity to work the technique out for myself. Unfortunately the technique has not given me any LDs. I have experienced a significant jump in recall and dream vividness but I am not sure where to go from here. I have applied the tech over four nights and each night I have experienced a jump in recall. On a couple of occasions my mind has drifted, another couple my mind has become more alert and I've a little time to get back to sleep (I did RC, they weren't FAs). I am now sure I am doing the SSILD correctly. Not sure if I should combine it with another technique.

          Current LD goal(s): Fly faster  

cosmic.iron wrote:
... I have been toying with similar ideas but I'm too lazy, LOL.  Building a dedicated web site is no trivial task

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OK, here is a bare-bones beginning:

http://sildreaming.org/  

I'll give it a try!  

Are people still having success with SSILD? It has never worked for me.
          Current LD goal(s): Fly faster  

Thanks Rhewin!

Maybe that will help me work out what I'm doing wrong - even though I know I'm doing it right!  
          Current LD goal(s): Fly faster  

cosmic.iron wrote:
SnakeBelt wrote:
Thanks Rhewin!

Maybe that will help me work out what I'm doing wrong - even though I know I'm doing it right!  
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The thread on DV also has collected quite a few dozen success cases.  If you could provide me with a more detailed description on how you did the exercise, maybe I can help diagnose.

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I woke up for WBTB at 4am. I did the techniques and found myself starting to drift off to sleep so I woke a little and continued seeing/hearing/feeling. I was getting "lost" (which is good, yes?) and then suddenly became more awake. I wondered if it was FA so did a couple more seeing/hearing/feeling to see if it was a dream but they felt the same as before. I went to sleep. I woke up later and pinched my nose but I was not in a dream. I went back to sleep and nothing happened and I woke up later as normal.

          Current LD goal(s): Fly faster  

cosmic.iron wrote:


Sounds to me you are doing it correctly and are actually very close to success.  I suggest delaying you WBTB for one more hour, say 5am.  Once you start drifting off it's ok to do one more cycle with slightly more focus.  After that you should allow yourself to fall asleep ASAp and do not attempt doing the cycles at the same time as that may keep you awake.

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Okay, it's good to know I'm doing the right thing! I will experiment with a slightly later WBTB time. Thanks Cosmic.

          Current LD goal(s): Fly faster  

shelli wrote:
So I've tried this 2 nights in a row without becoming lucid. However, my dreams have been much more vivid and realistic. Most of them seem to be bunched up in the hour or so before getting up (like a chain). Both of these things make it hard to determine when/if I'm dreaming.

Though this mornings dream was mundane it was realistic enough that some part of me may not have wanted to accept that it was a dream as it was a little overwhelming.

Now that I think about it....the reason the dream was different is because I was more aware of my senses! I could see and hear more than usual.

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That's a great thing! Even if you didn't get lucid, you're a lot closer than you were before (and also, dreams can be VERY increadible even without lucidity).

And welcome to LD4all  

WILD, WILD... It feels like such a controversial technique, of course you will never have 100% success with any techinque, but it surely can be very useful wonce mastered, I'm convinced. Getting it to work is the big problem, I didn't have a chance to this day, I simply do not how to simutaneously fall asleep while keeping myself aware.

          Current LD goal(s): Have a two week long dream! (Longest one had two days)  

So I haven't bothered trying to LD in years, and admittedly my dream recall is horrendous, but after finally acquiring a decent digital recorder (after my old one kicked it I couldn't be bothered to keep a written dream journal) I'm going to give it another shot. Came back here to find that some new techniques have been discovered, which is pretty exciting.

I really like the idea behind this technique; mostly the casual, relaxed part of it; no counting, no trying to stay completely still... those were always the things that killed me with other techniques; trying to focus hard on something just tenses me up and makes it hard for me to sleep anyway.

I sort of gave this a limited trial run earlier when I lie down for an afternoon nap; though I found myself doing the little sensory rotations for more like 30-45 seconds just because I was so tired my brain didn't want to shift gears more often. By the third set I found myself losing focus and pulling myself back-- that was when I started seeing more than darkness on my eyelids, light and shapes and I think I made out a few complex forms, a birds head and some other faces. I found myself not wanting to leave the "eye" phase after that, because focusing on hearing and feeling was less interesting, but I forced myself to anyway, and pretty much immediately lost consciousness.

If I had any dreams, I didn't recall them (but then I'm still very out of practice; I fully expect this will get better with time), and it didn't help that I was sharing a bed with a rather restless person who seemed to be dreaming about kicking things, hah. It was a very brief nap.

But I am wondering if I should have stayed focus on those changing visuals on my eyelids instead of forcing myself to continue the cycle?

Regardless, I found this to be an extremely relaxing technique; even if I wasn't trying to LD, I think I still would use something like this just to help me sleep. I love it in that it's mentally engaging, without requiring any active effort, like watching a really engrossing movie.

I'll try to keep you updated on any future inevitable successes  

I'll either give this a shot tonight or after I've worked on improving my recall a bit more. Thanks much! I foresee that the avoiding rational thoughts or thinking about the technique part will be difficult for me, however.

These last few nights I've been attempting MILD after about 5 hours of sleep and I cannot get back to sleep, even without a WBTB (despite total silence and darkness and no stress). Perhaps, however, as Maneda said, it will help with getting to sleep!

I'm the sort of sleeper that finds it extremely easy to wake up after a dream and record it or do a WBTB but very hard to get back to sleep afterwards.

EDIT:

Night 1 - I went to bed around midnight and got to sleep around an hour later. I woke up at 6am but with only a few fragments of a dream in my head, as it has been for the past few days. I went through the procedure 5 times I think. By the 5th cycle I noticed a few odd outlines on my eyelids and a veeeery slight ringing sound. I also notice I twitched a hell of a lot haha. I got back to sleep half an hour or so after finishing that (can't do much better than that I'm afraid) and had a normal dream which I remembered with slightly more detail than I had been for the past few days.

Night 2 - I got to bed at about 11pm. It took a little while to get to sleep again(this has become more common since starting with LD stuff). I woke up at some point, but felt as though it was too early and my REM time hadn't even started (couldn't remember any dreams or anything, and felt as though I hadn't really slept yet). I next woke up later in the morning and went through the SSILD procedure 5 times. This time I did not notice any shapes or odd sounds. After that I went to sleep slightly quicker than Night 1. I then had another normal dream, but remembered a few more details of it than last night's.

Night 3 - Same as last night, except I had more difficulty getting back to sleep afterwards, and this time didn't remember any dreams at all, which hasn't happened in a while. I think to take LDing slower and practice my dream recall before moving onto induction techniques. An interesting one nonetheless so thanks!

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

I tried it last night, and I woke up at 1 (I set my alarm for 4, but got up at one for some reason) after going to sleep at 10. I tried going through the motions, and I think I got into the trance, but I could NOT get to sleep. It took until 4:00 to get to sleep! So now I'm banned from waking up in the night from now on.

I know this wasn't a side effect of this method, just a coincidence, but what's done is done.
          Current LD goal(s): Have an LD  

Total success!  I can't believe that this technique worked on the first try.

I was so sure that I had screwed everything up.  My concentration had wandered a few times during the sense cycling but once I tried to get to sleep I felt kind of wired.  I wound up "giving up" and flopping over to my stomach so I could get some shut-eye.

After a little tossing and turning, I started hearing a weird noise from out in the hallway.  I went into the hall to investigate.  When I looked back into the bedroom, I saw this green-hued "energy storm" had gathered in my bedroom doorway.  I walked back, curious, and pushed my way through it.  It felt like walking in the open on a very windy day.

Realizing that I'd had a false awakening, I pushed my finger into my palm for a reality check.  Needless to say, the reality check confirmed everything for me and I took off at a run toward the window to try flying.

The dream was quite stable.  It seemed to last 10-12 minutes and required no intervention.  I was quite aggressive throughout the dream, trying flying, falling from an enormous height, and conversing with dream characters.  I even informed three of them that they were a part of my lucid dream and got three unique, very interesting reactions.

I don't yet understand why this technique works but so far it is amazing.  I can't thank you enough for sharing it!  I hope it keeps delivering like it did last night.

          Current LD goal(s): Stand on top of the Great Pyramid.  

I have time to sleep in the mornings now and the last few nights I've been waking up in the early morning (probably because of the sun and noises) and then I feel it takes a little time to fall asleep again. I can't believe I forgot to try SSILD    I'll try it again this week, as usually I would just fall asleep...  

Lucid Wolf wrote:
Such a great technique.  I've got a lot of issues to work out but I'm really enjoying the process.  Is SSILD something that you still use yourself?  Or now that you are in the thousands of LDs (!!), can you just lucid dream if you get bored sitting on the toilet?  

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Based on my observation, after performing SSILD for extended period, your mind and body gets into a state that is quite easy to invoke a WILD/OBE.  This happens at two stages:

1. Immediately after performing extra cycles, say, 6 or more.  You are still awake, may even have trouble falling asleep, but you are actually very close to getting a WILD.

2. The first time you wake up after the exercise.  It is likely that you will wake up into a realistic FA.  However, sometimes you do wake up into reality, but your body/mind is at such a state that with minimal effort you can enter a WILD.

You can try the following method to trigger the WILD at the aforementioned stages:

1. Relax your head

2. Focus a bit on the hearings. If you hear ringing noises try to increase it. When it becomes loud enough you can do an RC and get up.

3. Assuming step 2 fails, concentrate on your hand and try to move it without using muscle. At the same time you can also imagine the motion of raising your hand to reach for your nose for the nose pinching RC. If all goes well you should be able to raise your dream hand and grab your dream nose, LOL.  At which point you can simply get up and enjoy your LD.

Nowadays I use SSILD extensively myself with very good result.  My routine is this:

1. Sleep for 5 hours, get up for 2-5 minutes.

2. 4-6 cycles of SSILD.

3. Go to sleep.

4. Upon first awakening (regardless of it being an FA or real one) perform the above technique to enter a WILD. I have 100% success rate with this one.

Prior to SSILD, I used a form of customized WILD.  I was pretty good at it... although not so good that I can do it on the toilet, but there are times I could enter an OBE from being fully awake within a minute or two.  I've also done it successfully in noisy environments such as on an airplane.  However, these days I prefer SSILD over all other techniques I've used.  It is simpler, faster, more relaxing (the WILD I used actually demands quite a bit of concentration and seems to consume a lot of mental and sometimes physical energy), and produces good results.  

The amount of people to whom this method had proven successful was the reason I decided to try it out yesterday. I went to sleep at around 2 AM and set my alarm clock for 6:30 AM. I woke up and came on LD4all to read some articles, I then did the cycles for a couple of times and went to sleep. Next thing I know I'm sitting on my bed and doing an RC for God knows what reason. I happen to be dreaming. There were however some problems with controlling the dream but I've had those in all of my previous LD's for some reason. It wasn't long before the dream started slipping away and I ended up awake. Or not? I didn't check whether it was a FA or not. My fault. Nevertheless, an awesome method.  

So, I tried this night, without much success, except for SLIGHTLY increased dream recall.  I went to be at around 1 am, set my alarm for 7 am, and I woke.  I laid down on my side and focused on my sight, then my hearing, then my touch.  Sometimes, I would kind of drift off, and then start it again.  After about 2 repetitions, I would start dozing off and coming back to start he exercise again.  At times, I felt tiny tingling in my legs, but that's all.  I eventually fell asleep.  Am I doing anything wrong? I just wanna know because I'm gonna be using this technique for the next few days and I wanna make sure I get it right.  Thanks!

          Current LD goal(s): Fly into space then free fall back to Earth  

brian8u123 wrote:
So, I tried this night, without much success, except for SLIGHTLY increased dream recall.  I went to be at around 1 am, set my alarm for 7 am, and I woke.  I laid down on my side and focused on my sight, then my hearing, then my touch.  Sometimes, I would kind of drift off, and then start it again.  After about 2 repetitions, I would start dozing off and coming back to start he exercise again.  At times, I felt tiny tingling in my legs, but that's all.  I eventually fell asleep.  Am I doing anything wrong? I just wanna know because I'm gonna be using this technique for the next few days and I wanna make sure I get it right.  Thanks!

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Try to get out of your bed and stay awake for at least 5 minutes.  When you have difficulty completing the first 2 cycles, it is a sign that you are not sufficiently awake. Of course, if you finish the 4 cycles in a hurry without ever going into the trance, you have awaken too much.

   KimokaJane wrote:
Last night I tried this and I couldn't even get through ONE cycle without losing my train of thought.   Does this mean that it's taking less time to get into 'trance' now that my mind/body is somewhat accustomed to this method?   In other words, is it unnecessary to press through, since maybe I'm already there?  Or do the fewer cycles lessen my chances of being successful?

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KimokaJane, your problem is the same as brian's.  Try to awake yourself a bit more before the exercise.  You are also right that you have become somewhat accustomed to this method, which is a good thing.  This means you can get into the trance much more quickly and less likely to lose sleep afterward.  

mattias wrote:
I remembered to really try SSILD this morning. I woke up, went to the bathroom, and then tried it on my back, as on my side I usually just fall asleep before 2 or 3 cycles. I was able to do 5-7 cycles, even though I did get distracted a lot. After that I rolled on my side to fall asleep but it took me some time. I got a LD which had lots of low or semi lucidity, only a couple moments of decent lucidity. It was pretty stable and ok in terms of vividness. I'm just glad I didn't wake up right away    Anyway, the quick WBTB and a couple MILD mantras could have helped, but I want to try it again.

I have a question about "where" you're supposed to look at. There's the blackness behind my eyeslids, but then there's this "place" where when sometimes I'm trying to fall asleep I get some random images/ideas pop up. Should I focus on this second "place"? or is it just the physical blackness? The same question goes for the hearing.

Another thing is you say you like this method because it doesn't need much energy/effort, but to me I feel I do need some effort . Is this only because my mind drifts so easily?

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Congrats mattias, Im my opinion I would say on HI but not too much, not interfering them, just gently observer them, just like WILD, even though you are not doing WILD and you will fall asleep after a few cycles I believe that this could either transform into WILD or you will just maintain higher awareness through the process which could also result into LD... At least in my opinion, you can experiment with both scenarios...

Good luck!
          Current LD goal(s): #Find/Meet Dream Guide#  

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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You should do more cycles because that's the point, to keep awareness on your body, sensations, feelings, etc. But don't force it, try it at 3 cycles...

          Current LD goal(s): #Find/Meet Dream Guide#