~ 8 min read

Wake Initiated Lucid Dreaming (WILD)

Wake Initiated Lucid Dreaming or WILD for short is when you enter your dream without losing consciousness. Click this article to learn more about WILD.

Intro

Note from author (Sensei):

This technique is a game I play. I dont know what is actually happening. Nrem or REM or blah blah blah. I care about things that I do that work for me. For all we know, me doing this technique makes the pixies happy and they give me lucid dreams because of it. It works for me is the most I can really say. I could add that Ive taught people to LD with this and many that have WILDs agree with these different steps for LDing, so I may actually be onto something.

STEP 1

Actually understand what WILD is

WILD is a wake initiated lucid dream. This means that you go straight from waking to dreaming without losing consciousness. You need to sleep to dream. It doesnt require sleep paralysis.

STEP 2

Understand how falling asleep works like a game and not physically. I dont care about science. I care about the game of falling asleep consciously

So what things do I really need to understand in order to continue? Three things:

  1. There are different phases of falling asleep and these phases seem to be able to make you lose consciousness or memory as you fall asleep. I call this the phase barrier

  2. These phases are not always the same or in the same order or the same amount of time and definitely not the same from person to person

  3. The longest and most phases you will go through will generally be at the beginning of the night, so we recommend waking during the night to try to wild. This will mean that the phase barrier is smaller and easier to cross. Sometimes it wont even be there at all!

STEP 3

Figure out some things about your phases

You need to gather some intel. Lay down and try to notice the second that you lose consciousness. Try this at different times.

Tips for gathering intel:

Lay in an uncomfortable position that you cant fall asleep in. your body will go through some phases, but you wont fall asleep, so you can actually see them and the effect that they have on your mind.

Listen to an audiobook. Try to follow along as you fall asleep. When you wake up, rewind and go back to the last moment you remember and play it from there. See if this sparks any memories of phases and how your brain was operating at the time.

When you have discovered what kind of phases you are dealing with, its time to make a plan.

Examples of phases include hypnagogic imagery, floating limb sensations, auditory hallucinations, mind seemingly running on its own in weird directions, buzzing, itching, feeling heavy, feeling light, spinning sensations.

This is not a list of all the things that you will feel. You may not feel any of them or you may feel all of them or different ones that I didnt mention.

STEP 4

Plan

You now need a plan to get through these phases. The most common plan is an anchor. An anchor is a mental or physical thing that you keep your mind on as you fall asleep so that you dont lose consciousness through the phases. So lets talk about how to make a plan and then how to fix it when it ultimately fails.

Since WILD is all about trial and error on the path to dreams, you are going to be constantly on your toes with WILD and constantly failing. It took me about a year with multiple wild attempts a night and often a nap during the day to attempt wild to even get to 1 wild a week. Maybe I sucked at WILD, but I think that people dont put in very many attempts and are surprised when it doesnt work out.

While making a plan, we have three possibilities for our wild attempt to keep in mind.

  1. We fall asleep unconscious

  2. We stay awake conscious

  3. We fall asleep conscious

Obviously, we want something that gives us number 3, but with what you know of your mind, which is most likely for you? Number one or number 2? If you think that you will fall asleep unconscious then you want to look at what I call a heavy anchor. If you think that you will probably not fall asleep during a wild attempt, you may want to find a light anchor.

A heavy anchor is something big and intense that keeps a lot of consciousness and often makes it a bit more difficult to fall asleep. For me (for instance) counting is a very heavy anchor. If I focus on counting, I cant sleep. I could be awake for 72 hours and Id still not be able to sleep if i was focusing on counting.

A light anchor is something light and a bit fickle. It will be harder to keep your mind on it since it isnt as intense as the heavy anchor, but because of this lack of intensity, you can fall asleep more easily. For me, a mantra (my mantra) is a very light anchor that I can just repeat until I fall asleep unconsciously easily. It doesnt impede my ability to fall asleep or increase my chances of keeping consciousness very well.

So you are looking for the goldilocks zone of anchors. Something that sometimes makes you stay awake consciously and sometimes lets you fall asleep unconsciously. When you find this thing, it is only a matter of time until you finally hit that balance and make it into a dream consciously. If you are attempting multiple wilds a night or trying it quite early in the night, you may want to lean towards a light anchor so that you donEt lose out on hours of sleep. Like always, dont do stupid things in order to lucid dream, like losing 5 hours of sleep for one attempt at a wild.

Possible anchors include:

  • Sounds in your room
  • Ideas in your head
  • Mantras
  • Counting
  • Feelings
  • Audiobooks
  • Songs
  • Visualization (a million light and heavy anchors possible with visualization)
  • Breathing

STEP 6

Shifting things around to find a path through the phase

As you work very hard to use your anchor, you will start to notice a connection between your mind and what phases you are going to deal with (I was very sleepy during my waking during the night and my intense anchor still wasnt enough to keep me from losing consciousness). You will start to notice a connection between your anchor and what happens during a phase (every time I try to count while I am seeing hypnagogic images, the images disperse more and more until I am fully awake). WRITE THINGS DOWN! After a WILD attempt, write down what anchor you used, what you experienced and what you think you can do in a similar attempt in the future to get through the phases.

SECRETS:

  • The more consistent you are with your sleep and waking times, the more consistent the phases will probably be. If you are always dealing with the same phases, you are going to find how to get through them more easily.
  • If you just cannot seem to keep consciousness, try at a time that seems harder to sleep.
  • If you just cannot seem to keep consciousness, try to sit up and go to sleep. You most likely wont be able to. Slowly lower the angle from 90 degrees to 85 to 80 to 75 and so on and you should find a place that you are able to sleep, but it should make it easier to stick with your anchor
  • Dont do WILD attempts that will ruin your sleep schedule. I generally dont recommend people to try for longer than 20 minutes unless they know that they are going to be getting enough sleep.
  • Try sleeping in and trying a WILD super late. Good saturday morning plans.
  • Try waking for three hours and then trying wild late in the mornings.
  • Try taking a nap during the afternoon, especially the time that you feel some sleep pressure (it is usually a bit after lunch if you have a standard sleep schedule
  • WILD can be disheartening if you dont enjoy exploring the space between waking and asleep. It may help you to enjoy this exploration or to realize that this may be a long journey
  • There is nothing stopping you from trying many times in a row, especially if you do short attempts (5-10 min and then just go to sleep)
  • Meditation or relaxation before your attempt can really help you for many reasons. Dont need to go into details as to why, but it just does.
  • Meditation in almost all ways seems to help give mental acuity that can help you with wild, so practicing meditation can help a ton and is something you can do when you are just wanting to get better at lding and have time during the day
  • RECALL is still necessary. You can forget lucid dreams! Steps 3 and 6 also rely heavily on memory.
  • Laying on your back seems to increase chances. DONT TELL ANYONE I SAID THAT. If you cant fall asleep on your back, then this decreases chances, so it definitely changes a bit from person to person.

SPECIAL THANKS TO SENSEI FOR THIS GUIDE

  • You can find his guide here
  • You can support him on patreon here

Other Credtis

Image was taken by Jason Yuen

The image can be found here

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