Have YOU successfully entered a lucid dream through the FRONT door 🚪 instead of sneaking in through the back? Have you tried and came close? Share your personal experiences with WILD's and what they were like. This will greatly help the community members who are still trying to achieve this feat. Make sure to share any relevant information to help your fellow dreamers, like...
1) if you experienced any bodily sensations,
2) experienced any hypnagogic hallucinations,
3) how many hours of sleep you had before your attempt, and
4) why you think your attempt succeeded or failed, and so on.
Since I know dreams are personal, you don't need to share the dream itself if you don't want to. If you do however, I'm sure we would love to hear it!
So far I've been mostly experimenting with various techniques to see which one is most suited for me. Of the methods I have attempted, techniques that require a low amount of attention are best, as I find myself unable to go back to sleep if I am focusing too much. Of the techniques that have worked best for me, counting, break-the-circle, IMP, and the drop technique have served me very well. All of them don't require too much focus or visualization but are mentally stimulating enough to keep my attention while I fall asleep.
Bodily sensations that tend to occur are feelings of numbness around the whole body during the transition period. This is mostly because my WILDs have all been preceded by sleep paralysis thus far. This is quickly followed by being engulfed in some sort of darkness. From this point, I close my eyes and use IMP and enter the dream, which has always started in my bed.
Only one of my WILDs was preceded by hypnogogic imagery. It looked like a bright kaleidoscope shined behind my closed eyes.
All of my WILDs occurred during the second REM period, so after 2 hours and 30 minutes of sleep every time. From each, I attempted a very brief WBTB, lasting from 1-5 minutes without getting out of bed.
Of the techniques that succeeded, I believe they can be attributed to finding that perfect balance between wakefulness and sleep. Unlike a lot of people I see here, I can't stay awake any longer than 5 minutes during a WBTB attempt without being unable to fall back to sleep. It's important to consider how much time is needed for you to actually fall asleep. Some people fall asleep almost instantly without at least 10-30 minutes of wakefulness, while others can only spend less than a minute awake without compromising the rest of their sleep. Additionally, it should be made completely clear that it is better to fail a WILD attempt and fall asleep than to fail a WILD attempt and stay awake. People should be more comfortable with the idea of giving up on an attempt that did not work if it took them longer than what's necessary or healthy. As far as the techniques that were not successful, many of them were far too much to concentrate on or commit to. Dreamwalker, while amazing in its own right and works when I am in sleep paralysis, is far too much for me to attempt because of how much I commit to imagining the scene. I once ended up spending upwards of 1-2 hours trying it because I was too stubborn to give up. On the opposite end, however, techniques such as the anchor technique simply don't provide enough for me to stay focused and end up making me fall asleep faster. The last thing I want to say is that people REALLY need to loosen up when it comes to attempting any technique at all. The allure of lucid dreams is high, but no amount of struggle will make things easier. WILDs require that you find the perfect balance just for you, so you should try to be more content with any progress you make at all. When I realized this, I was far more successful than when I was attempting to brute force my way in.
1) As I'm approaching the transition, I get increasingly strong vibrations that almost feel like muscle spasms? Then I'll get a feeling of pressure on my chest and after this I know I've made the transition and I can just get up and find myself in the dream version of my bedroom...
2) I don't really get HI when I do DEILD (my go-to method), but when attempting a classic WILD I'll get fleeting dream scenes that eventually turn into full immersive experiences.
3) I do 5 hours sleep, then 30 mins staying awake. This seems to be an optimal time for me. Then I'll go back to sleep but with the intention to DEILD on each subsequent awakening.
4) Success usually depends on how dedicated and strong my intention is to perform DEILD techniques when waking from a dream.
Since everyone is so terribly shy around here (I've been waiting for someone to finally post here!), I'll go first:
My favourite technique to try WILD is Dreamwalker and I go for it about twice a week (on the weekends). I tweak it a lot to tailor it to my needs and almost everytime I try - even if I don't get lucid - I get a ton of visual/sensory hallucinations. That is, things start happening that I did not consciously envision and they sometimes genuinely blow my mind.
1) Bodily sensations? The usual stuff, like body going numb, feeling floaty, feeling like my limbs are all over the place, feeling crazy heavy, feeling my dream body simulatenously with my waking body, and so on. I had spinning sensations a few times (imagine you spin around your own axis like a top spin). Most interesting to me is the "jump". So far, every single time I did get a successful WILD, it was preceeded by some jumping or jerking sensation that feels like I'm suddenly receiving a push and then take off someplace at high speed. Anytime I feel this I know I'm almost there. But sometimes the sensation shocks me awake because it always happens so suddenly.
2) Hypnagogic images? Sure. By far the most interesting ones happen once again when I go for Dreamwalker because those are convincingly real. I see people, animals, objects, ... When I try other WILD approaches I get light flashes etc. like most anyone else I suppose. Once I saw something like a symbol in front of my inner eye that flashed like crazy for a couple seconds, then faded.
3) I usually go for 5h of sleep followed by 30min of WBTB but I sometimes vary this a little.
4) Practice and timing are important. I had to practise Dreamwalker a couple weeks before I could envision the route properly, ever since then it works pretty well. Anyway, if I'm too tired I fall asleep too quickly before a lot can happen. Dreamwalker always takes a lot of time for me (30-60min I guess) so I only do it on days when I can sleep in.
Oh, and what also seems really important is to take any WILD approach, be it Dreamwalker or not, and then try to tweak it in order to figure out what works best for you. For example, if you try Dreamwalker, don't just visualise things, also touch something or listen to environmental sounds, or focus on your dream body's movements, etc. Playing around like this helped me enormeously - and it's great fun, too.
Judging from my own limited experience with WILDs so far, I think the experimenting part (and having fun experimenting) is what really is important here. Everything else, like hypnagogia, will come naturally, and it doesn't matter whether you experience them differently than others. Oh wait, one more advice: no stressing over falling alseep when doing WILD! I gave myself insomnia so many times until I started to accept that my body wants to fall asleep and will do so on its own if I only let it. I very rarely get insomnia now.
Ah yes, and finally: what are (my) WILDs like? Like other lucid dreams, but much more stable. My latest DILDs were so erratic and many things seem to happen simultaneously. My last WILD was short but completely stable until it simply fell apart.
Does this help? Do others now want to post, too? Come on, I'm waiting! Let's hear it, I want to get inspired by you! 😃