Wake Initiated Lucid Dreams (WILD)

Introduction to WILDs

A wake initiated lucid dream (WILD) is the technique of entering a lucid dream while your mind is awake. This is in contrast to the DreamInitiatedLucidDreams (DILD). A WILD is much more difficult than a DILD, but if you can master the technique it should in theory be more reliable than a DILD because you enter your dream state in a controlled way, unlike a DILD where you have to hope that you will question the dream reality and become lucid.

The goal of a WILD is to allow your body to fall to sleep without your mind falling asleep too. Note that when your body falls to sleep it enters sleep paralysis. This can be an unnerving feeling. See our LucidDreamGlossary for details.

Essential Background

You need to understand and be able to distinguish between two types of thoughts. Concious thoughts are directed by you, usually influenced by your wants and needs, and should be avoided until you are in your lucid dream. Subconscious thoughts appear as random images or sounds with seemly no reason or relevance.

You have to remove concious thoughts and any inner dialogue from your mind. Inner dialogue can be a big problem. Don't fall in to the trap of commenting on your own progress, i.e. saying to yourself "this is going well" or "I'm nearly there!!". On the other hand you should allow subconscious thoughts as they are your dream's environment. Just allow these thoughts to come and go. Notice them but don't concentrate of them. If you allow your conciousness to slip away with these thoughts you may fall to sleep without remaining lucid, which could still result in having a DILD.

Preparation

• Ensure the room is dark and noise free. I use a sleep mask that blocks 100% light and ear plugs to ensure the environment is suitable.
• Lie in bed in a comfortable position. I lie on my back with my legs shoulder width apart, feet turned outwards and arms about 30cm to the sides with palms faced down. I bend my elbows so that my hands are slightly closer to my body that my elbows.
• Tense each part of your body for a couple of seconds and then relax. Start from your toes and work up through your body to your head.
• Now take a minute to relax and make sure you are comfortable, adjust your position if necessary and remove anything that is irritating you.

A common problem with WILDs is for people to concentrate on their breathing and consciously control each breath. This is a common meditation practice, but may result in two problems for lucid dreamers:

1. You will probably be taking deeper breaths than necessary, resulting in a greater oxygen intake and stimulation.
2. You can't continue to consciously control your breathing as you enter the lucid dream, so you will probably feel the discomfort and panic many people report as they enter sleep paralysis and come close to the dream state. I speculate that the discomfort is encountered because you are trying to continue your concious breath control while your subconscious is trying to take over for you. It would be like two drivers trying to drive the same car, it's going to cause problems.

Right from the start we can do something to prevent this problem. Keep your mind actively thinking about anything you like for a minute or so, and while you do just notice the rate and depth of your breathing. You haven't been controlling your breath at this point or thinking about it, so this lets you understand what your breathing should be like. If your breathing changes later on, don't worry about it or resist it, but make sure you are not consciously controlling it either.

Now let me stress that we are not going to control our breathing at any point! We will be aware of it, but we will simply relax and let it continue on autopilot.

Relaxing Your Mind & Body

• Count backward from 20 to 1. Say the number in your mind as you breath in, and say "relax" in your mind as your breath out. Feel your body relax in to the bed with every exhale. Breath through your nose (keeping your mouth closed). Do not try to control your breathing, just let it happen.
• If your mind wanders during this process and you loose count, start from 20 again.
• By the time you do this successfully you should be very relaxed. If you don't feel relaxed perform the counting exercise again. If an any point during the rest of the process your mind becomes too distracted or you feel you are not making progress, return to the counting exercise.

Moving To a Sleeping State

Next steps:

• Notice the air moving through your nostrils and think of nothing else. Don't concentrate on this or control it!! Just notice the sensations. If you do this for a while you may find that your perception changes, it feels more like your point of view / your perception is from your nose rather than your eyes. If at any point you feel a little distracted, return to this step to regain your composure. When you feel ready, move on to the next step.
• Move your awareness from your nose to "nothing". Totally empty your mind. This is a tricky bit, but alternate between this and the previous step, gradually prolonging the time you can think of “nothing”.
• Allow your subconscious dream images to form. Don't concentrate on anything and don't allow any internal dialogue, just be there!
• Continue with these steps until you fall in to a lucid dream. At this point, a lasting dream environment forms and the sensation of feeling your body on your bed is completely replaced with the sensations of your dream world. Sometimes you may feel as though you are watching the dream rather than being in it. In this case you have to will yourself in to the dream. Just imagine and believe that you are materialising in the scene.

Important Points

Throughout this process you may experiences various sensations of tingling, bending, floating, dissolving, temperature changes, changes to your heart rate and breathing and sleep paralysis etc. Don't allow any of this to distract you. Don't resist anything. Allow the sensations to flow through you, notice them but don't concentrate on them. Sleep paralysis is only uncomfortable if you let it worry you. If you don't fight it the experience may be brief and you may not even notice it.

A useful technique I use when I am experiencing strong sensations is to say in my mind "acceptance" as I let myself go with the sensations. After repeating this a few times I remove the inner dialogue while keeping the underlying feeling of "acceptance" as I go with the sensations.

Your mind does not go to sleep during a WILD, but it still needs to change state. If you are concentrating on something (breathing, sensations etc.) you will not easily enter a dream because your mind knows that this is not an appropriate state for dreaming. Your conciousness needs to be blank / still so that your mind decides it's OK to dream, but you need to maintain an awareness so that you do not fall to sleep. Once in your lucid dream, you can safely engage your concious thoughts and inner dialogues.

The length of this process if very variable. It may take 30 minutes or 3 hours. Attempt it in conjunction with the WakeBackToBed method to decrease the amount of time required and increase your chances of success.

Keywords you should remember are relax and acceptance, awareness as opposed to control. Use the comments and our forum to let us know how you get along.

Don't "try" to have a lucid dream, you can't force it. Instead you should allow yourself to have one.

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