Ssild Test 30 Days

Day 2 Attempts: 2 LDs: 0 FAs: 0 So I tried again last night aaannnddd I didn't get outta bed. I have no idea my logical brain just shuts off. Its not really due to laziness but I think I will change the alarm tone to trumpets to get me going. Also forgot to RC after I tried and I had a hard time falling back asleep so that might have possibly been a FA but I'm not positive though!

I like the idea behind SSILD so I'm going to do this 30 day thing. Started 4 days ago but I'm only going to count from yesterday because the conditions for the other two days were horrible and I doubt any technique would have worked. Day 1: No difference, dreams same as usual.: Day 2: - SSILD induced WILD - very smooth and fast transition into a dream, as a WILD technique I would rate 10/10 - Other dreams same as always no change in vividness, content or anything else.: Attempts: 2 WILDs: 1 DILDs: 0 FAs: 0

Day 5: No effect.: Day 6: I kept falling asleep at the start of the SSILD, but I think this is actually a good thing, just need to strike a balance now between alert enough to do SSILD and sleepy enough to actually fall asleep in whatever sense-awareness state of mind SSILD tries to achieve. -------- Attempts: 6 WILDs: 1 DILDs: 0 FAs: 0

Day 7: Nada. I'm a bit disappointed so far, my dreams are exactly the same as always, I expected at least one FA. Starting to wonder if the FAs are just because people are told the technique is supposed to produce them and it becomes a placebo effect. Oh well, will keep trying.: Day 8: Got ~4 hours of sleep so not a good night. -------- Attempts: 8 WILDs: 1 DILDs: 0 FAs: 0

Day 9: Don't think this was a good night, I had a half-dream (it was around 3.5 hours of sleep so it was half-thoughts / half-dreaming) where I was dreaming/thinking about SSILD. The rest of the night was uneventful.: Day 10: Missed a couple of opportunities for SSILD because I fell asleep too quickly, the two biggest killers of the technique seem to be falling asleep before really getting started and not being able to fall asleep from doing too many repetitions. -------- Attempted Nights: 9 Total Attempts: ~15 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.6 WILDs: 1 DILDs: 0 FAs: 0: PS: fixed my attempts count to be more precise about what I'm doing.

Day 11: Tried SSILD once this night but I was quite sleepy so it was half-arsed, had some normal dreams.: Day 12: Not much sleep so not a good night for this. -------- Attempted Nights: 10 Total Attempts: ~16 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.6 WILDs: 1 DILDs: 0 FAs: 0: Last few days haven't been too good sleep wise, will try to resume with more energy tomorrow!

Day 13: I was entering a WILD from SSILD but I decided to stop that and turned over to go to sleep and see if I could manage to get a DILD instead. Dreams were normal the rest of the night, it doesn't seem like SSILD is having any effect on my dreams whatsoever. =[: Day 14: Fell asleep during WBTB so no SSILD today. -------- Attempted Nights: 11 Total Attempts: ~17 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.5 WILDs: 2 DILDs: 0 FAs: 0

Day 15: Not much sleep no attempt.: Day 16: Woke up from a really long dream (probably due to the lack of sleep the night before), feel asleep after about 2 cycles of SSILD, nothing to note the rest of the night. -------- Attempted Nights: 12 Total Attempts: ~18 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.5 WILDs: 2 DILDs: 0 FAs: 0

Day 17: Possibly an FA although I'm not sure, felt like a sort of half-awake / half-dreaming state, possibly an FA that I was "dreaming" in? Not sure if I should count it as an FA, I'll put it under "Other".: Day 18: No attempt, slept through the whole night. -------- Attempted Nights: 13 Total Attempts: ~19 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.5 WILDs: 2 DILDs: 0 FAs: 0 Other: 1

Day 19: No attempt.: Day 20: 3 or 4 quick cycles and 3 or 4 long cycles after a natural wake up during the night, no effect on rest of the night. -------- Attempted Nights: 14 Total Attempts: ~20 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.4 WILDs: 2 DILDs: 0 FAs: 0 Other: 1

ay 17: Possibly an FA although I'm not sure, felt like a sort of half-awake / half-dreaming state, possibly an FA that I was "dreaming" in? Not sure if I should count it as an FA, I'll put it under "Other". -------- I just wanted to note that the FA's are very hard to catch. Sometimes an FA rolls into a regular dream and you don't remember the transition or you think that you just woke up in between dreams when you really just had an FA (in some cases) if you remember the FA at all. You can also have an FA that you are lying in bed and you start doing the cycles again within the dream. It is always good to have a motionless RC in your arsenal. It took me months before I realized that some of my awakenings or wakefulness were FAs.

I'm pretty confident in my FA catching abilities, almost all of my awakenings after SSILD were at the end of dreams and they were real awakenings. Speaking of FAs I did have another semi-FA this morning that rolled into a weird dream, I say semi because it turned into a proper unconscious dream in just a couple seconds. -------- ================================================== ================================== -------- Day 21: Woke up after 5 hours of sleep naturally (I wanted to but didn't set an alarm, power of intention yay), did SSILD on my back at least 4 long cycles, tried to fall asleep on my back but too uncomfortable, turned over into my natural position and fell asleep. Woke up from one of those bathroom dreams after a really tiny FA. I would more likely attribute this FA to needing to go the bathroom rather than SSILD, but I'll mark it down. -------- Attempted Nights: 15 Total Attempts: ~21 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.4 WILDs: 2 DILDs: 0 FAs: 1 Other: 1

Day 22: No attempt. Day 23: Fell asleep at the start of SSILD. -------- Attempted Nights: 16 Total Attempts: ~21 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.3 WILDs: 2 DILDs: 0 FAs: 1 Other: 1

Day 24: Woke up from a nightmarish dream, did a few quick SSILD cycles followed by I think 1 long one before I fell asleep. Had one of my normal imagination dreams but at the end of it it turned more realistic and I was sitting in the front seat of a car with somebody driving me somewhere, suddenly they started breaking all the road rules which was weird because normally they were a good driver and when the car drove up on top of a line of cars at a traffic light I thought "what the hell are you doing! This has to be a dream!" and then I almost face palmed because "duh!" I did a reality check just to make sure and woke up! But wait it wasn't a real wake up, it was an FA, everything was hyper realistic but my room wasn't quite right, I got up and stabilised but once I walked out of the room it destabilised very quickly and I woke up for real after about half a minute. Probably because I didn't have much REM left since I was already dreaming for a decent 30 ish minutes before this point. I did SSILD after two more wake ups after that but the rest of my dreams were normal. Since I can't say if it was SSILD related here are a couple of other things I was doing that day: I was "feeling the ground" as I walked most of the day, very in tune with my feet (this is a meditation but also a tai chi chuan thing)Before I went to bed I was reading on the forums about punishment induced lucid dreams and I thought it was pretty funny so I thought if I didn't get a DILD tonight I would have to eat an olive in the morning (I hate olives), I wasn't very serious about it but just the thought of having to do that did leave an impression. I also thought I'd have ice cream if I did DILD. At the moment I don't think SSILD itself really causes FAs or DILDs, I think it's basically the same as the 61 point relaxation technique where you move your awareness through 61 points of the body, except here you move your awareness through just 3, the effect is the same though, it just gives the mind something to work on so that it stops flapping in the wind and becomes more focused and relaxed. Anyway I'm eating ice cream right now. =P: Attempted Nights: 17 Total Attempts: ~24 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.4 WILDs: 2 DILDs: 1 FAs: 1 Other: 1

Day 1: Did a few quick SSILD cycles before sleeping. Woke up four times over the course of the night and did SSILD every time before going back to sleep, but kept losing focus during cycles, and had trouble falling back asleep. Not sure if my recent awakenings are due to SSILD, but usually I only wake up once or twice per night. No LDs, not very good recall. Attempts: 1 LDs: 0 FAs: 0

Day 25: No attempt or nothing worth mentioning. Day 26: Fell asleep after one cycle, I've probably been relaxing a bit too much while doing them. -------- Attempted Nights: 18 Total Attempts: ~24 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.3 WILDs: 2 DILDs: 1 FAs: 1 Other: 1

Day 27: I woke up after about 5.5 to 6 hours of sleep naturally and was really sleepy, as I was falling asleep I started doing SSILD but my mind wandered a couple of times and I was afraid that I would fall asleep like yesterday, so I forced my concentration on the cycles and stopped any wanderings as soon as they arose. I did 3 quick cycles and after that I'm not sure how many long cycles, I think maybe just 1 complete cycle because the other times my mind wandered in the middle of it. It went something like *eyes....* *random thoughts* *kill random thoughts* *eyes....* *hearing....* *almost fell asleep* *eyes....* (50s) *hearing.....*(30s) *body.....* (20s), although it was very mixed up. While I was busy concentrating I already transitioned into a dream, it must have happened sometime during the long cycle and I was still trying to SSILD for another few minutes before realising I was already dreaming. I ended up chaining 2 or 3 LDs (wake up, stay still, fall back into LD) and had about an hour's worth of LDing, each time I chained back the LD was more stable. I feel this experience is quite repeatable and didn't feel like a one off, might even be possible to do it every night. Also I'm counting it as a WILD, although that distinction is only clear to me because I was aware of the whole thing, if you fall asleep while doing the cycles and then jerk into awareness during the dream because you're still focused on SSILD you might think it's a DILD or FA. -------- Attempted Nights: 19 Total Attempts: ~25 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.3 WILDs: 3 DILDs: 1 FAs: 1 Other: 1

Day 28: Fell asleep before I could SSILD. Day 29: 4 hours of sleep so no attempt. -------- Attempted Nights: 20 Total Attempts: ~25 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.2 WILDs: 3 DILDs: 1 FAs: 1 Other: 1

Day 30: I was planning on repeating day 27 today but unfortunately I was pretty tired and couldn't keep my concentration up and fell asleep, easily fixed by staying up a bit longer in the future. 30 day experiment over! Wooooh! In the next week or so I will try to fix the last little issues and hopefully I'll be able to repeat day 27 any night I want, after I get to that point I'll write up exactly what I ended up doing and how I think SSILD works. -------- Attempted Nights: 21 Total Attempts: ~25 Average Attempts per Night: ~1.2 WILDs: 3 DILDs: 1 FAs: 1 Other: 1

I'll start journaling my attempts as well Day 1 I did a WBTB at 3:30 and walked to the bathroom.. used the toilett and washed my face.. came back and started with SSILD.. had a rather hard time falling asleep but it wasn't to bad didn't get anything in particular in my dreams Attempts: 1 LDs: 0 FAs: 0

Day 3 SUCCESS again I did a WBTB at 3:30 which was roughly 5h30m (without the time I need to fall asleep) after going to bed this time I just took a few steps in my room to get awake enough to actually attempt to SSILD at that point it wasn't to hard to fall asleep but I could actually concentrate on the technique I had an FA which I didn't notice as one: In the dream I was lying in bed and took a look at the time using my phone. I was holding it above my head and set an alarm to go off in one hour. After blinking and opening my eyes again the time had passed and I was still holding my phone on which I especially noticed the battery going down in that hour which I thought to had been asleep in. Now I did that a few more times but didn't dream anything while apparently sleeping for one hour again and again. So I thought maybe I need more sleep to actually start dreaming and either set the alarm to 5 hours from now or not at all I'm not sure anymore. Upon closing my eyes and waiting for a few seconds I could somehow feel that I might have actually entered a dream from being awake (again it really was just a FA). I did the old faithful and pinched my nose and there we go I was lucid in my bed (the second FA). I'm gonna skip the details but after making everything more than 100% vivid I closed my eyes for a few moments and when I opened them again I was actually awake. God dammit the next LD that was murdered so early and unpredictably for no good reason MUST NOT CLOSE EYES SSILD ftw I hope the success rate continues like that Attempts: 3 LDs: 1 FAs: 2

Day 4 and Day 5 both times pretty much the same thing happened: I woke up before my wbtb alert and deactivated th one I had planned. I got up and walked around in my room for a few moments but after lying down again I just couldn't concentrate on SSILD. My thoughts drifted away before I was even able to perform a single cycle. I won't even call these 2 attempts because I didn't try nearly hard enough. Attempts: 3 LDs: 1 FAs: 2

Day 8 SUCCESS So I woke up at 3:30 to my WBTB alarm and performed some SSILD cycles. I woke up a bit after that and again attempted SSILD a second time. In the following dream I though about the possibilty of this being a dream and it instantly hit me. I did a few RCs and after trying to enhance my vision everything went black. I was still in the dream but I just couldn't see a damn thing. It was pretty clear that the LD was pretty much over at that point. The only thing I could still try was open my eyes and hope that I'm still in my dream but I was lying in my bed. I'm pretty sure that was just an FA though and didn't notice that until I actually woke up in the morning. It's important that I remember to try and open my eyes using my dream arms/hands so I can't actually open my real eyes should something similar happen again. Attempts: 7 LDs: 2 FAs: 3