Senses Initiated Lucid Dream Ssild

Originally Posted by LittleStar: Oh no, I didn't mean to sound negative I was merely saying that I think I found it more difficult than other methods, and I think the lack of concentration used for the cycles is the problem. I have a very narrow line between sleeping and wide awake. So I either wake up to much and my brain noise kicks in, so I don't sleep, or I fall asleep before the cycles are finished. It just going to take time to find the right balance between everything, and I think until I've found this median other methods ight be a little easier for me... That said,it could well be that I didn't give this enough time. I think ill have a break for a week or so, then try again, if I get the same results then I'll know a little more. All about experimentation at this point in time for me -------- The trick is NEVER to concentrate when doing SSILD. Do not attempt to see/feel anything during the cycles. They are necessary evils, just get them over with so you can go to sleep -- that's the right attitude.

Originally Posted by EmptyBucket: Well, I've been trying this for around a week now Results -No lucids -No false awakenings(at least I think?) -Dream recall is great(very happy about this) My style So sometimes when attempting techniques to induce LDs I'm either very excited to attempt it, but other times when doing techniques I'm kind of just in a "whatever" mindset(ie, it would be cool to have a lucid tonight but if not.. meh), It would be helpful if someone could tell me which mindset is most resourceful for lucid dreaming as I know mindsets are HUGE in success. But latey I've been waking up, doing the cycles somewhat carelessly and sometimes extremely carelessly, just kind of messing around with that. Every morning I wake up and I remember my dreams and it's starting to get rare that I remember nothing(which is awesome). Although, I've been having some moments where I feel like when I was in the dream I could've done something, like I was 1/4 conscious. Very hard to explain it just feels like the day following the dream I felt like I was close enough to attain lucidity. Some thoughts I enjoy doing this method but I'm hungering to attempt other methods such as WILD, but at the same time I feel like I should stick to this method as it's yielding better results than I've had with WILD, DILD(had 2 short lucid, idk bout this one). But I feel like this can also be a good stepping stone for beginners to increase recall and I would recommend this method to people with bad recall. -------- Your second approach is perfect. That's the way to do SSILD! However, I'm suspecting you might have overlooked some False Awakenings. Tell yourself to reality check every time you wake up after doing SSILD no matter how sure you are.

Originally Posted by tofur: just had a lengthy lucid and a FA via ssild last night. I'd say this was my 9th or 10th attempt, I was starting to have doubts. The FA was weird, the dream blacked out and I was "awake", but felt fuzzy. I plugged my nose and tried to breathe and it worked, I did it a few more times because it didn't make any sense, but then I like, forgot about it or something. Maybe the issue was I never opened my eyes. Weird. Lucidity wasn't as clear as it could've been. This is where I'm also curious as to the benefit of awareness practice. Can it lead to increased awareness once your lucid in a dream, is that a potential use for it? what do you guys do to increase your "waking consciousness" once you realize your dreaming? -------- IMO the fuzziness has nothing to do with awareness, but more to do with sleep cycles and other mind/body conditions. You can also perform some stabilization techniques to improve the quality, but if the conditions are not met then there is not much you can do.

Originally Posted by LittleStar: So, I have to assume that either this the doesn't work for me, or wasnt doing it right. I tried it for 4-5 days, I know it's not the lengthiest spell, but my recall in those days went down to near nothing, really just a vague image or two each night rather than any kind of full dream. I switched back to MILD with my usual mantras and mediation before sleep and immediately had much better recall. I am inclined to think that I just fail at SSILD, as so many people can't be wrong about the tech, but I think for me I needed the mantra to focus on dreaming before sleeping, rather than focusing in external factors. As some above posts suggest, it could be that I need to press through until I become a little more used to a different kind focusing, or perhaps need to return to this once I'm a little more proficient and experienced with lucidity in general. (as a side note, I dont seem to ever get that initial jolt of lucidity with a new and interesting tech that many people seem to get, perhaps I'm too analytical for that, or pessimistic(realistic), but that I would say is a big problem for me and new methods... Just not sure how to overcome it, and set my mind up for decent expectation of lucidity.) A quick point about the ADA, isn't want the thread to be hijacked by any means, but I would be interested in a thread about this, as I'm in the mind that ADA is the perfect tech, it makes sense to me that it should work, and I think I would attribute a lot of my lucid dreams to general awareness rather than a technique... In fact probably all (2 or 3) that weren't induced by fear. I would be very interested to hear other opinions and arguments, especially if there was experience fro the likes of Sageous weighing on the counter. -------- In the lucid dreaming world I often see people say things like "this makes a lot of sense to me so it's probably a good technique." I beg to differ. In fact, I often like to see it from exactly the opposite angle -- because it seems to make a lot of sense it's probably NOT a good technique. Please keep in mind we know very little about how the brain works and what consciousness/awareness truly are. In this case, the rules we see as "correct" or "make sense" may not apply at all! Techniques that are invented this way often leads to nothing.

Sageous just posted his thread on whether ADA is beneficial to LDs here: http://www.dreamviews.com/attaining-...-lucidity.html I still have to go back and read it after work, but briefly on the fuzziness, I sometimes experience something similar when I'm really exhausted and I have been able to transition out of the "fuzziness" by imagining a new dreamscape.

Success! Been trying this for close to a week now and I just had my 2nd ever lucid, my 1st lucid being over a year ago. There were a couple of differences between last nights SSILD "routine" than my previous failed attempts which I think helped. Firstly, I was doing my ADA much more comprehensively yesterday compared to the previous days. Secondly, the WBTB yesterday was naturally rather than due to an alarm clock. This is how it went: I went to sleep at about 10:30pm and set the alarm for 3:00am which would have meant I would wake up 4.5hrs after. But I ended up waking up at 11:57pm, feeling hot for some reason. Since my sleep was disturbed, I thought Ill just cancel the alarm, have a proper sleep and try again tomorrow. So i cancelled the alarmed. But then I naturally woke back up 4:17am needing to take a mad piss. So I went straight to the toilet and straight back but I decided I might as well do the cycles now. I did the cycles, went to sleep, and had a long and vivid lucid dream. So what changed in my SSILD "routine" last night was that I woke up later than usual(4.17am compared to my usual 3:00am), and I also did the cycles differently. I kept reading CosmicIron saying on here that you need to do the cycles in a relaxed and not highly attentive matter but I just wasnt getting it and kept doing the cycles robotically. But last night, I decided that I would prioritize going back to sleep first and the cycles second. Meaning I was putting my main focus on going back to sleep and the cycles in the back of my head which kept me much more relaxed than usual. Of course by doing that, my mind kept drifting off but I would catch myself and continue the cycles. I ended up finishing about 3-4 decently long, albeit broken up due to my mind drifting off, cycles. So there it is.: The main reason I posted this though is to thank CosmicIron for all your input in this thread and for introducing us to this technique. Im going to need to keep at this technique for a little longer to really have faith in it, but so far so good.

Originally Posted by qaz741: Success! Been trying this for close to a week now and I just had my 2nd ever lucid, my 1st lucid being over a year ago. There were a couple of differences between last nights SSILD "routine" than my previous failed attempts which I think helped. Firstly, I was doing my ADA much more comprehensively yesterday compared to the previous days. Secondly, the WBTB yesterday was naturally rather than due to an alarm clock. This is how it went: I went to sleep at about 10:30pm and set the alarm for 3:00am which would have meant I would wake up 4.5hrs after. But I ended up waking up at 11:57pm, feeling hot for some reason. Since my sleep was disturbed, I thought Ill just cancel the alarm, have a proper sleep and try again tomorrow. So i cancelled the alarmed. But then I naturally woke back up 4:17am needing to take a mad piss. So I went straight to the toilet and straight back but I decided I might as well do the cycles now. I did the cycles, went to sleep, and had a long and vivid lucid dream. So what changed in my SSILD "routine" last night was that I woke up later than usual(4.17am compared to my usual 3:00am), and I also did the cycles differently. I kept reading CosmicIron saying on here that you need to do the cycles in a relaxed and not highly attentive matter but I just wasnt getting it and kept doing the cycles robotically. But last night, I decided that I would prioritize going back to sleep first and the cycles second. Meaning I was putting my main focus on going back to sleep and the cycles in the back of my head which kept me much more relaxed than usual. Of course by doing that, my mind kept drifting off but I would catch myself and continue the cycles. I ended up finishing about 3-4 decently long, albeit broken up due to my mind drifting off, cycles. So there it is.: The main reason I posted this though is to thank CosmicIron for all your input in this thread and for introducing us to this technique. Im going to need to keep at this technique for a little longer to really have faith in it, but so far so good. -------- Congratulations! What you described -- prioritizing on falling asleep instead of the cycles, is the perfect way to do SSILD. Now that you got the hang of it you will see more successes down the road for sure!

I have been using it successfully for about 6 months. I usually only try on the weekends. I have heard some people say that is more the act of using wake back to bed than the technique but I always wake back to bed to go to the bathroom every night and that by itself is definitely not enough for me. Whether it is the fact that doing the cycles activates your mind rather than the specifics of the cycles, I don't know. I think the one where you focus on the back of your eyelids helped me get lucid when I noticed that I could see through my closed eyes. I am open to hearing arguments on that. Either way, I plan to continue using the cycles as my method of activating my mind before going back to sleep for now.

The challenge with this thread is that it is kind of buried in a sub thread that you don't normally see when scanning through the main forum sections. If you do a search (of all sections) for SSILD you will find 476 different threads. If you narrow down the results in the last month or newer there are still 30 different threads.

Originally Posted by rynkrt3: Was this method ever confirmed to be more than a placebo? After scrolling through all of the pages of replies and trying this myself, it seems that it is more of a placebo than a reliable technique to use nightly. -------- A placebo is something that has no real medical value but works due to perhaps psychological reasons. By this definition, you can probably say that all lucid dreaming techniques are placebos. You probably meant whether or not SsILD can be used reliably in long term. I'd say, based on my own experience and observations, it is more effective in long term than many other well-known methods. It is not difficult to find report on this forum which show people having success with this technique over a long period. On my own forum, there are more than a dozen people, myself included, who use the technique every day and succeed every time. All of these are well documented. If that's placebo, then placebo so be it. LOL

Originally Posted by CosmicIron: A placebo is something that has no real medical value but works due to perhaps psychological reasons. By this definition, you can probably say that all lucid dreaming techniques are placebos. You probably meant whether or not SsILD can be used reliably in long term. I'd say, based on my own experience and observations, it is more effective in long term than many other well-known methods. It is not difficult to find report on this forum which show people having success with this technique over a long period. On my own forum, there are more than a dozen people, myself included, who use the technique every day and succeed every time. All of these are well documented. If that's placebo, then placebo so be it. LOL -------- Yes, that is what I meant. I do not doubt you or your technique, I just find it odd that no one on this site has really found long term success with it. I just wander about people having success with it, but when that initial excitement phase wears off they start not having success. This happened to me. I found mild success a few times with this technique (a few shorts lucids and a few FA's.) but now no matter what I do I can't find success.

Originally Posted by rynkrt3: Yes, that is what I meant. I do not doubt you or your technique, I just find it odd that no one on this site has really found long term success with it. I just wander about people having success with it, but when that initial excitement phase wears off they start not having success. This happened to me. I found mild success a few times with this technique (a few shorts lucids and a few FA's.) but now no matter what I do I can't find success. -------- Such evidence are not difficult to find on this site alone. There is a thread that people record their results over a 30-day period and you can see some amazing statistics there, for example. To get sustained success with a technique one needs to not only practice but also analyze. This applies to every known techniques, not just Ssild.

Rynkrt3, I don't know if you missed my earlier post, but I've been using it for 6 months successfully. I usually only try on the weekends because I want to go straight back to sleep after my nightly getting up for the bathroom on work nights. I was off today and tried and succeeded last night but did fail Friday and Saturday night...I think I went to bed too late those nights. I know the OP doesn't suggest it, but maybe if it is no longer working for you try tweaking it assuming you went back over the steps and we're following them and it stopped being effective for you. have you tried a shorter or a longer WBTB before trying the cycles? For me, to keep from waking up too much I tweaked it to where I basically did the three cycles together after doing the first/shorter ones separately (thanks to the tip from PennyRoyal!).

Originally Posted by Bobblehat: Not quite sure what you mean by that, Foggy. Can you explain? -------- you know how there is a quick set of cycles and then a longer set of cycles? The longer set of cycles I actually do the eye, hearing and feeling one in the same breath over and over again for a few minutes or more. I do focus on the three cycles separately but they more flow together than being done 4-6 cycles of the eyes one before going to the sound/hearing one.

so does anyone else kind of question how much of the cycles they are actually getting in? like I know that I get up, go to the bathroom, and lay down and do the cycles, but my memory of the entire waking period is very hazy. Can you guys remember exactly how many cycles you did, like is your memory clear in the morning? I'm thinking if my memory of doing it is so bad then maybe I'm actually half asleep the whole time, lol.

Interesting technique. Funny enough I had a lucid this morning. I tested this out this morning but didn't really do the right amount of cycles. Think I just did like 1 cycle and went back to sleep. Marked it down as a DILD but SSILD could have possibly made me more aware in my dreams, cause I was semi-aware in another way, and this rarely happens. May have to experiment with this technique.

Originally Posted by tofur: Can you guys remember exactly how many cycles you did, like is your memory clear in the morning? I'm thinking if my memory of doing it is so bad then maybe I'm actually half asleep the whole time, lol. -------- I think the OP has been very busy lately so I will try to help with these questions. You never know...you could have been half asleep or all the way asleep. If I am too sleepy my memory of how the cycles went is a little hazy the next morning. So, the OP says that you don't want to count. Even though you don't remember how many, can you remember if you actually did at least some of both the short and the long sets of all 3 of the cycle types(sight/hearing/touch)? Originally Posted by CherryBomb: Just wondering if this technique is good for recall? I only remember one vivid dream a night and I'm not sure if that's enough for lding yet, and do I have to get into habit of doing rcs again? At the moment I'm tired of doing rcs lol -------- Maybe the OP can better answer. My opinion is that it will only help you recall in as much as it can help you to have LDs and it is hard to forget most LDs. And this technique has helped me to have most of my LDs! I think it is beneficial to also use a separate recall technique(s). If you are tired of doing reality checks, maybe try doing them differently or take a break...how do you RC?