WILD - Wake Induced Lucid Dreams

WILD is an abbreviation for Wake Induced Lucid Dream.

The concept behind the WILD technique is that you are utilizing the fact that you wake up in the middle of the REM state as previously discussed in the Sleep Cycle section from The Lucid Dream Primer. By waking from the REM state, it is much easier to fall back to sleep into REM faster and therefore bypassing the NREM stages that make it more difficult to remain conscious as you fall asleep.

It is nearly impossible to go from the waking state into a lucid dream when you go to bed first thing at night, because your mind has to wind down during the NREM stage of your sleep cycle.

However, if you allow yourself to wake up while you are in the middle of the REM stage, then you can go back to sleep and enter right back into finishing that REM stage that you previously woke up from (which is the dreaming stage of the sleep cycle).

To perform the WILD technique, do the following:

Step 1:
Set the alarm on your clock or cell phone to wake you up 5 to 6 hours after going to sleep. Try to time the alarm to wake you up during the middle of one of your 1.5 hour sleep cycle intervals, since this is when you will likely be in the REM stage.

Step 2:
Get in bed and go to sleep at night as you normally do.

Step 3:
When the alarm wakes you up, turn it off and close your eyes again.

Step 4:
Now that your eyes are closed again, you will begin to drift back to sleep. You may begin seeing hypnagogic imagery of faces, etc. Continue repeating "I will have a lucid dream" to yourself. Visualize yourself being conscious and aware in your dream. Try to visualize being logical about everything you see with your eyes closed.

Step 5:
Slowly, but surely, you will begin to feel your body entering the dream. Your body will begin to relax into what is called "sleep paralysis", where you can't move. This paralysis happens every time you fall asleep, but you usually don't realize it, because by then you are unconscious and unaware that you are asleep.

Step 6:
Continue falling deeper until you enter the dream and you are lucid.

After the DILD technique, the WILD technique is the most popular type of lucid dream induction technique. Since mind is still in the state of REM when you wake up, it is much easier to fall back to sleep into REM, but this time, you are falling asleep with the intention of having a lucid dream. Intention is everything with lucid dreams. Get into the habit of telling yourself before you go to sleep that you are going to have a lucid dream or that you want to have a lucid dream.