Help! How to avoid insomnia when trying to LD?

I guess I was blessed and cursed as a kid when I had so many sleep paralysis episodes. I was a champion sleeper but boy were they scary.

Now that I normally get a good night's sleep - if usually a little under the recommended amount - nothing ever goes bump in the night. If you've read my other posts you'll know that from time to time I experiment with trying to LD, I get some minimal success but can't go any further, and ultimately give up.

Or, like now, I end up with insomnia!

Something about laying there meditating on this whole thing, expecting, anticipating, revs up my mind and causes me to have less sleep during the night. Then I am over tired, stressed, and get caught in a vicious cycle where the insomnia gets worse. I haven't had it for years, and yet, right when I begin to experiment with LD, I get it.

What am I doing wrong? How to I get back a regular night's sleep, then attempt LD again without another bout of insomnia?

Seems counterintuitive that I am trying to create a scenario where I wake up IN my dream but my body remains asleep and I CAN'T (at least temporarily) wake it up or move it, and yet the result is I get less sleep and less quality sleep. What is going on here? Is this normal in pursuit of LD?

I still want to do this, but not at the cost of my sanity (and the well-being of others when I am driving).

I forgot to give a particular shout-out to those who look down on the use of LD "aids" like Galantamine (which I am STILL waiting to receive). Obviously not everyone is an expert at this, so it can't be a case of "some aren't built for having LD." I should be, or at least was - or is my brain a completely different chemical battle ground than when I was a kid and had these without even trying (or wanting them)? Sometimes I had more than one a night - so what was going on biochemically to do this on those particular nights, devoid of work stress, poor sleeping habits, caffeine or teen hormones or whatever else has been imagined to help facilitate their unsuspected appearances?

The "advice" to some to "just relax and not be scared" of their paralysis, when it happens, is also easier said than done for many. Just because it comes easy for some people does not mean it should for everyone else. Every parasomnia known would have a simple solution of "do what I did" to solve it, be it nightmares or bedwetting.

A good exercise (if only in empathy) is to turn the advice around: if you NEVER experience the frightening sleep paralysis, can you actually trick yourself into being afraid of it to intensify and prolong the experience? It should work both ways, right? But I guess it is just as easy to shrug off a fear or phobia as it is to intentionally create one....

Anyway, I guess my point is that I hope that the herbal assistance does more of the chemical heavy lifting for me, without requiring to much mental effort that renders me an insomniac.

I came across a video on youtube lastnight while researching LD, it tackled the problem of insomnia, I have never suffered chronically with insomnia, just small bouts, and i dont know if it was the placebo effect or just dumb luck, but this video helped tons, by the way, i am not advertising this person/channel.

Hope it helps! Heres the link

http://youtu.be/Tb8eGsu_nX4

If a technique is causing you sleep issues, you should do a diferent one. Sleep issues if one does something so body creates a habit of them, can be a extremely hard to recover from. Giving oneself health issues just for a LD isnt worth it esp when there are other techniques.

Sometimes I had more than one a night - so what was going on biochemically to do this on those particular nights, devoid of work stress, poor sleeping habits, caffeine or teen hormones or whatever else has been imagined to help facilitate their unsuspected appearances?

Irregular sleeping habits can trigger off a LD as its a habit of just going to bed at certain time and falling unconsciously asleep one has to overcome to LD.

.....

If you are doing any kind of LD technique which is giving you stress, it could make LD much harder to achieve.

...so, what is a technique that DOESN'T cause this stress?

The answer to that question is: anything that is guaranteed to work.

Because if it doesn't, then the hopeful LD seeker lies awake in anticipation for something to happen. You end up laying there half the night, not sleeping. What does it take to fall unknowingly to sleep? The options then seem that either nothing remarkable happens (except, once again, no LD), or you have a "false awakening" and suddenly "a black monster suddenly attacks you" as one person put it. Or, heaven forbid, you have success!

If I were you I would just do a ton of reality checks and pray for a DILD.

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Grimez wrote: If I were you I would just do a ton of reality checks and pray for a DILD.

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Yikes, I need to review the nomenclature. I've heard of MILD and WILD, but not DILD. (Since I can't do the first two, I don't have much hope for the third.)

The Galantamine arrived yesterday. The previous night I broke my insomnia in part by a hot bath, some "shared physical activity" and, because I had a little post nasal drip going on, some Nyquil. I wouldn't say that I slept like a champ, but I wasn't stressed out. I remember waking up several times to shift position but seem to have returned to sleep, and I ended up being in bed for about 12 hours. I guess I needed it?

So maybe the very next night wasn't the best to try the Galantamine, but being a Friday night, the promise of being able to stay in bed late was too tempting. I was still feeling a bit under the weather so I took more Nyquil (I researched and found no bad side effects of combining these meds). I had a banana before the Galantamine. Result: I stayed up most of the night! UGH!!!

You see why, given the options of NOTHING happening vs. BEING SCARED OUT OF MY WITS that I'd choose the latter, because then I know that at least SOMETHING happened, and it gives me something to work with. But with neither happening, it seems like I am at a loss. Herbs don't work, and trying to WILL it to happen leads to insomnia. Am I a lost cause? I would hope, given my childhood history of SP, and my ability to once in a while stick with it long enough to have some strange half-progress, should elevate me above the majority of the population.

Eventually I did fall asleep, which I only know from a series of dreams I had. None were what I'd call vivid, and none offered any opportunity for lucidity or SP (despite including a trip to Italy, an 8-foot tall reproduction of the human brain and my drilling through the nostril, and a visit to the eye doctor to discuss the microorganisms that inhabit the eye (including a digression into this fatty tissue by the tear ducts that baffled scientists), and finally arriving too late to witness a demonstration in animal husbandry with DUCKS, for which I inspected these cards that somehow attached to the males, and based on your selection of genetic material (and paying the differing price for each!) is what would determine your outcome. Oh, and there was this scene in a garden where somehow plants that could not possibly survive the winter actually did, in the rows I originally planted them. And a dog that jumped into a van I was in that was missing a side panel, and I had to push it out (this could have been a good LD/SP moment, no?)

Okay, so it seems that the promise of good dream recall is true. While not especially vivid, I seem to be remembering quite a bit some couple hours later. I suspected I would recall more as soon as I started typing, but I would still prefer for SP/LD.

I am not giving up after one attempt. Maybe the Nyquil messed it up. I should have tried it during a better stretch of sleep, or timed when I took it and the dosage better. Perhaps some day on the heels of sleep deprivation or before a nap? So we'll see. Just wish I had more people to talk this over with who USE it.

astrovineyard wrote: ...so, what is a technique that DOESN'T cause this stress?

The answer to that question is: anything that is guaranteed to work.

Make sure you are doing techiques you dont at all mind and you have patience to regularly do for 2-3 weeks before changing something or the technique completely if nothing happened. eg for myself, counting sheep as I think "lucid dream" is a very bad thing for me to do, it stresses me out and to have a WILD one needs to be relaxed. Counting backwards is a bad technique for myself too as I can count backwards from 5000 and have nothing at all happen.

You need to find whatever works for you.

Impatience thou will interfere with a persons calmness and make harder to have a LD so find things you dont mind doing.

Because if it doesn't, then the hopeful LD seeker lies awake in anticipation for something to happen.

Have a time limit for the trial if you are trying to WILD as otherwise it is quite possible to lay there all night and have nothing happen. Most that do WILD will have it happen before an hour. Me and at least one other here has it happen around the 45 min mark while a couple here I know have them happen a lot faster then that. I wont try to WILD for longer then 1hr. (often people commonly end up having a WILD once they relaxed and stopped trying ie they were trying too hard, I somtimes do that.. and go right into one then instead of sleep)..

Stop if you are getting frustrated as it means you wont be relaxing well.

or you have a "false awakening" and suddenly "a black monster suddenly attacks you" as one person put it. Or, heaven forbid, you have success!

If you are having false awakenings that is a great thing if you want to LD.. all you have to do is start reality checking every time you wake up.

You dont seem very calm about the whole thing and that is likely to impact your ability to LD.

Also taking supplements are not the answer if you arent close as they are then unlikely to work. Certain ones just may slightly increase the chances. Sometimes its more about a person believing they can do it and the supplements help them believe they can (they can also work as like a placebo).

astrovineyard wrote: A good exercise (if only in empathy) is to turn the advice around: if you NEVER experience the frightening sleep paralysis, can you actually trick yourself into being afraid of it to intensify and prolong the experience? It should work both ways, right? But I guess it is just as easy to shrug off a fear or phobia as it is to intentionally create one.... .

Yes one can purposely make something scary thou I'd find that very hard to do in a sleep paralyses state as it just doesnt scare me at all not being able to move as logically I know Im like that every single night when Im unconsciously asleep.

I like to face fear eg I have lucids in which I purposely tried to make them as scary as possible just so I can practice my dream control and ability to then change something which is making myself want to pee myself in fright and have me sweating and shaking in the dream as Im so intensely scared in the dream as Ive allowed myself to become (the more scared one is, of cause the harder it often becomes to then escape the fear and scary thing).

Noone has said that working with fear is easy. It can be quite a challenge (and that is what I like about it).

taniaaust1 wrote:

You dont seem very calm about the whole thing and that is likely to impact your ability to LD.

Also taking supplements are not the answer if you arent close as they are then unlikely to work. Certain ones just may slightly increase the chances. Sometimes its more about a person believing they can do it and the supplements help them believe they can (they can also work as like a placebo).

Ironically, I was anything but calm as a child when having SP. Being afraid to go back to sleep seems like precisely the state one doesn't want to be in to make something happen, according to your suggestion... unless it is precisely the DESIRED result that is elusive, and you either get the opposite effect or nothing at all.

(Such as nightmares linked to sleep paralysis - you may be afraid of something and so psychologically be prone to the nightmares, but what is it exactly makes the same person susceptible to the completely separate series of events that create the SP? If they are truly separate phenomena, then they would seem to have the same triggers, meaning chronic SP can arise from the same state of fear that causes the nightmares that precede them?)

I thought the supplements might be an interesting change in how I've done things. Don't they say it is foolish to keep doing the same thing and expect different results? Truth is that 100% of my prior SP episodes happened drug-free, and as I've stated, without the effects of caffeine or sleep deprivation or inconsistent sleep schedules, as I've read can be the culprit.

Intentional exercises yield very little results, and are more likely to end with insomnia. So it seems the less I think about it, the better. So hoping the supplements increase the odds.

astrovineyard wrote: I guess I was blessed and cursed as a kid when I had so many sleep paralysis episodes. I was a champion sleeper but boy were they scary.

Now that I normally get a good night's sleep - if usually a little under the recommended amount - nothing ever goes bump in the night. If you've read my other posts you'll know that from time to time I experiment with trying to LD, I get some minimal success but can't go any further, and ultimately give up.

Or, like now, I end up with insomnia!

Something about laying there meditating on this whole thing, expecting, anticipating, revs up my mind and causes me to have less sleep during the night. Then I am over tired, stressed, and get caught in a vicious cycle where the insomnia gets worse. I haven't had it for years, and yet, right when I begin to experiment with LD, I get it.

What am I doing wrong? How to I get back a regular night's sleep, then attempt LD again without another bout of insomnia?

Seems counterintuitive that I am trying to create a scenario where I wake up IN my dream but my body remains asleep and I CAN'T (at least temporarily) wake it up or move it, and yet the result is I get less sleep and less quality sleep. What is going on here? Is this normal in pursuit of LD?

I still want to do this, but not at the cost of my sanity (and the well-being of others when I am driving).

Hey bud; As on who's suffered (if that's the correct word choice) from insomnia for decades, I think you've hit the nail on the head. As I understand it, & someone please correct me if I'm wrong or there's a better way of perceiving the dilemma, lucid dreaming is a combination of deep progressive relaxation w concomitant alertness. Similar in a way to oil & water. 2 states of consciousness, 2 liquids, but neither pair mixes well together. And since that is what you typically want to manifest a lucid dream state, there's the rub. How to do, how to do? No ready answer here, just head scratching.

Well that's just it: what is the magic bullet? How to do this and/or what supplement can be taken (if any).

Many will poo-poo and pills as "cheating." But ultimately the verdict is reached that you are either "doing it wrong" or "not trying hard/long enough."

They realize that you'll either succeed or fail at having lucid dreams, but never hint that simply attempting these things might blow up in your face and lead to other sleep problems, including NOT sleeping!

I also disagree about the nature of "alertness/wakefulness" that one paradoxically has during SP or LD. If the mind is truly awake, then why can't it so easily dispense with the terror and hypnagogia? There is more going on than simply muscle atone (and I'm not suggesting anything supernatural). For instance, if one were awake and injected with a drug to paralyze you, would you instantly start hallucinating, hear buzzing and be terrified, despite being "awake"? Are paraplegics in a constant state of horrifying paralysis and feel heavy and crushed? For that matter, would a paraplegic ever experience SP, and if so, what would that actually mean since they can't move if they wanted to even when awake, REM chemical or not?

The "magic bullet" will necessarily vary from person to person as we all exhibit some degree of unique biological individuality. By that I mean our history, our lives, our tastes & distastes can never all be completely the same & it is the sum of the parts, the synergy that we our, that makes things happen for us. One person loves chocolate, another is allergic to it. Whether we're LDing or not is what we're attempting, how we do it is just that. Yeah, a myriad of factors take place within us, awake, asleep, or in between those states. Understanding how to do it is not going to happen by pinning the tail on one donkey.

son of shennong wrote:

Hey bud; As on who's suffered (if that's the correct word choice) from insomnia for decades, I think you've hit the nail on the head. As I understand it, & someone please correct me if I'm wrong or there's a better way of perceiving the dilemma, lucid dreaming is a combination of deep progressive relaxation w concomitant alertness. Similar in a way to oil & water. 2 states of consciousness, 2 liquids, but neither pair mixes well together. And since that is what you typically want to manifest a lucid dream state, there's the rub. How to do, how to do? No ready answer here, just head scratching.

It's like soap making, the perfect balance of things has to be there or it wont work. Soap is made from lye which is highly caustic and causes severe burns if inhaled or got on the skin. In its making, the right amount of fat has to be added to cancel out caustic nature of it.. if one though puts in too much, it wont set, too little and your skin would be in big trouble.

Like cooking and having to work out the right balance of ingredients. People need to play around with it to find the right balance (if you have insomnia though, you have trouble to start with since you need to get to sleep, though of cause insominics still do sleep and hence its still possible but like a man with false legs running a marathon, they may need to go about things a bit differently).

Not all people make good cooks :D (some of mine has been disasterous. We got given some ingredients in high school and had to make up a dish, mine was so bad that when it come to class sharing, no one would eat it). They may want to be a good cook but there is a knack to adding the right amount of herbs, spices and flavourings. Some with their cooking is quite hit and miss, they need to keep trying different things and getting advice and adjusting what they do till they find something which works, others make natural cooks. It took me 20 years to become a decent cook. I see LD a bit like this.

astrovineyard wrote: Well that's just it: what is the magic bullet? How to do this and/or what supplement can be taken (if any).

Many will poo-poo and pills as "cheating." But ultimately the verdict is reached that you are either "doing it wrong" or "not trying hard/long enough."

There are several issues with supplements eg WBTB is recommended with using them to give them the most chance of helping and WBTB isn't advisable for you, even the ones some people who research sleep and LD recommend that WBTB is also used with the supplements. So hence why supplements were never a good recommendation for you and I'm not at all surprised didn't work.

I don't think you ever have understood why I don't think they probably are not suitable in your case. Besides even you noticed there are no good studies on how affective they are for this. I wouldn't recommend something to someone which I didn't think was likely to work for them.

I also disagree about the nature of "alertness/wakefulness" that one paradoxically has during SP or LD. If the mind is truly awake, then why can't it so easily dispense with the terror and hypnagogia?

They are "transition states" states between sleep and awake, hence why some cant control their fears well. It also depends on how bad a persons fear is of their experiences and may not even be the individual state at the time if they have previously had fear over a state (eg if a person is scared of spiders, they will be scared while awake if confronted by one).... and the balance between the sleep state and the subconsciousness state.

is more going on than simply muscle atone (and I'm not suggesting anything supernatural). For instance, if one were awake and injected with a drug to paralyze you, would you instantly start hallucinating, hear buzzing and be terrified, despite being "awake"? I'm sure most who were paralysed by a drug but still awake would be terrified to be in that state and not able to move (unless they completely understood what was going on). Paralyses renders a person to feeling "vulnerable" and if a person has hangups around feeling vulnerable, that could turn the experience scary.