Problems getting back to sleep after WBTB

Tried searching on this topic, but didn't see anything posted. Maybe someone can point me to a thread if it's already been addressed.

I'm making progress with dream recall during the initial WBTB method (not moving and just lying there relaxed while gently asking myself what I'd just dreamed, and then getting up and dream journaling after I've recalled all I can).

I'm also staying really stoked about now possibly lucid dreaming after I stay up for a while (at least a half hour--depends on how tired I feel).

The problem is that the last few nights I've been so amped with enthusiasm that it's really hard to get back to sleep! And worse yet, it's almost as if relaxation techniques (I've been messing with the 61 point method while counting breaths) wake me up even more! It took me about two and half hours to get back to sleep last night--and today's a workday :)

Folks, I need some help. Any ideas?

ps: Hope this isn't all covered in Rebecca's ebook. If it is, let me know--I've been meaning to download a copy anyway.

I can take a good hour to get back to sleep and if lucky pop into a WILD. if I am amped I find it best to concentrate on breathing and put a little focus on breathing out fully, a little more than normal. It tends to place you mind on the breathing and one small part so becomes quite calming. After a while you might start to become aware of parts of your body and just go with the feelings. Explore them with your mind and you should drift away. Dont forget to stay awake.....

Peter

Thanks for the response, Peter.

It's odd, though. Instead of causing relaxation, the breathing often causes these intense thoughts that my mind fixates on--seemingly involuntarily. Then it's off to the races and I'll notice that, like, maybe 20 minutes have gone by before I refocus. I'll start the breathing again--but then that whole cycle will start over.

I'll try your extra-breathing-out suggestion tonight. Maybe that will "kickstart" the relaxation back into sleep (how's that for a non-sequitur!?)

If it doesn't help, though, I'm wondering if at that point I should just turn a light back on and read--hey, I could read Rebecca's book! At least I'll be keeping my mind focused on lucid dreaming in general.

Also, when you say "Dont forget to stay awake", I take it you mean body-asleep/mind-awake?

As always, TIA.

You know, I always find it hard to go to sleep after attempting WILD when I stop trying the tecnique (because i'm feeling it doesn't work). It can take me more than 2 hours to fall asleep again, and I don't sleep well after that.

Any suggestions?

Hey, dagomez99.

Yeah, pretty much the same thing I'm experiencing, except I'm just trying to do a MILD technique. I did end up having a lucid dream a couple of days ago after WBTB, but--man--it took me hours to get back to sleep.

Maybe it was worth it, though--but there's gotta be some shortcut to getting back to sleep fairly quickly.

yes, the most frustrating time is when you do relax and simply go to sleep. Worrying about sleeping or relaxing is the worst thing and hardest not to do. If I try by focusing on breathing out its on the last little push and a little muscle tension goes with this. A few breathes (10 to 20) is normaly enough to settle my mind a little and if not wait a bit and start again. if nothing works it peanut butter on toast with a cup of sweetened milo or choc drink

Peter

Peter wrote: if nothing works it peanut butter on toast with a cup of sweetened milo or choc drink

--Or maybe a shot of Jamesons!

Seriously, thanks Peter. That little extra push on the breathing technique tended to work for me last night. It still took me about and hour and half to get back to sleep, but I wanted to stay up for at least an hour anyway to really charge the REM sleep (this was all between about 4 and 5:30am).

As a result, no lucid dreams--but three great, vivid dreams (one a 2-parter) that I clearly remembered and was able to journal later (like this afternoon) that all had a number of great dream themes and signs contained within them.

The other thing I did was just not get aggravated about not falling right back asleep. Just kind of had a matter of fact attitude. I went out to the couch (didn't want to disturb my wife) and my pooch jumped up and laid his head on my ankles. Last thing I remembered was hearing his deep breathing....zzzzz....good boy....zzzzz.....

cool that it helped. I had 3 vivid dreams last night. I remember them fully and in detail and the dreams signs in hindsight make me feel silly for not noticing them. I was running in a race and everyone else took a short cut but I did it the hard way and was climbing an impossible rock face. The rocks keep coming loose in my hands and only will power kept them in place and allowed me to the next handhold. I then got to the end of the face and on a ledge was a cardboard box with a gumboot poking out. I still DIDNT GET IT.

One dream I was walking and turned around and my racing bike was hanging in a tree, that time I laughed and knew I was in a dream. (this was months ago) The dreams are ours, we create them and the signs are ours as we create them as well but we are also (well me) are 1% out of sync with the dream state in that we need signs to understand we are there.

I call these dreams full of signs and that I remember in detail "vivid dreams" is this your understanding as well?. If I could click to the signs I would have muliple LD each night

Peter

Peter,

Thanks, man. Great dream. Seems like physical / outdoor activities are definite dream "themes" for you.

To answer your question, yes--that's exactly the way I would define my own "vivid" dreams as well. Not lucid, but ones I recall in detail (especially if I can remember earlier segments), and full of both familiar (and possibly new) dream signs--and sometimes these dreams can offer pretty profound insights into things that I'm trying to figure out in "real time", as it were.

I also really know, however, what you mean about not quite picking up on dream signs--that being off by 1%. I find it easy to berate myself a bit when I wake up. I still consider myself to be a novice LD'er, but a number of my lucid dreams have been triggered by "commotions" caused by certain traffic situations (driving itself seems to be one of my dream themes--I think it's because I have a lousy commute--flippin' California drivers!).

Anyway, one of those dreams I had the other night, after I did get back to sleep, involved my car getting away from me (like coming to life with me outside it) on a narrow, mountain road--beautiful area, though, with incredible granite rocks, like up in Yosemite or something. The car was twisting and turning, but holding its own somehow--and I'm running with everything I've got after it. On one of the switchbacks in the road it somehow manages to go between a number of cars all coming the other way--but with lots of honking and irate drivers. Now this should have tipped me off--that type of "commotion" has in other dreams. But this time, well, no dice, as they say.

But, you know, just waking up and acknowledging the dream sign--I still feel that's important, and a job well done. At the very least it primes the pump for recognizing it in a similar dream situations in the future. Plus, I really agree with that guy, Tim Post, out at Lucidipedia that we shouldn't discount our non-lucid dreams. They can be incredibly powerful in their own right.

By the way--I took the night off last night. I was dog-tired and slept like a baby. Can't remember I thing, but, as they say here in Santa Cruz--"It's all good"!

LOL. nice to hear of your experiances. I have a lot of outdoor dreams but really just a lot of dreams so only picked that one as it was the night before your post. The care one happens for me a lot as well and I am normally driving along a road and will drive off the road into water and think that I am going to die. They normally end up lucid as I will ofter click at the event which is the sign. The vivid dreams are so close and so frequent that I think I just accept whatever I see. I think in vivid dreams and converse with others so the gap is tiny (1%) and they can be profound as well with meaning and as you say link normal daily life. My biggest trigger is an emotional content and normally my safety that triggers into a LD state, in saying this I ofter just get lucid on no signs at all. A car crash, someone or something that is a threat to me is a good trigger but they never the same twice.
I keep a dream dairy and it has hundreds of dreams from the last year. I think if I had talent for writing I could invent some charactors and make a cool childrens book from some of the adventures. also going to google Tim Post and see what I can find Peter

Peter,

First, if you have an inclination to use your dreams (or anything else) for any kind of creative pursuits, I would strongly urge you to do it. Yeah, I'm a 9-to-5 working stiff, but in many ways I've structured my entire life around creative pursuits. I think children's stories based on dreams is a great idea, and have often wondered if that's where guys like Shel Silverstein and Maurice Sendak got their ideas in the first place.*

Thanks for the clarification on the 1%. Yes, I totally, agree. I've had dreams over my entire life that have been so vivid that, now thinking back on them, I'm surprise I didn't go lucid with 'em. As a matter of fact, that second "silver moon" dream I had last week was really like that. It's strange to say, but I almost have this feeling that becoming lucid would have actually spoiled that dream in a way--it was so damned good! And the fact that I remembered the moon from the other dream--the odd "chaining" phenomenon--without become lucid, is something really interesting to me in itself.

I feel that I'm at the stage of my LD development where, once I recognize a dream sign, I really need to work on recognizing that same dream sign during the day--and then of course do a reality check. I'm not really there yet, but I've had successes. And when I have them they feel like I've caught the brass ring.

• Beat writer Jack Kerouac also kept scrupulous dream journals and ended up writing many of them out as poetry--eventually publishing them in his Mexico City Blues.

• Beat writer Jack Kerouac also kept scrupulous dream journals and ended up writing many of them out as poetry--eventually publishing them in his Mexico City Blues.

Just ordered a copy this book, it looks interesting

Peter