Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming (WILD)

I sure took my time to write this article. That is, because I wanted to gather sufficient practical experience first in order to be able to provide you with substantial and personally verified information. Whenever possible, I tried to backup my results with scientific findings. WILD is a wonderful method that allowed me to dream lucidly for several hours straight more than once. Although it's easy to understand, it's usually hard to perform successfully. There are means to increase the chances though.
 
Lucid from the beginning
WILD is an umbrella term for a broad number of techniques. However, it always implies that you enter a dream maintaining the unbroken awareness of the waking state in contrast to becoming aware during a dream (DILD - Dream Induced Lucid Dreaming).
 
Optimizing preconditions
My most compelling WILD experience occurred right at the beginning of the night, falling asleep firmly. To achieve this, I had to completely skip sleeping the preceding night, which causes the abandonment of delta wave NREM sleep (deep sleep) the next time you fall asleep. Many sources claim that you only dream during REM sleep. That is untenable as is known by now, but it is unequally harder to stay aware during deep sleep and recall your dreams afterwards, so you can greatly improve the preconditions by facilitating REM sleep. Skipping a night of sleep should remain a rare exception though for obvious reasons.

Another natural way to facilitate REM sleep is simply to sleep through several sleep cycles. The more sleep cycles you had, the higher the portion of REM sleep gets until your whole sleep cycle finally consists of REM only. That is the perfect state to apply a WILD technique, because it allows you to slip into a vivid dream directly from the waking state.
 
A third option exercised by many proficient lucid dreamers is taking a so-called power-nap, a short nap during the day. Due to low melatonin levels during daylight hours, you most likely enter a REM phase first, before enough melatonin is produced in the pineal gland to initiate a normal sleep cycle. On the other hand, high levels of melatonin are reported to increase dream vividness and activity, which expresses itself in more profound experiences, as suggested above.
 
There is a good reason I extensively address the issue of sleep cycles. Especially for beginners, but also for advanced lucid dreamers, performing a successful WILD greatly depends on optimal preconditions. As you can often read on lucid dreaming forums, people try to apply a WILD technique right when they go to bed for the night. And as you can also observe, they fail, become frustrated and give up sooner or later. I already explained that it is next to impossible for most of us mere mortals to stay aware during NREM phases and a normal night's rest starts with two to three sleep cycles predominantly consisting of those. Probably 99.9 per cent of your attempts to accomplish WILD at the onset of a full nightly sleep period will be in vain, so don't even bother.
 
The ideal time to easily induce WILD is after having had a lot of sleep first - I recommend 10 hours or more! Get up to meet urgent needs if required, but don't stay up longer than about 30 minutes and avoid actions that may excite you. Then it's time to return to bed and proceed with the lucid dream induction technique.

WILD versus meditation
WILD is all about maintaining awareness while letting the body fall asleep, which can be a very light sleep, especially after you have had much sleep before. In a more general sense, WILD requires you to stay mentally awake while losing all awareness of your physical body. You may notice that this closely resembles the approach of many meditation and out-of-body experience (OBE) induction techniques. Indeed, WILD often results in OBE-like experiences. In fact, I see no mentionable difference between WILD and other kinds of relaxation and awareness based meditation. WILD is just a different term stemming from a rather modern western cultural background. This understanding is very helpful, because the well-proven knowledge of eastern and western meditation alike can be fully integrated.
 
Maintaining awareness
The primary key to sustain awareness while entering a sleep-like state is the unconstrained observation of the mind plus a few additional auxiliary techniques, mostly facilitating physical relaxation. Let me explain by example:
 
After 10 hours of sleep, I get up, take care of everything required to be comfortable and undisturbed for the next few hours and return to bed. When performing WILD, I prefer to lie on my front with my arms at the side. This is my special position reserved for this occasion. It is part of my individual ritual and signals my intuition, making it more efficient with repetition. Whatever position you may favour, it is of utmost importance that it is as comfortable as possible and that your blood circulation is unimpaired, because you need to stay completely motionless without tensing up.
 
I start with relaxation. Since I am already well relaxed from sleeping before, it is sufficient to consciously slacken my muscles when breathing out. I breathe in deeply but effortlessly and release the air quickly without pressure, almost like sighing, letting go of all physical and mental tension. That is a natural behavior you probably performed innumberable times in your life without even thinking about it.
 
When I feel deeply relaxed and can't detect any remaining tension in my body, I start mimicking my sleeping breath pattern. Again it is important to do it effortlessly and naturally.
 
Now comes the harder part, which requires practice for most people: I clear my mind of all thoughts. Thoughts are the enemy. They lead you astray and steal away your awareness, so you would just enter a common dream. A training method for clearing and calming your mind will be given at another place. I remain in this thoughtless blankness and observe, but don't wait for anything to happen. A hunter does not fall asleep, so don't expect your prey - the dream - to turn up. Just observe.
 
After some time, I perceive occasional images, mostly depicting natural or urban sceneries, detailed flashes of impressions remaining for just split seconds. This is commonly called hypnagogic imagery. Trying to focus on the imagery will destroy it, just continue observing everything without concentrating on any fixed point. More images pop up and remain longer. After some time, the images become short scenes, birds flying over a field, a street corner with cars passing by... it's easy to get lost now. Remain in your reserved mental position and let it happen, but don't attach your attention, no matter how fascinating and alluring it may seem.

Finally, the perception fully stabilizes and a portal into the dream world opens. It may appear as a viewport into a coherent locale of some kind. Entering is easy, but hard to explain. You simply think or will yourself in. Rely on your intuition, it really isn't hard to do. As always, calmness is key.
 
Opening your eyes
If you use the technique I described, you may notice that you don't fall asleep deeply due to the many hours of sleep you had before. In fact you should be able to open your physical eyes without terminating the dream connection as long as you don't move the rest of your body. This may be confusing at times, mixing up the two different pairs of eyelids, but it also allows for a very interesting experience: An out-of-body one. I discovered this by accident. Once, I opened my physical eyes from the lucid dream state and I saw exactly what I was supposed to see from the position of the sleeping physical body. Amazed, I remained this way for a while. Then I was grabbed and pulled out of my body. I could freely float inside the room I was sleeping in and beyond. The next time I managed to induce a WILD, I deliberately opened my physical eyes again and was able to exit on my own. It didn't always work though. On some occasions I could only get out partially or I thought I was awake, got up and realized later that I was having a regular dream.
 
Advanced WILDing
Recently, experimenting with "astral projection" techniques, I noticed that performing WILD in a sitting position seems to allow for more reliable results. I wouldn't call it WILD anymore, but the basic principle is the very same. I'm going to describe the technique I'm working with in a future article, but I don't suggest to start with that, because it requires a lot of practice and visualization skills. If you want to learn WILD, go for what I described in this article, which is probably the most easy way and once you are successful with it, you can still optimize it further according to your individual conditions.

"Sleep paralysis" and vibrations
I should mention that you most likely are not going to experience special sensations like "sleep paralysis" (REM atonia) or vibrations often described in other tutorials. As far as I could observe, those only occur in earlier sleep cycles, if at all. Though vibrations and paralysis are believed by some to be closely related to out-of-body experiences, they hardly ever befall me. My advice to you is not to worry about that at all, as it will only distract you from the actual objective, that is having lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences. Focus your mind on achieving your goal and don't get kept by side-effects.