I had a period of stress and less sleep, although I kept trying a little bit, I wasn’t succeeding in Wild anymore, but now having Christmas holiday, it came back, two successfull WILD’s per night the last two nights.
Buttercup, I will do my best trying to explain. If I focus on my body, or my breath, I get to excited when I begin to feel something and thus loose my focus, so I try to focus somewhere outside my body, and also outside my head. And ignore everything that is happening in my body and head, ignoring the strange tingling feelings, ignoring the sounds, even ignoring the visuals behind the eyelids, just focussing my attention somewhere outside my head, it depends and sometimes I switch little bit, above my head, or beneath my head, just little bit, not to much outside my head. How, very hard to explain, I think I use what I know anout Buddhism and the notion of just being aware that you are aware without being aware of something, only being aware of the fact that you are aware, breing aware of awareness itself, although I can’t actually do this, just trying it places my awareness in some sort of meta position, like looking at my mind, from a little distance, if I can hold onto this feeling it Is like I am aware, but not of something particular, but just aware, and this give a feeling of being aware outside of my body, which helps me to fall asleep keeping some awareness.
But as I mentioned in a previous post, I think: I should not start with this out of the body awareness to early. I first have to relax my body enough, at his stage it is ok for me to look for sometime to the visuals behind my eyelids (have not so many), or count a little bit. It is only when I am in this sleep meditative state, as you describe it, seems very familiar, that I can start doing this. And off course I should prevent to fall asleep, sometimes with force, like opening my eyes wide open for some time if I feel I tend to drift of to sleep in this stage. So first of all try to get in that body numb mind awake state, that’s how I call it, not focusing on falling asleep at all, this is for the next stage (the awareness out of the body stage).
So my WILD technique is:
- Short WBTB (only 5 minutes awake, little stretching, toilet)
- Relaxing, but almost forcefully staying awake, getting to that body numb mind awake state.
- Placing awareness outside of body, and let myself fall asleep, keeping this awareness, if I feel I can’t fall asleep very easy, keeping this awareness rather vague, just trusting it will come back stronger as soon as I see a dream is forming
If I get to awake, in stage 2, I often do some short SSILD cycles, that always helps me to relax my to strong awakened mind, before I go to stage 3.
In stage 3 it is important to have a very laid back attittude, nothing is important, no feeling is worth enough to give attention, except the feeling of that awareness that itself is not aware of something only about awareness itself. I guess this helps me to really disconnect from my expectations, from my fascination for things that I could get aware off, from my body, and thus brings me finally to sleep with something (that doesn’t keep me awake) to hold on to.
Good luck and feel free to share your thoughts, experiences or other questions about it.