SSILD: cycling through the senses

SSILD, "senses initiated lucid dream", emerged from online lucid-dreaming communities rather than from a laboratory. It is included here because it is widely practised and because leaving it out would not stop anyone finding it.

The method

After four to six hours of sleep, wake briefly, then:

1. Cycle through three senses (sight (eyes closed, attending to whatever is there), hearing, then touch) spending a few seconds on each. Do this quickly, four or five times.
2. Then slow down. Repeat the cycle three or four more times, spending perhaps twenty to thirty seconds per sense.
3. Stop and go to sleep normally. Do not try to stay conscious. Unlike WILD, the intent is to fall asleep, having primed attention.

Practitioners report becoming lucid either later in a dream or during a false awakening.

What is actually known about it

Very little. There are no published trials of SSILD comparable to the work on MILD or reality testing. Its plausibility rests on the same general mechanism as the cognitive techniques: a period of directed attention shortly before REM-rich sleep, in a wake-back-to-bed window that is itself associated with better results.

That is not nothing. It is also not evidence, and this page will not pretend otherwise.

If you try it

The low cost is the argument in its favour: it takes a few minutes, it does not require staying awake, and its failure mode is going back to sleep. Log the attempts in the tracker with the technique recorded, and after enough nights the dashboard will show your own success rate by technique, which is better evidence for you than anything on this page.