Reflection of the Techniques

There are hundreds of different techniques out there (I've only scraped the tip of the ice berg) and I'm sure all of them are pretty effective, but of the ones that I used, I think the Wake-Back-to-Bed (WBTB) technique was the best, especially when coupled with the rhythm timer. Not only did the idea of waking up during the night to stimulate the brain to help gain consciousness make sense, but it was also practical because 3 days a week I was able to come to school at noon, which gave me time to really try this technique. When trying the WILD (Wake-Induced Lucid Dream) technique, I didn't really realize that it went hand-in-hand with the WBTB method, but in retrospect I see that I used the WILD technique without noticing. The WILD technique uses the hypnagogic imagery as a transition from the waking state to the dreaming state. This is a hard technique to master, but it is easily done subconsciously when focusing on WBTB with the rhythm timer. Next comes the binaural beats. Even though I've only used the beats a few times, the results were pretty astonishing. When I awoke in the morning after listening to the beats as I went to sleep, I remembered 3 or 4 dreams from that night. It improved my dream recall phenomenally. I was really astonished. I never tried using them in the morning when I woke up for the WBTB technique, but I feel it would be really effective if used then. Next on my list was the MILD (mnemonic induction of lucid dreams), which I thought was pretty effective, but grossly inefficient. I liked the idea of the finger counting as a reality check, however, having to do it every hour on the hour for many, many days isn't exactly the best way. It did pop up in my dream once (as mentioned before), but then my watch broke and that went down hill... Last and certainly least is the CAT (cycle adjustment technique). It required a lot of effort (minimum 1 week preparation) and could only be done every other day after the 1 week preparation. On top of that, you lost 90 minutes of sleep every other day and couldn't go back to sleep. I didn't find this technique very useful at all really...

In summary, from the best techniques to the worst:

WBTB Technique

--- WILD / Rhythm Timer*

MILD Technique

Binaural Beats

CAT

Those two are most effective when coupled with the WBTB technique (as previously stated) and so they go in the WBTB subgroup.