I’m new so I get to have The Manditory Long-Winded Post.
I’ve known about the concept of the lucid dream for a while now but have only recently looked into the practice of it a few weeks ago. I didn’t know anything about the techniques going in.
Once in a while I would nod off and experience odd vertigo-like sensations accompanied by a “whoosh” noice in my inner ear, vibes, etc. It could happen anywhere, sleeping in the back of class, taking a nap. But in either case I was usually conscious enough to actually hear noises associated with the waking world. Usually I would get scared and just try to shake it off. I knew this was either the Old Hag phenomenon or Sleep Paralysis (or even OBE). Since I had no practical application for these, I tried to avoid them by sleeping on my side or making an effort before sleep to remember not to fall into SP. (Later on I realized I was doing something not unlike the Autosuggestion Technique outlined in Laberge’s book - only for the opposite reasons)
After I read Stephen Laberge’s Exploring Lucid Dreaming, I realized I’ve been doing something advanced lucid dreamers still have trouble achieving from time to time. I actually haven’t been serious about trying his techniques just yet. But for some reason just reading about the idea of WILDs made me a lot more suseptible to SP. On some nights I can now fall into SP at will. Usually I wake up before falling into the “vortex”. Last night I decided to take the ride almost from start to finish. It was kinda cool. Like riding an elevator really fast up and down 100 floors. I could still hear my partner sleeping next to me and was feeling fully conscious during the whole episode. There was no visual component to this “dream” however.
Why the high WILD rate? What is it that I’m doing right? Am I actually doing WILD? Did I get close to being lucid? What’s your proven method for acheiving lucidity via WILD?