Title was: A Newbie to this with an odd experience
Well, it’s odd to me at least. Let me start by saying I’ve never before now had anything I’d call a lucid dream. But two days ago the following happened.
First I’ve been on a very odd sleep schedual for awhile, and it recently shifted, so I’ve been very sleep deprived this week. Two days ago I layed down on my memory foam mat to get some sleep with my alarms set to wake me at around 7am when I was bedding down at 2am. I was desperate for sleep and knew I’d be a zombie the next day with no sleep so I decided to use a meditation technique I’d learned from a friend to help me get to sleep. It’s worked before and essentialy is this, place your thumbs and forefingers together and place them so your thumbs are on your sternum and your index fingers are near your belly button. Then clear your head, focus on the spot between your hands, and breath deeply and slowly.
Now then, usualy this quiets my mind, my body sort of ‘fades’ from my perception and I pass out into a quiet and peacful sleep. This time however, my mind wouldn’t quiet. Try as I might, control my breathing as well as I could I could not seem to clear my head fully for any length of time. I kept at it for what felt like a long time…when a strange sensation came over me.
my body was, for lack of a better term, almost completely numb. And I became aware of the fact I was dreaming. But it wasn’t a ‘normal’ dream, it was like everything I saw and felt were wrapped in cotton or veiwed through frosted glass, hazy and indisnict, but definately there. The more confusing thing, was that I was fully aware of the room I was in still. I could hear my ceiling fan and ‘feel’ it’s breeze. I could hear cars and other sounds outside and around me. So I found myself in this state and started to experement with it. I found I could ‘move’ in the dream state easily enough but my actual body wouldn’t respond without signifigant effort. I also found I could form things in the dream part of my perception, just about anything from people to objects but I couldn’t seem to move a whole lot. However, I did notice that interacting with things in the dream had a ‘slight’ tactile responce on my actual body. Besides this I also found I could change my dream image sellf around abit, I didn’t really shift much but I changed my body to a self image I’m fond of easily and I’ll leave it at that for now. Also, another strange thing I noticed was I seemed to be in a ‘hyper’ REM state. I could to some extent feel my eyes twitching, and I’ve seen what normal folks look like in rem, mine must have looked rather freakishly faster in their movements than that, almost vibration I think. I managed to wrest myself from this condition for a short while and checked the time, all of my experimenting, which had felt like I’d been at it for a few hours, had been done in maybe 15-20 minutes or so. And what’s more I felt very rested, not fully but certianly a lot more so than 20 min to a half hour should have done for me. I managed to slip back into the state again and somewhere during it finaly fell fully asleep and out of the controled state I was in to awake at 7:30am the next morning. I got up and felt like a million bucks off maybe 5 hours total of sleep if that.
as to why I’m posting this, I’m mostly curious as to other’s input on this as to what actualy happened there. I’m confused as to what it was and heard everything from it sounded like an Out of body experence to a form of lucid dreaming and wanted to get the input from people a bit more experenced in this than me. Thanks for putting up with the huge starter post ^^;
Welcome! This sounds to me like a combination of sleep paralysis and hypnagogic imagery. I know I’ve had HI before in which I could “control” what I was doing.
Last night I decided to force myself to have an actual LD…
I used to realize I was dreaming…only to wake up a few seconds later…Last night I seemed to have the same experience as you…but then shortly that faded into a normal dream…I saw a dreamsign and when I woke up I tried doing the MILD techniqe…and subconciously focused on the Dreamsign…
Bam before you know it…I was in an immediate LD right where my last dream left off…It was so cool, my first real LD experience… I think what you experienced could be like a gateway to LDing…you just have to have the goal to come out of it in a Lucid Dream…
Well thanks for the input Datameister and MBdreamer. I’ll have to see what those terms are you mentioned. It was…unique alright though. I’m not sure I could duplicate it.
Chances are there wasn’t really anything extra-ordinary about your REM stage. I guess it’s rare that you are able to witness your own rapid eye movement, but I would imagine that everyone’s REM responses are different (ie. speed of eye movement) - you were just noticing your own so it may have appeared more strange than it actually was.
From what you describe, I’ve the feeling that you manage to get a WILD. It was a lucid dream, but it wasn’t very vivid. Sometimes people have such WILD’s which are not very gratifying cause it looks sometimes more like imagination and it’s not very realistic cause all is hazy or loses its shape. I remember such a dream in which I believed I was in my bedroom. The dream characters were like pixelated and they lost parts or textures.
In such a state, it happens that your mind recreates the whole environment. It’s not certain that you really perceived it.
It’s still unclear if those feelings are real or not. But I remember that I have read very recently on the forum an account of a WILD’er who said he was sort of bilocated, feeling in the same time his physical body and his dreamed one. Anyhow, this state when you feel awake but you’re in a LD has been described and it has been called by some dreamers the “intermediate state”. I just mention this so that you’ll know it has been experienced many times before. Yet this term is not very in use on the forum.
I’m not a WILD’er. I hope a WILD pro will see your thread and give his opinion. I’ll change your thread title cause it’s not very explicit. But as you don’t know what it is, you couldn’t of course find a good title! And as I’m unsure too, I can just hope mine will be better! Tell me is you find the new title to be OK.
bzteam, I find this curious too cause I don’t think it’s related to REM sleep. But I’ve read many accounts from people saying their eyes were twitching quickly. Most are beginners indeed.
Huh, thanks for the info I think I’ll go read up on it a bit. I havn’t tried to go for it again yet but maybe I’ll try tonight. See what happens. And actualy that “bilocationality” and WILD as you put it does sound pretty acurate.
I am also not a WILD pro, but I wanted to coment on your topic because I’ve been practicing it for the past two weeks, and I’ve seen progress. Although I’ve made progress, I haven’t actually achived a lucid dream via this technique. All of mine so far were dream induced. Just like your experience, they weren’t all that vivid, at least not the “More vivid than real life” experience that I often hear from people. For the most part, they were low level at the highest, and some interesting experiences where the dream seemed to fade, but sometimes they did not end entirely. Instead, I attempted to do more, and I felt as if I were imagining it, although it’s still possible that I was still dreaming. I really don’t know about those experiences.
Oh, right! I became distracted. I was going to comment on your experience! From the sounds of it, that seemed like a Wake Induce Lucid Dream to me, although I have yet to experience one and know what it’s like. What is amazing is that you’ve achieved it without even trying! That sounds like a great accomplishment. You should consider trying it more often.
Thinking about it tonight. I thought it was pretty crazy too but looking through the desc of WILD on the website I pretty much did the steps they suggested. I didn’t intend to at all and wasn’t trying to certianly I just kinda fell into it. -chuckles- what are the chances?
I’m not completely sure I understood your question. IMO, the WILD technique reproduces the falling asleep process, but you do the steps voluntarily. The steps are the same for everybody: relaxing; seeing phosphenes (little fuzzy light dots); experiencing soft HH; feeling you body becoming numb; experiencing stronger HH; entering a LD. If because of some circumstances you WILD unvoluntarily, you’ll do the same steps. Did I answer to your question?
Was kinda a hypothetical question there ^^; I meant what are the chances I’d go through the steps the right way without even being aware of the steps in the first place. Havn’t gotten a chance to try again yet though.
Heh looks like it ‘was’ easier to do without meaning too. I tried last night and I could feel myself getting close to it but I fell asleep before I could enter a WILD state. Ah well maybe tonight it’ll work.
From the sounds of it, that seemed like a Wake Induce Lucid Dream to me, although I have yet to experience one and know what it’s like. What is amazing is that you’ve achieved it without even trying! That sounds like a great accomplishment. You should consider trying it more often. 
IMO, the WILD technique reproduces the falling asleep process, but you do the steps voluntarily. The steps are the same for everybody: relaxing; seeing phosphenes (little fuzzy light dots); experiencing soft HH; feeling you body becoming numb; experiencing stronger HH; entering a LD. If because of some circumstances you WILD unvoluntarily, you’ll do the same steps. Did I answer to your question?