Sorry if this information can found elsewhere, but I would like a quick confirmation.
Many nights after trying the WILD techniques I have various sensations:
A stiffening of the whole body (but I can still move if I wish)
It starts to get unusually warm
Twitching of various muscles
Shadows moving briefly across the wall (difficult to describe)
If I move at all all of these sensations quickly go away, and by the time I start seeing things out of excitement I believe I wake myself up (that is, if I am presumably half-asleep).
Would this be an accurate description of the hypnagogic state?
If so, how do I get past the shadows and into an actual LD? In other words, how do I maintain myself calm and avoid thinking “It’s happening!” and wake myself up?
Thing is, I can easily get to this point, but I haven’t gone further this by using the techniques, and actively trying to have a lucid dream. I do however remember having one lucid dream at random.
Well I do see faint geometric patterns on my eyelids. But sometimes I’ll open my eyes and see shadows moving along the wall. A few weeks back I believe I even imagined (with my eyes open) that there was a dark ghost holding my old cell phone standing at my door.
Stiffening of the whole body is a good thing but it’s not enough to describe the hypnagogic state.
Body getting warm is annoying. If it happens often too much, you should find a trick to avoid this.
Twitching of various muscles (myoclonic jerks) may lead to suppose that you’re not very well relaxed, or that you start to think about random things.
Shadows moving (when you open your eyes) is probably a projection of your phosphenes in the dark. Phosphenes can be classified in two: when they don’t move, you pay attention to the bright points or forms. When they move (repetitive rotation or translation), you generally pay attention to the dark forms, thus you have the sensation of dark forms moving.
From your description, you haven’t reached the hypnagogic state. When you reach the hypnagogic state, you have HI (realistic and random images which seem to be projected on your eyelids) or hypnagogic sounds or somesthetic hallucinations, for instance your limbs stretching, your body floating, etc.
Don’t be impatient too much, don’t open your eyes or move. By the way, what WILD technique are you using?
I wouldn’t say “a very long way”. Cause in this state, you’re not very far from the hypnagogic state. Just continue and get more experience about this. If in, say three weeks, you haven’t made any progress, I think it would be better that you use another induction technique than WILD.
About these images. First night I tried WILD, I definetely got a picture like this. What should I do when it comes, think about nothing, or think about what’s showing before my eyes, or think about counting?
One of the big problems with WILD is that it depends on you. I don’t usaly get HI, or HH. I just slip into a dream, and then know that I am dreaming. I have had some HI, but not sounds. I also have had som somesthetic hallucinations, but not very offten.
This is also true about what you do when you get HH. Some people concetrat on it, some people have to ignore it. If it is HI, some people can just “enter” the Hallucination, and be in a dream. I can’t do that. I just let the HH happen, and keep working on being relaxed, then I am sudenly dreaming.
That means that learning WILD is a lot of trying, and seeing what works for you. That is why for most people, they have more luck with MILD or RC’s and DILD. Thoese techs are easy to learn, and you do not need to worry so much about what works for you or not. You just follow the steps and after a while you get an LD.
With WILD, you may work on it for weeks, or months just to find out that you are one of the people who can’t count, or you have to ignore the HH, or whatever. Then you have to adjust your WILD method to adapt for that. This can be very frustrating. You never know in advance. The next thing that you change could be the last thing that is stoping you from having an LD with WILD, or there might be 5 or 10 other things that you have to learn about yourself, and adapt your WILD for befor it works. That is just how WILD is.
don
Cause in this state, you’re not very far from the hypnagogic state. Just continue and get more experience about this. If in, say three weeks, you haven’t made any progress, I think it would be better that you use another induction technique than WILD.