Last night I experienced rapid heart rate for the first time while trying to get to sleep. I was not trying to WILD, instead my goal was to try out VILD, (visually incubated lucid dream) as discussed in the Sticky: the BIG VILD topic.
It was somewhat startling, but I remember reading this topic from before so I didn’t panic. It was a bit of a problem because when my heartrate increased I lost focus on my visuallization, and once it was over, I felt like I had to start all over again after all the progress I made. 