So, will this work?

Every night, I go to bed, and try to concentrate my energy between my ears and my eyes, and try to get rid of all of the day’s thoughts. I have a pad of paper and a pen right next to me. Sometimes, I look at that swirling link with the scrolling text, as I hear it helps for dream recall.

I just want to make sure I’m not doing anything wrong. I want to make sure that I can remember my dreams correctly and eventually become lucid.

Yes, nothing wrong with that :smile:

Additionally you can try to develop that critical atitude towards reality.Whenever something unusual happens, wonder wether you are really awake right now

But if you feel that´s too much for you right now, you can also just stick to what you described above

Traumgänger

Okay, so, do you think that it’s possible that I could get a “sleep paralyze” episode from trying to remember my dreams too much? From what I hear, you freeze, as in, you can’t move, and there is a bunch of freaky things like black figures and weird noises going around. My brother has had night terrors, and what he said he saw was a tall, black figure that just jogged into his room. Basically, what he had, was the same as a “sleep paralyze” episode, but he could move. I’m not exactly up for being scared like that. I’d like to keep it at nightmares, thank you very much. :smile:

So…?

I dont think you have to be scared, because in a LD you know it isnt real :smile:

…I don’t want to run into a sleep paralization episode while I’m trying to have a lucid dream. I mean, I’m still in the early stages of learning, and if I don’t have a dream, I might not know it isn’t real and get freaked out. Argh, you know how it is when you first wake up. :grin:

Hmm, I am no expert on that topic, since I never had a sleep paralysis.

Anyway, I think that

  • you won´t get one by trying to remember your dreams.Perhaps WILD can give you SP, but I see no connection between remembering your dreams and SP.

  • even if you have an SP, it probably won´t be really bad.The problem is just that most people don´t know about it.I mean, you just wake up and can´t move, and you don´t understand what it is happening.Of course you get frightened then.But if you know what SP is, what it is good for and that it will go away, I think you can stay calm much easier

One more thing I´d like to add:
I am even a bit “sad” that I never have SP, for two reasons.First, I just like to know what it is like, second, it is reported to be quited easy to have a LD out of a SP

So, I´d say don´t worry about that.Since you obviously already spent some time thinking about SP, you´ll probably recognize that you are having one IF it happens to you, even if you just woke up

Traumgänger

Hear strange sounds and see things? sounds trippy. At least until a black figure runs into your room. . . 2 of my friends regularly have sleep paralysis, and they told me about it and I thought they were on crack or something, at least until I started getting insterested in LD. I have never had it in my life, and it sounds like an interesting experience.

ok, I’ve had SP occasionally before, and I’ve found a way to get out of it (it works for me anyway). You start by slowly trying to turn your head from side to side, and then do it more and more, until your head is moving quite a lot. Then you do the same, but with your whole body, starting with your shoulders and working down to the feet, until your whole body is rocking. Ta-da! You can move again. Although, this method leaves you wide awake, so you might prefer to just live with it and try to get back to sleep.

Sleep paralysis is easy to get out of, you just have to use all your strength and after a few seconds of that you will jerk free. Of course, I don’t do this anymore because since this only happens in the middle of REM to prevent you from acting out your dreams, you can just close your eyes, vizualize a scene, and easily fall into a LD.

I have had Sp few times and i can tell you it was one of the most pleasant experiences in my life.For me it was like huge portions of energy flowing inside my body giving me “mighty” like sensation.I loved it!And i know many ppl reporting it same way,so just dont worry about it.Like Traumganger said-mostly its scary for ppl who has no idea whats going on.For us lucid dreamers its a great aid in our practice.
Its a very powerfull tool in becoming lucid.Just be cool about it.its quite normal body function which passes itself anyways.
take care

I had SP before I ever even knew what a lucid dream was. It’s possible for it to happen but I dont think that LDing will make it happen more unless you induce it. I could be wrong though but don’t worry. There’s nothing to be afraid of in SP anyway because even if you believe in bad spirits or mosnters or anything what I usualy do is say to myself that I’m safe because really you are just as safe as you always are when you’re sleeping, only your mind is aware. I think that sometimes people get scared when they get SP and start to see images since you are still kind of in dream mode. The best thing to do is just relax and if you want to you can use one of the techniques that they mentioned for breaking out of it. For me I used to scrunch up my face or move my feet as those were the only parts that I could move.
So just remember, if it does happen don’t be afriad. And don’t be scared to LD because you’re scared of SP. LDing is safe and fun!