Hello everyone, I have been thinking about trying to go lucid in a dream for a while and have read about some ways, however I am a bit worried about Sleep Paralysis, does this happen every time before a lucid dream? I’ve heard alot of bad things about SP such as it is accompanied by paranoia, fear etc. Can anybody give me more information on this?
Hey steve, welcome to the forum 
You experience SP, believe it or not, every single night. Your body goes through this stage where basically you become immobile so that whatever you do in your dreams will not be re-created in real life. Now, sometimes you are able to, willingly or not, be conscious while SP is taking place. This is no big deal, and is not dangerous in any way, seeing as how you would be going through it conscious or not. The only thing that is remotely scary is that you just can’t move anything, and since your body is falling asleep, so is your mind (or at least it’s trying to), so you start hearing things that don’t exist, and maybe feeling vibrations that aren’t happening. All of this, the noises and all, are completely in your head and cannot harm you in any way.
So basically, know that you are completely safe and just relax. Ignore any things that you think you are going through (the noises, the vibrations, etc…), and just continue on with whatever method you are shooting for (most of the time that method is WILD, because otherwise you probably wont experience SP consciously).
SP is as normal as you burping. It’s odd, but still human natured . So don’t let that stop you from having a lucid dream, that would be nonsense. And even if it does frighten you a bit, then go for another method to obtain lucidity other than WILD, which is what I think you are looking at, so that you don’t have to stay up for SP.
Thank you for the information, I will start a dream journal soon as the weekend starts since at the moment I am only getting about 5 hours of sleep a night I dont think im asleep long enough for REM. Thanks again for the information.