Why would you leave it open? 
I think you close it and breathe through your nose.
You can practice a more enhanced relaxation just for these points. Just feel every muscle of your face (forehead, eyebrows, eyelids, nose, mouth) and feel them relaxed. But perhaps are you describing another thing. When your body gets numb and sort of floats, it seems that chest and face stay stuck longer to the physical body. I don’t know what to do then.
Yes it’s HH (more precisely somesthetic hallucinations). People who have somesthetic hallucinations should try to spin their dream body around its axis in order to enter a LD.
Just do the same thing you do when you fall asleep. You should better not think about your mouth indeed or you’ll have the same problem than this comics character who couldn’t sleep cause he didn’t remember whether he slept with his beard upon or under his sheets. 
That’s probably not HI but phosphenes. HI is rarely abstract. So you didn’t reach the HH stage. Don’t be disturbed by phosphenes and focus on your practice. Another solution is trying to zoom into phosphenes when you have them, thus they are likely to become more 3D and to transform into HI. This is not an easy technique, it requires a lot of practice.
So all HI is, is just spontaneous images you see at the onset of sleep, right?
Yes, and no. they are more then just images. When you close your eyes you almost always see spots or images, when the spots or images start turning into faces, or pictures, then that is the start of HI, sometimes the HI just seems to come unrelated to the spots or images. HI is something coherent, which means that it makes sense to you. If you are studying biology and looking at lots of cells, then what might look like a cell to you could be coherent, but might not be for someone else. I have gotten to the point of HI with my WILD lately, and now I remember that from years ago before I knew what it was. I would suddenly see something that looked like the head of a lizard, or dragon moving toward me. I would often wake up because it startled me. Now I get too excited and wake up too much. A few times in the last two weeks I got so far that a dream would start, but in the instant that it started, I would realize that I was dreaming, and wake up 
. But that is not too bad, because I am getting closer 
and sometime I will be able to remain calm and have a real LD 
.
don
Hm, what exactly is your definition of “phosphenes”. I thought, these were the bright, non-moving things you see everytime you close your eyes!?
…
Okay, just looked it up in the internet, you’re right. 
I always thought, HI and phosphenes were the same…
I have been working on WILD for a while now, and for the last two weeks I have been starting to dream, then falling back into the HI/relaxation/awake state. I can now stay in HI or relaxation and get into another dream within minutes, however in each dream, as soon as I know I am dreaming I pop back up into HI or relaxation. Last night I had a somwhat longer dream. I walked into a store, there was a casher on the left, and wagens on the right, then I had to go down a hall on the left behind the cashier. As I was going down the hall, I realized that I was dreaming and everything started faiding. I tried to maintan the dream, but was aware of my sleeping body, and when I tried to look at my hands, or spin, I could not move, and my awarness of my sleeping body became stronger. I had no control over my dream body. I fought to keep my awareness in the dream, but it just faided away. Then I was in bed in a relaxed state, no longer sleeping. By remaining still, I fall back into a dream within minutes, but again, as soon as I am aware that I am dreaming, back up to HI/relaxation.
Does anyone have any tips on how I can maintain the dream when I can’t rub my hands, touch the walls or spin? It is strange because I am still in a first person dream, but as soon as I become lucid, I have no control over my dream body, and am aware of my sleeping body.
don
you’re on the right track.
from here it is about your own learning experience and not so much ours.
i can definitely relate. and all you can really do is “yoyo” or “REM surf” there are times when your sleep is just too light to do much, and there are times where maybe you need to just stay in the HI instead of go into a dream…
because to me if you rush into HI instead of just letting them develop, you run the risk of being in a “non REM” dream, where it’s kind of like, you don’t have much free time, you feel like your dream body doesn’t work and that you are really aware of your waking body.
like if you see this dreamscape open up, and you want to step inside it. it may be best to just sit and watch it for a while until suddenly you really are in the dreamscape.
i don’t know.
being lucid in the hypnagogic state is fairly rare for me, which is a bit unfortunate since I really enjoy the process of bearing witness to the birth of dreams, from HI leading to interactive dream scene, and noting how they come to be.
i think it is very cool.
but my biggest tip. try this more towards night than morning, when your sleep is heavier, and I think REM surfing in the same way you are right now, or yoyoing… will lead to much much longer dream adventures, just they will have periodic breaks where you have to stay still and be patient.
it can also really help to talk to any dream characters, tell them “i might be about to wake up…” and try and keep them fresh in your mind, it’s like, it validates the dream as “real” and you can maybe talk to them "hey i’m coming back soon, sorry… " or “hey can you help pull me back into the dream”
i do that a lot, because almost all the times I REM surf it’s because I’m going along with a very plot oriented lucid dream, where I’m interacting with a particular figure and hanging out with them.
I had an experience similar to yours, but it felt like my hands were on backwards… It was quite a funny feeling.
I have an help request:
About a month ago I had my first WILD, but after that I didn’t have a single LD!
I do WBTBs with WILD attempts almost every night, this way:
-I wake up after about 6-7 hours of sleep
-I wait about 30 minutes, going to the bathroom, reading something, writing in my DJ…
-I go back to sleep in a comfortable position
-To help myself relax and mantaining concentration I count my breaths
-After a little while I enter SP (now I can enter SP whenever I want, I had a month of costant training after all 
)
-My SP is very weak, it’s hard to move, but I can if I’m really willing to do so. I have just a little HI and only during transition phase or a little before
-When I am in SP, I start counting “1… I’m dreaming… 2… I’m dreaming…” and so on, at a slow rate, and restarting from 1 after reaching 100
-Now the problematic part. I count a lot. I usually get to 150 or more without even getting to transition phase
-When I’ve been counting a lot, I get a strange feeling. I feel just like I have to move, to change position, to exit my bed or something. Anyway, I have to move
-I try to resist, but this stresses me even more (thus reducing the probability of entering the dream-state; also, at some point I can’t resist anymore and I have in fact to move. At this point, I break out of SP, and the WILD attempt is gone
-If I try to lay down again, I just lack motivation at this point
The “strange” fact is that during my only succeded WILD attempt I did exactly the same steps but I easily got to transition phase and I entered the dream after counting only to about 75. I’m quite sure that if I could make SP “faster” and thus enter transition phase earlier I could easily WILD.
I thought I was just too awake after 30 minutes of WBTB, so I tried to stay awake only for 15 minutes but I just fell asleep without entering SP completely 
What am I doing wrong? Any hints on how to enter transition phase earlier?
No such help for you is to be coming from me, that is. I have your same problem. Although…as far as resisting the urge to move, I personally feel it is best just to relax and do what you normally would. Don’t make yourself uncomfortable because you don’t think you can move. Just move, and go right back to where you were. It may be a setback, as you say, at first, but you will eventually get over it.
Hey Sunshadow, try these tips :
- count slower
*count with your breath while saying 1-im dreaming. This way you can calm yourself. - listen to relaxing music while Wilding
Apart from that, i don’t know what the problem is
Good Luck!
Thanks for the answers 
Well, maybe I’ll try moving as I would normally do, but I won’t have much time to WILD then… I usually WBTB from about 6:30 to 7:00, then I stay in SP until about 8:15 sometimes… I’m on holiday now and I can get up later than usual, but not too late (or my parents get upset ), so if I just move at 8:15, exiting SP, I won’t have enough time to try again…
About the 2 counting techniques, I’ve been trying both. I try to count at a rate I find comfortable, which is either with my breath or very slow…
Maybe I’ll try the music 
Thanks again for the hints
Hey Everyone. I’m been having some trouble with WILD. I WILD a lot, normally, not WBTB/WILD. I get reasonably far, experience HH and HI, and sometimes get enough vibrations that i forget i have a real body. the point is. I want to try WBTB/WILD, but when i do, the vibrations hit me so hard. I feel really weak, and the vibrations just take over my body. I usually give up on WBTB/WILD, and feel releived to move my body. Once i try WBTB/WILD, i can’t fall asleep, because when i do try, i feel the vibrations and purposely move my body to get rid of them. Help? 
The post ld4all.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t … highlight= describes a relaxation/WILD method that is good for WBTB.
I’ve had this question in my head so long now…better get it off here before i forget. =P
What’s it supposed to feel like as you enter the dream? Or will you just realise that something feels different…? Been bugging me like forever this question >_<
Ok i will answer your question, but that doesn’t mean you should expect this when WILDing. You enter a dream in diffrent ways. I have only WILDed once and this is what happened :
I saw some HI of a duck, and suddenly, lights came on and i was in a room with a duck.
You can enter a dream in other ways such as zooming in on something and then finding it in your hand in a dream.
Usually, I can’t feel my breathing or heartbeat, and my body begins to float. However, I just can’t drift off well enough.
I will almost always hear some kind of noise getting louder and louder, then settle off. When this happens, I’m usually in my room when I open my eyes, but dreaming.
SunShadow, I don’t know if any of what I am going to say was already proven wrong but I had the strangest (and enlightening) experience this morning.
(I did a WBTB at 8am)
I tried to stay away from thinking about lucid dreaming, trying to just let things happen without mentally responding to it. I changed my position every little while when I felt like it. After a bit, I found a position which I stayed in and entered a dream-like state of SP maybe 5 minutes after I stopped moving. After that happenes, I never feel like I need to move. I’m in a dream state and I just feel floaty. Actually, this time I felt like some hands were grabbing my feet and dragging me across the floor (but still floaty-feeling so it didn’t bother me). The only problem with that is then my feet began to feel ticklish, so thinking I was totally in the dream world now (bad mistake) I “pulled my feet away” and ruined everything. I came out of SP by moving my feet. I am still learning not to do that.
ANYWAY the point is that from this experience I feel it is absolutely ok to change your position whenever you feel like it, and then stop changing position once you enter a dream-like state (where you just feel floaty and won’t feel like changing position). I know this sounds crazy, but my experience has lead me to believe this.
What do you mean, you had a month of constant SP training? And do you have any tips on entering SP at will?