While on a bus, I kept closing my eyes about to fall asleep, but I tried to stay awake so hard. My eyes would close, when I opened them I saw things in front of me or to my side. I saw my laptop and a backpack. Is that HH?
I suppose that your laptop and backpack weren’t really here? If they were really here, it was reality. 
More seriously, could you please describe this with more precision? Did you sleep before? Were you very sleepy? How many time did your vision last? Was your vision very “solid” or did the objects look like a little transparent?
They weren’t really there. I would open my eyes a little bit and see them, then when i fully opened them, they were gone. The bus ride was at about 10 or 11 am. I woke up at 6:30 am. I was extremely sleepy, I kept closing my eyes and fighting to stay awake. I had an assignment for school to describe the area outside on the way to our destination. The objects looked rather solid. I opened my eyes and wondered why these things were there.
Sorry for replying so late, I wasn’t here this week.
If you were very sleepy, it’s likely to be something like hallucinations due to a REM rebound. The father of a friend of mine, who was driving trucks, used to see foxes sitting in the middle of the road when he was sleepy too much. And I’ve seen once a one meter tall cat a day I was ready to drop from tiredness at work! 
When you try to WILD, are you supposed to let your thoughts wander before the hypnogogic state or if they begin to wander, do you snap them back?
merged in the BIG WILD topic 
I had a great WILD attempt last night. I got all the way to the vibrations this time, after the sensation of being hit on the head. I became too conscious once again, though.
I find that I progress further towards a WILD if I let my thoughts wander, as “snapping them back” tends to make me awaken completely.
Same. I find that I need to focus somehow, or I will fall asleep. Usually, I’ll just focus on one thing like breathing or tinnitus or the random thoughts happening (which is like observing HI, but it’s different, I guess).
I have the problem, that when I try to focus on random thoughts, I automatically start controlling them and awaken…
That is one of the difficult parts of learning to WILD, finding the correct balance between focus and relaxing. If you focus too much, you wake up too much, if you relax too much, you fall asleep. As you practice, it does get easyer, but stress can mess everything up. Right now I am having a lot of stress at work and at home so DR is gone, and I can’t WILD. I was getting short LD’s every time I tried WILD, but now I can’t find the correct level of focus/relaxing. There is just too much going on in my head. 
I just have to keep working, and try to reduce the stress. 
don
I almost got WILD last night, I was soooo close… I almost entered a dream 
… actually… I think I did it after a WBTB!!
It says on the home page of LD4all that:
Two nights ago, while doing the WILD method, I had the most concrete HI I have had thus far.
I’ve noticed that when I first see HI, that is, when the imagery first comes into view, I experience a sensation akin to my eyes zooming out. First I see only the blackness of my eyelids upfront and up against my eyes; but then the HI appears, and I feel as if I am seeing it from a distance.
Anyway, I get this feeling, and what I first see is a palm tree. Then a whole beach. Then the ocean water, turquoise, shimmering, brilliant. At this point my eyelids begin to shake horribly (once again) and the HI becomes more and more faint. I try to relax my face as much as possible: and it helps. Then I tell myself that I intend to zoom in on the beach scene. Nothing happens. How exactly does one zoom? I didn’t dare move my body lest I wake myself. Any suggestions, any advice? I have been at this for weeks now (WILD), and I can’t recall having an induced lucid dream yet. Help! 
I was trying to WILD the another night again (I keep forgetting about it for some reason every night). I laid down and I found myself in this really strange state within a minute or so. It was like a moderately deep hypnagogic state, but I felt like I could completely control it for the most part (things would kind of appear on their own, but I could focus in on them and look at the details and comment to myself, ie “Wow that face looks so real…strange to think my mind is just creating this from no where”). At the same time, I felt fully awake. After a little while I started drifting off though and I forgot I was just dreaming–I caught myself once, but then I fell asleep a couple seconds later.
I think I must have just been really tired. School Schedule + Long Weekend = Awkward Sleep Patterns.
Well, I have never been able to induce an LD with this “step into your dream” method. It just doesn’t work for me. I can also not zoom in on my HI. I just let the HI happen and don’t pay too much attention to it. Often I just get little pictures, faces, or animals. Sometimes I do get complet pictures that then seem to get closer, and can even become a dream. For the most part, I just seem to switch/jump from HI to a dream without noticing the change.
It all depends on you. Some people can enter their HI to start an LD. Some can’t. I can’t, maybe you can’t ether.
You just have to keep trying and find out what works for you. One important thing, take your time. Like in your quote, there is something like “knowingness” that comes with practice. If you don’t have this “knowingness”, then it is too soon, keep going without trying to jump into the dream.
don
I doubt that its a matter of can or can’t; we are all physiologically the same, no? I see as more a question of when or how. Can anyone help me with the how?
At first I thought about posting a new topic, but I hope I’ll get answers here too.
I’ve had few attempts at WILD, and usually fell aspleep. I wasn’t really determined before, probably because I was scared of what would happen. But tonight I wasn’t going to sleep alone, so I decided to really try it.
I was lying down on my back, counting as I breath and trying to relax. I wasn’t very tired. My body soon got more heavy, and breathing slightly more difficult. But I thought nothing more was going to happen, not anytime soon anyway.
When I got to 123 on my count, my mind was still very much awake, I didn’t feel tired, but things really started to change. Suddenly I didn’t feel my body, I was VERY numb. Breathing got extremely hard, I felt strong vibrations, the darkness behind my closed eyelids got brighter, and I heard loud noise. I felt like I was going to die. 
I stayed there for a while, but then I just had to push myself out of it. It was terrible! But at the same time very interesting… 
I just got up from bed and came here to write about it.
Does this sound like I was close? How can I ever get through this part, I was so scared…
How did the ones here that have had success do it? Is it so hard for everybody?
Please help me get through this 
I really wanna make it work.
In the 1,089675545 hours I’ve been attempting WILD (;p) I’ve had improvement! Buttt I need some advice. So any input you guys give me is greatly appreciated. 
So last night I decided to use the “colour visualisation” technique. I have to say this had to be the trick to it. I believe I followed MelissaDreamer’s technique so Melissa…Thankyou!
It started off with me going through ROY-G-BIV. My mind started wondering. I got the usual heavy, paralysed feeling and just the beginnings of WILD. Then as my thoughts drifted off, I noticed the black getting…well…more black. Suddenly, I heard a ‘click’ and the sounds around me changed and some tinnitus popped up. Its kind of weird to describe, but my mind kind of felt “out”. Then as this continued, I started getting some weird tingle sensations along my arms and then it was amost as if any external sound was magnified. The black started to get white-it was as if my vision was being slowly filled with light. Then I started to get scared. I ignored the fear and went back to concentrating on what I had to do. Suddenly, some HI popped up and it totally startled me 
It was this really really weird cartoon thing. Haha it really scared me!
By this time I was getting frustrated. I didnt know how to exactly get to the next level. I guess this is the hardest bit of WILD. Having school the next day also means I have to eventually sleep at some time 
Anyway, some input on how I could possibly get to the next level would be great!
I’m afraid we aren’t exactly the same. Some people have often SOREM sleep and they can easily WILD, some haven’t. About HI, some people can zoom in into them and some people have to wait that they are passively zoomed into it. You can perhaps try to induce a movement, like imagining you’re walking into the hypnagogic landscape and imagining the pressure of your feet on the ground.
Mikk, it seems you had very good results quickly and you’re gifted with WILD. Perhaps you’ll not have the same sensations next time. Anyway, you have to get accustomed to them if you want to progress. It’s not necessary so hard for everybody. The two times I managed to WILD, it was by chaining dreams. I didn’t experienced such things, I just saw an image and felt immediatly that I could jump into it. Now it’s possible that your way of having WILD’s is through somesthetic hallucinations, I don’t know.
MissEvil, the next step is not to be scared by this. 
You should try dream chaining or WILD+WBTB so you are likely to have a first WILD experience and know better how to manage it.
Thanks Basilus West! 
So do you think I should concentrate on the sensations, or try to put them aside? I’m not sure where I should go from there, maybe images start to appear and I can get to a dream through those?
The time I had this little success, I was visualizing colors as I counted. Something I read about in one of the other threads here. I also did not move at all, I pretended to be completely paralyzed.
I tried it again the night after this one. Did the counting and visualizing colors. I did feel heavy at one time, was seeing mental images and I thought my heart was racing like crazy. But there were sounds (actual sounds) that kept distracting me, and then I realised my heartbeat was completely normal. The sounds kept me from going any further. I was feeling good and managed to stay relaxed though and didn’t experience anything as extreme as the first time, but I was lying on my side this time. I was counting all the time, went up to 450 and then decided to start sleeping normally. Oh and when I was at somewhere like 280, my thoughts wandered and the next thing I know, I’m counting at 390… 
Maybe I fell asleep.
Anyway, I’ll try again maybe tonight. 
When you feel strong somesthetic sensations, like your body floating or very strong vibrations, it means your already in a dream. You can then try to increase dream body movements, to spin around your axis or roll out of your bed to enter a WILD.
Most often, people who have somesthetic HH don’t have visual HH, that why they use these techniques.
Do you mean that your heart racing was an hallucination? It’s interesting cause heart racing is rather common and some people are afraid of this.