Breaking illusions:Sleep paralysis [WILD help (method)]

[adraw]

Breaking illusions: Sleep paralysis We all got trough this. Itches, serious body sensations. We desperately wanted to have our first SP experiences and these damn body signals made us loose so many attempts. What about it? Are we doing something wrong? Introduction I started lucid dreaming maybe a year ago, and didnt manage to have WILD with unaltered consciousness transition yet. But I had a lot of unfinished attempts ending with DILDs. I had some DEILDs and best results came with slight modified MILD techniques. {I hate naming techniques, but it is the best way not to make it too long}. Nearly every evening i am doing WILD preparation exercises and it is starting to get serious. I think, I can help you with problems you surely experience when starting your first attempts. So how dit it all probably start for you? How it all starts? You had your first spontaneous lucid dream {or not yet}. You try researching on google and you find dreamviews with dozens of motivated people here. You do your research and sign up here. You find some interesting techniques, how to achieve WILD and SP. You study them and try them yourself. And here are the roots of the problem. Nearly everyone thinks sequentially and as everyone here describes, WILD is technique which takes time to learn. So why not to achieve SP as the first step in a row. For most of you sleep paralysis is body sensation happenning on sleep onset, when you loose control over your body. If you are just starting you are fully motivated and cant wait to achieve this cool new Sleep paralylis everyone talks about. Your first gate into lucid dreaming at will. And what you do next? Later on... You are in search of techniques to help you relax your body and sink deeper and deeper into relaxation, and hopefully sleep paralysis strikes and you go trough it all and you finally made it. You will eventually make it trough first step and you may continue further with another steps. WRONG !!!. Do you think, it would be that simple? You will surely experience things like itches which must be desperately scratched, body sensations sometimes even hurting. Swallowing sensation. And believe me, first nigths, you will not be able to sleep well, becouse you will be fully awake after the body finally wins the battle against you. Most of you even dont search for sleep paralysis, most of you would like to experience the transition phase at first: When everything shakes, some electricity-like sensation, sounds... Well. Its almost impossible to achieve this intentionally {unless you are pretty good with concentration (most of us isnt)}. Remember. Your mind shuts your body down only if it believes you are no longer interested in sensations coming from your body. But if you are waiting for transition, if you would like to experience it. It simply cannot happen. Your mind is not and idiot Your search after Sleep paralysis is something you should forget about as soon as possible. Remember your first and last goal. You want to achieve WILD and what happens en route, simply happens. Forget about your body So according to what I said, you should concentrate on WILD and not on SP. But how? You feel like your body is attacking you with itches, and these signals get stronger, the more you pay attention to them. So you will soon find out, you should no longer pay attention to your body. Simple task which is probably not as easily performed as stated. (luckily it is not as bad as it seems at first ) What now? You want to forget about the body, thats the task. I tried many methods like counting and breathing, but this methods are not fun, and they keep yourself within your own body, which is attacking you with signals, which you are probably starting to dislike. Bets way how to forget about your body is to create another, internal world. And this is really, really simple. Believe me. With practice you are heroes. Internal world - gateway into lucid dream You are in your own body. You feel your muscles. Take a deep breath or two becouse you are going to construct our own internal world. You will be using nothing more than your memory and one cool phenomenon:Inertia (As soon as you start something with your body, it starts performing on its own) Step 1: Relaxation Relaxation is vital. Relaxation is crucial. You have to be relaxed before you make your WILD transition. Everyone says that. But why? Simply if you dont relax yourself, the body does it for your. It makes some twitches to relax the muscles automatically and this unfortunatelly breaks the concentration you will need later. So you should prepare your body to be slightly relaxed. You dont have to go into extremes, becouse as you go deeper, it will continue to relax more and more becouse you gave it the instructions, how to do it and Inertia does the rest. Use method you like most, but dont spend too much time here. Step 2: Forgetting about the body Your body is slightly relaxed and you start to sense, that the body starts to shut down on its own. Still you feel it. And thats what we are going to change in step 2. Pretend you are in your bedroom. You dont have to see it. Just pretend. Pretend you are near your desk. Touch it with your hand. You dont have to see your hand. How does the texture feel like? You dont feel anything, but your own hand in bed? Doesnt matter .... use your memory. You touched that desk in past. You know, how it feels, try harder... You get it? Thats it. Now imagine it in your minds eye. You dont see it. No problem. But you saw it in past... Try harder. You see darkness? Pretend you see the desk. Move your imaginary hand over the desk. Construct the sequence of tactile feelings, maybe visuals, sounds.... Maybe each second one feeling. If you cannot see, feel, hear, touch, just pretend it. This way you build some kind of choppy film made only of your memories. This way you program yourself to act on its own later. I know, it needs some anmount of concentration to mantain at first. But as you progress, it takes its own inertia and it gets more detail. You are starting to move into your own internal world. Step 3: This is the place for sleep paralysis As you are using memories of touch, guess, what happens? You are forgetting about external world. About your body. And it continues relaxing without you being mentally present. And as you dont interfere with the process. You may or may not suddenly feel the transition which you awaited sooo much at the beginning. And this time it is becouse you were not present while it was happening. You were playing in your own internal world made of memories and fully forget about your body, just as in real life when you do something requiring concentration. Internal world starts to become more and more real overtime. The film you made with concentration starts to take its own way and you might discover yourself in your dream world. Conclusion WILD is the process of falling asleep consciously. But this doesnt mean, that you must consciously observe the process of shutting down. It is much easier to hide yourself into your own mentally created memory world and have fun within your head, while it happens. Believe me. I cannot imagine well. I was not good at tactile imaging and i could see only blackness. But I simply use something what is natural, and what we all have. Memories and inertia. I hope, I managed to break some illusions about sleep paralysis and helped to clarify the process of wild how i percieve it. You really should change your view on sleep paralysis, and start experimenting within your head. Let your body relax. The true WILD happens in your head.

[TheLucidDreamer]

nice job adraw that helped me a lot I will try it tonight

[adraw]

Wish you good luck.

[jamesplague]

I deeply agree with this. I've found lately that if I just focus on staying aware, I get a LD. I think you should not think about SP at all, just relax, and don't create the fake SP like I have before, thiss will just keep you awake. Just remember to try falling asleep, but staying aware. I've found that the lucid dreaming mp3's work great for putting ideas into your head while you sit in bed relaxing. For me, it's all about producing that feeling like you just got home from the most exhausting day and hopping in bed, but keeping your concentration as you quickly fall asleep. This way you will notice HI much quicker, and you can sink into the imagery quickly.

[a1112]

Thanks man, I've been trying to immagine myself doing sports, and it starts to work but it always fails, but for a moment I can hear the sounds of my actions then it just all fades away. I think I also need to relax because I get several body twitches (mainly in the legs) when I try to wild.

[adraw]

Thanks man, I've been trying to immagine myself doing sports, and it starts to work but it always fails, but for a moment I can hear the sounds of my actions then it just all fades away. I think I also need to relax because I get several body twitches (mainly in the legs) when I try to wild. YEah. It takes some practice to be good at visualization. But the results are visible when you do it the first time. It is simple to loose track about the body, but it is also simple to loose track of yourself too {especially when you do it at the evening}

[Something Else]

Create a world inside your mind. Slip inside and have a fun time!

[adraw]

Create a world inside your mind. Slip inside and have a fun time! HI again something else . I am glad you are still here in dreamviews. I am doing some experimentations with newly rediscovered view on WILD, which i presented here. Still i have some problems concentrating on internal world, becouse my visuals are not as clear as I would like to have them. And there comes the time, when the body starts to shift my attention back into it. Do you also have this kind of experience? If so, what is your strategy to remain stabilised in your internal world? I am not talking about usual disturbances like itches and scratches. I feel some kind of urge to concentrate back on my body. Usually i find it in deep relaxed state.

[Something Else]

Yes, I really love this website. I would say that we have a similar challenge to overcome with this experience of being drawn back to body. For me, I find that this type of thing ebbs and flows in cycles. Hopefully each cycle brings me deeper into trance and closer to LDing. So, if I find myself being drawn back to body, I realize such a feeling will pass as going into trance is cyclical. If I internalize this, it helps to calm and reassure me, which then helps the next cycle to be deeper. As for the visuals not being a clear or vivid as I would like, that has happened to me off and on. I am not sure really what is the defining component(s) of great visuals. I have noticed that not LDing in a while usually makes my visuals more intense. Also, imagery exercises helps. But ultimately I still really am not sure. I far as stabalizing a dream, I try to use my dream senses to really expand, intensify, and clarify the dream. Maybe it is the difference between touching and feeling, hearing and listening, seeing and looking at, really breathing in and experiencing my dream, letting my consciousness really experience the dream feeling it in my core. Hope this helps.

[a1112]

The craziest part, is before actual images appear, I get the craziest HI. I go into spirals and things pop out, like an ITunes visualizer, and by this time my eyes are twitching twice per second, Then I always see eyes glowing in blue then a face outline appears. Its hard to get through that part, and when I do, I always end up in a dream, realize it and wake up. I'm either riding in a car with my buddy's, doing my favorite sport, or playing video games with my friends . So I'm thinking that the next time I have crazy HI its time to visualize and I will pop into a dream knowingly and not be surprised and wake up when I do. I'm just that close, and this happens every night. It's impossible for me to WILD in the morning, I'm just too awake, even after 4 hours of sleep.

[ollei]

Adraw, I was just wondering exactly how important the visulizations are? I've been doing pretty much the same things that you have concluded here when I attempt to WILD, I also found that remembering tactile stuff helps me to distance myself from my body. All this is good and all but I haven't made any greater progress, I also know that I suck at visulizations. So my actual question is if this "scene" or "film" that I am to produce in my head needs clear imagery in order to build a dreamscene? And if so how do I improve me visulization skills?

[adraw]

Yes, I really love this website. I would say that we have a similar challenge to overcome with this experience of being drawn back to body. For me, I find that this type of thing ebbs and flows in cycles. Hopefully each cycle brings me deeper into trance and closer to LDing. So, if I find myself being drawn back to body, I realize such a feeling will pass as going into trance is cyclical. If I internalize this, it helps to calm and reassure me, which then helps the next cycle to be deeper. As for the visuals not being a clear or vivid as I would like, that has happened to me off and on. I am not sure really what is the defining component(s) of great visuals. I have noticed that not LDing in a while usually makes my visuals more intense. Also, imagery exercises helps. But ultimately I still really am not sure. I far as stabalizing a dream, I try to use my dream senses to really expand, intensify, and clarify the dream. Maybe it is the difference between touching and feeling, hearing and listening, seeing and looking at, really breathing in and experiencing my dream, letting my consciousness really experience the dream feeling it in my core. Hope this helps. Thats fine. Cyclical trance. That reasures me, I am not doing as much wrong. So maybe you could help me with another think which is probably connected with fact I am doing my exercises at the evening. And that would be: SOmetimes, when I want to construct internal world, it somehow does not work. As if i couldnt do anything mental. My mind stops to respond to my wishes and simply doesnt do anything. Do you have such experience? Is it part of the cyclic process you mentioned, or is it just becouse i feel so tired? Thx in forward.

[adraw]

The craziest part, is before actual images appear, I get the craziest HI. I go into spirals and things pop out, like an ITunes visualizer, and by this time my eyes are twitching twice per second, Then I always see eyes glowing in blue then a face outline appears. Its hard to get through that part, and when I do, I always end up in a dream, realize it and wake up. I'm either riding in a car with my buddy's, doing my favorite sport, or playing video games with my friends . So I'm thinking that the next time I have crazy HI its time to visualize and I will pop into a dream knowingly and not be surprised and wake up when I do. I'm just that close, and this happens every night. It's impossible for me to WILD in the morning, I'm just too awake, even after 4 hours of sleep. Interesting. I am totally different. But maybe not as much different as you. Main difference would be, that your HI is wery vivid. Mine is really black and white without much detail. That is dissapointing sometimes, but i am working on this too. Yeah I found myself really awake too nearly each night. SImple the wish to have wild ended my attempt making me physically tired, but i couldnt fall asleep. The only way out of this is what i suggested above. To construct internal world. Becouse that gives not much time to think about anything else. Maybe it could help you to focus. Still there is one last barrier. And that is concentration. Now i understand what more experienced WILDers told to be most difficult part {not to fall asleep}. Even when i am constructing some imagery. Even when i am focusing, I fall asleep.

[adraw]

Adraw, I was just wondering exactly how important the visulizations are? I've been doing pretty much the same things that you have concluded here when I attempt to WILD, I also found that remembering tactile stuff helps me to distance myself from my body. All this is good and all but I haven't made any greater progress, I also know that I suck at visulizations. So my actual question is if this "scene" or "film" that I am to produce in my head needs clear imagery in order to build a dreamscene? And if so how do I improve me visulization skills? Well thats a question .... . First of all. This topic should all be about the tactile stuff you mentioned. And about the visualizations? Well I guess we would need help in this. My latest observations signalize, that visualization is important on the beginning only, becouse later on it takes enormous anmount of energy. But to be honest. I cannot tell you exactly. Maybe SomethingElse could. He is far more experienced. For me, I cannot reach further level, becouse i do my exercises at the evening. And this is probably the reason why my visualizations are not vivid and therefore hard to mantain. Whats your story? Whats your visualization process?

[Something Else]

It is important to have your mind rested enough so that you won't fall asleep, but still relaxed enough that you can enter a dream. An odd paradox. For me, this is best achieved in the morning after having had most of a good nights rest but still a little tired so I can sleep more. This is why WBTB is so good for me. My mind is calm, controllable, and charged. It is ready to make a dreamscape and slip inside. And that would be: SOmetimes, when I want to construct internal world, it somehow does not work. As if i couldnt do anything mental. My mind stops to respond to my wishes and simply doesnt do anything. Do you have such experience? Is it part of the cyclic process you mentioned, or is it just becouse i feel so tired? Thx in forward.

[adraw]

It is important to have your mind rested enough so that you won't fall asleep, but still relaxed enough that you can enter a dream. An odd paradox. For me, this is best achieved in the morning after having had most of a good nights rest but still a little tired so I can sleep more. This is why WBTB is so good for me. My mind is calm, controllable, and charged. It is ready to make a dreamscape and slip inside. The word controllable should help me to get further. I guess. Till i cannot perform WBTBs, i will continue with evening exercises, even if it means I wont be successfull with WILDs, to better my self control. But i am starting to sense, that i am nearing the borders of my current method, becouse progressing further would bring me more new experiences from which I could learn. Thanx for your advices SomethingElse. Thanx everyone. Any suggestions? Any experiences with visualization aiding you with body "problems"?.ň

[Brainstorm]

The more experience I get myself the more this forum helps! All of the posts on this thread have given me a bit more insight. I can't add much yet, but keep posting this is very helpful

[Robot_Butler]

I really like your guide, Adraw. I like the focus on Memory and Inertia. I think many people have a hard time creating complex and involving visualizations. Instead of trying to invent a visualization, why not just use a memory? Before bed, rehearse your imaginary scene. Spend a minute touching your desk (your example), or whatever you decide to do. Then, when you are lying in bed half asleep, you only need to remember your experience from earlier in the night. Inertia is a good way to describe how to let go of the waking world, and let the dream take over. You nudge your mind in the right direction, and then let it take over. You can't force it. Just give it a push, and let it roll downhill into a dream. If it slows down, give it another little push.

[Sniper991122]

I've never seen much HI and I've never actively attempted to Wild, it just happens where I'm trying to Mild (and only when I'm extremely tired, to the point where I'll fall back asleep in 5-10 seconds) and eventually I'll hear that static tell-tale noise in my ear that means its game time. I haven't made any efforts in dream recall or LD'ing since about january so I rarely remembered any dreams in the past few months, but I actively started up again 3 days ago and day 1 produced a failed Wild (hit SP), day 2 an LD and day 3 another failed Wild(SP again). The first one happened during a nap, mid-day I had woken up and you know the feeling where you can barely keep your eyes open cause your so tired your literally about to fall back asleep? When I get that feeling I can wild more than 75% of the time. I tell myself I'm going to have a lucid dream about twice and before I can say it a third time I generally hear that buzzing/static sound in my ear. Reading what Something else mentioned about the trance being cyclical I guess I now realize or believe that because the statics sound came in and then went away about 3 times each time growing longer till I finally entered my dream/SP. Why I've failed to become lucid with those 2 failed Wild's i can't say, I used to become lucid 99% of the time when I hit SP but since I've come back again it seems my dream logic takes over and wont let me realize that SP is there. I just simply can't move =\ It sucks too because I can literally recall every single action from the moment I told myself I was going to LD, till SP, through the dream and to the moment I woke up recalling every second. I've only been trying again for 3 days and patience is hard when it comes to stuff like this but hopefully I can figure it out in the next week or so.

[Semja]

Your mind shuts your body down only if it believes you are no longer interested in sensations coming from your body. But if you are waiting for transition, if you would like to experience it. It simply cannot happen. Your mind is not and idiot Aha! Nice, insightful post, and well written too. I'll be sure to try this tonight. I managed it once when I was imagining a lift I regularly use. Obviously I almost always press the same button and then just stand there waiting so the image was not too hard to picture. I tried to increase the detail by willpower I guess and it became almost lifelike. Then I thought, woah, and snapped out of it...

[ollei]

Well thats a question .... . First of all. This topic should all be about the tactile stuff you mentioned. And about the visualizations? Well I guess we would need help in this. My latest observations signalize, that visualization is important on the beginning only, becouse later on it takes enormous anmount of energy. But to be honest. I cannot tell you exactly. Maybe SomethingElse could. He is far more experienced. For me, I cannot reach further level, becouse i do my exercises at the evening. And this is probably the reason why my visualizations are not vivid and therefore hard to mantain. Whats your story? Whats your visualization process? Well I haven't had much progress with visualizations either. But I feel that tactile sensations have often helped me visualize. That's why I was interested in this thread to begin with. I've gotten the impression that visualizations are very important to achieve WILD. Using some kind of tactile memory have helped me build up a dream scene. I've experienced some kind of synergistic effect, The tactile sensations enables me to visualize as I get an overall "feel" of the scene. But being a crappy visualizer and all I was thinking that maybe the tactile sensations would do the jobs just as good as any visualization would. I've had several non lucid dreams in which I don't have any sense of sight, everything is black, but my tactile sensations are at an all time high. The real question I guess is: can you build a dream scene out of tactile sensations only? Would this be enough? Adraw I understand if you don't have the answers to my questions, maybe we just have to find out for ourself

[adraw]

The more experience I get myself the more this forum helps! All of the posts on this thread have given me a bit more insight. I can't add much yet, but keep posting this is very helpful Tell me about it. At first. Everything I readed here helped me just a little. But now, as I read the same text again, the same tutorials once more, i find it even more interesting and helpfull. It needs time to develop enough skills to understand whats written in this forums. Till i dont understand, I ask many questions, and sometimes even more

[adraw]

I really like your guide, Adraw. I like the focus on Memory and Inertia. I think many people have a hard time creating complex and involving visualizations. Instead of trying to invent a visualization, why not just use a memory? Before bed, rehearse your imaginary scene. Spend a minute touching your desk (your example), or whatever you decide to do. Then, when you are lying in bed half asleep, you only need to remember your experience from earlier in the night. Inertia is a good way to describe how to let go of the waking world, and let the dream take over. You nudge your mind in the right direction, and then let it take over. You can't force it. Just give it a push, and let it roll downhill into a dream. If it slows down, give it another little push. Thanx. Visualization is superb tool and the inertia always helps with it. Still sometimes it is pretty delicate to find the sweet spot between concentration and letting it go its own way. There is one moment which causes problems. And that is, the more i let go, the less i am concentrated and the easier i fall asleep without consciousness present. But the more i try to be active within visualization the less vivid everything seems. It takes practice to develop right skills, but even when the visualization is not vivid, just the process of it helps to forget about the body, which is exactly what i am aiming at now. Do you have any experiences with this? Have you tried something like that? If so, what is your success rate? Thanx for now.

[adraw]

I've never seen much HI and I've never actively attempted to Wild, it just happens where I'm trying to Mild (and only when I'm extremely tired, to the point where I'll fall back asleep in 5-10 seconds) and eventually I'll hear that static tell-tale noise in my ear that means its game time. I haven't made any efforts in dream recall or LD'ing since about january so I rarely remembered any dreams in the past few months, but I actively started up again 3 days ago and day 1 produced a failed Wild (hit SP), day 2 an LD and day 3 another failed Wild(SP again). The first one happened during a nap, mid-day I had woken up and you know the feeling where you can barely keep your eyes open cause your so tired your literally about to fall back asleep? When I get that feeling I can wild more than 75% of the time. I tell myself I'm going to have a lucid dream about twice and before I can say it a third time I generally hear that buzzing/static sound in my ear. Reading what Something else mentioned about the trance being cyclical I guess I now realize or believe that because the statics sound came in and then went away about 3 times each time growing longer till I finally entered my dream/SP. Why I've failed to become lucid with those 2 failed Wild's i can't say, I used to become lucid 99% of the time when I hit SP but since I've come back again it seems my dream logic takes over and wont let me realize that SP is there. I just simply can't move =\ It sucks too because I can literally recall every single action from the moment I told myself I was going to LD, till SP, through the dream and to the moment I woke up recalling every second. I've only been trying again for 3 days and patience is hard when it comes to stuff like this but hopefully I can figure it out in the next week or so. There is pretty a lot of information inbued in your experience. What I like most is, that we are starting to connect our experiences together. Something Else always helps, when it is most needed and it is always passion to share information with him. And as everyone adds his own experience, this topic starts to make sense even more. I would have one question for your. What about the buzzing sound. Do you hear this kind of sound everytime? And one more question. Do you work with music? Are you composer, or DJ, or audiophile? Thanx in advance Sniper

[adraw]

Aha! Nice, insightful post, and well written too. I'll be sure to try this tonight. I managed it once when I was imagining a lift I regularly use. Obviously I almost always press the same button and then just stand there waiting so the image was not too hard to picture. I tried to increase the detail by willpower I guess and it became almost lifelike. Then I thought, woah, and snapped out of it... Finding the sweet spot... Hard as hell. But also a lot of fun. May I ask you how you increase the detail in more detail? Please. Even if it is hard to formulate, try to. Thx.