Am I trying at the wrong time or am I just doing something wrong? (WILD)

So, as part of trying to go back to my LD-ing ways, I decided I'd do a WBTB today. Set my alarm to go off in roughly 6 hours and 50 minutes, accounting for the long time it takes me to fall asleep. However, I woke up early. Roughly 4-4.5 after falling asleep. I decided to WILD then, figured it was better if I naturally woke up.

And then I stood motionless on my bed for a long time. Typical stuff happened. I begin to feel heavy. I can still move my muscles but it feels like it would be harder than usual. A bunch of twitches as well, for some reason.

Then what I took as the dream starting began to happen: I saw white before my eyes while empty noise in my ears became apparent.

The annoying thing that has always happened to me in this phase is that I get the strong wish to open my eyelids, my right one specifically this time. It starts to twitch as if it wants to open for no apparent reason. Along with that, the white colors and noise progressed into nothing. So I continued to lay there, in a really uncomfortable position by now with the huge urge to swallow.

I got the flashes of light several more times and at one point, a really fast-beating heart. This really put me off continuing to WILD because my breathing got fucked up by the heart rate and my eyes wouldn't stay shut.

I'm taking this as if I tried to WILD at the wrong time. Because during all the time I laid still, this thing progressed into nothing. I think I was not due for my REM cycle, I was either entering the light sleep or deep sleep mode awake, thus no dreams could form. What was weird, I didn't strongly even get the dreamy thought processes, it was pretty easy to keep track of what I was thinking of.

Would I be right in assuming I just woke up at the wrong time? Or am I doing something wrong?

Thank ye all.

It's a strong possibility you just woke up right after a REM cycle, or right before a deeper stage of sleep. About 4.5 hours into sleep the average person is in stage 3 sleep (stage 1 is REM/light sleep) so that lines up with your story. Another possibility is that that night just wasn't the night. That happens to me occasionally when I try and WILD. I'll set it all up, be sure I set my alarm for the right time, and then after I do my WBTB and everything, and I just can't fall asleep for whatever reason, or I just fall asleep too fast. No harm either way, but if you try again for the same time and it happens again, you could try moving it back 20-30 minutes to try an catch that REM cycle better.

This WILD attempt was after naturally waking up. Now I heard that these are good times to attempt WILDs but I've also heard that you usually wake up at the end of REM cycles, which seems to contradict the first point. Now I'm wondering if I should just set an alarm at 3h50m-4h after I fall asleep to catch myself before my REM cycle ends. It's what I'm going to do tonight.

I'm not the best at wild techniques but for me I've had that problem as well where my eyes start twitching open slightly and you can't control it and its around the same time I start to see swirling patterns. Could be the rem timing or maybe you were too 'conscious' if you know what I mean? For me at least its a delicate balance I have to be barely conscious to successfully wild like I usually almost pass out and I become aware soon as I start to feel an acceleration or floating feeling happining.

My advice her is for you to be as away from your WILD as you can. Start to WILD and then just keep your mind blank, or focus on one thing. Do not focus at all on the stages of WILD and not even in lucid dreaming, just on a fixed dream scenario and on getting more and more relaxed. You will soon realize you are not in bed anymore thus, dreaming lucidly.

That makes sense, Percy, as long as I don't fall asleep during that blank state. I'll try that, thanks!