The Persistence of Dreams

I figured I would make note of the weird feelings I had last night before I drifted away into being asleep. While the night before last, I had almost successfully achieved a WILD without doing a WBTB or anything of the sort (Until my dog in my room started to go crazy about something outside...). That boosted my confidence greatly into the hopes that I will be able to successfully achieve lucidity by this method, as well as hopefully mastering it and using it to practice/experience OBEs and APs, which I am also greatly interested in.

I am writing this however due to my experience last night. To start, I drink a few blends of herbal teas that I make up myself. For night time to help myself not get up as often and to at least have a restful sleep (Thats the main problem with crohn's...) I make a brew of Mugwort tea, with some peppermint, rosemary, and mullien. Most of those are used to help relax the body, as I have read Mugwort helps with dreams and such, I do not ingest it for that reason. I also cannot for sure say if it has had any effect on my dreaming ability or recall. I can say it has not helped me achieve lucidity though, but that could just be because of my failed techniques..

However last night, I was going through my usual motions. I had laid down into my bed, on my back, the palms of my hands faced down by my side, with my mouth slightly open to breathe through. I took a few deep breaths, and then went into the motion of willingly not breathing. I only do this for a few seconds until I feel my body relax, and then I move into breathing exercises to replicate sleep. As I'm laying there relaxing, the usual HIs, bright lights, and this weird beeping noise (has to be in my head as there was no noise throughout the night except my breathing) began to encompass my 'vision'. As I was drifting deeper and deeper into this relaxed state (and what I was hoping would trigger SP and then a LD..)I started having the heavy vibrations and I suddenly felt like my arms were moving around. Even scratching small itches that I had around my face, but my arms remained by my side. It was such a surreal feeling, that I felt like I was closer to an OBE than I was to an LD.