Very, VERY Strange Feelings/Vibrations

I used to be pretty interested in LDs/OBEs a while back, and used to do a lot of relaxation/energy work. I no longer believe in OBEs nor chi, but I do still feel distinct sensations when I do the exercises that are meant to move chi around your body (which I attribute to a stimulation of the central nervous system which causes slight sensory sensations), so I use that to relax.

Tonight I decided to relax a bit before bed and see if I could slip into a state of hypnogagia and experience hypnogagic imagery - trying to induce this is a pretty helpful way I combat insomnia. So, I focused on my body for about 20 minutes and felt the sensations of "moving energy" around until my body was more or less asleep and felt heavy. Then, I remembered a little trick I used to use where I would, with my eyes closed, focus my eyes upwards towards my forehead, where the 3rd eye is meant to be (which I also don't believe in at all). Once I did this I saw a few dashes of light, which almost look like mild lightning, and then immediately started to get very odd sensations.

I got vibrations, but not what I used to imagine them as - I always hear people describe them as rapid vibrations and a buzzing, but these were more like my mind and body going up and down, probably about once a second, as if I were on a stormy sea. I didn't really feel like my body was going up and down, but rather my awareness. In addition to this I felt MANY very weird sensations. I felt as if my body (or my awareness of it) was flattening out, almost like a pancake being compressed further. When I tried to sense my body it felt as it was extremely long, almost immeasurably long, so it's safe to say I completely lost all awareness of my body. Everything I perceived - even thoughts - seemed to feel extremely large, which is something I know makes absolutely no sense as it's a feeling I can't really put into words. Interestingly enough, I experienced this same thing when I had a very high fever when I was much, much younger (probably around 7). I felt my awareness and consciousness moving and being morphed, almost as if I was physically travelling (but not really, again, it's tough to describe). These sensations of distortion would come and go.

When I did this a few years back I'd back out after maybe 25 seconds, but this time I rode out the sensations for probably about 3 minutes. Eventually they more or less simmered down, and left me feeling very, very, very strange. I could hear the rain on my roof and my radiator, so I figured I wasn't in a dream. Nothing seemed to be happening, so I got up from bed to see how long it would take for my altered awareness/perception of things to fade away, which took about 15 seconds.

Has anyone experienced something like this? Is this what normal vibrations are like pre-LD/"OBE"? Is this basically my body entering REM? I suppose I should've waited a bit longer to see what would've happened 5, 10 minutes down the road...

Very cool, but standard falling asleep sensations. I especially love the vibrations and 'traveling' - I call it flying at high rate of speed, sometimes over rough surface. Distortions and falling are cool too.

Sensations, HH and types of entry into WILD.

Yeah, sounds like normal HH for me, i am almost always getting a bunch of weird sensations on my WILD attempts.

Awesome, thanks for the replies guys.

People always say that these hypnogogic sensations are basically the entry into REM sleep. I always take basically anything said related to LDing/"OBE"ing with more than a grain of salt because most of the common knowledge is based mostly off of speculation and is largely opinion-based.

However, I just realized something pretty amazing. I noticed that after these sensations last night, I slowly started to get an erection, lol. I remember this happening when I used to do this a while ago, too. I did some quick research on REM, and guess what - most males get an erection during REM! This basically reinforces the fact that these HI sensations ARE an indicator that your body is entering a REM state, which is pretty amazing.

I'm not entirely sure if this started to happen slightly before, during, or after the weird sensations I described, so I'm going to try again and see if it happens during/after, which will be really amazing, as it will reinforce with a little bit of science that HI really is the entry point into REM. I also own a Zeo, which monitors your sleep state through electric sensors, so I'm going to eventually use that to see if it picks me up being in REM after these sensations.

I'm sure this is common WILD knowledge, but if you really do go into REM after this, it seems like you just need to sort of lay there and wait for a dream to start. I remember that my eyes would feel odd and open sort of on their own a while back when I did this, which could be the beginnings of the rapid eye movement of REM. I also know that I don't always get these feelings, which makes sense, as sometimes you don't enter REM first when you go to sleep - I think it mostly depends on how tired you are.

You are right about not entering REM right away as you go to sleep. First you go through NREM. How long the NREM is depends on how long have you slept before your attempt. After 7-8 hrs of sleep, NREM is quite short. And it's also very short, almost non-existent when you take a nap and when you are sleep deprived.

And the HH do happen as you go from NREM into REM.

Here is a great WILD (sageous) tutorial