Thread: Help!

If the sleep paralysis/out-of-body process frightens you, then your subconscious mind will probably try to prevent it from happening. If you do want to be succesful with it, then you should try to get more at ease with the process. Fully come to terms with it, and even embrace it.

One way of lowering anxiety would be to have a cup of lemon balm tea at night before bedtime. Lemon balm is well known to calm nerves down (and it is all around healthy too, but should be avoided by pregnant women and people with a thyroid condition). I, personally, have good experience with lemon balm for this purpose, but too much of it, and I can't remember my dreams in the morning, so getting the right amount is important.

Damiana is said to have a similar effect.

Yo.
Firstly, sleep paralysis is impossible to induce and what you did experienced is not sleep paralysis, but hypnagogic hallucinations and normal sensations of falling asleep, most of people never experience it and it's a very rare experience for others, only small part of people experience it regularly due to sleep disorder. It is not a part of lucid dreaming and never was. http://www.dreamviews.com/wake-initi...mystified.html
Secondly, hypnagogic hallucinations are not dangerous at all, there's nothing to be afraid of, and in fact, you can control them. Don't think about bad things and they will never happen.
Thirdly, get some patience, lucid dreaming is a skill that needs some work and confidence and the time required varies from person to person, but it will happen eventually, don't get, frustrated keep DJ, work on awareness and think positive.
And fourthly, check out this collection of tutorials: Induction Methods and Techniques
Good luck!

Epiphanies of my 4-6 years of practise:

This is something I guess you need to go through on your own in order to appreciate the value of it. But I can share it so you have some kind of guideline.

1-2 years: Set goals and endure failure to find the balance of practise and learning. What I learned was that in order to continue practise lucid dreaming and not quit. I can't focus on result, lucid dreams can be induced any night, but as a beginner this can't be the goal, because it is out of your reality and belief.
So what you need to do is to appreciate the process of learning about lucid dreaming. And later on you will love this more than the experiences itself.
Try different techniques through trial and error and learn how it works by doing it. You will fail more than you succeed, but you will learn the most during this time.

3-4 years: Have fun. Don't look for the best technique, because by now you should understand that all techniques of lucid dreaming basically does the same thing. And since a long term persecptive is the most effective mindset, then the technique that motivates you and are entertaining in itself is the best one.

5-6 years: You now have own experience and can start to experiment on your own. Theories are just theories, but your experience is knowledge, YOUR knowledge. So now you can think out of the box and even attempt the impossible, why? Because you love to learn!

Do the impossible to discover new possibilities

So what you need to do as a beginner is not to find the best technique (that works for the many), that misstake is something we all start out with.
What you should do is do what you think is interesting and start getting your own experiences of the lucid dreaming practise.

For example now you have READ about sleep paralysis, and notice that you are experiencing problems. Isn't it kind of interesting that half of the members of dreamviews do the same. Can it be that sleep paralysis isn't the transition state and it has to do with something else?

I can of course provide you with answers to most things, but my point is that YOUR experience is most valid for you.
Which is why I am emphasising the importance of EXPERIENCE.

However a beginner is impatient and want result immediatelly, I am not bashing you, I am simply refering to how I was and that I see most people approach this in the beginning.

It took Stephen LaBerge and many other lucid dreaming authors 20-30 years of experience to learn and understand what we are trying to learn in a day.
And by 20-30 years I mean complete mastery of course, but what I mean is that it is irrational to feel discouraged when the practise isn't providing result, that will come with time. What you should do is strive to learn and get experience.

So you got to understand that you need patience. And the best way for that is to have fun! Which I have described of how to do here.

Originally Posted by iDreamm

This is my third time trying to lucid dream. I have had little to no success. I tried the dream journal and everything and nothing seemed to work, I gut frustrated and quit. now, three months later I am back to try again. Any tips would be helpful. The closest i've gotten was inducing sleep paralysis. I felt as if I was sinking into my bed and heard loud buzzing noises around me. I got scared so kept trying to wake up and eventually did. Ever since then I haven't been able to re induce sleep pralysis.

Firstly, I would do research and clear your fears. Until you can get past those work strictly on dream recall. Then try out different induction techniques until you find one that works for you. I tried different techniques by giving each a months trial and ended up making one that works for me personally. Also patience is key.