Thread: Need help. I have developed hypnic jerk!

Hey Everyone,

I've been attempting to do WILD and MILD during the middle of the night after waking up from a 4-5 hour sleep. But whenever i try to be somewhat conscious while I fall asleep, I jerk as soon as I feel myself falling asleep. The worst part is that even when I no longer want to be conscious or attempt WILD during those nights, I will usually continue to jerk for the rest of the night.

But these jerks do not happen in nights where I do not even try to WILD or MILD during the middle of night. Does anyone have any experience with this and know how to stop it? I researched a bit and found out these jerks usually happen from being from having anxiety to falling asleep . I can see that I might be anxious to have a lucid dream during the night.

Thanks for reading and I would appreciate all help

Hmm, very interesting. I had no idea this sort of thing was a looked over, known phenomenon. I can't provide you with any insight on this because I think I am just as new to it as you. I do believe I have been experiencing these 'Jerks' as well. However, I thought these were just mere twitches ! Lol. So are you minorly twitching ? Or is your leg actually like kicking out or some shit ? Anyways, I used my mind to get over these. It takes practice, but in the end you will be able to supress them. I think you should try meditation and relaxation techniques in order to stop these 'Jerks'. Hope this helps, good luck!

Thanks for the reply,
These jerks are not a very physical thing where my leg twitches like nuts. Its more of a sudden jolt of awareness. Awareness that I'm actually still in my bed. And these jolts happened when I'm about to fall asleep (hypnotic state).

Ahh, my bad. lol. I thought by Hypnic you were trying to related it to something along the lines of psychosomatics. whoops.

I do know exactly what your talking about, though. I have actually been working on suppressing them. I've figured out that they are one of my new found obstacles with gaining a lucid state through WILD's. I deemed them something that was a result of me becoming almost 'too' aware that I was falling asleep, or 'too' aware of my mind falling asleep. Almost as my minds emergency button to not fall asleep, it hurls itself back into reality.

- Obviously one is trying to hold onto conciousness whilst attempting a wild, and loosing this conciousness will lead to the person falling asleep/failing. They do not want this to happen. So, once they begin to slip away from there conciousness, the subconscious takes over for a second thus; jerking them back from sleep, and sending them into reality.

Though I have only found and tried one solution, which I have found to work for myself, is to simply practice suppressing them. Suppressing them by when you feel yourself slipping away, do not get exited, do not fear it, etc, etc. Simply remain in an open yet aware conciousness. Ready to explore what is next and explore what you see. This can easily result in going lucid even for a very short time. I'm assuming that they come just before you go lucid too, right? This is mainly the type of thing I tried when I was having those issues and it worked out quite well. Hope this helps a bit man, good luck!

Hypnic jerks are normal. I think you are noticing them more when you WILDing, because you are still awake and aware, when normally you would be asleep, or very close to falling asleep. Normally we don't pay attention to our body, so a hypnic jerk we still notice of course, but we soon forget it about it and just continue falling asleep.

But when we WILD, we are very observant and everything we notice, even if it's something normal, we think it could be because of WILDing.

I think, that as long as you know they can happen, and then just passively acknowledge it happening, you can calmly continue with your WILD attempt. Just treat it as normal sign of falling asleep. Happy dreams