Thread: What does the transition feel like?

That's a difficult question and varies a lot...

When I enter a scene it's usually a sudden transition. For example, the transition in DEILD, and other wilding techs with visualization (VILD, etc) is very sudden for me - it like one moment you just imagine the scene, and suddenly it becomes REAL. Or when doing "general WILD" with pre-dreams present, the pre-dreams feel like a movie or something, until one of them feels 100% real (that's the dream that I stick with).

But when it comes to "leaving" your body - sometimes the dreams are still "not ready" - so it's like floating around without a body. This transition is pretty gradual for me... Usually I lose "sensations" part by part - from the feet up. It's not that things like temperature don't change - I just stop being aware of them. Like going blind / numb / deaf... Other times, instead of losing sensations, weird sensations gradually intensify - vibrations, floating, sinking, jolts, spinning, etc. They usually disappear relatively abruptly, though.

I usually fall through my bed. The other night there was a river flowing beside me. If I moved into it I had a dream body. Outside it and I didn't.

You know the feeling of waking up? The exact opposite of that!

For me, I usually just notice at some point that there is some imagery that has been gradually materializing and becoming “real”. There's often a subtlety to the transition that makes it somehow hard to actually notice until it's already complete or nearly so. I don't usually notice any changes in body sensations, but I'm not normally really paying attention to my body at that point, anyway.

My WILD/DEILD transitions have always followed the same rule set.

When it's about to happen, I start to feel vibrations in my feet. Those are making their way to the upper parts of my body and are accompanied with a low tone hum which gets louder as the sensation reaches my head. Then it suddenly stops. After a brief pause the whole process repeats itself. The number of those waves ranges somewhere between 2 and 5.

I never experience any hypnagogic imagery and those dreams always begin as false awakenings. That means it is sometimes hard for me to determine whether I'm already dreaming or not. But I have learned that my dream body feels different to the real one. My real body is heavily relaxed and it feels like trying to move would prove difficult while the dream one is somewhat lighter and ready for action.

After a succesful transition, I'm in the dream version of my room. I usually leave it by flying through the window and then I find myself in a full-blown dream. If I'm lucid enough, I can choose the place the window leads to, but most of the times I'm letting it surprise me.