Thread: Problems...

Hi,

I am Thunderstorm, and a novice in OOBE and lucid dreaming. I seem to have a severe problem with entering the state required for lucid and OOBE.

My problem is that when I start to fall asleep, it's relatively easy to achieve a state in which I am basically asleep but still aware of it. I always know that I am conscious and my head is empty, but then something happens. I wake up to an extremely powerful muscular spasm striking through my entire body. I wake up fully, but then I realize that before the spasm I was not awake... I was sleeping but I could think freely. No dreams though.

Last night I attempted yet again... Only to suffer a different problem. I felt that someone tickled my armpit. I could no longer keep up with the "dreaming" and woke up to scratch myself in a panicked manner. But, I was alone so it was just some odd sensation instead of someone else doing something.

I wonder what is the cause of this... Please explain and help, if you understand what I mean.

Greetings,
Thunderstorm

Heya Thunderstorm, and requisite "Welcome to DV."

The "asleep but still aware" bit sounds like a WILD, which you can find a lot of tutorials on in this website.

For the OOBE stuff, check out the 'Beyond Dreaming' forum for things relating to the supernatural.

The muscle spasms are a way of your body testing if you're asleep or not. I've read about people having extremely large spasms that throw them out of bed but the most I've ever experienced was a spasm that made my leg kick. I don't know if there's any way to actually combat these spasms and if you have them constantly then the WILD method, which I assume you're trying, may not be for you.

It's called a "hypnic jerk". I don't know the physiology behind this, but the root term "hyp-" is often used in "hypnagogia" which is a common word around here when referring to the on-set of sleep, and hallucinations that occur during this state.

So in other words, I believe it literally means, "falling into sleep-jerk".