Too WILD

[TooWild]

Hi, I'm sort of a newbie here and I have a probably newbie question. As I always do, I sleep naturally for two cycles, wake up, go to the bathroom and go back to bed. A week ago, I decided to made a small affirmation "when I am an a dream, I will perform a reality check and know that I am dreaming". This was successful for three successive nights and I had about ten very short lucid dreams. I started to look more information to increase duration from seconds to minutes, and came among others to this site. Now my expectations are too high, and "just going to sleep again" actually becomes a series of failed WILD attempts: every time I notice myself drifting to sleep, my heart rate rushes to 100. It does not help if I tell myself to forget the whole thing and just to get some sleep: my whole third sleep cycle is effectively turned to shreds. So, questions: 1) I was on mild painkillers (ibuprophene, paracetamol) at the time I had the lucid dreams, could this explain the number of LDs I had during the first three nights? 2) It seems that just getting more information raised my exceptations on the first place. Should I just log off and cool down, or could I actively help the situation somehow? -TooWild

[MarkieP52]

I know some certain things can help LDs (I think b12 was one but I'm not sure) and some things can hinder them (caffiene).....so I guess it is possible your medicine could help produce dreams but I don't know much in that area. For the second part, I too had trouble falling alseep mainly because I was excited and hoping for a lucid, so looking back it was counter productive I think :p Cooling down might help but you just have to find a balance between wanting it so bad and not letting it get to you. If your scared because your heart is pumping fast or numbness or whatever, just remind yourself that you go through it everynight that's just Sleep Paralysis.

[Snowboy]

Well, congratulations, you are a natural lucid dreamer! A good one at that! Your kind is pretty rare! Anyway, to your questions. 1) As far as I'm concerned, no. First time I have even heard that question, but I wouldn't suspect so. 2) I don't think WILD is your thing. MILD seems to work for you (that's what you were doing at first), so I suggest you look some more into that. Just fall asleep thinking what you were before, no high expectations. To stabilize your dreams a bit further you can look at the Stabilization and Clarity Tutorial. When you do you will be able to make your dreams much longer. Welcome to Dreamviews, and I hope I helped!

[TooWild]

Thank you for your welcomes and insight! MarkieP52: It is quite interesting that the heart rate increase is a normal thing that happens every night. I took the HR increase as a symptom of being frightened already. Maybe I should study this a bit more. Snowboy: I might be some sort of a natural (my reality checks are instant and always reliable), so you are probably right that I should leave WILD for now. Then the main question just becomes how to fall asleep "efficiently" and how to perform the affirmation in a way that does not disturb falling asleep. I'll maybe try to search for general information on falling asleep. Nice dreams,

[Snowboy]

Just think it, believe it, then go to sleep normally. Not much to it, really!