Crazy heart rate from counting?

I attempted the "counting" technique last night, where you simply count in your head and attempt an RC after a while to see if you were in a dream. Well, after I began counting and repeating "I am lucid dreaming", my heart rate got to ridiculous levels. I could hardly hear my own thoughts over my heart pounding, and I think this may have kept me from going back to sleep. Any thoughts on why this happened? I think it might have been overexcitement or my inherent fear of sleep paralysis kicking in, but I was getting a very odd tingling sensation and might have actually been losing consciousness.

What do I do? :?

There are actually a lot of people who have reported this, and I have experienced it myself. The consensus seems to be that it is actually an illusion or a hallucination and that your heart is actually not beating that fast. If it's like what I've experienced, then it probably would actually be impossible for your heart to beat as fast in reality as it seems to be in this illusion. The times this has happened to me seem to be when I was actually not anywhere near REM sleep but tried to WILD. Maybe try a different wake back to bed time.

I've had this happen before, the same as above when I wasn't near REM sleep and I tried to wild. My heardbeat got ridiculously loud and I felt like it was a struggle to breathe. Try it during a WBTB instead, my experiences with sleep paralysis then haven't been quite as wild. :lol:

Yeah, I have had this too. It makes it feel hard to breathe, and very hard to relax enough to go to sleep.

I've heard it's a hallucination, but of course as far as you're concerned that doesn't make much difference at all, because it's just as distracting as it would be if it was real.

What I did was find an external 'anchor' to distract me. I've been using a fan next to my bed. Also, after being told that it was a hallucination it did make it easier for me to ignore it :)

i get this aswell, it feels like you just need a massive breath, i had it a couple of hours ago and again not in REM. my thoughts on this are that if you can just go along with it (as hard as it may be) you may be able to WILD without being in an REM period. This is just my opinoin. i would like to know how far anyone has went, or did you just do what i did and take that desperatly needed breath lol?

I've experienced this; your heart pounding ridiculously hard. I've heard many others report this as well, and most people seem to think that it's only a hallucination. I could see this being the case, however I've never personally seen any actual evidence or expert opinion either way.

that WAS sleep paralysis i think. Or maybe Hynagogic imagery. Either way it happens sometimes when attempting a WILD/WBTB branch of techniques.