Hello fellow dreamers! Let this be my introduction thread, along with some questions.

I got introduced to Lucid Dreaming a few months ago on some humor sites and, intrigued, I decided to do some brief research on the Web about it.
Having never experienced any lucid dream before, I then went to try the WILD technique, telling myself "That'd be awesome to be able to have lucid dreams at will every night!".
The first few tries were failures. I was falling asleep before feeling anything or I was just laying in bed and nothing was going on. This went for about a week.

Then one night, after about half an hour of laying on my back, eyes closed and concentrating on my breathing and heartbeat, I started to feel an increasing weight on my body as well as some changes in the images and lighting behind my closed eyes. I felt like I was entering a new place, a new state of mind.
Probably because this was a new experience or something like this, I panicked or got excited (I never new which one haha). My heartbeat went crazy and I was breathing fast. I tried to calm myself, but I knew that I had lost my concentration, and that my attempt had failed, once again.
The night after, I was able to reach the same point of the process, and I got even further. That time, I really was starting to see images forming behind my closed eyes. I wasn't able to recognize them, but I knew there was something going on. Even more, I had sound hallucinations, like buzzing, some clicking, etc. They were very vivid, as if someone in the room was making those sounds. At that point, I was amazed by the experience, but also a bit scared.
And that's what made the same result as the previous attempt. Crazy heartbeat, panic, hard breathing, failure. But that night, I fell asleep with a little victory in mind.

The next week, I wasn't even able to reach the weight on my body, even with binaural beats, so I forgot about Lucid Dreaming and quit trying.

Then, two days ago, I remembered that Lucid Dreaming thing, fell on that forum, read the beginner's section, and decided to give it another try.

I went to bed 2 hours after an afternoon/evening nap, and my god did I had results fast! In less than 10 minutes I started feeling a great weight on my body, and the lighting was changing behind my closed eyes. I tried visualizing numbers,and it worked pretty well! I reached 11 I think, being able to visualize each number before. Then, I felt like my mind started to move somewhere else, leaving my body, something I experienced the first times. And then blam : panic, rapid heartbeat, hard breathing, failure.

That's my story.

I am presently trying to exercise my dream memory with a dream journal, as well as doing reality checks in hope I trigger lucidity in a dream.
But I'm very determined to succeed the WILD technique, as I find it fascinating and I had awesome experiences trying it.

1. Any tips or comments to help me reach lucidity in my dreams?
2. Did any of you have the panic problem? How did you overcome it?
3. I found binaural beats great for concentration and relaxation. What do you think?

Thanks for reading, and looking forward to reading your replies!

Sincerely,

Alexis a.k.a. Buzzsaw