Hello Dreamviews community !

[Buzzzsaw]

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

[gab]

Welcome to Dreamviews! The hallucinations you may get when WILDing can be scary, especially if you don't know what's going on. There is no other way to get around it, than to tell yourself that they can't hurt you and wait for them to be over. If you have happy thoughts and not thinking about what scary stuff can happen, you are more likely to have a pleasant experience. From your description it sounds, like you were WILDing at the beginning of night. Best time to WILD is after at least 4.5 hrs of sleep - and you noticed that also, when you had best results after the afternoon nap. I don't use binaural beats, but feel free to check out the Lucid Aids section for more info about that. And here is an excellent WILD (sageous) tutorial. It's long, but you will learn everything about WILDing in great detail and you will understand the whole process. Happy dreams

[Buzzzsaw]

Thanks for the reply! I've started reading Sageous's tutorial, and it's really interesting. Knowing better what's going on in the process and developing some LD tools can definitely help me! I'll try the WILD again, but this time after a few hours of sleep and we'll see how it goes on !

[Sivason]

Welcome to Dream Views! This is the place to be for anyone wanting to learn how to lucid dream. The Dream Guide team is here to help you navigate the forum and answer questions. We all have 3 green stars above our avatar. Click on our user name and you can then select private message if you have a question, or you can start new threads. Don't worry about starting threads that have been started before, just try it out, if it ends up in the wrong place one of us can move it for you. One thing you can do in a post is place a link to another thread. I have done this below. You can click on the colored words to see the new thread. Start with this extra basic one, it will help you read the acronyms in other posts, Help With Acronyms For Complete Beginners After that one the very first thing you should do is check out basic tutorials. This one covers most of the terms you will see members using in much more depth, so start here, The Beginner's Guide to Lucid Dreaming Also be sure to check out the DVA Dream Views Acadamy, click on this link to get there, DV Academy. Matte , our Dream Guide team leader runs a general lucid dreaming class, and you can join in contests where you gain points for dreams you have. General Lucid Dreaming (Matte87) Gab , another Dream Guide runs a class that is very valuable to beginners on MILD/DILD, which is by far the best method to start with. DILD (Hukif and gab) Finally as far as the DVA stuff goes, there is a class on introduction to lucid dreaming. This is a great place if you are just starting out and need a little personal help. Intro Class (OpheliaBlue, RareCola, CanisLucidus, Chimpertainment, Xanous) I hope to save you some time by giving you a link to a thread we all put together on the topic Sleep Paralysis. There has been so much misinformation and confusion on this topic, that after a few days on the sight, you would surely run into confusing statements refering to SP. Save yourself some frustration and read this post if you want to know about SP, Sleep Paralysis Explained Now, on the lighter side, you may be excited to learn to fly! Here is a thread where people explain how they went about learning to fly, Can U Fly/ How Did You Learn? Then just for a laugh here is a thread where people list all the things they want to do in an LD. It is mostly light hearted and supposed to be funny, 1000 things to do in a lucid dream!!! Have fun and good luck with your dreaming!

[Mancon]

Welcome! Seems like everyone else already answered your questions and provided many great links! Binaural beats work differently for different people but some people have had great success with them. So go for it! If you have any addition questions, just ask

[dakotahnok]

Well first i would like to welcome you to dreamviews! It is not recommended for someone who is new at lucid dreaming to take on the WILD technique. It more for experienced lucid dreamers (though not always the case). I would reccomned that you go for a technique like MILD (mnemonic induced lucid dream) Or DILD (dream induced lucid dream). When I was first practicing the WILD technique I used binaural beats with limited success. They would either make me too relaxed and fall asleep or just annoy me. But they did sometimes work.

[Buzzzsaw]

Thanks for the comments! People here seem nice and friendly, I like that! sivason, I'll definitely take a look at your links. I've alreay visited some of them, but a rereading won't hurt! It is not recommended for someone who is new at lucid dreaming to take on the WILD technique. It more for experienced lucid dreamers (though not always the case). I would reccomned that you go for a technique like MILD (mnemonic induced lucid dream) Or DILD (dream induced lucid dream). I'm actually set on practicing WILD sometimes when I know I don't have to get up early the next morning while practicing Reality Checks and sageous' Reverse Reality Checks for DILD. I don't see why practicing both would be bad When I was first practicing the WILD technique I used binaural beats with limited success. They would either make me too relaxed and fall asleep or just annoy me. But they did sometimes work. I must agree with you about the falling asleep part, haha. I happened to me some times I had some difficulties trying to practice LD for the past few weeks. My busy university schedule makes it hard to try WILD and made me slack a bit on Reality Checks. On the other hand, I noticed that it's much easier for me to remember my dreams. I'm feeling more aware of my "dreaming process". I mean, when I wake up, I don't simply wake up, I try to review my dream, analyze it, etc. Even in the middle of the night! I also had an "Almost" DILD ( I think ) a few days ago. I became aware of my dream (Telling myself "Ooh, I'm in a dream!"), but the dream was blank, I was just seeing gray. I woke up a few seconds after. I should go get a real journal this week instead of a notepad for writing my dreams

[Sivason]

There is no harm in practicing both. I agree that you should be doing MILD, but also working on WILD increases the chance for MILD. A failed WILD is a great way to have a MILD. Just remember that you DO need to fall asleep in WILD. You must allow your body to sleep, but keep some of your awareness. At first you will be lucky to stay aware even ten minutes after your body is asleep, so that is why we use WBTB, to increase the chance of dreaminng in those first few minutes. You ccan assume your body is asleepp whae you are barely aware of it (say 30% of normal) and odd feelings, such as tingling or fluctuations in heat start happening, then start trying to visualize. Wait until you think your body is sleeping before the visualization phase, or you will keep yourself awake.