Did I almost WILD?

Hi everyone at Dream Views! I have lurked for forever and tried to LD with limited progress, but this is my first post on the forums (I really didn't know what to post before anyway).

Here's the scenario:
My friend and I stayed up until 5 o'clock this morning working on a video game. We went to sleep at 5 and woke up at 10 (my sleep pattern is not always this messed up, I'm pretty routine). At about 1:15 (20 minutes ago) I jumped on my bed to see if I could WILD during a nap.

During the first minute or so I focused on my breathing, but then I listened to a song loop in my head for about ten minutes. Around then I started seeing what appeared as a dim purple haze in my vision (eyes closed) and my body was tingling an heavy. I then lost it with the realization that I have to leave soon. Now here I am feeling slightly dizzy. How close was I?

First off, welcome to posting in Dreamviews! ;)

Well, when you slept 5 hours you slept into your REM stage (I believe its the REM stage). This 5 hour rest is important and is whats recommended when trying to WILD. Rather than getting up at 10, you should have gotten up, walked around a bit, then went back to sleep.

The tingling sensation you felt is Sleep Paralysis. It's very normal, and (though I'm not completely sure) I believe it will last forever unless you move or fall asleep. Several different 'layers' of SP can occur, and eventually (for some) getting to the point where you actually won't be able to break out of it and you will be paralyzed unless you go to sleep (but it's completely harmless, don't be scared of it).

The haze you saw was likely HI (Hypnotic Imagery) and is also normal. When the HI starts to form into 3D shapes, you know you're close. My problem when I try to WILD is my heart rate really starts to sky rocket when the HI starts to form 3D shapes. It might be only me that sees these 3D forms, not sure. But try slowing your breathing, not to the point where its uncomfortable, but just keep focused on staying nice and calm.

Getting SP and seeing strong HI's is close, but next time you should try sleeping 5 hours then doing a WBTB.

I think you were close, and make sure you try to clear your mind before doing this, being busy in thoughts is very distracting and it's easy to fall into deep sleep and forget you're trying to WILD if you get distracted.

Hope this helped. :)

Welcome to the forum! Was the game MGS4 by any chance :P

Well you did good with the few hours sleep beforehand. The purple stuff could either be from the lack of sleep (I'm guessing from your internal clock there with a long night on the games) or it was an early form of SP where you started to have hynagogic hallucinations which if you continued could have gotten close to you WILDing.

:welcome:

Those purple lights and swirls were the first stages of hypnogogic imagery, the dream centre of the brain starting to kick on and the eyes resetting themselves. The tingling was your body starting to fall asleep. Sounds like you were fairly close to getting into a WILD.

Maybe tonight you will get some REM rebound from the lack of sleep last night, and score some awesome epic dreams.

It sounds like you were getting close to falling asleep and entering a dream. Keep trying what you did this morning, and see if you can repeat it :)

Were you working on making a video game, or playing one?

We were making a game. :) POS flash game but everyone has to start somewhere. Thanks for the replies folks, too bad I don't check back often enough to get them.