Hey, I tried Lucid Dreaming about a year ago but stopped after having no success and not being able to commit to wilding and the such. so i have started trying again.

last night i think managed to enter sp when i first went to bed, it was a really wierd experience, my body eventually felt like it was spinning and it only took about 5 minutes. then i started visualising images (all of which were quite disturbing as they were all from nightmares i had when i was younger) They werent scenes or anything so it wasnt a dream and after this point due to lack of research i didnt know what to do next so i came out of the sp state.
So there is my question what are you meant to do once in sp?

also, do you need to wake up in the rem stage for it to initiate a lucid or can you just do it straight from when you fall asleep?

thanks in advance