My First experience (and post) :)

Hi all , ive come across lucid dreaming a couple of times now and always wanted to try it
This thread will be about my lucid dreaming timeline i guess.
1st experience with SP
quite a long time back i had a fairly horrible experience with sleep paralysis. i remember being in a dream and standing in the football field at the park, slowly everything started spinning, i remember feeling my body being lifted in the air and i started spinning around at the same time the gates around the field ripped apart and span around me . It felt as though i couldnt move and was wriggling to get free i awoke in a cold sweat itwas pretty horrible

1st experience with lucid dreaming
a couple months back i became increasingly interested in lucid dreaming and carried out many reality checks a day ( looking pretty stupid looking at my hand all day) but it seemed to pay off as one night i remember rolling over and looking at my hand whilst in bed .. i had 3 fingers, i jumped out of bed and remember that my sense of feeling was there and i could feel the carpet under my feet, previously i thought that i would become incredibly exited and pull myself out of the dream, well.. i continued to feel the carpet with my feet , and lost the lucidity :(

i will most likley keep this page updated with more expericences
but for now i would like to ask some questions.
i have experimented with the wild technique and after a short while can feel slightly weightless... maybe a placebo effect not sure but the feelings there. Is this feeling shared by more experienced WILDers? LDers?

Also , in the case of hypnagogic imagery i have been seeing green orbs for a very long time (even before i learnt about lucid dreaming ) and it is more of an annoyance than a sign of lucidity as i usually get up look outside in the light for abit to get rid of them , i get them fairly easily is this hypnagogic imagery?

Thanks

Hello Adam,

Congrats on your first LD! First let me clarify some terminology for you. Your "SP" experience you wrote of was not SP, it was just a nightmare in which you couldn't move. Sleep paralysis is the experience of not being able to move while you are falling asleep. The typical occurance is like this: You go to bed, relax and drift towards sleep. You may experience feelings of heaviness, lightness and/or hypnagogic imagery as you mentioned. As your body falls asleep, it becomes mostly paralyzed to protect itself during dreaming. Your consciousness typically slips into sleep at the same time, but it may lag behind a bit. If it does and you try to move while in SP, then you would notice you could not move. If not aware of this being normal and harmless, then the experience can be scary. If you are aware of the reality of it, it should not be scary at all. In fact, it should be a positive sign that your are maintaining awareness into sleep ala WILD. You were dreaming at the time, so therefore it was not SP, it was a nightmare in which you couldn't move. (Very common by the way.)

As to your questions, yes a feeling of lightness or the opposite, heavyness is common.

As for the hypnagogic imagery, yes your green orbs sound like they are hypnagogic. I suggest you be grateful for seeing them because they also indicate that you are aware when falling asleep. Again, this works in your favor for a WILD. You may not realize that not everyone experiences HI (hypnagogic Imagery) and remembers it. Ideally you will notice HI and maintain awareness without letting the awareness itself keep you from transitioning to sleep. After all, you need to sleep to LD.

Hope that helps.

Well I'm not a master of this but I think that RC's are the key I've had a few lucid dreams since I started trying and all of them involve RC at some point so keep up with that!