...I first gained interest in such things as a result of regular experimentation with dissociative substances, which gave me almost frightening control over very specific bodily functions that I'm not sure I probably should have been messing around with at the time. For example, I could speed up or slow down my heart rate and body temperature with a single thought. What was interesting to me was how immediately and fully the body would respond. At full waking consciousness if I try to slow my heart rate down it is a process, and it takes a few minutes for my heart to actually begin truly slowing down. But during those times on dissociatives it would quite literally immediately respond to my thoughts and instructions. Just to be sure it wasn't all in my head (though I knew the thermometer wasn't lying, but it is extremely difficult to take an accurate reading of your own pulse) I even had a friend take my pulse and I truly was consciously controlling it. I would give my brain a single command like, "sleep" and within seconds I would start feeling the deep slow high amplitude waves of delta setting in. But I soon began to realize how similar this state of dissociation is to the transitional states as experienced during WILDs...pre and post dream trance-like states of mind. I noticed how, during the vibrational state, I was able to consciously control vibrations, frequencies, and even instruct my heart to slow down if I began to get too excited. And when it comes to it, they basically are the same...it is merely a dissociation from the body, something our minds do every single night when we enter sleep paralysis.