Just some general questions about WILD

Ok so, lucid dreaming is perhaps one of the things in my life that I have been fascinated with, yet I have only ever achieved partial lucidity in very few dreams and they have been accidents. i.e someone in my dream tells me I am dreaming and I shortly awaken.

Progress with keeping a dream diary, has had some fascinating successes in dream recall but never really materialised anything for me other than really detailed and vivid dreams.

I did however, once attempt WILD and it scared the crap out of me so badly that I never experimented with it seriously again. However, now I think that i'm ready to revisit it.

The reason why it scared the crap out of me when I first attempted it was because after the paralysis kicked in, I got the vibrations, which became ridiculously intense and were accompanied by these massive bright white dots that moved across my line of sight, when I tried to awaken, I couldnt, well it took about 5 - 10 mins to come out of it.

Now I really want to lucid dream as I have been suffering from a recurring nightmare for the past two weeks, one that I can never remember, I just wake up in a cold sweat and half panicking. I want to go into my dreams and find out:

1) What this nightmare is and
2) I want to find out what the problem is, then of course
3) Have some fun in the dream world.

I am familiar with the technique but need additional advice on the following:

1) Does anybody have any tips for not getting distracted/staying awake.
2) Any tips for getting through the vibrations calmly.
3) Another problem I had was 'jumping' into the forming dream, I could see a landscape forming but had no idea how to get into it, any advice?
4) Has anybody accidently induced sleep paralysis hallucinations directly from this technique?
5) Once im in the dream world, how would I go about navigating it to get to the root of my nightmares?
6) What’s the most crazy thing you have ever done in a lucid dream?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Sam

I can try to take these in order:

1) This is one of those things that just has to be learned, it can't easily be put into words. I mean, some people have theories about anchors and whatnot, but really it's just a matter of training your brain to be in a certain mode, and that's achievable with lots of practice.

2) The vibrations aren't always violent, sometimes they're fairly calm. But if you want to avoid them, you can do that by entering the dream early. The dream will be a little more unstable at first, but you won't feel the vibrations anymore. Of course, entering the dream is another matter.

3) Once the landscapes start to become 3-dimensional, you can stick your arm out and touch them. Assuming your 'real' arm is sufficiently paralyzed, the arm that you are able to move will be your 'dream' arm. Then once you touch something, the dream wraps around you. There's more to it than that, but again it's just something that takes a little practice.

Don't worry if it seems like you don't have any arms. Just send the signal and an arm will appear. What an odd thing to say.

4) Accidental hallucinations -- all the time.

5) I can't help you with this one.

6) I made a new colour once. It was sorta like green, sorta like pink, but not a colour that actually exists.

You know, now that I think about it, this may be one of the rare cases where DILD is actually the better way to go. I'm not sure if your nightmares would appear in a WILD. Also, WILD tends to produce 100% lucidity, which makes for very short dreams (seconds to minutes), for a beginner at least. DILD might give less lucid, but longer, dreams. And DILD dreams might contain more nightmares. But I would still recommend WILD for lucid dreaming in general.

you could try watching a few scary movies while doing some reality checks so that that whenever you feel panic you do a reality check in the nightmare..?

Hey thanks for the replys guys. I tried to WILD this morning but after 35 mins of trying to relax I fell asleep without getting into any of the later stages (doh!).

I plan on trying again next morning and will hopefully get a bit further.

Thanks for answering my questions cmind, a new colour sounds crazy to think of!

As for the nightmare though whiterain, the problem I am having is that I have no idea what this nightmare is about, I litterally just wake up from in in a panic and cold sweat with no memory of the nightmare itself, i've kept a dream diary for the past week and remember a lot of dreams but for some reason I can not recall the nightmare.

Anyway, lets see if I make any futher progress on my next attempt, I will not give up this time!