Thread: 1st WILD attempt - crazy symptoms and questions.

Context: have only had 2 lucid dreams. Both were accidental DILD's. Just recently started exploring intentional methods.

I woke up this morning at about 9 o'clock and knew that I could sleep in for longer. Because of that I decided to try my first WI LD. Not knowing much about WILD yet, I primarily knew I wanted to fall back into a dream state while maintaining awareness. I had only read about really one potential thing to expect, sleep paralysis. I went in blind to anything other than thinking that might happen.

I decided I would try to envision the dream state I wanted to fall into while telling myself to relax but remain conscious that I was going to enter a dream and still be aware. I cycled through a few scenes in my imagination and landed on riding a horse in a dense forest with rivers and waterfalls. I imagined myself looking around as I rode, taking in the scenery, and feeling the motion of the horse beneath me.

Eventually I noticed some physical effects, starting with my hands getting pins and needles and eventually going numb. I have an issue with some nerves that cause me to get numb hands when laying down sleeping sometimes, so this feeling was actually something I was fairly accustomed to, but I took it as a good sign. Shortly after that the rest of my body started to feel the effects. Starting with my feet and then legs, I had small muscle spasms and numbness. After the legs is where it got really interesting.

My breathing became very shallow and my heart beats seemed faster. I found I had to allow the shallow breathing against my better judgement as deep breaths would stop the progression. Once I did the effects seemed to jump over my upper body and move into my eyes. It started visually first, with the light blacks you have when you close your eyes turning into deeper and deeper pitch black in quick waves or pulses. At the same time I had strong spasms or twitching in my eyelids and around my eyes that came in quick waves and increased in strength every wave. Still fully aware this was a bit alarming any I was tempted to shake it off. However I assumed this was normal and let them do their thing. Just then I started to notice that in the deep blacks it was almost like my eyes were open in a pitch black room instead of looking at the inside of my eyelids. I felt like I would see visuals at any time and just then I felt my bed shake a little. To my frustration I remembered my two little shitzus were sleeping with me and getting restless. It was enough to pull me out of the cycle. I didn't dare get up and let them out because I knew at that point id have to get up and start the day. That said, I tried again hoping they would stay still.

I ran through the same cycle about 4 times - feet, legs, eye twitching and color darkening, etc. each time my dogs moved right as I felt I was about to transition. The last time my body was completely numb, and the twitching / spasms moved beyond my eyes into my other face muscles. This distracted me from the dream setting I had set up so I transitioned to imagining a scenario hat fit in with the face and eye spasms - my wife sitting behind me and massaging my face and eyelids. This seemed to help. I felt like I would see things any second and prepared myself to push through any scary experiences (as I've heard can happen at this point) by talking myself out of them with happy thoughts and a " this isn't real" mentality. Right then my bed shook more than before, and I realized my daughter had woken up and crawled in bed with me. I knew I had to get up and looked at the clock. 10:50. Almost 2 hours of failed attempts but I left the situation confident this proved my ability to MILD in the future and feeling like is get though it easier next time due to having less of a surprised adrenaline rush from the effects.

So obviously as a newbie I have some questions.

Was this all pretty standard as far as first experience with trying to WILD goes?

Was I close to going Lucid?

Were the methods I implemented helping my chances or hurting them?

Does the fact that I got this far on my first try show I have a natural ability or is this pretty typical for a 1st attempt?

Obviously having the dogs in bed was a bad idea - a thing else I could have done differently?