New to WILD (and everything for that matter)

I'm brand new to the idea of lucid dreaming; I had ordered a book (LaBerge) and started writing in a dream journal in preparation. The night I got the book I tried having a lucid dream, although didn't get far enough into the book to know what I was even supposed to do...lol. After a couple dreams I became frustrated with myself, telling my brain "Look here brain, how could you not notice that those were dreams? How about this...if I'm not laying in bed in this exact position, then it's a fricken dream!"

Soon after that the weirdest thing happened...I was still laying in bed in that exact spot, but the "dream world" seemed to be speeding into my head. I battled back and forth between worlds, a little freaked out but excited to let it take me, and then I finally got completely sucked into it - but the weird part is my body turned into a rippling cape, crazy wind and sounds as if I were in a wind tunnel or tornado, and me as a cape was in overdrive. I didn't see anything else except my own "cape body" rippling in parallel lines, hovering in "the black void" that didn't make it into a cool dream scene. It was still extremely exhilarating and astonishing, instantly letting me know that lucid dreams were real (I was still skeptical at the time).

The next night I did the same thing, but instead of my "dream body" being a cool rippling cape, it was just my normal body. I instantly thought/yelled "I did it! I'm dreaming!" Unfortunately I felt myself waking up after that, so I quickly tried to prove I was lucid in the darn black void area...I copied LaBerge and moved my eyes left right, left right...and thought "When I wake up, if someone was recording that, they'd know I did it!".

Then the next night I got to the part in LaBerge's book about WILDs (I didn't know they existed either), and from what I could gather from his book I did a short WILD with my own version of the Two-Body Approach. My dream bodies were a cape and my regular body. Unfortunately I did not get any further. I see that many call it OBEs as well.

Now since learning what a WILD is, I haven't been able to get even as far as those first two attempts. To make it worse, a few nights ago I had almost got to the same point but ended up dreaming in the dream world, feeling paralyzed on some random basement floor and had a rare feeling of fear. After waking up I knew that it was just my own reflection about sleep paralysis and there's nothing to fear, but then the next couple nights have been affected - I had fear one more night, think I got rid of it now, but the other part of it is my heart rate amps up and as I'm trying to transition I can still detect my heart so stop...I don't want a heart attack! lol. This morning I was more calm and only had a moderate amped-up heart so tried continuing with the transition, but didn't work...I just lay in bed not moving for a couple hours.

So I've literally gotten worse since actually learning a proper technique and understanding what a WILD is and about sleep paralysis. I think I'll give up on WILDs for a few nights as it's making me losing sleep trying, and I'll just try getting my first normal DILD. Unfortunately my brain believes everything it sees, whether my truck turns into a bicycle, or I'm arm in arm with Christian Bale performing at the circus. Hopefully it'll click soon that it's just a little too silly to be true ;-)

Hey, that's very cool that you had those two WILD experiences. It is very common for beginners to have a lucid dream or two in the very beginning. Sometimes just thinking about it is enough to cause one. I've talked to friends about lucid dreaming and have had a couple of them come back and tell me that that night they had an LD! Fortunately there are ways to develop consistency, though.

Laberge talks in his book about developing critical awareness. Practicing that will help you to notice how strange things are in a dream.

If you're still interested in working on WILDS, a great tutorial on this forum is here written by a member, Sageous.