Getting over the initial stage

This morning, I think I got into the initial stages of WILD. Let me try to describe it as best as I can. I try a method I came up with a while back where I wake up, stay reeealy tired, and try to look at the clock over and over again and see if it starts reading funny stuff. Like, I'll check, then close my eyes, then check...sometimes, I'll end up in a weird in-between state where I'm dreaming (i.e. the clock starts making no sense) but don't realize it at the time and still think I'm in the middle of a WILD.

So while attempting this, I get to a part where I'm paralyzed. I feel as if I'm getting sandblasted, or pins and needles in most parts of my body. But where it really gets unpleasant is the sensations. In the middle of all this, I feel as if I'm suffocating, or having my breathing getting slow and constricted. All in all it just feels like if everything intensified, I'd die or end up disabled or something. It just all felt really bizarre and unnatural, and I kept shaking out of it because of it.

Anyone ever have the same issue, and how did you get over it? Better yet, how do you get "into" the dream from this point?

SP can be overwhelming. It'll get easier as you go on. I have the same problem. It's not going to kill you, don't worry. :P

When my breathing starts getting funny, am I still *actually* breathing sufficently? That's part of my concern. It just feels like the way I breath during SP would be enough for me to black out.

I get the same, mini. The other day it felt like my heart and lungs were going to be ripped out. I also worry about my breathing - even when I'm at a relaxed stage of WILD: Sometimes I feel like I could stop breathing and never start again.

The pins and needles sensation, at least for me, is part of relaxation, and not SP. I find that I can still move fine even after the sensations intensify and then pass. The sensation of irregular breathing could also possibly be imagined. Maybe, you could have someone watch your chest while you attempt to repeat what you did. Everything you experience already happens naturally, but you just aren't usually aware of it; keep that in mind. If you don't worry about it or expect it in the future, it should go away.

I have had this happen so many times. When I think about it I could have probably had more than a couple hundred lucid dreams by now. The funny thing is I noticed that the more I'm covered up by my sheets the easier it is for me to notice the paralysis. I had to convince myself before going laying down and while laying down that there was no way for me to suffocate and that if anything the sheets would fall away from my face and allow me to breathe better. I was sucessful once and had a lucid dream with full control. The hardest part about this is staying down through the fear. You have to convince yourself that it is an illusion about the breathing being harder. It is just that normally you don't feel the paralysis happening.