Sensations and Problems of Lucid Dreaming

Hi, I'm new to this site so I hope that I'm not being redundant. I'm open to being directed to existing threads if need be. :)

So, today is my 23rd birthday, and this morning I had my first truly lucid dream.
This was exciting, but somewhat strange. When I was 13, I heard about lucid dreaming through the spiritual group I was engaged in at the time, and began reading up on how to achieve it. After about a year of meditation and following the tips provided in literature (there wasn't much online at the time), I found that I was getting stuck in the stage of sleep paralysis--which to say the least, was terrifying. It got to the point that I couldn't even take a nap because if I ever drifted off without being completely exhausted, I would find myself consciously paralyzed without ever achieving a lucid dream. I gave it up.

The problem never went away entirely, but did improve over the years until "getting stuck" became less frequent. However, I recently had a three-day period when I (admittedly) drank too much every day due to having some wild family staying with me over a holiday. (I'm not generally such a big drinker)
The following three nights I was almost completely unable to sleep and came in and out of sleep paralysis all night every night.
Following this strange episode, I did sleep like a rock for three nights, but this morning, with no sleep paralysis or effort on my part, I found myself in a very vivid lucid dream.

I did find that I was able to control my surroundings (except for the characters in it), float, etc but with the sensation of great physical strain and a deafening white noise in my head whenever the effort was made. I awoke only to fall back asleep (accompanied by a strange, pulsing buzz as I was drifting off--but again, no sleep paralysis) into another, equally if not more, lucid dream. Throughout, I could hear what was going on in my house clearly enough that I could recount it to my housemates afterwards, without it interfering with the dream unless I chose to awaken long enough to address something (like my phone) and fall back into the dream as though I had never woken up. I confirmed through my phone history that this was not imagined.

After so many years of struggling with sleep paralysis, after everything I've read about the nature of lucid dreams (and granted I have not read up as much on more recent online things), I was completely caught off guard by the experience--hence my eagerness to post!

So my questions are, has anyone else had similar experiences/problems, or insight as to what might be going on?

I appreciate any feedback you may have.

Were you trying to WILD straight from going to sleep? If so, there's your first problem. When you first start going to sleep, it not only may take a while for you to get to REM atonia (the correct term for what you describe as sleep paralysis, sorry for being pedantic, but it will help prevent future confusion), but there usually isn't a dream to enter. At best you will, like my first experience, spend five minutes in a recreation of your own room, frantically trying to stabilize, only to wake up almost immediately. What happened to you is that you woke up either immediately prior to a REM cycle or during one. This is, in my experience, the best way to WILD, so you are now on the right track. Sorry if I come off as condescending, but its the best way for me to describe it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by splodeymissile

Were you trying to WILD straight from going to sleep? If so, there's your first problem. When you first start going to sleep, it not only may take a while for you to get to REM atonia (the correct term for what you describe as sleep paralysis, sorry for being pedantic, but it will help prevent future confusion), but there usually isn't a dream to enter. At best you will, like my first experience, spend five minutes in a recreation of your own room, frantically trying to stabilize, only to wake up almost immediately. What happened to you is that you woke up either immediately prior to a REM cycle or during one. This is, in my experience, the best way to WILD, so you are now on the right track. Sorry if I come off as condescending, but its the best way for me to describe it.

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He pretty much summed up what i was going to say LOL!

I'm just gonna add few things to splodeymissile's excellent post.

You don't need Sleep paralysis to lucid dream. That is a huge misconception. SP is a disorder, when paralysis called REM atonia we have when dreaming doesn't shut down on time, or turns on too soon. It's a 1-2 a lifetime event, unless you have a chronic disorder.

The various sensations and hallucinations you may/may not get as falling asleep, are normal signs of normal falling asleep process. They also are not a goal in lucid dreaming.

Here is a WILD for beginners recommended by dreamviews team Induction Methods and Techniques
and here is very detailed and excellent guide by sageous WILD
Good luck.

Yet one more thought, Treevoice:

WILD is not the only path to lucidity. You might look at DILD, which doesn't involve distracting "falling asleep" sensations at all.

Thank you guys for the responses, and for the correct terminology. Now that I am looking into things more, I think the techniques I had tried as a kid are more pertinent for astral projection than for lucid dreaming (if my understanding is correct). I was more curious if the sensations I experienced were normal, since in my reading I hadn't been warned what to expect as far as sensations go and it was a little startling. I had experienced the hallucinations, but this was more of a bodily experience than I expected. It does appear that I must have a sleep disorder, because it is pretty uncontrollable and debilitating and has been frequent for a good ten years. Thank you for the insight. :)

Everyone's sensations are different. The trick is to ignore it or use it as a glorified signpost. The more you focus on your physical body, the more likely you are to remain in it.