Thread: Lucid Dreaming And Its Side Effects

-The Side Effects

(background info
Lucid dreaming was something that happened to me one day, with out trying to induce it- or even prior knowledge of its existence. After one helluva an experience, I spent futile attempts questioning friends, hoping someone had experienced what I did, desiring for any manner of information to understand what had just happened.
After a couple of more lucid dreams, I decided to take my search to the internet, and came across the term "Lucid dreaming". After carefull investigation, I realized this is what I was experiencing. That was about 6 years ago.
I am not a fanatic lucid dreamer, and although I am aware of some techniques to induce lucid dreaming, I seldom use them.
lately, however, for reasons I am not sure of, I have been suffering from sleep paralysis. This is probably due to lack of sufficient sleep, and a hectic days work.
(what is sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis, is actually quite a normal process and happens to everyone who sleeps. One part of the brain is responsible for releasing hormones that demobilizes your body. This is done in order that you won't "act out" what you are dreaming. Some times this function is faulty, as a result people talk in their sleep, go sleep-walking, start kicking in bed... you get the picture. And some times the opposite happens, your brain wakes up and goes conscious before your body, this is usually a scary(panic) experience for most people, being awake and unable to move, wanting to scream and unable to speak. Thankfully it only lasts a few seconds to maybe a min or so. It is the latter of the two that I am intrested in and how it relates to lucid dreaming.
(the problem
It happens that now, when ever I go lucid I fall into sleep paralysis. It can be very annoying. To the point that I am no longer intrested in going lucid because of its ill after effects.
Is there something I'm doing wrong?
Can I turn this around to my advantage?
Am I alone?

Hey and Welcome to the forum

Sleep Paralysis is actually normal for Lucid Dreamers, and many use it as an advantage rather then a flaw. Sleep Paralysis is normally experienced in the moments of waking up and falling asleep that we don't really remember. When we do experience it, its because we were conscious enough at that moment to. This is not surprising as Lucid Dreaming litterally translates to "Conscious Dreaming" in which our conscious mind is active while we dream.

Its the same with WILDing, your effectively trying to keep yourself conscious as you enter sleep. Many actually use SP as a method to induce Lucid Dreams.

Be sure to browse the forum and ask questions. Many here would be more then happy to help.

I'm no experienced WILDer, but i just wanted to add that people's talking in their sleep or somnabulance are not caused by their "acting out" their dreams; this is a common misconception. Unfortunately, I don't know the reason why, but as an intro to my psych course, we learned about misconceptions and that was near the top of the list.

hey thanks all for the welcome and the info!

I will look into WILD. I am not completely familiar with it, if I can salvage anything from SP, then great!
Thanks thebeagle56 for the update, I was not aware of possible conflicts in the theory!

LightCloud.

Hello, I'm new to this Website/Forum. I have never talked on a forum before. When I was about 13 or 14 years old I saw the movie Inception for the first time (Absolutely incredible movie, have seen it 16 times on DVD) I just tried to see what would happen if I just lay still, closed my eyes and ignored any scratch or itch urge as I noticed that the team in Inception seemed to to that (although they did use the machine), and after only about 5 minutes I felt as if I couldn't really feel my body and that there were a few images that popped up in my vision even with my eyes closed and then I started to notice I could control these and they weren't just images. After a bit of random internet searches of Inception and background stuff, being a huge fan of it, I realized this was most probably what was called Lucid Dreaming. I did this about 3 times after and then eventually got kinda bored of it. I haven't tried doing it for about 3 years because I just forgot about it and life got in the way. However I've been going through a really tough time this year mainly through not being able to go many places or do anything as I live kind of remote, lack of enjoyment outlet etc... Just this afternoon coming home on the bus after a really crap day I felt really tired and (after remembering it and thinking about it for a while) tried to Lucid Dream. It scared me how easy I was able to do it, got a bit of a fright as soon as I saw something clearly and opened my eyes immediately (causing me to only Lucid Dream for less than a second). as soon as I opened my eyes everything in the bus seemed very clear in vision and I pretty much had no emotion at all and couldn't even think about much at all unless I tried really hard. This lasted for a lot of the afternoon and I got quite worried because I had the same detachment feeling from anything around me as I did when I went through an Anxiety Disorder a few years back.
In summary, after having a crap day, just moments after having a Lucid Dream on my bus I felt ABSOLUTELY no emotion until the worry came to me about how I was feeling. Also that I could think about my homework so much more clear if I kept my focus on it.
From this I have got so many questions that I don't know where to start so if anyone could comment on this or reply to it, however you make conversation on this then that would be much appreciated.
Thanks