New - WILD, Childhood nightmares, paralysis and Binaural beats

Hello everyone, I am new to the forum - although not necessarily new to lucid dreaming. I signed up to this forum primarily because I was slightly freaked out by my last experience (more about it later) and being able to ask questions from people who are experienced in LD. I have a lot of questions, but mainly I am just trying to understand Lucid Dreaming better and get over some fears.

The first time I had a lucid dream was when I was a very small child. Up until recently I thought that my experience was unique but as I read more its quite obvious that this is fairly common.

Basically I used to get nightmares beginning when I was 4 or so- Every single day, to the point where I seriously feared going to sleep. A variety of different things would happen. Either my dream would seem rather ordinary and suddenly things (particularly people I knew well ) would transform into horrific monsters and nightmarish objects or a "plot" or recurring dream would happen which would be scary right from the start. As I grew older I became "heroic" so to speak in my dreams and I would often act as if I wasn't scared/was completely bored by whatever monsters/imagery I faced in my nightmares.

Overtime the recurring pattern within my nightmares meant that I could realize it was just a dream and achieved lucidity. Once I was lucid I would "eject" myself from the dream (Which was a false awakening 50% of the time) at other time I achieved some degree of dream control as I was able to make the monsters/nightmares disappear or become funny.

I stopped having nightmares when I was a teen, I was always completely exhausted when I went to bed and I did not dream at all 50% of the time. In my dreams I would achieve lucidity quite often (Something in the dream just wouldn't be right) yet even when I achieved lucidity in the dream I would have "doubts" about whether it was really a dream. I would contemplate how crazy I would look if it turned out to be real and so "just in case" I wouldn't do anything stupid in my lucid dreams.
After achieving lucidity I would VERY quickly wake up - much to my disappointment.

I can't remember the last time I had a lucid dream- at some point I researched lucid dreams and had an AHA moment where it all made sense. I hadn't thought about them since - Until yesterday\

I was experimenting with a binaural beat which I had gotten on my ipod. The function of the beat was to help you get more "Deep Sleep" as In REM sleep. I didn't believe It could do a thing but what the heck, what did I have to lose?? So I lay there in my bed on my back with my headphones on, eyes closed and listened to the beat. After 10 minutes the set time which I had chosen finished. It was quite relaxing but other than that It didn't make me particularly sleepy, tired but sort of too conscious to fall asleep. I decided to give it another go. This time I didn't move a muscle the whole time. I concentrated on the sound of the beat at first and then when I started feeling drowsy I concentrated on my Childhood memories, my school, my preschool, my old home etc. I was surprised at how many memories I could recall and kept exploring my mind. My body began to to try to "get me to move" at that point, muscles twitched, my nose was itchy, I had a sudden urge to change my hands position, my head was itchy etc. I was adamant on ignoring it and I didn't move
an inch. My breathing sped up and I started to try to breathe slower at this point I could feel my hands going numb and my eyes sort of rolling back, and my body falling. I began to freak out at this point. I could sort of see a black "abyss" at the back of my mind that I was slowly plunging into. I could see a simple pattern and my heart started beating really fast and then suddenly I snapped out of it terrified and started to open and clench my fist. 2 hrs had passed since I had began to listen to the beat, I grabbed the head phones and threw them away and then got up and tried my best to find out what the hell had happened.


I think the black at the back of my mind was the transition into sleep - meaning this was a failed WILD of a sort. I seriously want to try it again but after reading up on lucid dreaming I am absolutely terrified of Sleep paralysis I am easily startled and although I do not let my fears stop me from doing things in the real world, its a different story when it comes to my own mind playing tricks on me. This little experience has got me interested in the world of lucid dreaming again and how much control I can achieve over my dreams. How scary is sleep paralysis?? Are there any health implications to Lucid dreaming? Does it affect how much REM sleep you get/the quality of sleep ? Does DILD lead to frequent sleep paralysis or just WILD?

DreamShard, welcome to Dreamviews.

I'll start with a story of something that happened to me. I used to play an online game back when I was at high school. Since I had to get up early to go to school, and I was mostly busy for the whole day after school finished, I had little time to play the game. I decided one week to start waking myself up during the night so I could play it; so that went well for two or three days. Then one night the alarm on my phone didn't wake me up; or rather, it woke me up and I went straight back to sleep. I woke up in the morning earlier than usual but I couldn't move. I was staring up and the blackness in my room gradually changed to a bright white light. I felt a strong upwards force on my consciousness, as if I was being pulled out of my body. The force kept getting stronger and I kept trying to wriggle free, until it got so strong that the sleep paralysis wore off.

The point of the story is not to put doubt and fear into your mind, but to emphasize a point. After this happened, I researched a lot and stumbled across Dreamviews. I've been here for the better part of a year now, but only recently did I have my first sleep paralysis experience after researching it. However, I've learned in my time here that bad sleep paralysis experiences are caused only by fear and expectation of bad things. Being confident that the experience will be a good one, or at least not a bad one, is the key to not being afraid. Sleep paralysis is only as scary as you expect it to be.

There are no health implications to lucid dreaming, as everything involved in it is already carried out behind the scenes. Every time you go to sleep, you enter sleep paralysis, and you exit it whenever you wake up. When you become lucid in a dream, nothing different is happening, it's still a dream. So no, it doesn't directly affect how much REM sleep you get, or the quality of sleep.

If you've got any other questions, feel free to post, or send me a private message :).

ShockWave.

I listened to the beats too, not the same ones, but after a while i stopped for a day and then i had a sleep paralysis and NDE, the sleep paralysis was scary at the time, but to be honest it's not that much to be scared off, people say you hear and see shit but i didn't i was just scared cause i didn't know what was happening at the time.