WILD Progression Outline

This isn't really going to be a full guide so much as a quick thread on how a WILD progresses given known scientific information and personal experience.

NOTE: This is for information purposes only. Expecting these things to happen, or looking for them to happen during a WILD attempt is counter productive and can result in failure unless you know exactly what you're doing.

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The typical sleep cycle usually looks like this: N1 -> N2 -> N3 -> N2 -> REM

A chart: (notation is old, combine Stage 3 and 4 into N3)


Source: Wikipedia

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N1 Sleep:

This is where people report experiences with HH and the like. Hypnic jerks can also occur here.

N2 Sleep:

Definitely a more interesting phase. This is where sleep spindles tend to occur, and from personal experience, I'm proposing this is also where vibrations hit, and senses tend go fuzzy.

I would not be surprised if the experience of these vibrations is directly related to the occurrence of sleep spindles. Unfortunately, I haven't seen enough strong evidence to support this idea one way or the other, so feel free to do your own research there.

N3 Sleep:

Not extraordinarily relevant to a normal WILD, but the insertion of N3 sleep between two N2 events accounts for a lot of anecdotes from people who feel vibrations for a short while, have them subside for a time, only to have them pick up again right before they make the final transition.

REM:

REM atonia, aka full body paralysis, comes into play at this stage. By this time, a dream has likely formed already or at least started forming.

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So, if we were to break down a WILD, given the usual progression of a sleep cycle we'd be looking at:

HH -> vibrations, sense dampening/relaxation -> a bit of down-time, sleep disorders may appear here if you've got them -> vibrations, more sense dampening/relaxation -> conscious transition* -> REM, fully body paralysis

* The transition into a lucid dream could occur at pretty much any point in this chain, but is most likely to happen right before REM hits.