Thread: Lucidity Breathing Method

Originally Posted by Sythix

Hello all,

I have an idea about achieving constant lucidity everynight just by using your breath and consciousness! I've been practicing this method for a bit now, but not long enough to see constant lucidity everynight. I am sharing this method now because I want others to join in and see if they can achieve said results. Allow me to introduce to you the idea of the Lucidity Breathing Method and how to do it:

You, are breathing every moment, but are you ever AWARE of your breathing? Are you at this moment aware that you're inhaling.......and now exhaling.........and inhaling again? Maybe you are now because I brought your awareness to it, but normally your breath is an UNCONSCIOUS process never driven by your conscious mind. After all, if you were the one to have conscious control over your breathing you would've probably died years ago. The idea is not to have conscious CONTROL over your breath, but to have conscious AWARENESS of your breath. Why you ask? Well, you're ALWAYS breathing.....even during sleep . And if we were to keep conscious awareness of our breathing through out the day, our brains can then carry this consciousness over into sleep and we'll become aware of our breath and then......LUCIDITY! You'll begin breathing in your dreams and eventually you'll associate breathing with consciousness and become instantly lucid.

How To Begin Breathing Consciously

Everyday Developed Awareness: Simply put, you may begin breathing consciously whenever and wherever you want. How to develop a constant awareness of your breath is up to you on how long you plan to keep your conscious awareness of your breathing. All you really have to do is remain aware of your breathing through out the day whenever you can.

- To help you keep awareness of your breath you can use a mantra. A mantra is basically a repetition of a word or words to help you and keep you focused.

As you inhale say: I'mmmmmmm (as long as the inhale takes until exhale)
As you exhale say: Dreammmmmmminnggggggg (as long as the exhale takes until the next inhale)

And repeat this over and over in your mind to help keep you focused on keep awareness on your breath.

Meditation Developed Awareness: I know some people don't like the idea of meditating or just can't find the time to, so that's why I included the Everyday Developed Awareness. This meditation can be very beneficial though if practiced regularly and everyday.

Basically all you have to do is sit in any comfortable posture you want; avoiding one that will make you fall asleep though. You can close your eyes and begin to take deep breaths in and out. Take a very deep inhale to fill up your lungs as much as you can and then a long exhale until you can't exhale any longer, do this about 20 times. Then calm down and breathe normally, keeping your awareness ONLY on your breathing. You may do this for a length of 5-10 minutes and increase the time everyday to 10-15 minutes and so on.
This will definetely help you develop a constant awareness of breath and focus as well.

Tibetan Dream Yoga Technique: This is a technique I decided to include with the overall Lucidity Breathing Method. It makes a whole lot of sense to me. You may not wish to include this into the method, that is your choice, but I very much like the idea and I think it'll help in achieving constant lucidity everynight.

Tibetan dream yoga practice comprises three parts:

- Daytime practice, designed to help us recognize the dreamlike nature of all existence and thereby prepare us to experience our dreams as vividly as we do our waking activities
- Morning wake-up practices that help us recall our dreams, and confirm our determination to recall more of them
- Nightime practice, which prepares the ground for lucid dreaming and spiritual

See the first line? I included this technique into the Lucidity Breathing Method so we can realize that waking life is a dream and this consciousness PLUS the breathing will both lead into a seamless transition into lucidity everynight because our minds will just begin to think as dreams as continuations of our waking reality! So...

Daytime Practice:

During the day, practice these four points:
- Contemplating the body as illusory and unreal
- Contemplating the mind and mental activities as similarly insubstantial
- Regarding the world and all phenomena and experience as dreamlike, insubstantial, impermanent, and unreal
- Recognizing the relativity and ungraspable quality such as time, space, knowledge, and awareness

Reminding ourselves of these four truths throughout our waking life helps to dissolve the barrier between the dream of real-life and the sleeping dream. As we become more adept at this practice, we begin to regard our nighttime dreams as continuations of our waking dream and we learn how to bring habitual awareness to both.
And that concludes my Lucidity Breathing Method for now. Please if anyone is interested in trying this out, please do and post your results. If you have any questions PM me or ask me here. And remember, your breath is a vehicle into the dream world! Don't leave your consciousness/awareness behind, take the wheel and start driving into lucidity!
[/b]

Hmm very Interresting. I guess the Idea behind it is to learn how to become Conscious of Subconscious acts such as Breathing, Dreaming, your Heart Beating..all those things that happen naturally and subconsciously.

May I add an Idea to your Meditational training Method? I know many people are not open to the idea of meditation and find it wierd and nothing for them. All it is, in this case, is learning to strengthen your attention and awareness and can be achieved by anyone just following this technique..well provided you are Motivated.
Perhaps if you would try staying AWARE of the Dreaming process all day you could Train it gradually by means of a Simple Dayly meditation.
You could start by sitting in a relaxing posture (sitting is crucial for longer Meditation sessions to NOT fall asleep). First day you try and stay CONSTANTLY aware of your Breathing process for 10 Minutes Straight. If you find yourself Distracted after only 5 minutes its okay': Just write it down somewhere. Next day try it again. and again the day after. Just as long untill you are able to focus your Attention COMPLETELY on your Breathing for 10 Minutes Straight. Then, when you can do that effortlessly, try and stay Aware of your Breathing for 15 Minutes untill you succeed in doing so effortlessly. Then try it for 20 minuters. Then for 30 Minutes Straight.....etc It's Crucial that you try and focus on Breathing for 10 minutes untill you are FULLY able to do so effortlessly. Only then move on to 15 minutes, 20 minutes..etc. Learning this way, I learned ALOT of things that involve Skill in this way: Guitar, Piano, Drawing, Painting..etc. It's a Great learning Process: 1 step at a Time and full 100% dedication to that step untill it is achieved completely effortlessly and succesfully. Then move on to the next step and repeat his method untill you're once again trained to ''the next level''.

I guess this would be a Good Training Method to Strengthen your Awareness and Attention-focussing ability, cuz many people find it hard to focus their Mind on a single thought for even 2 minutes. I guess This Meditation training would serve well as a Technique to do First, before actually trying to go Lucid at Night using your Technique.

wow. sounds simple and easy plus it makes sense! im trying this method. ill see everyone in a week with results

This is done already, but not with just breathing - with every sense there is, basically. It's called Lucid Living. I don't know how well known LL is on DV, but if you go to Lucid Dreaming 4 all (LD4all)'s forums, you'll find a topic called "Lucid Living" there which has all the info in it.

Surely a better meditation technique is to use a position where you DO fall asleep !!! The goal is to fall asleep consciously while repeating "I'm dreaming" as you breathe.

Originally Posted by Sythix

You'll begin breathing in your dreams and eventually you'll associate breathing with consciousness and become instantly lucid.
[/b]

Are you implying this as to the fact that you will recognize you are not beathing in the dream world? As in, a simple reality check/dream sign being the breathing? I assume so. Unless you are just trying to pair breathing with the question of "is this real", which also works by simply thinking about breathing in your dream since your mind has paired the thoughts.

This is really just another way or option for a typical awareness scenario.

Really, a lot of us try to question reality constantly and constantly bring this into dream world. There are a lot of techniques or events in which you could focus on. The repetition of breathing makes it a good choice.

The problem is that it will not work the same for everyone. What I do personally is tell myself "I am in a dream when not at my house". Even though I'm not always at my house, if everytime this thought comes to mind I do a reality check, the idea is that it will carry over well to a dreaming scenario in which I am not at my house.

The demise of any solution is in the simple rememberance factor of the person themself.

I do not always remember "I'm in a dream" when I'm not at home and do a reality check. Therefore, I do not always question the scene in the dream I am in.

Once I can think to myself that I am in a dream 100% of the time when out of the house and reality check, I have a strong feeling 90% of my dreams outside of home will have a chance at lucidity.

The importance factor to the individual must be kept up and the habit must see a constant factor of increase until lucids theoretically peak. Any time you slack in the real world you slack in dream world.

Originally Posted by ZenVortex

Surely a better meditation technique is to use a position where you DO fall asleep !!! The goal is to fall asleep consciously while repeating "I'm dreaming" as you breathe.
[/b]

Perhaps this is a better meditation technique for night time practice (the one I mentioned would be for during the day), but like I said many will just want to do a quick 10 to 15 meditation and not fall asleep and wake up 4 hours later from a nap; many don't have that luxury of spare time. But you reminded me of a very important point in the method; at night when you're falling asleep keeping your consciousness on your breathing is very important as you've been doing the whole day. This isn't any WILD or MILD this is just simply awareness linked to your breath which is ALWAYS with you. You are ALWAYS breathing aren't you? The mantra is there to help you focus on that awareness of your breath, but also can help to lead to lucidity - true.

Are you implying this as to the fact that you will recognize you are not beathing in the dream world? [/b]

you are breathing in dreams. you have too breathe that is why the nose rc works so well, cause you cant stop breathing in the dream world. what he is saying is that if you are consiously aware of your breathing in the real world, then it will carry over into the dream world and you will be consious there.

Originally Posted by TweaK

This is done already, but not with just breathing - with every sense there is, basically. It's called Lucid Living. I don't know how well known LL is on DV, but if you go to Lucid Dreaming 4 all (LD4all)'s forums, you'll find a topic called "Lucid Living" there which has all the info in it.
[/b]

I'm aware of Lucid Living, but that's not like this method I'm proposing. In Lucidity Breathing you're linking your consciousness with breathing which is a SUBCONSCIOUS habit. A habit that is ALWAYS with you even while you sleep!

Originally Posted by SKA

Hmm very Interresting. I guess the Idea behind it is to learn how to become Conscious of Subconscious acts such as Breathing, Dreaming, your Heart Beating..all those things that happen naturally and subconsciously.

May I add an Idea to your Meditational training Method? I know many people are not open to the idea of meditation and find it wierd and nothing for them. All it is, in this case, is learning to strengthen your attention and awareness and can be achieved by anyone just following this technique..well provided you are Motivated.
Perhaps if you would try staying AWARE of the Dreaming process all day you could Train it gradually by means of a Simple Dayly meditation.
You could start by sitting in a relaxing posture (sitting is crucial for longer Meditation sessions to NOT fall asleep). First day you try and stay CONSTANTLY aware of your Breathing process for 10 Minutes Straight. If you find yourself Distracted after only 5 minutes its okay': Just write it down somewhere. Next day try it again. and again the day after. Just as long untill you are able to focus your Attention COMPLETELY on your Breathing for 10 Minutes Straight. Then, when you can do that effortlessly, try and stay Aware of your Breathing for 15 Minutes untill you succeed in doing so effortlessly. Then try it for 20 minuters. Then for 30 Minutes Straight.....etc It's Crucial that you try and focus on Breathing for 10 minutes untill you are FULLY able to do so effortlessly. Only then move on to 15 minutes, 20 minutes..etc. Learning this way, I learned ALOT of things that involve Skill in this way: Guitar, Piano, Drawing, Painting..etc. It's a Great learning Process: 1 step at a Time and full 100% dedication to that step untill it is achieved completely effortlessly and succesfully. Then move on to the next step and repeat his method untill you're once again trained to ''the next level''.

I guess this would be a Good Training Method to Strengthen your Awareness and Attention-focussing ability, cuz many people find it hard to focus their Mind on a single thought for even 2 minutes. I guess This Meditation training would serve well as a Technique to do First, before actually trying to go Lucid at Night using your Technique.
[/b]

Hey Ska,
That is exactly the idea behind this method. Becoming aware of your breathing which is a subconscious habit that everyone has and is always present (unless you're dead or something.) I do like your 1 step at a time meditation, very good practice for beginners finding it hard to keeping their awareness on their breathing. The mantra I posted as well can help you focus on your breathing, but eventually this can maybe drive you crazy saying it over and over in your mind (it hasn't drove me crazy yet.) What the true goal of this method is is to have constant awareness of your breathing, so that you may carry this consciousness of your breathing into the dream world and become lucid - because you're always breathing! You don't stop breathing at night when you go to sleep. So step by step for beginners is great if they have a hard time keeping this awareness.

I experienced 2 Lucid Dreams last night, in 2 different REM periods. Unfortunately they were very short but I believe they were the attained the Lucidity Breathing Method. The first lucid came as a result of suddenly becoming aware, the second I found myself waking up in bed and becoming aware it was a dream because it "felt like it" but I couldn't get out of bed (a problem I've had for a while) and in the struggle I woke up in real life.

Originally Posted by Sythix

I'm aware of Lucid Living, but that's not like this method I'm proposing. In Lucidity Breathing you're linking your consciousness with breathing which is a SUBCONSCIOUS habit. A habit that is ALWAYS with you even while you sleep!
[/b]

I see. In that case, definitely interesting - I must've misread.

900th post, woo-yay.

Originally Posted by TweaK

I see. In that case, definitely interesting - I must've misread.

900th post, woo-yay.
[/b]

Congrats, lol

Hey Sythix, great post. I was hoping that you could complete the part about dream yoga. What are the wakeup and nighttime practises. I know they aren't part of lucid breath, but you peaked my attention.

Originally Posted by GODLIGHT

Hey Sythix, great post. I was hoping that you could complete the part about dream yoga. What are the wakeup and nighttime practises. I know they aren't part of lucid breath, but you peaked my attention.
[/b]

Hey Godlight, thanks for your interest in this method...

Here's a link to the exact site I cited this here

Have fun, it's a very interesting read.

Good insight.

"Breath by Breath" by Larry Rosenberg is a great book on insight meditation and it really ties all of those ideas together nicely. He doesn't mention dreaming, but it IS all interrelated, and there's a section on walking meditation that helps to bring your awareness to more activities throughout the day.

Originally Posted by Sythix

Hello all,

I have an idea about achieving constant lucidity everynight just by using your breath and consciousness! I've been practicing this method for a bit now, but not long enough to see constant lucidity everynight. I am sharing this method now because I want others to join in and see if they can achieve said results. Allow me to introduce to you the idea of the Lucidity Breathing Method and how to do it:

You, are breathing every moment, but are you ever AWARE of your breathing? Are you at this moment aware that you're inhaling.......and now exhaling.........and inhaling again? Maybe you are now because I brought your awareness to it, but normally your breath is an UNCONSCIOUS process never driven by your conscious mind. After all, if you were the one to have conscious control over your breathing you would've probably died years ago. The idea is not to have conscious CONTROL over your breath, but to have conscious AWARENESS of your breath. Why you ask? Well, you're ALWAYS breathing.....even during sleep . And if we were to keep conscious awareness of our breathing through out the day, our brains can then carry this consciousness over into sleep and we'll become aware of our breath and then......LUCIDITY! You'll begin breathing in your dreams and eventually you'll associate breathing with consciousness and become instantly lucid.

How To Begin Breathing Consciously

Everyday Developed Awareness: Simply put, you may begin breathing consciously whenever and wherever you want. How to develop a constant awareness of your breath is up to you on how long you plan to keep your conscious awareness of your breathing. All you really have to do is remain aware of your breathing through out the day whenever you can.

- To help you keep awareness of your breath you can use a mantra. A mantra is basically a repetition of a word or words to help you and keep you focused.

As you inhale say: I'mmmmmmm (as long as the inhale takes until exhale)
As you exhale say: Dreammmmmmminnggggggg (as long as the exhale takes until the next inhale)

And repeat this over and over in your mind to help keep you focused on keep awareness on your breath.

Meditation Developed Awareness: I know some people don't like the idea of meditating or just can't find the time to, so that's why I included the Everyday Developed Awareness. This meditation can be very beneficial though if practiced regularly and everyday.

Basically all you have to do is sit in any comfortable posture you want; avoiding one that will make you fall asleep though. You can close your eyes and begin to take deep breaths in and out. Take a very deep inhale to fill up your lungs as much as you can and then a long exhale until you can't exhale any longer, do this about 20 times. Then calm down and breathe normally, keeping your awareness ONLY on your breathing. You may do this for a length of 5-10 minutes and increase the time everyday to 10-15 minutes and so on.
This will definetely help you develop a constant awareness of breath and focus as well.

Tibetan Dream Yoga Technique: This is a technique I decided to include with the overall Lucidity Breathing Method. It makes a whole lot of sense to me. You may not wish to include this into the method, that is your choice, but I very much like the idea and I think it'll help in achieving constant lucidity everynight.

Tibetan dream yoga practice comprises three parts:

- Daytime practice, designed to help us recognize the dreamlike nature of all existence and thereby prepare us to experience our dreams as vividly as we do our waking activities
- Morning wake-up practices that help us recall our dreams, and confirm our determination to recall more of them
- Nightime practice, which prepares the ground for lucid dreaming and spiritual

See the first line? I included this technique into the Lucidity Breathing Method so we can realize that waking life is a dream and this consciousness PLUS the breathing will both lead into a seamless transition into lucidity everynight because our minds will just begin to think as dreams as continuations of our waking reality! So...

Daytime Practice:

During the day, practice these four points:
- Contemplating the body as illusory and unreal
- Contemplating the mind and mental activities as similarly insubstantial
- Regarding the world and all phenomena and experience as dreamlike, insubstantial, impermanent, and unreal
- Recognizing the relativity and ungraspable quality such as time, space, knowledge, and awareness

Reminding ourselves of these four truths throughout our waking life helps to dissolve the barrier between the dream of real-life and the sleeping dream. As we become more adept at this practice, we begin to regard our nighttime dreams as continuations of our waking dream and we learn how to bring habitual awareness to both.


And that concludes my Lucidity Breathing Method for now. Please if anyone is interested in trying this out, please do and post your results. If you have any questions PM me or ask me here. And remember, your breath is a vehicle into the dream world! Don't leave your consciousness/awareness behind, take the wheel and start driving into lucidity!

I'm just wondering if this type of awareness exercise will take away too much of my (limited) consciousness that's focused on the external world. I'm very introversive but often find it useful for other reasons to try and be more externally focused. Anyhow, I will try this method (again.. I did it a while ago without much effort) and see if it smoothes out my mind for enhanced awareness.

I'll let you know the results.

Lol if you gonna be so concious about your Breathing you might develop a OCD lol

SO i wouldnt recommend that one

Originally Posted by TalkingHead

I'm just wondering if this type of awareness exercise will take away too much of my (limited) consciousness that's focused on the external world. I'm very introversive but often find it useful for other reasons to try and be more externally focused. Anyhow, I will try this method (again.. I did it a while ago without much effort) and see if it smoothes out my mind for enhanced awareness.

I'll let you know the results.

You're not trying to control your breath, you're just becoming more AWARE of it. Once you consistently practice this you see that it's natural and effortless. It gets you grounded in the present moment, and allows you to observe the illusory thoughts that your mind produces rather than be constantly distracted by them.

So Cygnus.. how often and for how long do you plan on doing this during the day? Sythix's post seemed to suggest that the breath be focused on CONSTANTLY and I merely wanted to point out that this takes up a large portion of our awareness (which is a limited personal resource.) For my part, I'm going to focus on my breath whenever I'm transitioning from one activity to another, or doing a non-demanding task like driving.

I like the idea, tried it over the past few days, but it's pretty hard to be aware of it constantly. Longest time was about one hour, while riding a bus. I guess it's a start.
Are you aware constantly? How long did it take you to be aware constantly? Any advice?

Originally Posted by TalkingHead

So Cygnus.. how often and for how long do you plan on doing this during the day? Sythix's post seemed to suggest that the breath be focused on CONSTANTLY and I merely wanted to point out that this takes up a large portion of our awareness (which is a limited personal resource.) For my part, I'm going to focus on my breath whenever I'm transitioning from one activity to another, or doing a non-demanding task like driving.

Haha, yeah I know what you mean. I definitely can't be aware of my breath CONSTANTLY because as far as I know, only monks can do that. So I think if you have a decent amount of quiet time to yourself, it's possible to be more aware than when you're at work or something that requires a lot of attention. It does seem to be a skill that can develop over time, and recently whenever I commute to school I don't have any music playing and I focus all of my awareness to driving, watching my breath and keeping my mind from straying too far.
I've found that it's easier to bring this awareness to normal activities throughout the day by focusing on the pauses between in- and out-breath, and between out- and in-breath whenever I get a free moment. Then if I find myself out of touch with this, I can simply make a mental note: for example, if you reflect on the world around you as being the same as that of a dream, you can say to yourself "I've lost lucidity - I need to come back to the present moment."
This doesn't just help you with lucid dreaming but makes you appreciate your life by day and not go about everything mechanically, which we are prone to.

Oh yeah, and why are we all "Lurkers." What does that mean?

I have no idea what a 'lurker' is, but apparently it's some sort of status between a 'junior member' and a 'member'.
But it does sound a bit weird to me too.