Thread: Dream Yoga

Well there are many ways of meditating with different purposes. What I meant was for concentration meditation or insight meditation you get better with practice; there is no set time to start with.

If you are asking what the different types mean, insight is mindfulness meditation (Vipassana) performed by buddhists, and concentration is focusing on one thing, such as an object, the breath, etc. Dream yoga is a form of low intensity insight meditation performed all day with a twist. The twist is the reality checking. Instead of focusing on the nature of reality or merely what one is doing, they are super aware of their surroundings and of which reality they are in.

Here is a good place to learn about meditation from the monks; more than you ever wanted to know:

Scroll down to the meditation section

I read a buddhist text about attention today and decided to start applying it and dream yoga as well. I found it pretty hard to maintain constant attentiveness of my actions, since many times i noticed that for the last 10-15 minutes or so my attention had wavered and gone off somewhere .
Do you (billybob 001) use just the dream yoga technique or do you incorporate other techniques as well?

Like a few have mentioned before, for the last few lucids i've had i haven't needed the use of rc's, since i know if i am dreaming or not and for some weird reason, doing an rc will drastically shorten my lucidity (i'll wake up real fast)

Awesome! Dream yoga can be very useful.

I guess you could start by paying particular attention to the things that don't matter, I think you would still see the things that are important. By paying attention to the things that don't matter you start to notice more.

yes. dream yoga is constant attention to your environment, but what i do is add attention of self to attention of environment. Don't know if that was what Billybob meant.

Originally Posted by BillyBob_001

When you hear the words: "Dream Yoga" you may think something along the lines of: "OMFG!!!1!one!!! Thats a time consuming and painfully hard-to-adjust-to method of attaining lucidity!!!"
If that is indeed what you thought, then guess what? your right.

Dream yoga has been the most daunting and painstaking approach to lucid dreaming that I've ever had the liberty of trying.
Its hard, hugely annoying, mentally draining, and worst of all: extremely time consuming (at first that is).
Whats that you say? Your no longer interested? Keep reading.
Dream yoga is one of those things that really pays off in the end (heres the good of it):

• Your normal dreams become infinitely more detailed and rich (usually on the first night of using this yoga).
• Your lucid dreams become more intense, more logical, and easier to hold on to.
• You get a whole new outlook on waking reality, life becomes more alive and extraordinarily detailed.
• Your "minds eye" (imagination) is more easily controlled; the images you see in it are vivid beyond anything you've ever thought possible.
• No interruption of nighttime sleep!
  
• Other benefits I can't think of right now ( )

If that caught your interest then keep reading, just remember, Dream Yoga is very hard, you shouldnt really even think for a second of using this first thing (before having many LDs via other methods).

<div align="center">Living The Dream.</span></span>

{warning}I guess I&#39;ll start by telling you that I&#39;m in no way an epic expert in this area, though I do know all the steps to becoming a dream yoga master, I&#39;ve yet to complete them. In fact, the main reason I&#39;m writing this topic is for myself; that is, I want to put down all my collective knowledge on the subject into one easy to read block of text for future reference. (much like I did with my WILDing tutorial){/warning}
<span style="color:#000000">Thats not to say that I know nothing on the subject, just that I don&#39;t know everything (yet).
expect me to be updating this topic as I run into new problems or find new solutions to already existing problems that I&#39;ve come across.
Ok, now for the goods. just to get you a bit educated before I go into detail on them, here&#39;s all the steps that I&#39;ll be going over:
</span>

1. Overview of how to think of this method of lucid induction
   
2. meditating daily.
3. Becoming acquainted with your surroundings.
4. Before bed
5. The morning after

I know what your thinking: "What the hell? five steps? I thought he said this would be hard&#33;&#33;"
You&#39;ll see...

• Overview of how to think of this induction method:

I was just BSing about this method being incredibly hard. In truth, I adapted to it pretty quickly. What I meant was that when compared with other induction methods this one is probably the hardest for the average person to get into and become adept at.

Keep in mind the benefits that I stated earlier, if that doesn&#39;t get you through the initial pattern setting stages of this technique, nothing I could really say will.

• Meditating daily:

daily meditation is practically a must for the concentration needed for this procedure.

<<How to Meditate>> <---(note: ignore the new age pictures, just take the meditation for what it is)

The reason your meditating daily is to improve your ability to consciously control your mind, and also your learning the ability to let go of the emotional impact you receive from viewing objects (more on that soon)

• Becoming acquainted with your surroundings:

This is the core of Yogic Meditation, the step that sets this method apart from any others that you may have read or heard of: nonstop reality checking.

I&#39;m sure when you read that you had at least one goose bump pop up, I mean, thats just epic, a reality check that lasts forever? thats a pretty incredible thing, but really, what did you expect? this is the method used by the gods of the human mind: yogis
Ok, enough ranting, heres what to do (as well as why you do it):

begin by taking a moment to look around the room your in right this moment (do it).

Did you see anything interesting? If you didn&#39;t then don&#39;t worry, the reason you didn&#39;t see anything interesting is because you probably didn&#39;t really see anything at all. Without looking back around the room try building a 3d model of the locations of all the items in the room with your imagination.
Now look around the room and see how accurate you were. How many things did you miss? Probably alot eh? The reason you missed so many items is because throughout your life you&#39;ve conditioned yourself to only see what needs seen. You see the lion creeping in the bushes (but not the weed thats growing two feet to its left), you see the brightly colored painting thats hanging on your wall (but yet you don&#39;t ever seem to notice that book thats lying on the desk beside it), etc.

Back in the day when we had to hunt our food and look for any dangers that we may be walking up on we couldn&#39;t afford to see (and consciously remember) every single object that happened to come into our view. but now we can (thank you civilization), and as it turns out, consciously viewing every object you see in real life in your minds eye is an excellent way to increase dream clarity and realism.

Getting your world view to change:

<span style="color:#000080">Look at something in front of you. I myself am looking at an "Odor-Eaters foot and sneaker spray powder"

If the thing your looking at has text then don&#39;t even worry about reading it. just go through the objects attributes in your head (try to use words as little as possible) here&#39;s an example of what goes through my head when I look at the above image in front of me:

1. "Tube shaped" (I see a tube with its dimensions in my head)
2. "Green lid, white bottom" (the tube now has a green lid/white bottom that looks exactly like the real one)
3. "Foot spray"
4. Now I fill in the details that I think will be on the back and "move behind" the can in my mind, imaging what it would look like if I were on the other side (if you were taking in a whole room you would move through the room as a whole in your mind after you had already built a complete model of it within your head)
5. Now I cache the object in my mind, remembering exactly the space that it filled in my room.
6. I hold onto the object in the back of my mind until I leave the room, I&#39;ll do this whole process over again when I come back into the room (thats much easier to do when its a whole room your doing instead of one object)

When applying this to complete rooms your going to want to recognize each object as an individual in the whole. Each object corresponds to the objects around it.
You&#39;ll undoubtedly find this technique hard to pull off for even a small amount of time at first, but soon you&#39;ll get better and better, until you finally do it no matter what (that is, your build a 3d model of every room you enter, every time you enter it. Then keep the model in your short term memory)

You may remember hearing Dream yoga described as "realizing reality is a dream". The meaning of this statement is that you should realize that the objects your seeing around you hold no real value. if they suddenly phased out of your reality then nothing would really be lost. The only value that objects hold is what we give them with our emotions and memories.
Just like a dream.
Don&#39;t look at the stuff your building your 3d model by with a sense of: "that trophy I won at the fair last year", look at them with the mindset that says: "a trophy plated in fools gold, with the model of a cow on the top of it"
I know that this is probably very confusing, let me lay it out in bullet form

• You walk into a room
• notice and remember every object in the room in a passive way (start at one side of the room and work your way around, remember to look at the ceilings, floors, and everything in between.)
• As your looking at objects don&#39;t let yourself get carried away in memories about said object (like if you see a bicycle and suddenly you get a flash of that time you broke your leg bike-riding)
  If you let yourself get carried away in these thoughts then you&#39;ll forget what you were doing and lose your focus.
• Remember to do Reality checks when you notice something weird in a room.
  The whole point of doing this is to make it so that you instantly notice screwups in your dreams and become lucid (thus allowing lucidity in every dream of the night)
• This entire process should take at max 5 seconds a room (thats after you&#39;ve done it about 20 times)

When your done reading this topic feel free to ask questions if you didn&#39;t get that, I&#39;ll amend this section to make it more logical

• Before Bed:

Reality check more than usual between the time you take a shower and the time you go to bed.
As your lying in bed don&#39;t forget to remind yourself that your about to enter another reality.

• The Morning After

Get up and write down all your dreams, include all the new extraordinary details you just witnessed.
Start the constant observance of your surroundings all over again.
__________________________________________________ _________________________
If your thinking: "Dream yoga is pretty worthless, I could get the same results doing normal DILD every night" then let me be the first to tell you: your wrong.

Dream Yoga is better than DILD because it teaches you to be aware of your reality all the time all DILD does is teach you to reality check when you happen to randomly gaze around your reality.
Though its probably the hardest of all methods, dream yoga is also the most rewarding.
You can be carrying on a conversation and also examining the space your in at the same time, its very non intrusive, and gives you the best possible chance of becoming lucid

Its very common for users of this to be lucid in every 9 out of 10 dreams they have.
Whew, comments?[/b][/quote]

Billy Bob 001:
I would like your opinion regarding a method which is somewhat of an off-shoot of your dream yoga tutorial?
I kind of made it up after reading your tutorial. Although a friend of mine used to do it just for fun not for dreaming etc.
The method is similar to yours except I mentally manipulate the objects in my room or my current enviornment, street, elevator or some other building. What I do is mentally change the form of the object I&#39;m working with briefly into an unusual shape, or cause it to do something it was not designed for. Like I will change a hanging lamp into a completly different object, say a hanging tree. I will also imagine a large object turning very small and perhaps changing color. I will take a picture on a wall and cause it to fall to the floor and break into pieces. Also cause liquid gold to pour out of a hole in the wall on to the floor. It&#39;s somewhat fun and I am trying to use it to become more aware of my current place in the enviornment.
There are no end to the possibilities of the things you can make up in your imagination. It causes you to look around more and be more aware.
I can&#39;t say how usefull it is in helping in Lucid Dreaming as I just started this a few weeks ago after reading your tutorial. I have had a few LD&#39;s
since doing this method but I can&#39;t say if this method has helped or not. As I just get them from time to time anyway. My question is is this a waste of precious time, or should I put more effort into some other method? I think I am using my inner wisdom regarding this any way but I would like your opinion.
Thanks for your attention for my request,
sea bee (a sailor forever)

Originally Posted by sea bee

{warning}I guess I&#39;ll start by telling you that I&#39;m in no way an epic expert in this area, though I do know all the steps to becoming a dream yoga master, I&#39;ve yet to complete them. In fact, the main reason I&#39;m writing this topic is for myself; that is, I want to put down all my collective knowledge on the subject into one easy to read block of text for future reference. (much like I did with my WILDing tutorial){/warning}
<span style="color:#000000">Thats not to say that I know nothing on the subject, just that I don&#39;t know everything (yet).
expect me to be updating this topic as I run into new problems or find new solutions to already existing problems that I&#39;ve come across.
Ok, now for the goods. just to get you a bit educated before I go into detail on them, here&#39;s all the steps that I&#39;ll be going over:
</span>

1. Overview of how to think of this method of lucid induction
   
2. meditating daily.
3. Becoming acquainted with your surroundings.
4. Before bed
5. The morning after

I know what your thinking: "What the hell? five steps? I thought he said this would be hard&#33;&#33;"
You&#39;ll see...

• Overview of how to think of this induction method:

I was just BSing about this method being incredibly hard. In truth, I adapted to it pretty quickly. What I meant was that when compared with other induction methods this one is probably the hardest for the average person to get into and become adept at.

Keep in mind the benefits that I stated earlier, if that doesn&#39;t get you through the initial pattern setting stages of this technique, nothing I could really say will.

• Meditating daily:

daily meditation is practically a must for the concentration needed for this procedure.

<<How to Meditate>> <---(note: ignore the new age pictures, just take the meditation for what it is)

The reason your meditating daily is to improve your ability to consciously control your mind, and also your learning the ability to let go of the emotional impact you receive from viewing objects (more on that soon)

• Becoming acquainted with your surroundings:

This is the core of Yogic Meditation, the step that sets this method apart from any others that you may have read or heard of: nonstop reality checking.

I&#39;m sure when you read that you had at least one goose bump pop up, I mean, thats just epic, a reality check that lasts forever? thats a pretty incredible thing, but really, what did you expect? this is the method used by the gods of the human mind: yogis
Ok, enough ranting, heres what to do (as well as why you do it):

begin by taking a moment to look around the room your in right this moment (do it).

Did you see anything interesting? If you didn&#39;t then don&#39;t worry, the reason you didn&#39;t see anything interesting is because you probably didn&#39;t really see anything at all. Without looking back around the room try building a 3d model of the locations of all the items in the room with your imagination.
Now look around the room and see how accurate you were. How many things did you miss? Probably alot eh? The reason you missed so many items is because throughout your life you&#39;ve conditioned yourself to only see what needs seen. You see the lion creeping in the bushes (but not the weed thats growing two feet to its left), you see the brightly colored painting thats hanging on your wall (but yet you don&#39;t ever seem to notice that book thats lying on the desk beside it), etc.

Back in the day when we had to hunt our food and look for any dangers that we may be walking up on we couldn&#39;t afford to see (and consciously remember) every single object that happened to come into our view. but now we can (thank you civilization), and as it turns out, consciously viewing every object you see in real life in your minds eye is an excellent way to increase dream clarity and realism.

Getting your world view to change:

<span style="color:#000080">Look at something in front of you. I myself am looking at an "Odor-Eaters foot and sneaker spray powder"

If the thing your looking at has text then don&#39;t even worry about reading it. just go through the objects attributes in your head (try to use words as little as possible) here&#39;s an example of what goes through my head when I look at the above image in front of me:
[/SIZE]

1. "Tube shaped" (I see a tube with its dimensions in my head)
2. "Green lid, white bottom" (the tube now has a green lid/white bottom that looks exactly like the real one)
3. "Foot spray"
4. Now I fill in the details that I think will be on the back and "move behind" the can in my mind, imaging what it would look like if I were on the other side (if you were taking in a whole room you would move through the room as a whole in your mind after you had already built a complete model of it within your head)
5. Now I cache the object in my mind, remembering exactly the space that it filled in my room.
6. I hold onto the object in the back of my mind until I leave the room, I&#39;ll do this whole process over again when I come back into the room (thats much easier to do when its a whole room your doing instead of one object)

When applying this to complete rooms your going to want to recognize each object as an individual in the whole. Each object corresponds to the objects around it.
You&#39;ll undoubtedly find this technique hard to pull off for even a small amount of time at first, but soon you&#39;ll get better and better, until you finally do it no matter what (that is, your build a 3d model of every room you enter, every time you enter it. Then keep the model in your short term memory)

You may remember hearing Dream yoga described as "realizing reality is a dream". The meaning of this statement is that you should realize that the objects your seeing around you hold no real value. if they suddenly phased out of your reality then nothing would really be lost. The only value that objects hold is what we give them with our emotions and memories.
Just like a dream.
Don&#39;t look at the stuff your building your 3d model by with a sense of: "that trophy I won at the fair last year", look at them with the mindset that says: "a trophy plated in fools gold, with the model of a cow on the top of it"
I know that this is probably very confusing, let me lay it out in bullet form

• You walk into a room
• notice and remember every object in the room in a passive way (start at one side of the room and work your way around, remember to look at the ceilings, floors, and everything in between.)
• As your looking at objects don&#39;t let yourself get carried away in memories about said object (like if you see a bicycle and suddenly you get a flash of that time you broke your leg bike-riding)
  If you let yourself get carried away in these thoughts then you&#39;ll forget what you were doing and lose your focus.
• Remember to do Reality checks when you notice something weird in a room.
  The whole point of doing this is to make it so that you instantly notice screwups in your dreams and become lucid (thus allowing lucidity in every dream of the night)
• This entire process should take at max 5 seconds a room (thats after you&#39;ve done it about 20 times)

When your done reading this topic feel free to ask questions if you didn&#39;t get that, I&#39;ll amend this section to make it more logical

• Before Bed:

Reality check more than usual between the time you take a shower and the time you go to bed.
As your lying in bed don&#39;t forget to remind yourself that your about to enter another reality.

• The Morning After

Get up and write down all your dreams, include all the new extraordinary details you just witnessed.
Start the constant observance of your surroundings all over again.
__________________________________________________ _________________________
If your thinking: "Dream yoga is pretty worthless, I could get the same results doing normal DILD every night" then let me be the first to tell you: your wrong.

Dream Yoga is better than DILD because it teaches you to be aware of your reality all the time all DILD does is teach you to reality check when you happen to randomly gaze around your reality.
Though its probably the hardest of all methods, dream yoga is also the most rewarding.
You can be carrying on a conversation and also examining the space your in at the same time, its very non intrusive, and gives you the best possible chance of becoming lucid

Its very common for users of this to be lucid in every 9 out of 10 dreams they have.
Whew, comments?[/b]

Billy Bob 001:
I would like your opinion regarding a method which is somewhat of an off-shoot of your dream yoga tutorial?
I kind of made it up after reading your tutorial. Although a friend of mine used to do it just for fun not for dreaming etc.
The method is similar to yours except I mentally manipulate the objects in my room or my current enviornment, street, elevator or some other building. What I do is mentally change the form of the object I&#39;m working with briefly into an unusual shape, or cause it to do something it was not designed for. Like I will change a hanging lamp into a completly different object, say a hanging tree. I will also imagine a large object turning very small and perhaps changing color. I will take a picture on a wall and cause it to fall to the floor and break into pieces. Also cause liquid gold to pour out of a hole in the wall on to the floor. It&#39;s somewhat fun and I am trying to use it to become more aware of my current place in the enviornment.
There are no end to the possibilities of the things you can make up in your imagination. It causes you to look around more and be more aware.
I can&#39;t say how usefull it is in helping in Lucid Dreaming as I just started this a few weeks ago after reading your tutorial. I have had a few LD&#39;s
since doing this method but I can&#39;t say if this method has helped or not. As I just get them from time to time anyway. My question is is this a waste of precious time, or should I put more effort into some other method? I think I am using my inner wisdom regarding this any way but I would like your opinion.
Thanks for your attention for my request,
sea bee (a sailor forever)[/QUOTE]
Billy Bob 001

Perhaps you overlooked my request for an opinion on my last request, or I don't know where to look for it.

Thanks,
sea bee

what if my visualization skills aren't so great? also, how is it possible no notice every tiny dtail?

You do not have to notice every detail. The idea is to train your mind to focus on the present moment. It takes constant vigilance. What I do is switch between methods. For example if I am walking around I will focus on what I see around me. If I am doing a small task, I will focus on that. If I am standing still, I will focus on my breathing. Anything you can think of to keep your mind from wandering is good.

Your visualization will improve over time if you practice this. Just look around and see what you see without putting words to it such as "tree", "cup"; "person". Just pretend you are memorizing everything.

What if you are moving somewhere, like in a car?

Well if you are driving, I suggest paying attention to the road lol

If you are in the front seat, just continue taking everything in. If you are a back seat rider then breathing meditation is probably the best bet again. The first goal is to learn to concentrate. Once you can do that well, dream yoga will be much easier.

I've been reading the book Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep.. And I haven't seen anything even remotely similar to this technique of constant mindfulness of surroundings that BillyBob has outlined here... Does anyone know where he got this from? Do the Tibetan Yogis themselves use this technique as it seems most of their time is spent convincing themselves everything is a dream and not making mental maps of their surroundigs...

Not to say this technique doesn't sound interesting I would just like to know a little more about it, perhaps research it directly from an official source...

Thanks for any responses!

Yes in the tradition the idea is to constantly be reminding yourself about how life is a dream, and observing your surroundings is a part of this. This tutorial obviously focuses on visuals, but smells, sounds, etc are also supposed to be part of this for advanced practitioners.

Dream yoga is meditation of reality but with the added reminder that life is like a dream at every moment. At least that is my take on it.

Last night in my dream I put clothes in the dryer and they were done in 3 seconds. I said "no I don't think so". That moment the color of the dryer changed and I instantly became lucid. You train your mind to always be aware of surroundings and events so even when your "life is a dream" mentality is not fully honed, you will still pick up on the obvious.

I had always heard people mentioning dream yoga, but had yet to see any solid principles of it laid out, Thank You. I only seem to have DILDS (Just 2) so I figure I might as well give this a try, I'll tell you how it works out :p.

Sounds great! I've thought of starting meditation for a long time... Now I feel even more motivated! Also, using this, can you remember all the dreams you had that night or just the latter ones? It would be great since I can only remember my last dreams. =|

BillyBob_001 you rule! Your tutorials are simple and easy to understand, yet detailed. They've helped me a lot. Thanks again

This in some way contributes to the Self-Awareness Reality Check...co0ll:p

very nice explanation

Is there any specific way to meditate or any mantras you have to repeat or is it just good old regular meditaton? oh by the way great tutorial

Also, using this, can you remember all the dreams you had that night or just the latter ones? It would be great since I can only remember my last dreams. =|

You will remember more dreams with this technique. In fact, as your dreams get better, they will be impossible to forget. When I become lucid it feels as though there is an unshakable force keeping the dream going. Even on my worst days when I have a hard time not blacking out, I still end up dream spinning for a long time. Once I spun through what seemed like over 50 dreams.

The more you do this, the more real your dreams will be. The more real your dreams are, the more you will remember, and the reality of dreams is often the glue that holds your mind in that moment.

I am a lucid dreamer that practise dream yoga over 20 years now, invented it myself and learned later that such a thing existed. I also started then to meditate inside my lucid dreams*several types* and do also dream yoga from inside my lucid dreams. Its a great thing and you can do marvelous things with it inside the lucid dream for control.

You may remember hearing Dream yoga described as "realizing reality is a dream". The meaning of this statement is that you should realize that the objects your seeing around you hold no real value. if they suddenly phased out of your reality then nothing would really be lost. The only value that objects hold is what we give them with our emotions and memories.
Just like a dream.

I've often read in various internet site that "realizing reality is a dream" means that that all experience is delivered to the individual via the brain and nervous system, and is therefore a product of the mind. E.g, if you see something, your brain uses the signals it gets from the eyes to make an image. Actually even your head and the rest of your body (or rather the sensation of it) is inside your. The whole point in seeing real life as an dream is that you are more conscious and mindful. When your're more conscious in RL than your also more conscious in your dreams (what means that all your dreams are lucid). I did this for just one day and had two lucid dreams in one night (one was just barely lucid), though I usual get only 1-3 LDs a month.

i understand the whole making an image of a room...but after you have....what do you do with it?

review them all at the end of the day?

and the demonstration with the odor-eater....are you supposed to do that to everyobject in a room?? because thats mega time-consuming?

Don't take it too literally. The idea is to be as aware as possible of your environment, just as you do when attempting to enhance the clarity of a lucid dream. Focus on the five senses. Stay in the moment.

In your dreams you will do the same and when something odd happens; *bam* you are lucid, and with unmatched clarity.

thank you so much for this tutorial....i followed it pretty closely for about 4 hours before I went to bed (Id never even heard of it until 4 hours before bed!) and I had my first lucid (albeit a muddy one..but I think it was way early in my REM cycle) in like 2 months....dild

thanks again billybob

Firstly I don't want to wake up in my boring room. No offence.
Secondly it would create unneccessary confusion whether I was awake or not awake.
Why not visualise a cool place to start your dream?
There would be no question, or less questioning if it is a dream.
Please tell me.

Originally Posted by DreamChaser

Firstly I don't want to wake up in my boring room. No offence.
Secondly it would create unneccessary confusion whether I was awake or not awake.
Why not visualise a cool place to start your dream?
There would be no question, or less questioning if it is a dream.
Please tell me.

Dream chaser, you may have missed the point

1 - what do you mean 'wake up' in your boring old room? you dont HAVE to sleep in your room? :S

2 - there is no confusion. if you are always observing. and you notice something wierd; you do a reality check. It works in real life and fails in a dream

3 - It's not about visualising dream-scapes. It's about getting into practice of knowing your surroundings; so you can tell if they are real

the point is you become more observant as a habit; so it carries over into your dream. THEREFORE you are more likely to spot tell-tale signs that you are dreaming

atleast, thats the way I interpretted it.