Thread: Dream Yoga

I have been wondering about this myself...
Actually, what I have been wondering about Yoga Nidra, which means yoga of sleep, not dream yoga. Maybe they are two different things.

Originally Posted by C-lion

I have been wondering about this myself...
Actually, what I have been wondering about Yoga Nidra, which means yoga of sleep, not dream yoga. Maybe they are two different things.

Yes, they are different in as much as they are not exactly the same. Put simply, dream yoga means awareness in dreams and sleep yoga awareness all the time, even in the deepest parts of sleep where one does not dream.

Great thread, worth a bump. It's right along the lines of how I feel about LDing and life as well.

I've always been a bit confused over the meditation you're speaking of, though. Basically, it goes like this when I try it:

1. Sit down and relax
2. Start detaching myself from my thoughts and feelings
3. Detach for 3 seconds
4. See a thought or feeling in a new light and spend the next 30 minutes thinking about it.

I can't stop thinking for more than 5 seconds I've found. Or am I not supposed to stop thinking? I'm very confused as to how I'm supposed to look at thoughts without thinking or getting caught up in a thought, as the former seems logically impossible and the latter is extremely difficult since I'm basically experiencing something completely new at that moment. The better I detach, the more interesting my observations become, and I can't let them go.

Anyway, I love this approach. It gets right to the heart of lucidity, cutting down the barrier of sleep/awake, and connects that to the duality of mind, the constant struggle between being aware and having an objective, perceptive eye of your surrounding reality; and being lost in a thought or feeling, only thinking of and seeing the closed conceptual system and its components.

In dreams, it is the aware and objective mind that sees the dream for what it is and becomes conscious and lucid; it is the unaware mind that becomes lost in the conceptual walls of the dream world, itself an ever-shifting character of that world.

Quite fun. But with all these fun thoughts, it's hard to stop thinking...

And a curious question:

Do you think humans have been historically less or more lucid than today?

I mean, prior to computers and TVs, etc, there were far less distractions and things to immerse oneself in. Being left with just the bare world in front of them, were humans far more aware of their surroundings, almost dream yogaing without trying due to lack of anything else to do? How lucid were our ancestors?

Originally Posted by DNK

Great thread, worth a bump. It's right along the lines of how I feel about LDing and life as well.

I've always been a bit confused over the meditation you're speaking of, though. Basically, it goes like this when I try it:

1. Sit down and relax
2. Start detaching myself from my thoughts and feelings
3. Detach for 3 seconds
4. See a thought or feeling in a new light and spend the next 30 minutes thinking about it.

I can't stop thinking for more than 5 seconds I've found. Or am I not supposed to stop thinking? I'm very confused as to how I'm supposed to look at thoughts without thinking or getting caught up in a thought, as the former seems logically impossible and the latter is extremely difficult since I'm basically experiencing something completely new at that moment. The better I detach, the more interesting my observations become, and I can't let them go.

Anyway, I love this approach. It gets right to the heart of lucidity, cutting down the barrier of sleep/awake, and connects that to the duality of mind, the constant struggle between being aware and having an objective, perceptive eye of your surrounding reality; and being lost in a thought or feeling, only thinking of and seeing the closed conceptual system and its components.

In dreams, it is the aware and objective mind that sees the dream for what it is and becomes conscious and lucid; it is the unaware mind that becomes lost in the conceptual walls of the dream world, itself an ever-shifting character of that world.

Quite fun. But with all these fun thoughts, it's hard to stop thinking...

I think I understand your dilemma, cuz I am in that position too. Most people would say you shouldn't try to stop thinking (which is impossible, anyway), rather stop indulging in thoughts. That is, we simply try not to entertain thoughts, we just allow them to come and go, without doing anything about them.

This is the basis of dream yoga, and basically any Buddhist tradition, I guess. Very valuable, even from the LD point of view. I've had limited success, but that's because I suck at these things anyway.

when image streaming to you have to keep your body completely still, or do you not have to worry about this too much?

Cool article I found about the Buddhist perspective on LD and Dream Yoga
http://www.spiritwatch.ca/abuddhis.htm

I also read 2 or 3 tibetan dream yoga books and I think that the main thing that they have in common are the day time reality checks (RC). I think the more RC you could manage to do during the day the better. Just like an alchololic for example. The more you drink the more neurons you created in your brain to tell you to drink more. (by the day I do not suggest that you try to drink to find this out :-). So the more RC you do the more neurons are recruited to gear you toward being able to recognizing a dream as a dream when your are dreaming at night. It's that simple. All the books that I've read about Tibetan Dream Yoga suggested for day time practice is that you look around your environment during the day and suggest to yourself that all that you senses in the morning (see,hear,touch,smell)..."All of this is a dream"...and the more serious you are willing to do this the faster your neurons will reward you with this mental remembering during your night dream and thus push you toward the edge of Lucidity. It's that simple. To me it's so simple. I don't care who you are. In term of being gifted with doing LD, meditation, visualization...or simple can't sit still for 5 minutes or can't even visualize your hand. If you do at least 100 RC per day...everyday for 30 days. Then at least by the end of 30 days, you will have retrain and recruite enough neruons in your brain to give you at least one or two lucid dreams. And the most you could get is a lucid dream every night. And if you keep at it, who knows...maybe a lucid dream in every dream...or what the tibetan call the dream of "clear light"
Best wishes to all :-)

I just updated this old POS. Tell me what you think.

more steps more steps!

I'm still just a newb at this dream yoga stuff, but I think the processing of the day as you fall asleep is an important step. so we don't dream of samsaric nonsense. let's cut to the cheeese

Thank you for writing this!


I started to do this a couple of years after learning about LDing. Doing reality check now and then evolved into one never-ending reality check.

I would always be asking myself "where am I? how did I get here? what was I last doing?" And every time I looked at my watch I would RC, since I looked my watch almost constantly (I was time-obsessed for a while, counting the exact number of minutes to get to school, to do this or that so I could maximize my sleep/fun time). So eventually I internalized it.

I believe that naturals do this on some level without ever having to learn it, too.

However, when I'm at a point of being overworked, stressed, or depressed, I mostly stop being aware because I'm focused inward on feelings or problem solving. A busy life may help, but a stressful life makes it hard to stick to dream yoga, imo.

Originally Posted by juroara

more steps more steps!

I'm still just a newb at this dream yoga stuff, but I think the processing of the day as you fall asleep is an important step. so we don't dream of samsaric nonsense. let's cut to the cheeese

I don't understand.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by Naiya

However, when I'm at a point of being overworked, stressed, or depressed, I mostly stop being aware because I'm focused inward on feelings or problem solving. A busy life may help, but a stressful life makes it hard to stick to dream yoga, imo.

Yeah definitely. This tech is certainly not for your average Joe, most people are forced into their heads all the time for their jobs/social lives/etc.
Thats one of the reasons I didn't like it; it works well, but takes a lot of dedication.

You've have the highest star rating possible for this thread, but you should get another star, srsly.

Originally Posted by Mysteryhunter

You've have the highest star rating possible for this thread, but you should get another star, srsly.

Thanks

Hey BillyBob (or whoever else has experience with this), when you do your image streaming do you report what you actually see (as in the fuzzy colored light in the back of your eyelids) or the vague visual thoughts that you get when you read or listen to poetry (also the stuff you're supposed ignore while meditating)?

I've had a few instances now where I've been conscious during the hypnagogic imagery we all get before we go to sleep. It's crystal clear and more like a dream than it is a thought, unlike the images I get from reading. It's as clear to me as the fuzzy colored light I see whenever I shut my eyes.

So basically should I be reporting the fuzzy light until I get hypnagogic imagery or should I report the passing vague thoughts that you ignore during meditation?

Thanks and great tutorial!

Originally Posted by stateofmind

Hey BillyBob (or whoever else has experience with this), when you do your image streaming do you report what you actually see (as in the fuzzy colored light in the back of your eyelids) or the vague visual thoughts that you get when you read or listen to poetry (also the stuff you're supposed ignore while meditating)?

I've had a few instances now where I've been conscious during the hypnagogic imagery we all get before we go to sleep. It's crystal clear and more like a dream than it is a thought, unlike the images I get from reading. It's as clear to me as the fuzzy colored light I see whenever I shut my eyes.

So basically should I be reporting the fuzzy light until I get hypnagogic imagery or should I report the passing vague thoughts that you ignore during meditation?

Thanks and great tutorial!

'Hypnagogic Imagery' is just the high end version of what you're shooting for with image streaming. Those fleeting vague images you see when reading a story are the low end.

When image streaming you want to start by explaining whatever you can about one piece of that fleeting imagery. What will most likely happen is that that image will become slightly more vivid the more you talk.
A good session begins with you laying on the bed forcing words, and ends with you exploring incredible detailed vistas within your mind (this type of transition can take anywhere from ten seconds to thirty minutes, depending on your mood).

Heres the first minute of a recent brutal image stream I did (quoted exactly):

Closing my eyes....

I see a squirrel tail... Its, uh, brown and has gray hairs in it. It looks, poofy and... soft.

...(silence)...

Um, its making an arc downwards...

...(silence)...

Ok... I see a... tree limb. Its uh, about, three inches in diameter...

It took a minute for me to say that... If nothing is coming to you then just say everything you can about the last image you saw. Notice that I went into the 'gray hairs' and arc of the tail. If nothing is coming, just expand on the most recent thing.
If nothing comes at all (no vague images whatsoever) then you're not looking hard enough.

"Closing my eyes....

I see a squirrel tail... Its, uh, brown and has gray hairs in it. It looks, poofy and... soft.

...(silence)...

Um, its making an arc downwards...

...(silence)...

Ok... I see a... tree limb. Its uh, about, three inches in diameter... "

Lol! Yah I had something similar to that. The main difference between hypnagogic imagery and regular thoughts for me is that I kind of have to force regular thoughts. Hypnagogic imagery is effortless. In one of the sessions I was doing it in the way you described and I fell into a sort of dusty ranch themed place and was exploring it in my mind. My mind would come up with something to add on to it that would logically be there (like an old man in a straw hat napping in a rocking chair on the porch) and then I would have to think about and fill in the finer details for it. I'd sometimes notice myself squinting my eyes closed in that brooding sort of way.

I think I get it now though. Anyway, how long have you been doing it now and have you had anything close to hypnagogic imagery yet?

-Peace

Yeah I've been to the pyramids, enchanted forests, mountains, and a bunch of other exotic locales. Image streaming is pretty much just guided daydreaming. I'm naturally ok with visualization though, so I don't image stream a whole lot. I've done it maybe twenty times total in the past year.


They can get pretty vivid if you roll with one theme for long enough. I've found that if you examine each thing you 'see' in great detail, then move on to the next thing, then the next, etc. you'll eventually have a scene as rich and vivid as any hypnagogia. You can even watch a story play out in logical detail like a dream.
I remember a few of the places I've image streamed like I was actually there. One in particular was this lake: it had a red boat that gently bobbed up and down at the end of a small homemade dock, the sky was whitish blue, and all around me was an elven-like forest of red and orange trees. I walked around in this forest hearing the leaves crunching under my feet and smelling the cool autumn air for at least fifteen minutes.

That was back when I was image streaming on a daily basis.

dumb question but ah.. did this increase your dilds?

p.s. you said you werent writing any more tutorials

Nah, I made it all up to screw with you.

Dream Yoga significantly increased the logic of my dreams, which then gave a noticeable increase in my DILD rate. All of my dreams became much more vivid, and in all of them I was 'in my body' so to speak - no third person views. I got up to probably around four DILDs a week, this compared to my previous one (I used WILD a lot).
I only used it for about a week or two.

If you just continue reality checking during the day while also doing Dream Yoga I'm sure you'll see a quick exponential increase. Most people don't get lucid because they don't even have a body in their dreams. DY brings dreams more in alignment with reality, which allows you many more chances to catch your state. Also the thinking about where you are all the time is a reality check in itself.


EDIT:
Technically I didn't write a new tutorial, I just modified an old one

coolbeans

hello!
*oooh , he is bumping! be careful!!!
I just wanted to know, what is the difference between this technique(billybob's method of mapping rooms) and the tibetan method, of recognizing life as a dream, being aware, not getting lost in thoughts, remaining in non-dual awareness(with the use of "wake life is an illusion on our mind")... ????
which technique could be better? which technique brings more lucid dreams? more awareness?

thanks!

Very clear cut and well worded. I had a hard time with this as well, I haven't thought about these mindsets in years. It may be worth another shot now.