Dream, Yoga, Lucid: Kyhaar's Workbook

**Kyhaar** · 06-29-2012 12:17 AM

I've never done anything like this before, so here goes nothing. I thought I would start off with the Basic Skills: Lesson #1 (Sensory Awareness Meditation). The beginning is a good place to begin, right?

Hopefully I do this right and don't mess up. I feel like my life is the opposite of yoga and meditation and all that. I'm always on the go, always doing something, tuning out everything so that I can do homework or studying. It's worked too well, unfortunately.

I am going to work at this lesson for a couple of days (and the different versions / levels), but here is my very first experience:

Basic Skills: Lesson #1:
Version 1, Lvl 1 and 2:
I decided to perform this exercise from my chair in front of my computer. It's not what most people would define as a "comfy chair," but I find it suitable enough (I can read in it for hours). So I let myself relax and closed my eyes. Rightly or wrongly, I find it easier to focus on auditory cues when I am not distracted by sight.

The first things I noticed were a) the hum of my laptop, b) my mom performing tasks downstairs, c) the ticking of my clock and then, half a second-later, d) the sound of the road / outside / distant traffic (not really sure what it was).

Then, after a minute or so of just listening, I noticed that the ticking of the clock actually had two different tones, different pitches. High-low. High-low. I also noticed that my laptop not only hummed, but made an erratic clicking noise. There was also another "sound of the road" different from the original one.

After this, I tried to focus on experiencing them all at once (I think I counted 6/7 "different" sounds); however, I was only able to hold on to 4 of them: the ticking of my clock (in general), my computer humming, the sound of the road (in general) and the faint click-ticking of my laptop. In essence, almost all the subtler sounds faded when I tried to experience them all: the louder, more dominant sounds (with the exception of the clicking/ticking) drowned them.

I always thought my house was silent. After performing this activity, even though it is "silent" in the sense of minimal movement, no talking, no music, etc. it was pretty noisy!

I was reading someone's example of applying the listening exercise to music and trying to hear all the layers. I know I still need to come up with an example of my own, but I wanted to test myself to see if I reacted to the different layers of music differently than I reacted to "non-music" sounds. I loved the idea, and I love music. I found it easy to IDENTIFY the different layers (ex. listening for the drums / bass / melody / lyrics / other), but I could only FOCUS on 2 or 3 at a time. I have slight musical training in band, and we had to do this in band in order to make sure our instruments were not dominating the other instruments / out of tune etc.

During the brief 1-2 second moments when I experienced all the parts, it was amazing. I never knew that listening to the drum line of a song could be so interesting! Usually I only listen to the melody since that's the thing I care about most when listening to music. I think I blocked out the entire non-music world when I did this, however. During one of the songs I listened to, my father came home and began talking to my mother. I couldn't focus on hearing their conversation AND on the music. It's like the words of the music interfered with their words. I've got a 2-hour car ride coming up soon, so I am going to use that time to do some more practice and/or try to come up with a practice activity of my own to share in this workbook.

Hopefully I've done my first entry right!

**Kyhaar** · 06-29-2012 12:48 AM

Not a few days per lesson, pardon me- I meant a few weeks, witha couple of days per level/version (depending on progress).

I don't know how frequently to post - every time I try, or every couple of days with those days' experiences?

**Kyhaar** · 08-14-2012 03:14 AM

I know I haven't updated my journal in a while. I think it's because I haven't been progressing as quickly as I expected. I find it very difficult to sit and just listen or be since I'm constantly on the go. Having a Type A personality can really suck when it comes to relaxing and taking things slowly, one step at a time. I have also been having trouble describing what I've experienced, and in my pride, I want to do so elegantly and eloquently. In so many things in life, I can learn quickly; when it comes to lucid dreaming, meditation and dream yoga, however, it's like I have to rediscover how to learn. Even now, it's taken me hours to compose this post, and I've done so once already (and deleted it).

Touch-Related Exercise:
You mentioned to try and create our own exercise. Since I didn't want to steal the music one someone came up with, I decided to try another sense: touch. I am a heavy tea-drinker, and this inspired me to practice touch while drinking tea (or other liquids). Today, I tried it with water. I pressed the metal bottle to my lips and felt the cool liquid seep past my lips and touch my tongue. I held it in my mouth for a few seconds, trying to sense the water in various places in my mouth. When I swallowed, I tried to do so gently, guiding the water down my throat with my mind until I couldn't feel its path any longer. (This works better with tea, where I have lingering warmth I can focus on). It made the drink incredible even though it was simply flavourless, ordinary tap water. All I did was slow down and try to experience as much of it as possible.

I hope this post is okay. I fret over everything that I type.

**Sivason** · 08-21-2012 07:20 AM

Originally Posted by Kyhaar

I know I haven't updated my journal in a while. I think it's because I haven't been progressing as quickly as I expected. I find it very difficult to sit and just listen or be since I'm constantly on the go. Having a Type A personality can really suck when it comes to relaxing and taking things slowly, one step at a time. I have also been having trouble describing what I've experienced, and in my pride, I want to do so elegantly and eloquently. In so many things in life, I can learn quickly; when it comes to lucid dreaming, meditation and dream yoga, however, it's like I have to rediscover how to learn. Even now, it's taken me hours to compose this post, and I've done so once already (and deleted it).

Touch-Related Exercise:
You mentioned to try and create our own exercise. Since I didn't want to steal the music one someone came up with, I decided to try another sense: touch. I am a heavy tea-drinker, and this inspired me to practice touch while drinking tea (or other liquids). Today, I tried it with water. I pressed the metal bottle to my lips and felt the cool liquid seep past my lips and touch my tongue. I held it in my mouth for a few seconds, trying to sense the water in various places in my mouth. When I swallowed, I tried to do so gently, guiding the water down my throat with my mind until I couldn't feel its path any longer. (This works better with tea, where I have lingering warmth I can focus on). It made the drink incredible even though it was simply flavourless, ordinary tap water. All I did was slow down and try to experience as much of it as possible.

I hope this post is okay. I fret over everything that I type.

It is a very nice post. Don't worry about making each post perfect. You do not need to post each time you work on something, but do post if you make any progress or have questions. I like your example of drinking liquids. I do this exact thing with liquids and food. Check out the difference closing your eyes makes on taste.

**Kyhaar** · 08-21-2012 03:13 PM

I had a lucid dream two nights ago. It wasn't a very good one, but I don't LD often.

I am in my living room at home talking to my mother. Then I am in a village* in preparing for a 60s night (Soiree Ye-Ye) dance. I am thinking of going to the club/bar since it is my last night in the village. I suddenly become aware that I have already come home from this trip and that the dance was NOT the same night and would have, in fact, happened two weeks prior. I do a nose pinch RC and confirm that it is a dream, but the dream immediately disintegrates.

*For privacy reasons, I'm leaving the village unnamed, but I did just return from spending 5 weeks with a French family

I don't know if I used anything I've learned so far to become lucid in that dream, but I definitely had a clearer head that time to think logically (as opposed to randomly doing a RC and then having a double-take on the situation when I can breathe through my nose).

**Sivason** · 08-27-2012 03:38 AM

Originally Posted by Kyhaar

I had a lucid dream two nights ago. It wasn't a very good one, but I don't LD often.

I am in my living room at home talking to my mother. Then I am in a village* in preparing for a 60s night (Soiree Ye-Ye) dance. I am thinking of going to the club/bar since it is my last night in the village. I suddenly become aware that I have already come home from this trip and that the dance was NOT the same night and would have, in fact, happened two weeks prior. I do a nose pinch RC and confirm that it is a dream, but the dream immediately disintegrates.

*For privacy reasons, I'm leaving the village unnamed, but I did just return from spending 5 weeks with a French family

I don't know if I used anything I've learned so far to become lucid in that dream, but I definitely had a clearer head that time to think logically (as opposed to randomly doing a RC and then having a double-take on the situation when I can breathe through my nose).

Congratulations! All of this training should improve every aspect of your lucid dreaming. Good luck on having more LDs soon.