Thread: Oneirin's Dream Yoga Temple

Thank you so much Oneirin! How is your dream yoga practice going? Are you still practising? I really want to join the class, but i am flaky and if i register, i will expose my flakiness to everyone here when i post for the first month and then slowly fade away. Looking through your workbook really inspired me to start a journey of my own. I joined this forum about a week ago and had my first lucid dream after 5 months last night. So i just wanted to thank you and the others on this forum for contributing to this community. It is so refreshing to meet like-minded people who understand when you talk about your other reality. Look forward to more interactions.

Happy dreaming!

Originally Posted by Soleen

How is your dream yoga practice going? I really want to join the class, but i am flaky and if i register, i will expose my flakiness to everyone here when i post for the first month and then slowly fade away. Looking through your workbook really inspired me to start a journey of my own. I joined this forum about a week ago and had my first lucid dream after 5 months last night. So i just wanted to thank you and the others on this forum for contributing to this community. It is so refreshing to meet like-minded people who understand when you talk about your other reality.

Still practicing every day! I'm going to post a bit longer of an update this weekend as I've been getting some cool lucids that incorporate the 'Visualization' lesson. It's been interesting playing around with techniques while trying to pull certain things off, and coming to find out first hand why they're part of the course. Spending more time reading sivason's dream journal is really deepening my understanding of the techniques, and it's building all the time.I can understand your hesitancy to join the course; I'm going to PM you with extra links/info you'll probably find helpful. Congrats on your first lucid btw! Many more will come.

Basic Skills
I recently got back into practicing some sense-based meditations now as I've just gotten back into the ADA practice. I notice that I'm able to hold a few different from varying sensory inputs at the same time at this point. I feel that practicing this tech in the past helped me hold multiples of 1 sense at a time, and the ADA is helping me to hold multiple senses.
I'm practicing more vippasana before bed (similar to 'be here now') and have noticed this tends to correlate with lucidity.

Intermediate Skills
Visual Working mainly on colors and 3-D shapes. I'm trying to get to the point where I can rotate more vividly. This will take time. This is helping me a lot with lucids! Roughly once a week or so, I'll find myself in a void state, yet now I can turn my visual field into a color, then in a short while begin to progressively visualize a dream scene I want to go to. I've noticed that I can successfully land into another lucid scene with this tech rather than slip into non-lucidity . I've noticed the visualization is way easier to pull off in these void states than in seated meditation.

Energy Flow Simulation I practice this one a bit every day, more so on weekends. I need to work on vividness at this point, but can slightly feel sensation if I really focus.

Tactile I've been combining this one with 'mudra awareness' occasionally. I'm focusing on my right arm predominantly right now, and am able to fairly vividly feel and say the phantom limb come in front of me while seeing the hand open and close while feeling it. I then work through a mudra where I progressively touch all my fingers to my thumb one at a time. It's becoming way more realistic now, and I want to try stabilizing with it down the road.
The tactile exercises have become more prominent in LD induction for me lately, and help a lot after WILD attempts. I tend to become aware of buzzing in the head, and continue to practice sliding out at this point with more success using 'phantom limbs'.

Advanced Skills
Immunity to Shock Continuing with cold showers first thing in AM. I actually like this as part of my routine now, and am getting much better at flicking off the part of my mind that really resists before hopping in. I notice a mental command helps override it. Also getting better at simply watching the sensation.

I had the chance to use two of the advanced skills last night in order to transition into a dream during the WILD process. I finally became aware of the dream quickly forming in front of me after holding still and remaining aware for about an hour (it took a while!). I got excited because I knew this was my chance to 'walk in'. I've never had a problem with excitement collapsing a dream mid-way, but this time I felt that the dream would not solidify unless the whole concept of 'Immunity to Shock' kicked in. I kept my cool and just focused on the figures. I got distracting thoughts that were telling me I would slip out, and the only way to deal with it was to simply 'suppress' them. Mindfulness or the vippasana approach weren't of much use at this point as I was in a position where I couldn't let the thought distract me from pure concentration. It happened quickly, and I kind of did this whole process intuitively, but knowledge of these techs I feel actually allowed me to 'walk into the dream' successfully. It was awesome!
I still need to practice the "suppressing emerging thoughts' exercise more, but I'm able to apply it when I need it at this point, which is good to know!

I've been focusing more on Vippasana and 'be here now' style meditations lately. Also, I've been incorporating a bit more tactile exercises and have become better at recreating/imagining the tactile feel of hand mudras, actually feeling as though fingers are progressively moving and touching in front of my field of awareness. I'm becoming better at actually visualizing the phantom limb as well.
I want to improve in this area, so I'm going to focus more on tactile exercises for the next couple months along with 'be here now style meditations'.
I'll post how this is influencing dreams as well as lucidity!

Updating with current tactile exercises.
I've been using a combination of the Tactile Beginner Lesson meditations in conjunction with the 'be here now' meditation. I'm essentially practcing awareness of body as well as the 'space of the mind' (shamatha practice). I begin increasing the amount of points I can hold in awareness while reamining aware of my thoughts entering my mind as well as the presence of gravity [you can even consider this as another suggestion for the 'homework' in that lesson].
I've been practicing the the Gravity RC for nearly two weeks, and plan to stick with it for the full 3 months necessary to see strong results. I'm going to continue to build my capacity to incorporate body awareness/gravity awareness into all of daily life as well as my meditations, so the tactile work is really helping to integrate this.
I've had a drop in lucidity due to the tech change, but have been having a lot of levitation and flying dreams with control. It seems the body awareness is really carrying over even at this point. Continuing to focus on recall for this period as well.
I'll keep updating with Gravity success and how tactile work is playing out in dreams!

Continuing with tactile exercises/body feel along with be here now meditations. I'm also incorporating
as well as experimenting with different mantras as opposed to typical WBTB tech.
I'm focusing more so on Tactile: stage 5 of The Basic Lesson #1, completing body awareness to begin night meditation, and progressing to body awareness as well as awareness of 'space of the mind'. It's very natural to be aware of gravity through the whole process, and I'm building ability to perceive any "physical sensory impulses" coming in.
Occasionally, I'll incorporate earlier stages and try to hold fully body/gravity awareness along with the mind (in a non-judgmental/'be here now' style).
This mind/body awareness is definitely carrying through the day, and tendency to be very aware of gravity as well as my entire body feel is becoming more of my daily experience.
At this point, I keep experiencing dreams where I'm walking, thinking about when the gravity awareness will kick in and make me lucid. I'm using prospective mantras for this. Continuing for a while to see if this tactile/gravity awareness will carry over .

It's been a while since I've formally been trying to LD, but still having spontaneous LDs here and there. Been doing a whole lot of meditation (similar to the "Be here now" technique) which I believe is helping to have spontaneous LDs. Resistance to shock is something I'm continuing to become interested in via cold plunging and heavy squat sessions. I'm going to work on building dream recall do kick back lucidity to where I once had it. Will be begin weaving mantras in as well.

I decided I wanted to work a bit more on visualizations in order to increase dream vividness and control in general. I circled back to the visualization training and for the past 2 weeks roughly have been putting in some practice during formal meditation sessions.
I'm currently getting better at shifting the full visual field between different colors, yet need to work to increase vividness. I'm playing around with shapes as well, and I'm beginning to be able to visualize two identical shapes, yet of different colors, facing toward one another. This visualization isn't very vivid yet and gets more difficult when I try to change the background as well.
I noticed that visualization has been great for transitioning out of "black void" states that I end up in from time to time when the dream imagery begins to fade. Sivason mentioned tactile simulation/visualization is great great for the initial stages of WILD when in SP, and I've noticed that visualization in particular has been really helpful for me in jump starting the visuals for the next dream scene
Last night for example, I was was in the void (which sometimes knocks me into non-lucidity) and was able to create the next dream scene by imagining first green, then a bush/tree. I'm going to keep working on these skills and try to get to more advanced summon abilities (direct field of view). There have been huge increases in vividness when generating out of field of view items though!