Tommy's Alien-Yoga Cosmos

This will be my notebook for the Dream Yoga course.

I have already a little experience with meditation, because I'm trying to meditate daily since the end of last year. Some of the meditations in lesson #1 reminded me of the SSILD technique, that I use every other night when falling asleep after my WBTB, where you observe your body's sensations and the sounds around you.

In the next few days I will be posting about my experience with the different levels of meditations, but will keep on practicing before moving on to lesson #2.

So I've been practicing these exercises for a few days now and noticed a few things. Since I'm not completely new to meditation I already know that it helps to increase my awareness in the moment a lot, which already helped me with dreaming lucidly.

So far I have only done the first and second version of the three ones described.

Version 1:
I'm currently on vacation and we're at a place where it's super quiet. Only on rare occasions are there even 5 different noises that I can pick up. But thats okay for now since I had trouble focusing on 3-4 noises at once when I started this. Now after a few days of hard practice I can keep up with 4 sometimes 5 noises a lot more easily. This already had me experience the "loss" of the loudest noise. When I was meditating near my dad who was currently talking on the phone (he was the loudest noise) I first tried to search for all the noises that I can pick up and then started focusing on more and more at the same time. When I got to four noises at the same time, I couldn't find another one to add. I eventually opened my eyes and saw my dad sitting basically next to me still talking on the phone. I totally forgot about him even though he was by far the loudest and closest noise.
I sometimes try to do this with my eyes open as well, and it's not as difficult as I imagined. Focusing on multiple noises at once with my eyes open makes me even more aware I believe.

Version 2:
I have done this version already and regularly practice it. I can focus on 6 - 8 sensations at once and found that when I connect them mentally with lines it makes it easier for me. I have also found that senses that are "symmetrical", like each of my hands laying on my legs and applying and symmetrical pressure to both legs, are easier to focus on simultaneously than senses that aren't.
I usually also try to focus on my breathing at the same time when experiencing sensations like itching or pain. This way I can try to breathe the itching or pain out of my body and watch it become less faster.

Meditation in general helps me to become more aware in the moment but especially these types of meditation help me to become not only more aware but also more aware of my body's sensations and surroundings.

After some more practice with Version 2 I can not only add more and more sensations to concentrate at once, but also concentrate on my entire body with all the sensations no matter how many (and I wouldn't know because I don't count them all) at once.
I also started to "meditate", by enhancing my awareness, whenever I do things that I don't really like and where my mind wanders off elsewhere. For example removing all the weeds in our garden for my father. Takes hours.

I've finally got back home earlier this week and will start to practice Lesson 2.