Thread: T's Dream Yoga Workbook.

Also, I have a workbook in the DILD class that I update pretty regularly. If you look at this, take note, those instructors are pretty amazing as well.

Sitting on a yoga ball and setting the timer for 7 minutes I start to pick up in this order

My breathing (loud nostrils)
The hard drive of the cable box whirring
Clicking from the same area
The water bowl tinkling
The fridge switches on and i can hear that motor now.
I come back to my breathing
I can hone in on the four of them together
Then i start to hear the tinnitus in my left ear
And i have to find my breathing again.
The cat comes in the room and drinks from the bowl
The dog chases the cat away
They both lay at my feet
I'm looking at them
Then i come back to my breathing.
I can handle four pretty well with some slipping
With 5 there's one that keeps slipping
I can be distracted by movement.

Doing the walking meditation with the sounds and I can hold about 5 at a time. Some slip as i remind myself to go back to my feet and my breathing, then i can add birds, crickets, cars, machines, and the ringing in my head.

Today i sat and went for a few minutes of the feeling meditation.
Starting with feet, hands and butt
All things that were actively touching things
Then the fan blowing on my head
Then my shirt and shorts
My tongue in my mouth
Chest rising and falling
Easy to lose track while counting
But i would always go back to what was grounding me.

I"m playing a bit with the diffused vision but i'm not sure i get it yet.

Originally Posted by tblanco

I"m playing a bit with the diffused vision but i'm not sure i get it yet.

Let go of all focus in your eyes, completely relax them, this should result in a sort of "doubled" vision. If you're outside with nothing close by you may not notice a huge difference, but if you're indoors you should experience a pretty noticeable change if there are small objects nearby (they'll become doubled (this is easiest to see holding up a finger about 1 foot in front of your face). While you're holding this relaxed, non-binocular-focused vision, place your awareness all across your full field of vision, particularly on the very edges (peripheral vision). Notice things (moving or not) there. Feel the pull to focus your vision on the things that you notice, try to find "where" this nudging comes from. Keep your vision diffuse (non-focused). It's a great exercise to try this outdoors in a busy place with lots of people bustling about. See if you can follow particular people/objects with your awareness as they move without focusing on them with binocular vision (keep the eyes relaxed and things "doubled").

As you get better and better at it you can incorporate multiple senses at once: while doing diffuse vision, also notice multiple sound sources, feel your body/gravity, etc., all the while maintaining a centered, stable, calm. yet vigilant awareness.

So i think i have a sense of this diffuse vision and it's difficult. I've had a few times where i've been able to grab the whole scene and follow things around without focusing on anything. The eyes want to pull but if i can stay relaxed, i can just follow moving objects similar to how i can move my physical awareness around my body in a relaxation exercise. This has been one of the big things I"m working on over the holiday because with company and the bustle, I don't get much of a moment to myself or great sleep.

I think just keep doing it -- it's challenging to avoid the pull to focus, for sure. The first steps are noticing and being aware of the pull to change focus. I find diffuse vision very relaxing, at least in fairly static scenes. In itself it's a form of meditation . These are not exercises with any sort of deadline -- you can keep doing them and doing them as you need, noting your progress as it occurs.

doing sitting meditation daily,
beginning to work on diffuse vision and adding in sound elements as well as physical elements too.
how long is a good long for this?

Beginning to incorporate the sensory awareness into difuse vision practice.
was able to use DV to stabalize a lucid dream.
Beginning to work on mantra work.

Really going back to dream recall basics, my recall quality has been very inconsistant, more bad nights than good.

I've been doing nightly work on the mantra excercises and trying to keep up with my sensory work as well. Keeping the pad and doing the memory pull of the distractions is very similar to trying to remember the dreams after waking up over the night.

I've been working on the visualization part of it, just watching the colors. It's crazy hard. Though the other night I think I was able to change the colors from yellow green to purple red.

these visualization excercises are very difficult. I can do the phantom touch better than the color shifting. There's a classic dream yoga thing where you can put the red "a" in your throat. I can do that, and see the red a but Making the colors shift is something i have yet to wrap my head around. i feel myself straining my eyes to make the colors change. I'm not sure that's the way it's supposed to work. Guidance would be helpful. I'm going to read the thread further to see if it's discussed.