Hello Dreamviewers, I am going to start off this thread with some background and subsequent posts will be my journal and thoughts and implementations of the strategies that are stickied.
I have performed dream yoga twice before. I am doing this journal to help me learn how to do it every night. I have been lucid dreaming since about the age of 4 to today, at the age of 25. I remember my first lucid dream from back then, I dreamed I was Goku doing a Kamehameha at the world tournament. I lucid dream almost every night with out trying at this point in my life. I have been avidly meditating most of my life. 7 years ago I started learning about all forms of meditation I could and practicing and researching Buddhism. Mostly to help me understand the parts of my mind that had been exposed to in deep dreams, dreamless sleeps, and some other one off experiences through my life. Buddhism has a label for the mind in these moments, the very subtle mind.
I said earlier that I had achieved dream yoga twice. That was from my understanding of Buddhist literature I had read in the last few years; most of my attempts were around 5 years ago. Several years before that, in my young teens, I found my self in a life or death situation camping. I was freezing to death soaked to the bone in a flooded tent in a flooded valley in a massive storm. It was very cold that night. I told myself that my only chance of survival was to not fall asleep and focus on conserving my heat. I also had to hike several miles the next day out of the valley. That night I performed a type of dream yoga. I went several hours with out thoughts and only pure consciousness in a dreamless sleep. The next morning I wasn't tired, I remembered the entire night, and I was shocked by a deep experience of my very subtle mind that stuck with me to this day. My other successful attempts were quite nice. The first one I was in a pure white light seeing myself seated meditating the entire night. This is the longest I have ever gone with out a single thought popping into my head and I also maintained my sense of time all night. I went at least 4 hours with out any word, emotion, or other abstract thought. It was the best night of sleep of my life. The 2nd successful attempt wasn't as good. There was a lot more thinking through the night and I lost my sense of time towards the end. I do not meditate nearly as much as I did back then. At that point in my life I had maintained a 1 month all day awareness only interrupted by sleep. I had been practicing ADA very seriously for 3 months up to that point, for 4 months of strong practice. My ADA is introspective. I wasn't focusing on inputs but on the presence of mind. You can feel your very subtle mind at all times, it is always with you. Being aware of it is an unique sensation and maintaining it all day was my goal. ADA where I focused on inputs was something I had done a lot through my entire life. I would do this on long car rides as a kid for hours. In fact any time I was in a car I was doing this from about 4-12 years old. This particular meditation is called appamada.
As of writing this I have put in 2 days of practice from the materials I have read here. I have lost my sense of time both nights and eventually my memory too. I definitely achieved it the first night, I am not sure about the 2nd night. The first night I woke up about 3.5 hours later fully rested. I had a sense of time, memory, and most of the last 3 hours didn't have much thought going on. I got up and ate a small bowl of cereal had a bio break and went back to bed. I forgot to try to maintain awareness and fell asleep for nearly 6 hours. My 2nd night I lost awareness while I was vibing. I regained it at some point while I was asleep but my memory of it is poor.
When I first dedicated this week to this I understood a few important things. My main failure of dream yoga induction in the past was from poor WILD skills. I can easily be lucid in dreams just by feeling that I am in a dream it will trigger me to be lucid. I can WILD when I wake up and go back to sleep with almost 100% try rate. I can eject from dreams and do a WILD for a more powerful dream, but only when I am not trying. I have a hard time transitioning from full wake to sleep with out losing awareness though. I have also never experienced true sleep paralysis. I can recognize when my movements are suppressed but I can choose to move them with some small effort. In all of my dream yoga attempts I have had some form of rest leg syndrome effecting me. These things are probably related. This week I have found that I can encourage the strength of my sleep paralysis to achieve sleep faster. This is huge for me as it normally takes me 30 minutes to an hour to fall asleep, or more. I usually spend that time meditating. This has been an issue my entire life. I have experimented with many ways to get to sleep faster. Meditating is just what I do because nothing has worked and it seems to me as the best use of my time. The only thing I have learned, apart from this sleep paralysis method, that has helped is focusing on lowering blood pressure and heart rate through breathing exercises. To induce this week I have been focusing on my mantra, reducing my blood pressure and heart rate through breath, and increasing the sleep paralysis I experience. I have been to sleep in 20 minutes both nights now. My goal is to make this a 5 minute switch where I maintain awareness all night.
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