Somnaea's Adventures in Yoga

Hello!

I am thrilled to see this class still exists. I came across it long ago and experimented with the techniques but never bothered to make an account and formally go through it. These lessons were very influential on me and I’m happy I still have a chance to take the class “for real”.

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Background on me & my experience so far:

Dreams: I have LD experience but lucidity has been infrequent lately. I started having spontaneous LDs 8 years ago and it changed my life. Over time I developed excellent dream recall, was able to LD frequently with a high level of clarity and vividness, and was starting to learn control techniques. I’ve also had some limited astral projection experience. Lucid dreaming entirely changed my perception of reality and led me to seek out yoga.

Yoga: My practice has been inspired by various systems (raja yoga, kriya yoga, kundalini yoga, hatha yoga, and others) and has been self-directed. I’d love to work with a teacher but because of dogmatic beliefs, guru worship, and stories of problematic spiritual leaders, I’ve avoided seeking formal instruction. I've settled for “flying by the seat of my pants yoga” but it’s working out so far, and I’ve definitely noticed results, including a rising sense of bliss and some early kundalini experiences.

I practiced both dream work and yoga heavily for several years, then my life crashed & burned, in part because I was focusing too much on those things and ignoring external problems. I had to stop for a while to make some changes and set up a better foundation. Now that life is stable again, I’ve re-established a yoga routine and am trying to restart my lucid dreaming practice—this time with a more balanced approach and a newfound appreciation of how real and powerful this all is.

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Thank you for putting these lessons together. I’m looking forward to going through the class and seeing where it takes me.

Listening to a Noisy World: Level 1

As I begin, I hear wind, wind chimes, some traffic noise, the occasional dog barking and birds chirping. I hear the quiet sound of the heater near the couch and the hum of the refrigerator in the other room, low-pitched and constant. At other times this sound might irritate me, but now it is almost pleasant. There's another high-pitched hum that is difficult to place directionally, I think it is the light in the dining room. As I settle in I hear my breath rising and falling.

The longer I listen the more I can pick up the more subtle differences in the sound. With the wind, I pay attention to how it picks up and dies down. I can sense the direction, and hear the difference between the wind up in the trees and the leaves scattering on the ground. The traffic noise becomes divided and I become more aware it is coming from multiple places. The quieter, distant rush is the cars on the highway; the occasional car that passes in front of the house is louder, and I can hear the whirring of tires on the asphalt as a separate sound. The lawnmower comes into focus and I become aware that the sound follows a pattern, becoming louder and softer as the neighbor pushes it back and forth. In the distance I hear a child's voice, and the dog again, and a rustling noise under the patio which I assume is one of the backyard squirrels.

The sound of my breath remains and comes in and out of focus. I also perceive a familiar internal sound that I become more aware of when I meditate, very low pitched and seemingly inseparable from a physical sensation of vibration in my head, growing increasingly louder with time.

I get startled from a very loud truck outside, and end the session.

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Thoughts afterward: I enjoyed the increase in perception of subtle differences in sound as the session progressed. It was also interesting that sounds I am typically annoyed by, like my refrigerator, didn't seem negative when I listened to them in a meditative way.

How this could help me in LDs: 1. Learning to perceive greater detail through the senses in the waking world should translate to being able to perceive and maintain greater detail in lucid dreams, improving vividness and clarity. 2. I've noticed that slowing down and paying attention to the senses is helpful when trying to stabilize a lucid dream, but I've only ever done this with vision. With sound, I've always just created my own (I've done a lot of singing to stay lucid) but I've never actually stopped to *listen* in a lucid dream. This sounds like an interesting thing to try.

I love that exercise. Another way it helps in dreams is you become trained to scan out around you with senses and doing so naturally you may find nothing. Perhaps two sounds exist and when you focus on something they fade. You know how listening now works and in a dream it will not work the same. This is building a passive reality check where you become lucid because you notice without trying that it is "not a noisy world" so might be a dream.