meditation induced lucid dream.

[somniumrex]

theory: sit up straight with your back straight but supported by something. kind of a sitting but leaning position. meditate: breath in and out, focus on where the breath comes into and leaves your nostrils. count each out breath up to ten starting over when you reach ten or lose count. let all other thoughts float by, do not interact with them and do not forcefully try to block them out, just let them drift by. when your mind wanders return it to your breath and counting. do this for a while and you should feel the effects of sleep coming on. at first drifting mental states. not new thoughts forming but mini dreams akin to hypnogogic imagery. you should then keep focus on the breath and keep counting. feelings of sleep paralysis should start, tingling, muscle twitches, odd distortion feelings, buzzing, etc. keep counting and breathing and you should enter a dream and be fully lucid. the end. for more info see below. critiques? personal experience? any feed back is welcome i'm going to try this tonight and see what happens. i came up with the theory for two reasons: 1. i have seen buddhist monks/nuns fall asleep while meditating (and yes it is hilarious once we were meditating and the time keeper fell asleep!. 2. people teaching and practicing out of body experiences do practices similar to this and since obe is a dream state, the practice should work for this too. other methods are similar but usually done in bed, this would be done in a chair or against a wall and should keep the mind more solid and alert. it seems if you keep your mind on your breath and the counting it will stay alert but docile enough to allow the body to sleep. sitting upright will contribute to this mindset as lying down means deep sleep to the body and brain. like when you fall asleep on a train or car you sleep much lighter. there's so much talk of using meditation to reach different realms and what not and i've always thought "some of these people could just be meditating until they are asleep and dreaming." and i've now decided; why not do the same thing?

[Dannon Oneironaut]

I like breathing through the hollow space the size of a walnut where the hypothalamus, the pituitary and pineal glands are located. This seems to bring about deep relaxation of both body and mind. If you think of an imaginary line going from where the cheekbone meets the front of the ear to the other cheekbone meeting the front of the ear, and make another imaginary line intersecting that line from where the third eye is, you come to that spot. If you are too far forward you get sensations in your sinuses, too far back you get sensations limited to your head and focused on the back of your head, too high and you get sensations on the crown. You know when you find the right spot when you feel a melting sensation in your whole body and relaxation.

[somniumrex]

thanx dannon! where does this practice fit for you? what are it's results?

[Dannon Oneironaut]

I do it for WILDing. Also I read an interesting article by my teacher. Let me find it and post it, it is about how lying down is the ideal meditation posture. Spoiler for By William Bagley: I have written about this theme before, but it came up in a recent conversation and I wanted to share about it again. Much of Buddhist and Hindu meditation practice uses Padmasana or the Lotus Posture. Buddhists add a little more to this teaching by sharing the Vairocana Posture which is the Lotus Posture with a number of wise check points, like whether your teeth are lightly touching or whether they are clenched. It is a wise meditation pose in many ways. But I do not recommend using it, at least not immediately. Here are my reasons: (1) As a healer, energy worker, and bodyworker, I have found that even many fairly advanced meditation practitioners, even teachers and Zen masters, have postural defects that I feel are exacerbated by prolonged use of sitting meditation. This also includes myself. If a person has the intention to master Padmasana, they really need to commit to a full Hatha Yoga routine and wisely master this whole yoga system. It would probably be wise to do other kinds of bodywork to support this. Most of us cannot really maintain a loose and erect sitting posture. We have been raised in a culture where unwholesome postural habits abound. We hunch forward too much and thereby put a strain at L4-L5 (lower back) and C1 (upper neck). One person that I worked with, who was a Zen teacher with about 30 years of sitting meditation, had to have a surgical intervention near C1. I have had a childhood scoliosis which is still slowly straightening out, but which still requires some strain to hold the posture erect. Prolonged sitting puts a vertical pressure at L4-L5. Also, because people normally do not really do Padmasana, but have an asymmetrical cross legged pose, the stretch to the lower back is unbalanced and can make the posture even more unbalanced. These things are correctable. When Padmasana is combined with a wise and devoted Hatha Yoga practice, it can even be healthful in the long run. But it needs this kind of support or a similar bodywork system to pull this off. (2) If you are lying down in Shivasana and go through all the check points, checking your jaw to see if the upper and lower teeth are lightly touching, checking the shoulders to see if they are raised or dropped, checking the chin to see if it is pointed up or opened gently towards the heart, checking the lower back to see if it is relatively flat, checking the knees to see if they are relaxed, checking the ankles to see if they are relaxed, checking the palms to see if they are opened upwards and relaxed, and generally traveling with relaxed awareness through the body and intentionally relaxing as much as possible every part of the body, and then checking again a few times, then you can keep your spine loose and erect (straight). The support of a level surface helps to restructure the spine to become looser and straighter over time. I would still recommend some Hatha Yoga poses (asanas) to help even here, but you do not necessarily need the support of a whole systematic practice of Hatha Yoga. With Padmasana, more of your body needs to be in proper alignment and balance in order to hold it. With Shivasana, a little support is definitely helpful and a whole Hatha Yoga is very helpful too. It is no surprise that a very large number of Hatha Yoga teachers end their practice sessions with Shivasana. (3) Inwardly, Shivasana is about totally and completely letting go of all effort, which is the final mudra of the Heart Sutra in Buddhism. With Padmasana, there is still a subtle effort required to hold the body erect. It is still possible to do the deep and full letting go in Padmasana, but it makes simpler and more logical sense to do it in Shivasana. All the effort of meditation is taken out of the practice from the very beginning. (4) Many Buddhist teachers have not recommended meditating in Shivasana with eyes closed, because you are likely to fall asleep. However, this is really a minor obstacle. With daily practice, people will learn how to not fall asleep. I also find that people are spontaneously learning "Yoga Nidra" in the process. They are learning how to fall asleep and get regenerated by a deep sleep. The kind of sleep that you get through such a practice is deep and renewing. Also the kind of attention that requires effort and strain in sitting to keep alive does not long serve a meditator. Attention needs to have the quality of being relaxed and allowing. Beta frequency brainwave attention is usually tense and is the mastery of "type A" people who are productive in the world, but run the risk of aging and dying soon because of stress. If there is any risk in Shivasana in this regard is that when the right kind of attention is mastered, one can be both relaxed and alert, and one can regain so much internal energy that it is actually harder to fall asleep. Then Yoga Nidra needs to be mastered in order to fall asleep (BTW the secret is to just keep on meditating). I find that Shivasana is superior that even the Tibetan Buddhist Dream Yoga pose (this is like Shivasana but has the legs crossed and the body tilted at an angle, partly raised up). But either the Tibetan Buddhist Dream Yoga pose or Shivasana addresses similar postural concerns in a similar manner. I do recommend trying a variety of meditation poses to get some direct experience of these things. (5) I do feel that it is good to "deep retreat" and have meditated for very long stretches of time, even 14 hours straight. Shivasana is vastly superior to Padmasana when it comes to handling these long stretches. I usually do some Hatha Yoga and bodywork before these long stretches of time, do Rebirthing breathing in a hot tub (or at least take a hot shower) before and after these long sessions, and drink some herbal tea. I find that hunger shuts down during these times. The body lowers its metabolism and does not need as much food. Usually a light soup, a small green salad, and some herbal tea is enough. Drinking some very pure water is helpful at this time, because the body kicks into regeneration mode and likes to excrete toxins into some surplus water. I do recommend microclustered/ozonated water if possible. (6) Shantideva, the favorite Bodhisattva of the Dalai Lama, reached a very deep level of enlightenment solely through lying down meditation. Although story does not say which lying down posture he used, it was most likely Shivasana, since there is really no other lying down meditation that is as completely effortless. If it was not Shivasana, then it was a variation of Shivasana. At one point, Shantideva levitated while channeling the words of the Bodhisattva Mansjushri. For some reason, lying down meditation seems helpful for levitation. One will feel a lightness come into the body. Gravity is more of a mystery than we realize. We still imagine it as a kind of impersonal force pulling us down and do not see it related to "curved space" like Einstein did. I see it as "the embrace of the Earth" and much relaxation is about allowing ourselves to "be held" by the Earth, releasing ourselves into this greater power that meets us in "gravity". When doing Padmasana, one might still struggle to maintain erectness against gravity and not arrive at this space. (7) There are deeper levels of meditation beyond the physical body, like moving into the dreambody and traveling to various places, like Sukhavati, the homeworld of Amida Buddha. When the physical body is totally relaxed and we leave in the embrace of the Earth, then we can peacefully let it go and travel to these worlds and learn much from them. There are Dream Yogas which can be mastered when our attention is released from the need to maintain our physical body and our physical life. Paradoxically, from this larger world and larger space, we can often more easily heal or help the physical body, our physical life, and our friends in the physical world. (8) In Shivasana, one can immediately learn "psychosomatics", how our mind and emotions tenses and makes our body ill. One can become aware of all the tension we hold in our physical body and how we are causing it psychologically and how in order to relax the body we need to "let go". This becomes an ideal learning space for the deepest lesson in meditation. (9) Shivasana is still "mudra yoga". By taking on the posture of an enlightened being we can learn to enter the mind of the enlightened being. There are Buddhist masters like Shantideva and the supreme Hindu master, Shiva, behind this one.

[somniumrex]

I do it for WILDing. Also I read an interesting article by my teacher. Let me find it and post it, it is about how lying down is the ideal meditation posture.[SPOILER="By William Bagley"]I have written about this theme before, but it came up in a recent conversation and I wanted to share about it again. Much of Buddhist and Hindu meditation practice uses Padmasana or the Lotus Posture. Buddhists add a little more to this teaching by sharing the Vairocana Posture which is the Lotus Posture with a number of wise check points, like whether your teeth are lightly touching or whether they are clenched. It is a wise meditation pose in many ways. But I do not recommend using it, at least not immediately. Here are my reasons: this is really interesting stuff! i'm a little biased though as i have trained in chan and pali canon (i don't say theravada because there are so many schools and i'm of none, i just read the canon and practice directly from it.) buddhism for many years and i don't know any monks or nuns who have noticeable back problems or posture issues. i have never been instructed to meditate for more than an hour and i doubt sitting for an hour a day is going to cause permanent back problems for most people. we all sat in school for six or seven hours a day for 12 years and a lot of us college after that for four or so years after and i don't think the majority has back problems due to this and i'm sure most sat with poor posture which is supposed to be the culprit here. and the monks/nuns at the temple i go to take breaks and go for walks during long meditation sessions which are practiced to alleviate stiffness and back issues. HOWEVER i do feel that the things he says about the non back related benefits of the style of meditation he his talking about are amazing! i'm very inclined to give it a shot. i don't think i know enough about it though. i'm a very deep sleeper and i've tried meditating lying down before and have promptly lost consciousness. he says that one would spontaneously learn yoga nidra, i have read about nidra before but i always imagined it was something that took a great amount of know how and vast amounts of training. can it really be learned just from lying in shivisana and letting everything go? how do i know if i'm making progress if i keep falling asleep? have you accomplished it? can you lay in this posture and enter the dream state? this type of practice is what i would really like to develop but failed with wangyals tibetan yogas book. if these goals are possible i've got to learn more!!! anything you could tell me would be greatly appreciated! also after making this initial post i've come to some interesting revelations about the stark contrast between the conscious meditating mind and the meditating mind drifting into sleep. i actually came to the conclusion that they are incompatible! which would explain why the buddha didn't teach any sleep practices (in the oldest known original scriptures: pali canon). however this is clearly an incompatibility with what he was teaching which is what i practice, not with meditation in general. therefore i will have to relearn meditation with this technique your teacher is talking about from scratch as a new type of meditation! very exciting! if you could pm me some kind of step by step guide i would be very thankful! also i find it very cool that he talks about different practices from all different traditions and different deities and even shiva without batting an eye! kind of omni relgious, how fun and unbridled! i like that because i'm pali canon buddhist but if i find a good practice in hinduism, bon or whatever there's no reason i won't try it. i use the canon as my base and authority but as long as it doesn't go against or cancel out those teachings and seems useful and relevant i'll practice it. whereas a lot of people stick to their practice only out of fear that others are wrong or even sacrilege! so what is he? i'm guessing tibetan buddhist but like i said he mentions hindu practices and tibetan so i'm thrown. what a cool guy!

[Dannon Oneironaut]

He is cool. He describes his spirituality as Amritayana. He is very far-out. Yoga Nidra is simple. The hardest part is to not let your mind fall asleep. It is just having the body sleep while the mind meditates. It is basically WILD. The way I achieve this is by slowing down my breath and making it more and more shallow and always hesitating before I start the next breath. Then I pretend that I am dead, soooo relaxed. I imagine my mind as very bright light like a full moon. As long as I keep the moon full, my mind won't fall asleep. When my body is very very very relaxed I breathe like I normally would if I was sleeping. I like to think of my breath as waves crashing on the beach at night with the full moon above.

[somniumrex]

He is cool. He describes his spirituality as Amritayana. He is very far-out. Yoga Nidra is simple. The hardest part is to not let your mind fall asleep. It is just having the body sleep while the mind meditates. It is basically WILD. The way I achieve this is by slowing down my breath and making it more and more shallow and always hesitating before I start the next breath. Then I pretend that I am dead, soooo relaxed. I imagine my mind as very bright light like a full moon. As long as I keep the moon full, my mind won't fall asleep. When my body is very very very relaxed I breathe like I normally would if I was sleeping. I like to think of my breath as waves crashing on the beach at night with the full moon above. awesome! i like your visuals and descriptions! thanx much

[lucidpersian]

hey, I will definitely try this tonight! Although in bed, as a variation to the WILD, seeing as I procrastinate too much to actually sit and meditate. Plus is 1:30 in the morning and im tired. But this was seriously interesting. I did notice this article http://www.dreamviews.com/f19/5000-y...fective-71387/ which seemed very similar to this, although it is involving visualizing a bright swirling white light where your 6th chakra is located , in between your brows. I have tried that for a couple of nights but find it hard to visualize something that bright and soon gave up, although on my first try I did feel some sort of an invigorating force resonate throughout my body. So if my interpretation is correct, I must lay down and simply focus on my breathing while relaxing at the same time. Keeping my mind awake, while my "body" drifts into sleep. I haven't had much success with WILDs, but I will try this for a couple of nights and let you know. Once the break is over and I get back to my regular sleeping patterns I should have an easier time lucid dreaming.

[somniumrex]

hey, I will definitely try this tonight! Although in bed, as a variation to the WILD, seeing as I procrastinate too much to actually sit and meditate. Plus is 1:30 in the morning and im tired. But this was seriously interesting. I did notice this article http://www.dreamviews.com/f19/5000-y...fective-71387/ which seemed very similar to this, although it is involving visualizing a bright swirling white light where your 6th chakra is located , in between your brows. I have tried that for a couple of nights but find it hard to visualize something that bright and soon gave up, although on my first try I did feel some sort of an invigorating force resonate throughout my body. So if my interpretation is correct, I must lay down and simply focus on my breathing while relaxing at the same time. Keeping my mind awake, while my "body" drifts into sleep. I haven't had much success with WILDs, but I will try this for a couple of nights and let you know. Once the break is over and I get back to my regular sleeping patterns I should have an easier time lucid dreaming. basically. i know it works because i have gotten into sleep paralysis with it. i started having little mini dreams where i could hear and see people talking and little things happening and i "saw" and "heard" a bunch of stuff fall over in my closet and woke myself up to check it lol! obviously nothing had happened, i was slipping perfectly into a dream and yanked myself out . but as long as you can ignore these things for just a couple of minutes you will float right passed and into a dream. let me know what happens with you. basically this is traditional buddhist meditation as opposed to hindu or tibetan that's why it's so simple and involves no chakras or any visualizations. i thought simplifying things would be a good idea and the posture being half laying down and half sitting up would help. dream yoga has you laying down completely and visualizing a lotus with a radiant glowing tibetan letter "A" floating in front of it in your throat chakra. it is such a comlicated visualization and you're already laying down so when i tried that i just passed out. hence the simplified approach. i just looked at the link you posted, very interesting! i was thinking it's non sense until i read the comparison to stimulating the saliva glands... seems almost plausible... i like it!

[lucidpersian]

duuuuuuuuuuuuude! Okay, so I didn't try the meditation yet because yesterday I pulled an all nighter and was too tired to do anything but sleep, but when I went to bed last night I counted each exhalation up to 10 then started over. My mind did wander from time to time but I kept putting it on track. I must have done that for about 15 minutes because I just couldn't fall asleep! But then I started feeling this tingling throughout my whole body! I started feeling my arms go numb, my legs get stiff, and soon that spread from my extremities to my core. Then I was like, okay, what now?? When the sensation began my mind was wandering, so I"m not sure if I panicked or something, but I started counting breaths again but then it went away..... Any advice from here? It was pretty damn cool...

[somniumrex]

duuuuuuuuuuuuude! Okay, so I didn't try the meditation yet because yesterday I pulled an all nighter and was too tired to do anything but sleep, but when I went to bed last night I counted each exhalation up to 10 then started over. My mind did wander from time to time but I kept putting it on track. I must have done that for about 15 minutes because I just couldn't fall asleep! But then I started feeling this tingling throughout my whole body! I started feeling my arms go numb, my legs get stiff, and soon that spread from my extremities to my core. Then I was like, okay, what now?? When the sensation began my mind was wandering, so I"m not sure if I panicked or something, but I started counting breaths again but then it went away..... Any advice from here? It was pretty damn cool... stay completely calm! meditating during the day without the intention of falling asleep helps with this a lot. when meditating you deal with all kinds of ridiculous thoughts and your mind gives you all kinds of reasons to stop meditating and do something else. train yourself to be solid and completely immovable with your breathing. then at night when trying this you won't have to get up and can maintain focus. obviously this will take practice at night too as you will have to teach yourself the same skill in ignoring these feelings and what not during sleep paralysis and early dream entry. eventually you will be so calm and your body and brain so used to these things and how to respond to them (the proper response being NOT responding to them) that you will slip right passed them and into a dream.