My Story of Overcoming my Nightmares so far (Part 2) -Mediation

I posted a thread a long time ago about one method how I lessen my nightmares through the 'IRT'- method :D More details here -> http://www.dreamviews.com/nightmares...-part-1-a.html

Beside the method from above I also really liked and still like to do mediation to not only overcome my nightmares but also to stop those awkward recurring dreams.
Of course there are definitely many threads about mediation already but I feel I must share my own experiences from mediation :boogie:
I actually started to mediate just about months ago but the results are amazingly stunning and also really helped me to become lucid more easily ^.^

How I began:

Week 1

First of all I made plans about how I can bring mediation in my daily routine because I was very busy with my illness and suffered from it and also I should done so much for school. So I thought would it make sense to invest time in something like that? However I manage to find some time for about 10 minutes to mediate in the night. Right before I went to bed. Before that I thought about my entire day and analyze my behavior and the behavior of some people as well who bothered me. So i could find a solution to make it better the next day. Oh dear I swear thanks to that I couldn't begin to mediate at all haha Because negative thoughts began to spread in my whole head and it made me so uncomfortable.

So in the first days to stop those analyzed before going to bed I lend a CD from my doctor and listened to it while I mediate. He recommend me to focus on the music (btw it was classic music with a voice of a women sometimes saying to me what to do just like relax now and stuff like that) and it truly helped me to make mediation much more easier and also comfortable.

After 3 days I could mediate without the help of that music and focusing on my current atmosphere weren't difficult anymore. I started my mediation routine always with being aware of my current atmosphere and I always noticed so many and various things at once just like the feeling of sitting on the ground and my breathing, those driving cars on the outside, the noise from the kids outside as well who are playing and so on. It really did calm me down although there were so many things to notice. But on the other side it confused me too because I wasn't used to that situation of noticing so so many things all at once. Nonetheless to get me out of the confusing I start to focus my consciousness on my breathing because i do that the whole time :chuckle:

On the first week my mediation exercise took me 10-15 minutes

Result
Not as many negative thoughts as before and a little bit more comfortable with myself.


Week 2

Not much have changed since a week. I only extend my mediation exercise from about 10-15 minutes to 15-20 minutes. My focus is still on my breathing because I didn't found another good thing yet to focus on.

Result
Again my negative thoughts luckily didn't increase and I become more aware of my atmosphere around me :) Good point for my goal to become lucid in my dreams!


Week 3

i did a few changes in week 3 e.g. changing my mediation position and doing mediation twice time a day. I will not go into the detail because there a many dream yoga threads about that.
However the change didn't bring a huge difference to my mediation but some alternations are always good :cheeky:
I also extended my mediation exercise again to 25-30 minutes. That means i must go to bed early to to be able to doing my mediation. So in week 3 I change my bedtimes too. That was hard because of my busy schedule but i was determined and very ambitious about reaching my goals!

Result

Maybe it was just my imagination but one of my new results were I'm not really paranoid like i used to be anymore. For me that is one of the best results within just 3 weeks! But becoming more aware was such a great thing too because like I said it indeed helped me with LD.


Week 4

I tried doing my mediation while lying in my bed in the evening instead of sitting (in various position). It was a good alternative but I think I'm staying with sitting during my mediation. Finally i changed my focus on my breathing and tried to set my focus on a point on my blank plain wall. Nowadays i switch my focus between both my breathing and the wall depending on my mood.

Result

I could notice how much have changed in only one month. Within that month I totally manage to minimize the amount of my negative thoughts so they could't capture my whole thinking and I could manage to calm me down every time when I have panic attacks by focusing on my current atmosphere. In addition I got really comfortable with my own self and I also noticed that my behavior and not only my thoughts has improved a bit over the time.
Through mediation my dream recalls improved too although I'm quite good at it. I could remember at least about 7 dreams in my week days! For me that is a big step for my LD goal and workbook. After all I must say the main reason why I started mediation is to help me overcome my nightmares but I still have my recurring dreams which bother me and sometimes a few nightmares. Despite that it didn't hinder me to go on with my mediation because like you can see I gain so much from mediation :sunflower:

And now after months I cannot say that I could overcome my nightmares for good. I still have many several awkward dreams but thanks to all my results I can manage to become lucid in my dreams when I recognize I'm in an uncomfortable situation. And that happened so quite often. Thus since my mediation experiences I can't tell you how many times I get the chance to become lucid. Furthermore those lucid dreams are very stable because I'm so aware of myself, my atmosphere and what I'm doing that nothing could bring me out of it except my alarm clock hahaha
But I'm gonna start with my workbook soon where I write down all my LD experiences which I gain from 'IRT' and mediation!


Wish you all sweet dreams :)