From:
slider@anashram.com
crsds wrote...
then perhaps it is a lifetime of
bad habit then? it is the not
doing of falling asleep like the
rest of the flock.
### - you can't wait for WILDs to come to YOU like ya do with dilds!
being the 'conscious' form of LDing YOU have to go to THEM!
Relaxation Techniques.
There are many ways of achieving a state of relaxation. You may already
know some and be using them fairly regularly anyway. If so, that’s just
fine as it will definitely save you time later while becoming familiar
with using a state of relaxation as a springboard into lucid dreaming.
Okay, so this is where the fun really begins. Better sit down and strap
in, since for our current purposes I’ll be concentrating on just one or
two quite simple but effective methods of getting oneself sufficiently
relaxed to invoke our hidden, innate ability to hop off into a waking
dream state at will. Both methods are rather similar.
For the first I’d initially suggest getting yourself into bed and lying
down on your left side with your knees together and your legs slightly
bent. Give your body a little time to adjust to the exertion involved of getting into bed and settling down into a comfortable position. Just lie
there for a few minutes in the dark until your breathing and heart-rate gradually slow down to a steady rhythm.
After about five minutes, when your breathing has settled right down and
has become steady and regular, deliberately take a long, deep breath by breathing slowly in through your nose until no more air can get in. Don’t force anything or cork your throat by letting go and relaxing your chest
once fully inflated. Keep your throat held open and hold that breath for
about four or five seconds or so and then let it out again very slowly
through the mouth while at the same time trying to feel any residual
tension in your muscles draining out of your body and sinking down through
the bed and into the floor. Make a conscious attempt as you breathe out to
feel your whole body becoming even more relaxed than it was before, as
though it was sinking down into the bed. Aim via these breaths to let your
body become so relaxed that if anyone were at one point to lift one of
your arms and let it go again, the arm would just flop right back to where
it was under its own weight without any help from you.
Do this long breath just the once and then let your body return to
breathing again under its own steam. Spend a few moments breathing
normally, just letting your body breathe as it may, and then, after a
little while, deliberately take another long slow breath in through your
nose feeling your whole body tense up slightly as you control the intake
of air, letting your lungs fill up as much as they can without forcing anything, again holding that breath when it reaches the top by maintaining
the ever so slight pressure of breathing in (i.e. by not corking your
throat in order to hold it locked in) for another count of four or five
seconds before slowly letting that breath out through your mouth while at
the same time deliberately letting go of your body as though you were weightless. When all the air is naturally out (again without forcing
anything) let your body return to its usual way of breathing for a couple
of minutes or so, noting how much more your body feels relaxed each time.
Repeat this exercise several times over the course of the next few minutes
and you’ll probably be surprised at just how tense you actually were, even though your body felt completely relaxed before. A good example of this is around the head, neck and shoulders area which seems to sink ever deeper
than before into the pillow each time you do the long breath out. Try to
detect any residual muscle tension from your body sink down into the bed
and floor as a mild sensation similar to that of going down in an
elevator. Pay particular attention to these areas of the head, neck and shoulders, working through them in sequence if necessary until they all
feel completely relaxed and as sunken into your pillow as they’re likely
to get.
Keep this up for about ten to twenty minutes in total, alternating between normal breathing and the occasional long controlled one and/or until you experience a sensation of feeling like a complete dead weight, trying each
time to aim for that feeling of being so relaxed that if someone were to
lift your arm and let it go again it would just flop back to your side.
You may also feel at this point a very slight overall tingling sensation,
a kind of spreading numbness in your limbs, and also notice that your
breathing is now beginning to be composed of slow, far slighter breaths
coming more from the lower part of your abdomen (belly breaths). This is perfect. Don’t try to force this situation to come about, let it occur naturally through using your breathing to release muscle tension. This is precisely the easy state of mental and physical relaxation one is aiming
for in order to begin trying to lucid dream, and this feeling of bodily lightness or largeness coupled with belly breaths confirms it.
The second method consists of doing exactly the same breathing exercises
for a few moments to get started, but this time systematically working all
the way up from your toes to the top of your head, gradually releasing all bodily tension from each area down through the bed and into the ground as
you go. Again, spending at least fifteen to twenty minutes or so on this,
the time it takes to reach a state of relaxation gradually becoming
shorter with each session as your ability to relax at will progresses.
Don’t worry if it takes longer in the initial stages, you are learning to consciously relax your body and it takes a little practice. You may have
to try for forty minutes the first few times to reach and recognise this
state of being but, rest assured, you’ll quickly get it all down to under twenty minutes or so with familiarity and practice. In the meantime, just
enjoy it for what it is; the setting out upon a new adventure. Don’t rush things. Enjoy every part and stage of it!
In order later to reach a state of lucid dreaming, it’s also very
important during these relaxation exercises not to move or change your
body position or posture at all, particularly during the last few minutes
of doing them. During the first few minutes get yourself into a
comfortable enough position and try to maintain it and to also perfect
that position by tweaking it minutely here and there until you don’t need
to settle down or move anymore. After that don’t even move an inch.
The end result of relaxing without moving like this is eventually to
achieve a mild sensation of floating, or of the body having slightly
expanded in some way. At this point the hands will possibly sometimes feel
kind of puffy or enlarged. Other times it’s as though one can no longer
tell the exact proportion or size of bodily areas you happen to focus on.
For example, upon focusing on them my teeth once lost their usual
dimensions of size, feeling huge and disproportionate for the size of my
mouth until they felt the size of tombstones. A very odd sensation indeed,
but I stress that all these minor sensations are perfectly normal, they’re
a novelty, enjoy them and explore them for what they are, they are nothing
to worry about and are really only clues the body provides us with to let
us know we’re nearly ready now to enter into a lucid dreaming state.
Once you’ve reached this floating feeling of relaxation, the next step is
to absolutely and deliberately turn your attention completely away from
all and any sensations of the body altogether, totally ignoring them.
Having served their purpose they are no longer important. Peer instead at
the
blank dark screen you can see just behind your closed eyes. Don’t move at
all and hang on to that feeling of lightness or floating and stare at the darkness that’s right there in front of your face until you begin to
notice the odd blob or streak of colour appearing and disappearing at
random.
Your body may feel a little strange at this point but just totally ignore
it (or any other sensations) by deliberately placing and holding your full attention ‘only’ on what your eyes can see.
At this point, consciously adjust your focus so it’s as though you are looking at an area about ten to fifteen inches away from your face. Keep
your eyes closed and let any blobs and splashes of colour come and go as
they please. Don’t attempt to control these effects in any way, just keep watching for them by staring straight ahead until you perhaps notice the appearance of an image of some kind. This is the next stage.
The following images can be rather faint and fleeting (fast), not really
giving you the time to focus on them properly, but that’s okay, don’t
worry about it, just let them come and go as they please and wait for the
next one to appear. Having already made yourself relax you shouldn’t be thinking about your body or your breathing at all by having deliberately
forced your attention away from them onto only what your closed eyes can
see. Don’t try to do anything other than watch those images come and go,
the same way as those blobs and streaks of colour did, especially since at
this point you are nearly ready to attempt entering into a dreaming state.
The only problem you may initially encounter at this stage is that of accidentally drifting right off into a deep sleep, and this is something that’s quite likely to happen repeatedly until you learn to recognise this
as being a distinct possibility. After all, every night for the duration
of our lives to date, we’ve always piled into bed with the express expectation of getting off to sleep as quickly as possible. We never know,
or even remember, just exactly how (or when) we actually drifted off, but usually just lie there kind of relaxing and getting comfortable while
waiting to be somehow snatched away.
It’s a ritual we’ve all unconsciously learned to perform since before we were born. One feels kind of drowsy and the eyes close while not really thinking of anything in particular, and before you know it we’ve gone off
to sleep without even realising it. Suddenly it’s the next day, something we’re all totally expert at doing by now because we’ve been doing it all our lives. Children (and insomniacs) are the only ones who tend to exhibit
any difficulty in getting off to sleep sometimes and so we distract them
by reading them stories and singing them lullabies and as soon as they
stop struggling against it their little eyes glaze over and off they jolly
well go! (Peace reigns at last. Whew!)
But I digress…so anyway, keep going like this, lightly gazing at fleeting images while trying not to accidentally nod off completely, until a really clear image shows up, sometimes shockingly so! Next, do your best to let
your eyes examine some of that image’s details.
(from the TWWTLD...)
***
again, WILDs can't be reached/achieved in a haphazard way like dilds are,
the above technique being anything but complicated (a starter only for 10)
has to be consistently performed for several nights on the trot to be
effective + once ya eventually push through to the other side (heh) you'll begin to develop your very own personal technique for getting there...
falling asleep in the middle of this exercise 10 times (or whatever) on
the trot is perfectly normal, the 'habit' (of a lifetime) of doing so has
to be broken in order to bring you face to face with the process itself
that 'unconsciously' whisks us off into sleep night after night after
night, change this ritual habit, however, and it literally changes
everything!
smile... there's no way yo 'nag' you (or anyone) into being consistent
with this (laughing) so really it's up to YOU to attempt this enough times
to be successful...
the current record holder was only successful with this on his 11th
attempt!
:)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)