It's simply focus and stabilzing thoughts. And a great benefit to LD and worth including in the practise. Helps for focus, stress relieve, lowering bloodpressure and all that kind of happyhappy. There's never a failed session. Even when totally distracted and difficult to focus, it'll train the mind. When I've dreams that are more vivid or having a LD, there's mostly some of a meditation excersise involved. Yoga also helps, it's focussing in the movement.
I think with everything it's personal what works. Guided or not guided. Visualising meditation for the visual people, but can also be beneficial as training this for less visual people. Same with sounds or movement. You can put music on, but it could also be worthy to try to cope with outside noise distractions. Also it can be used to focus and zooming in on one dreamgoal.
I combine a breathing excersise for 10 mins;
5 sec breathing in, 10 sec out. Or 6 in, 12 out.
It's deep belly breathing and will help me focus, cause no time to think and get a lot of oxygen. When becoming aware of breathing the body will be likely to take over this deeper breathing habit during the day and brings stress relieve with it. It took a little while to get into it and relax and trust this what first felt as forced breathing. .
I've a Pranayama app. Sounds twaddlish, but it's just a breathing techniqye. It makes different sounds for breathing in and out, helps me not having to count.
It helps to start a meditation, so you already more relaxed. It can be beneficial for all day awareness or mindfulness and slows down time a bit. When I breathe deep I can take in more of my environment and that's exactly what I need in a LD.
I've been off and on with my practice, but since I've started back up with lucid dreaming I'm trying to do a couple sessions a day of focusing on my breathing for 10-15 minutes, and occasionally longer on weekends.
I find it really helps me to get into a mindful state faster, and makes me feel "lucid" during the day time. I've been reminding myself during the day to bring myself back to the present, and meditation helps me understand what that means. I also have started noticing how my thoughts arise, before I get pulled into them. It's almost like a pre-thought that I can see coming before it comes fully into my consciousness.
Something I've been struggling with during my meditation though is that I do get caught up in thoughts for too long before I'm able to bring myself back to my breath, and feel like I'm building a bad habit with it. So recently I've started instead of just setting a fixed time to sit, I'm working on timing myself to see how long I can focus on my breath before I get distracted. Once I feel like I've gotten distracted I stop meditating and write down what pulled my attention away and then try again. I'm hoping having a goal of trying to see how long I can go will motivate me to keep my focus, and also catching what distracted me will help me understand what kinds of subjects pull my attention too hard.
Good idea to take this subject from the chat into the forum.
Personally I've done it from time to time with no real training other than a bit of reading and videos, so personally I just concentrate on my breathing, counting from 1-10 then repeating for ten minutes, feeling the air going in and out, the sound it makes etc
I've heard from many people who advocate it for Lucid Dreaming, as you've said, to explore gently holding your attention which should be useful for WBTB and visualisation work.
It's simply focus and stabilzing thoughts. And a great benefit to LD and worth including in the practise. Helps for focus, stress relieve, lowering bloodpressure and all that kind of happyhappy. There's never a failed session. Even when totally distracted and difficult to focus, it'll train the mind. When I've dreams that are more vivid or having a LD, there's mostly some of a meditation excersise involved. Yoga also helps, it's focussing in the movement.
I think with everything it's personal what works. Guided or not guided. Visualising meditation for the visual people, but can also be beneficial as training this for less visual people. Same with sounds or movement. You can put music on, but it could also be worthy to try to cope with outside noise distractions. Also it can be used to focus and zooming in on one dreamgoal.
I combine a breathing excersise for 10 mins;
5 sec breathing in, 10 sec out. Or 6 in, 12 out.
It's deep belly breathing and will help me focus, cause no time to think and get a lot of oxygen. When becoming aware of breathing the body will be likely to take over this deeper breathing habit during the day and brings stress relieve with it. It took a little while to get into it and relax and trust this what first felt as forced breathing. .
I've a Pranayama app. Sounds twaddlish, but it's just a breathing techniqye. It makes different sounds for breathing in and out, helps me not having to count.
It helps to start a meditation, so you already more relaxed. It can be beneficial for all day awareness or mindfulness and slows down time a bit. When I breathe deep I can take in more of my environment and that's exactly what I need in a LD.
I've been off and on with my practice, but since I've started back up with lucid dreaming I'm trying to do a couple sessions a day of focusing on my breathing for 10-15 minutes, and occasionally longer on weekends.
I find it really helps me to get into a mindful state faster, and makes me feel "lucid" during the day time. I've been reminding myself during the day to bring myself back to the present, and meditation helps me understand what that means. I also have started noticing how my thoughts arise, before I get pulled into them. It's almost like a pre-thought that I can see coming before it comes fully into my consciousness.
Something I've been struggling with during my meditation though is that I do get caught up in thoughts for too long before I'm able to bring myself back to my breath, and feel like I'm building a bad habit with it. So recently I've started instead of just setting a fixed time to sit, I'm working on timing myself to see how long I can focus on my breath before I get distracted. Once I feel like I've gotten distracted I stop meditating and write down what pulled my attention away and then try again. I'm hoping having a goal of trying to see how long I can go will motivate me to keep my focus, and also catching what distracted me will help me understand what kinds of subjects pull my attention too hard.
Good idea to take this subject from the chat into the forum.
Personally I've done it from time to time with no real training other than a bit of reading and videos, so personally I just concentrate on my breathing, counting from 1-10 then repeating for ten minutes, feeling the air going in and out, the sound it makes etc
I've heard from many people who advocate it for Lucid Dreaming, as you've said, to explore gently holding your attention which should be useful for WBTB and visualisation work.