Emotion Control and Yoga Nidra

[midnightfire]

Hi everyone, I have recently started the practice of Yoga Nidra and been researching Yoga Nidra for a while now and it seems to me it could be a great aid to attaining lucidity that is more specific than other types of meditations perhaps. Focus, awareness and control are important, but Yoga Nidra can also have a method to work with emotions. Since often when first learning to lucid dream our experiences are cut short by strong emotions – getting overly excited or fearful for example, this could be a great aid. There seems to be quite a few variations of Yoga Nidra. Some Yoga Nidra involves progressively relaxing the entire body and brining awareness to different body parts. It seem perfectly designed to induce OBEs as they are designed to get the body to be so relaxed it asleep while keeping the conscious “mind” awake. This is an ultimate goal that for most people would take a long time to achieve to get into a state of that profound relaxation yet also awareness. However, other Yoga Nidra go into more depth and can involve apparently randomly calling out a bunch of words/phrases such as “snake, baby, cat,” or “a calm river, a tall mountain, a stormy ocean” I have done these practices in Yoga classes before and had no idea what that point of that is. Now from further research it is my understanding that certain pairs of words are used that tend to evoke opposite responses in our minds. The constant yo-yoing between stressful thoughts and peaceful thoughts for example helps us to see that they are both one in the same and that we don’t need to react strongly either way. This can over-time train us to calmly observe whatever we encounter rather than reaction subconsciously which is so useful in everyday life and in learning to lucid dream! I would love to hear if anyone has had good success with yoga Nidra especially in relation to understanding emotions and habitual reactions.

[MasterMind]

Meditation in general is the art of observation rather than reaction. And I am using meditation to "wake up" from my over-active stressed out mind every day. I have a journal where I write down my mood and thoughts before the meditation and one after the meditation. And see for yourself below. It might look cool, but it FEELS amazing. Before: Unfocused, know that I should clean up the mess in the kitchen but not really motivated. Kind of anxious and stressed out about a girl that I am going to meet up on Friday and I feel a bit uneasy. Feel tired and not motivated to do stuff, need sleep. After: Extreme focus, clear mind and just feel like I want to do the right thing without having to think about it. Realize that I can't control the result and not a person, all I can do is to focus on my actions. I do realize that I wasn't really having any problems, I was just looking at them way too seriously. I feel calm and peaceful and it feels like I have woke up from my mind haze and I am energic and motivated, I still feel that I have lost some energy from the long day working, but it feels different, like I am just observing the tiredness, not letting it define me. Another fun way to describe it is that meditation is like a clean brain enhancement, like in the movie Limitless. "I wasn't high or wired, just clear, I knew what to do and how to do it." So my advice to you would be, just do the meditation and log your progress, it will be very clear to you that it do wonders for your mood and life as a whole. And I believe you are right, strong emotions in dreams are less frequent when you meditate regularly and since your mind is stable your dreams are more stable. There are tons of more benefits to meditation for lucid dreaming, but to prevent myself from writing a wall of texts, I end it here. I hope this helped you and good luck with the Yoga Nidra. Peace.

[midnightfire]

That's great that you are getting such clear changes, yeah I agree that any type of meditation is going to be helpful. I guess I find Yoga Nidra particularly helpful for Lucid dreaming because unlike a lot of other meditations which are traditionally done in a seated position this is the first I have encountered which is done in a lying down position and because instead of waiting to see what comes up there are certain ways to directly bring things up. I sometimes get the experience of after meditating feeling much calmer, but not always, sometimes I feel more agitated or it just wears off in an instance, but it's probably because I need to practice more/incorporate it more into my life. That is good advice to log my before and after I will give it a go

[MasterMind]

What made me truly integrate my meditation to my whole life was changing my view about what meditation was about. You can read my guide here: http://www.dreamviews.com/meditation...appy-free.html But to summarise the main idea: It's not WHAT you do but HOW you do it. Do not focus on attaining some outcome with the meditation, because what frees your mind isn't the result but your mindset of acceptance and non-resistence. Just accept where you are and casually observe it, but take action torwards your goals anyway and enjoy the action in itself. A practical example to understand one of the reasons to why non-trying, but just enjoying the doing inevitably leads to success, is the fact that you will stay patient and enjoy the ride while others are impatient and are hating every moment until they give up. A good example to show this is Arnold Schwarzenegger and his love for the process of working out. He was the undefeated Mr. Universe six years in a row and in the movie "Pumping Iron" when they interview his rivals they say "I am going to get up to that stage and show them who's the best and if I don't win all these workouts sessions have been for nothing!" but when they interview Arnold he is just calm and says "I love working out, it's an art and the idea of targeting each muscle and shaping it like a marble is so difficult but I love every workout. Each repetition is like orgasming for me." So in other words Arnold is focused on his actions and his love for the process itself, while his competerers is self-image focused and almost view the workouts as some annoying obstacle between them and their goal. Arnold won and then he became an actor and later a governor. So learn to love the process and the journey and the result is just a fun bonus. Meditation teaches you to love both the short-term process of each practise session but also the long-term process of learning to meditate. The true price of anything that you choose to master, is your state of mind. In this case Freedom and Happiness. Enjoy!

[midnightfire]

Thanks for the guide Mastermind. What you said about enjoying the process is something that I have only just recently been able to understand as I have become more focused on my lucid dreaming practices. In a way focusing on lucid dreaming has lead me back to meditation. For a long time I knew the benefits of meditation but still found it a chore. Now I don’t mind as much what kind of result I have as long as I give myself the time to try it and if its yoga Nidra I always come out relaxed so I look forward to that but I also do breath awareness meditation. For me Yoga Nidra was helpful beginning because for a beginner you just need to listen to the recording and do nothing else. Exactly because you do nothing it is a release for the mind and it feels very necessary to give the mind a break after all the over-trying with RCs, waking up going back to bed methods, cramming my mind full of information all day, problem solving etc.! Haha I hadn't heard that quote from Arnie but as a PT I can appreciate his view as well. I have used weight-lifting to get into a point of meditation – active meditation. Exercise can be a good way to align the mind and body if the focus is right. Ps. The cat in the photo in your other post is huge! My cat is too crazy for meditation she won't sit still even now I had to re-type some of this as she walked right across the keyboard.

[MasterMind]

Haha cats

[Daniele]

My first lucid dream, a WILD, was initiated at the beginning of the night while listening to a Yoga Nidra guided meditation. I was using it to help me fall asleep, a problem I frequently had, when I started feeling the vibrations and hearing the roaring sounds. It frightened me the first time until I researched what was happening. Once I understood my body was going to sleep while my mind remained awake I tried it again and went with the sensations when they started. I still use it to help me fall asleep some nights.

[MeohMyoh]

I'm glad to have found something I know is actually of some use. I've being doing Yoga Nidra as a relaxation tool for ten years or more. And I use it before I try to WILD. I just say the dialogue required to myself.