Video Description:
The lucid dream body can be a great lucidity trigger and the key to exciting transformations within the lucid dream. How do we get to know the lucid dream body? Dr Clare Johnson, author of Llewellyn’s complete Book of Lucid Dreaming, and Dream Therapy, shares her experience of doing yoga in lucid dreams, swimming mermaid-style through the air, and being bodiless.
Author of lucid dream-inspired novels Breathing in Colour and Dreamrunner (as Clare Jay), Dr Clare Johnson is a lifelong lucid dreamer and the first person to do a PhD on lucid dreaming and creativity. Her DeepLucidDreaming.com website explores the many ways of waking up in dreams for a happier, more creative life.
@_Barry haha, great, Barry!
just wondering about that, so would you say that this is in harmony with perhaps a daytime attitude of dealing in a positive pragmatic way with strange situations which is more stronger than the habit of actually stopping and checking the state when strange things occur?
I have been working on creating a dream body…or an energy body…while I am still awake and taking that into the dream.
I had a very strong WILD experience a few nights ago by doing that…really the first time I have actually accomplished slipping into a wake induced dream completely. Of course, because of the intensity of that transition that dream did not last very long.
@_Barry Hey Barry, it wasn‘t meant in any unfriendly way. I just had to chuckle when I read your post about the four fingers and the „oh well, can live with that“ because it reminded me of how sometimes the mind can be so funny in being pragmatically unlogical. Man, how many times did I miss clear hints in my dreams that should have gotten me lucid right away but didn’t. A while ago I was dreaming I was an astronaut out on a space walk and was trying to avoid the birds (!) flying around there, which at that time did not seem to be particularly unusual to the dreaming me.
I use Tenzin Wangyal’s protocols every night. Throat chakra for my first sleep phase, brow chakra for the second, heart for the third. The heart chakra has become the strongest time for me as it generally comes at around 2:00 which leaves me three hours before I need to rise.
After the 21 breaths concentrating on the heart chakra I slip into 2 or 3 sensory induction cycles, always ending on the body. By this time I am generally well into hypnagogia. At the last body cycle I imagine gathering in energy from the world around me into my center…like a black hole feeding a singularity just below my navel. I let that energy build and then let it explode into my body.
I imagine that energy turning to light and dissolving my body. I let form become formless, both with my own body and with the world around me. I imagine everything as light as I blend formlessly with the underlying essence. I think of this as a Turiya-like state.
After dwelling there for a bit I imagine all of that blended light coalescing back into form within my body…a formless form that is radiant light. This becomes my energy body. (Turiyatita?)
The hard part for me comes then as I try to transfer my consciousness into that energy body. Often times I do not make it this far as sleep takes me. But other times it can get very powerful. The hypnagogic imagery becomes more defined and I can feel that energy body coming alive as I will my physical body to sleep. The mantra that I use at this crucial transition is: “Conscious and aware…I enter the dream”.
Sometimes I can feel the separation of the two bodies but it is an inseparable separation. I try to do this every night. Most times when I get this far I decide to roll over and sleep. Many strong lucid dreams have happened soon after that sleep. The other night, however, during the mantra there was a moment of blackness and I was in the dream…strongly lucid.
@Steve_Gleason Thanks, Steve! I try TWR‘s protocol from time to time but usually never get past the throat chakra. Either I can‘t fall asleep all night - When I try to do the 2h segments, I usually stay up all night because in the back of my mind I know that in 2h „there will be something happening“ -
or I fall asleep and waking up every two hours in order to do the next chakra really messes me up and I am tired as heck.
Any further ideas on this?
I will reread though, since this is really a powerful method of connecting with different mind qualities. TWR is really an amazing teacher.
I changed my preferred method to one of Namkhai Norbu‘s, i.e. focussing on the white A in the heart chakra and succeeded once or twice with WILD. For some reason it seems more relaxed to me.
One thing that helps me with this is that I don’t spend a lot time on the throat chakra…at this point, I know that the heart chakra is my place. Look at his nine purification breaths as a good way to fall right to sleep. I don’t do it exactly per his protocols.
When I first go to bed I lay on my back. I do 12 breaths, each in-breath comes in through the two side channels and goes out through the central channel. I collect the inhale at my center and then breath out stopping three times at each chakra as I open the central channel…heart chakra, throat chakra, brow chakra and crown chakra.
With the central channel wide open like that I bring my attention back to the throat…but often times I am already too close to sleep to stay there long. In my first waking period after that I do the brow chakra with a strong emphasis on the perineal breathing technique that Tenzin speaks of. But, again, I sometimes slide through that if I am very sleepy.
One suggestion might be to see if one of the other chakras is stronger for you. Tenzin speaks to the fact that some folks only concentrate on one chakra.
The one thing that I have definitely learned is that I need to get good sleep early to have any possibility of good lucidity later. I have a pretty structured sleep schedule these days so that helps. I’m in bed early every night and up early every morning.
Thanks for furthering the discussion with your use of these practices. Sometimes priming the pump is necessary. Why not drop by the Dream Sharing group sometime?
Well…honestly speaking, my friend, I have never been one to share my dreams. They are so personal and sometimes powerful and trying to relate that to someone else seems as if it would be a shadowy image of what they truly are to me.
Hmmmm…perhaps I should drop by and listen, though.
I definitely respect that, Barry. I guess I don’t put a lot of stock in dream interpretation. I look more at where my dreams come from than what I think they might be telling me.
Steve, I don’t have as many dreams as you do so it’s important for me to look at dreams to examine my thinking, sans sensory input and social conditioning. That can indicate (or not) how well my daytime practices and studies are penetrating my “iron-dome” of ignorance. Sometimes, I feel I’m operating in the “Get Smart” cone of silence.
Hey Barry…that really helps me to understand your perspective. Looking at it that way I can see how an examination of my really non-lucid dreams would help me to tune up my daytime practices toward achieving greater lucidity.
I still can’t quite imagine myself being able to offer constructive evaluation of another person’s dreams without having some sort of intimate knowledge about them that helped me to understand what originated them. This is based on the fact that I have come to really see how dreams do originate from karmic seeds or traces.
I see that dynamic every night as my dreams are so filled with people and images from my past and I can often times feel that karma liberating even as I observe the dream in progress. Many mornings I wake feeling…lighter and a bit more unencumbered.
All of that said…I know that open dialog can definitely lead to unforeseen change and progress with anything.
As a teacher, I learned that the best feedback is good questioning to have the learner/speaker elaborate. Sometimes alternative thoughts pop-up and often that helps people to make connections that they themselves might at first miss. Happened to me in this Forum a couple of times.
A while ago I was dreaming I was an astronaut out on a space walk and was trying to avoid the birds (!) flying around there, which at that time did not seem to be particularly unusual to the dreaming me.
