So I read King Yoshi's all day awareness review. And I'm reading "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep"
Yoshi's talks about being aware all day as far as feeling your clothes on your body, feeling your tongue in your mouth, seeing yourself blink, listening to your footsteps, paying attention to muscle movements or basically anything that would make you self aware that normal people take for granted. All of this is done to help produce DILD"s and the feeling of awarness in dreams.
The Dream Yoga book states the opposite in a way saying you should be aware of yourself but think of everything around you including yourself own body and mind as in the dream state all the time and to really feel the dreaminess.
Which of these actually works better? I don't know which one to actually practice
I guess I do the first one, sort of. While I'm pretty fail at being constantly aware, I do try to maintain my awareness for as long as I can. What I do might be a bit of a combination between the two. I'll list of what I do in points... Once I become aware I...
- Do a couple of reality checks and compare with what is happening with what should be happening, if I'm dreaming. I pinch my nose. Did I breathe? No? Try again. Still no? Okay, probably awake. Bite my tongue. Does my tooth feel sharp or numb? Sharp? It should feel numb, try it again. Still sharp. Probably awake.
- Be aware of how being awake feels / Or, once I discover lucidity, being aware of how dreaming feels. How do things feel around my body? I try to engage all my senses, because they are most definitely different. With sight, I usually try to manipulate something, like words, or the color of an object.
Those are usually enough. If I'm awake, then my next exercise is to just maintain that awareness... being aware of how life is around me, being awake. This helps prolong lucdity, too, as many people can get sucked back into the dream, just like we lose awareness while awake.
Lastly... and this is one I need to get back into... Is being aware of the idea that you could be dreaming any instant at any moment. So check lots. Especially if something that happens during the day confuses you, or seems out of the ordinary. If you're in an unfamiliar place.
Eventually, all this led me to a fairly consistent always-knowing if it's a dream or awake. Of course, like all things, I'm out of practice and need to retrain a bit, but it got to the point where, I was almost always lucid and didn't need "discovery moments" anymore.
