Contratonics' Dream Journal

[Wędajihs]

Hope you had a merry christmas. I don't celebrate it myself but have no ill will toward those who do. I tried celebrating Festivus one year and had a blast. This year I went for a hike on the 25th to immerse myself in nature. Had a wonderful walk through foggy, snow patchy woods. Was magical. 

I really like the ending of your extreme running speed dream. That's pretty slick, teleporting unauthorized users to a detainment center.

[Contratonics]

I've heard Festivus is a wild ride, that one's on my bucket list. I don't live in a place that gets much fog anymore though, I miss it. Glad you were able to get out and appreciate some.

12/26/19

No dream recall. Last thing I do remember is moving a blanket off the bed after waking up in the night due to the heat.

Not much sleep either, the past couple nights. I focused on getting some more detailed descriptions for older recurring DCs and getting back to familiarity with some of their symbols. Working with some of Ophi and Lune's tones helped keep me attentive at work against a bit of sleeplessness. It's no substitute for rest, but it got me through a busy day. I caught up some in the evening, and I'll be heading back to that now. Fingers crossed.

[Contratonics]

12/27/19

Fragment

Single image of reaching into a small [wooden?] birdcage with several small gemstones floating inside.

[Contratonics]

12/28/19

Discovering, training with and eventually participating in a mock duel with several small magical and/or technological tools adapted for use as weapons.

-

first part of dream involved finding these. I remember a small underground sci-fi styled building that had become more cavelike over time due to mineral deposition coating the walls and floors with brittle stone. The place was roughly the size of a small apartment building, but with larger halls. Some of the machinery was working due to efforts by some group to restore the facility, which created obstacles to reaching the tool.

I was with DCs who represented two people from waking life, but I don't remember who now. Traveling through the building led us to a sort of looping series of rooms that were linking back recursively on each other, and we realized we must be in the facility where the palm-mounted weapon was made. We split up, allowing us to trigger different spatial anomalies and puzzle our way through the building.

At the top was a door hinge that had been expanded to comically large proportions over years and years of spatial distortion, but only when approached from a certain angle. The curved and irregular surface inside could only be navigated with some kind of skating maneuver I can't remember very well, but at the apex of the hinge were the palm mounted weapon. I presume escaping the place using their less dramatic but more reliable spatial distortions was simpler than breaking in, but I don't remember that bit.

-

Second part was a mock duel that consisted of two parts. First were several competitive tests of finesse, destructive ability and familiarity with the tools. First person to knock down a small pin hanging from a difficult to access object without breaking anything, first person to break a thing to judge's standards, the usual cliches. Then we relocated to a more open area for the actual face-to-face part, though I woke up on the way there.

[Contratonics]

12/29/19

No dream recall. I remember turning over a couple of times in the night for a drink of water I keep on the nightstand.

[Contratonics]

12/30/19

Fragment after some poor sleep.

Single image of a woman sitting on a bench indoors. Odd posture, both attentive and excruciatingly formal. She was looking off slightly to my left, not sure at what. No clear memory of the room or her exact appearance. Maybe wearing some kind of long coat?

[Caradon]

Hope you have some better sleep soon. I've been struggling to remember much the last couple nights too, sucks. It helped getting a nap in today. Had some nap recall.   

[Wędajihs]

Hope you get back to some sweet sleeping soon. As odd as it sounds, sleep yoga sometimes works for me when I'm desperate to sleep.

[Contratonics]

It's a pain in the ass, but it happens. Thanks for the encouragement you two.

I only have a passing familiarity with yoga in general, but it doesn't sound all that odd. Brings to mind some mental body awareness exercises and gentle dream-related meditation drills that might pair well with a sleep yoga session. I'll try that tonight and report back, likely after work. Busy one tomorrow.

[Contratonics]

12/31/19

No dream recall, but I did get a decent night's sleep.

I tried a dream yoga exercise after Wedijahs' suggestion, not surprisingly that's the last thing I remember from the night. It's been a while since I did anything like this, so I incorporated some easy to reach dream symbols to help simplify the process.

Started it by getting settled into bed with a small neck pillow and a larger one under my knees for comfort. I visualized an old comfortable scene from back home, paying special attention to the feelings of chill wind over my body and coarse ground under my feet. The soft sound of wingbeats over my head from local birds waking up in the early morning and the silhouettes of small trees and brush stretching off toward the horizon rounded it out.

I used those silhouettes to facilitate a scene transition the way I would in an LD, changing it from a waking life scene to the Manifestuary. The plant silhouettes were replaced by the dim glow of coral growths and the flat arid landscape replaced by grey shoreline and ink black ocean.

I reached my left hand out to one of the corals, drawing a pinpoint of tone into my hand, and using the faint vibration and luminescence associated with the stuff to perform a basic body awareness exercise. I moved the feeling of it up and down each finger, then each arm, then traced my back, stomach and legs, back up my neck and across my face and scalp.

Next time I'll probably start at my face or toes, I'm beginning to understand why most introductory guides on this sort of thing do that. I could feel myself making strained expressions and involuntarily flexing my feet when I reached tough spots. Focusing on relaxing those first seems like a smart choice.

Either way, once I spread the little tone echo through my body I focused on gathering it back into my hands and returning it to the coral.

It could have been a short and sweet session, but I ran into a couple of tough sensory areas that occupied most of the session and I probably compromised the relaxing intentions of it all by struggling through them until I was satisfied with the way the feeling traveled across them. Good practice, but not when I'm trying to fall asleep. Lessons learned.

[Wędajihs]

That sounds like a wonderful session. The sleep yoga I was talking about isn't that deep though. It's just deep stretching in yoga poses, slowing one's breathing, and trying to keep the mind clear. I started off using videos off youtube but developed my own routine. I'll usually do it until my body stops crackling and popping and the stretches aren't uncomfortable anymore. By the end, while in corpse pose, I sometimes can feel myself drifting off and know I'll sleep well that night.

Also
Happy New Year Contratonics.
 
Wishing you all the best and brightest dreams in the upcoming year, lucid and non lucid. Looking forward to reading what dreams may come you way.

[Contratonics]

My introduction to a thing called "sleep yoga" was very different, apparently. That sounds much more manageable!

Happy New year to you too, dreams and all.

01/01/20

A bunch of Fragments

1.
I'm traveling across a hilly, rocky area peppered with trees and small lakes. I'm carrying a sword and dream memory suggests I'm familiar with its use, but I am not a soldier or mercenary by trade. Instead I'm some sort of alchemist, collecting ingredients from rare creatures and environments to create potions, materials and other products with slight magical properties.

I settle in for a short time in a local town and meet another alchemist who specializes in metalwork. He and I take an apprentice who is was a soldier and is looking to find a trade. I and the metal worker eventually notice some nonspecific danger coming in the form of some kind of magical attack. While discussing amongst ourselves how to help the town and survive ourselves, the other alchemist is injured. I treat him but he will need time to be healed enough to fight without opening the wound. Our apprentice and I scout using tools of the trade.

2. Later in the same dream, I'm in third person watching crows gathering at a small ridge. Each is carrying a curved tooth. The teeth dissolve, and each crow becomes a fiery looking black and grey silhouette of a bird. They take flight again, and charge into local wildlife of their way to a town. Anything they touch dissolves and implodes with a rhythmic brush and thud.

3. Making a large luxurious bed with a waking life coworker in the middle of a slightly dome shaped room. Firm yet smooth sheets, thick blankets so fluffy they could almost be pillows themselves, dark rich burgundy and violet colors. I'd just gotten done talking with someone here, and I don't remember using the bed for anything, but my coworker and I were moving in what felt like very practiced motions turning this thing over.

4. Short scene of equipping some sort of science-fictiony set of equipment. I was wearing a sort of thin body armor with attachment sites for modular parts, choosing a "loadout" appropriate for some upcoming work, though I don't remember any of the details.

5. In Bu West house getting a cousin's dog ready to walk outside. I dress for snow while the juvenile golden retriever dances about in excitement. When I open the door, everything beyond the hill of the driveway seems to be a colorful, dense caricature of outer space with brightly colored galaxies, interstellar clouds, ect. There are several half-constructed lego sets strewn about, and I find myself able to take them apart to salvage real spacecraft and supplies by removing their toy equivalents from the set. The dog vanishes at some point during my scavenging.

[Caradon]

Wow looks like recall is picking up. Those were fun dreams.  I love the fantasy theme going on. Are you a fan of the genre? Books, movies, shows, games?  I've always wanted to summon and fly on the back of a dragon in a lucid dream. So far never done it, though I did visit Krynn once while lucid. the world of The Dragon Lance saga. That was a wonderfully magical experience. I have the VR version of Skyrim. OMG, fighting dragons in VR on a life size scale, and when my character was still weak, I was in pure awe of it the first couple of times. 

[Contratonics]

Fingers crossed on the recall. It'll wax and wane a bit, but things are getting on track faster than I expected.

Never been deep into fantasy, but I have gotten into a handful of series here and there and used to do a lot of tabletop RPGs as a player and gm, where fantasy in various forms is king in terms of popularity. That's where most of my familiarity with the genre comes from. I didn't know Dragonlance was a series, I've only heard of it as a D&D campaign setting. Literally walking into a fictional world does sound like a wild ride. If there's a thread for stuff like this I'd be glad to pick up on this convo more in depth there, could be good inspiration.

Edit: didn't see a general enough topic to Necro, so here's a fresh one http://mortalmist.com/forum/index.php?topic=10785.0

01/02/20

Fragment

Short scene in what looked like a concrete room. I'm alone, looking through various roughly carved stone crates and loading their contents onto a sort of flattened shopping cart.

[Wędajihs]

Great batch of dreams and recall there! Would love to experience an outerspace scene like the one you had.