The Christos Procedure

[Gen]

[Gen]

Right.. I'll try and sum up what I'm thinking with this.

A brief run down of the technique for those who can't be bothered reading the link..
1. Massage ankles and forehead simultaneously.
2. Ask subject to imagine their feet growing longer, then their head growing longer.. Alternate back and forth between the two stretching longer each time until they get the hang of it.
3. Ask subject to visualise standing at their front door. Get them to remember detail. Then ask them to imagine rising up above their house over their neighbourhood. Get more details to vivify the imagination. Ask them to change from night to day, to get them to have control over their environment.
4. Take them up over the clouds and ask them to move above the clouds forgetting what may be below, then ask them to descend back down into what ever environment they happen upon..

I have tried this technique once on a friend to induce a past life experience and it seemed to work quite well, but I did revert to some standard hypnosis techniques when I got him in the sky, simply because I hadn't memorised the technique very well decided to go with what I was familiar with.. (I do past life regressions with hypnosis)

So my thoughts on how this technique is useful is that I see it as breaking down to 4 standard stages of going to sleep..
1. physical relaxation
2. body distortion
3. conscious ideation (thought and visualisation)
4. subconscious free flow imagination, (dreams)

Obviously the massage part is not so ideal when trying to induce a lucid dream, but we have other methods of relaxation we can use.
The visualisation exercises are the parts that I feel are relevant. Incidentally, the body distortion part reminded me of Alice in Wonderland.

I don't think any of this is necessarily new to lucid dream research, but it is interesting and thought provoking to see it put into a package like this for altered states.

Does this strike a chord for anyone?

[Sunshine]

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[pj]

The technique certainly has all the elements of a hypnosis.  I like it because it is completely immersive - a hallmark of successful WILD techniques.

I like it and may give it a go this weekend.  Thank you!

[Gen]

A couple of other elements in this that got me thinking/analysing.. (sorry for my free flow writing style, my thoughts on this are under development..)

The head and feet stretching part:
Relating to Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (macropsia or Micropsia), the feeling of body spatial distortion on the verge of sleep (related to sleep paralysis)..
This phase of sleep onset tends to be where most people lose consciousness, so the idea of incorporating body distortion into the visualisation process, potentially could retrain the brain to be conscious for this part of the process.
This idea is a reflection of other common WILD techniques, e.g. Monroe's technique of imagining how nice it would be to fly/float..
It also could be stimulating that part of the (right?) Temporal lobe that is associated with spacial awareness, and of the perception of self within physical space.
Perhaps also related to that sense of falling as you are dropping off to sleep?

The front door visualisation:
Engaging memory, maybe a hippocampal stimulus (the hippocampus has been associated with out of body perception) also creating introspection and drawing attention away from the outer world is an important step towards dreaming..

Flying over house, engaging imagination and attention to detail. Movement visualisation creating REM. Also changing the lighting effect (night to day to night) helps establish control over environment (hmm, is this necessary)

My interest in this technique is also partly due to my aim to create an effective lucid dream hypnosis recording, this is why I am breaking it down thoroughly.

[Heidiho775]

I think this technique sounds really good. I often use the 61 points relaxation technique which also works very well for me.