Going Back At a Vipassana Meditation Retreat

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Hey guys!

I’m going back at a Vipassana meditation retreat in a few hours. For those of you who don’t know, it is a 10 day intensive meditation retreat in which you basically meditate 12 hours a day, eat minimal amounts of food and sleep very little.

I really found my last year experience to be highly beneficial on many levels, and I definitely look forward to going back to go deeper into my practice. I also view this retreat as a personal challenge.

I’m obviously a little apprehensive, Vipassana retreats are pretty damn hard, both physically and mentally, especially since there are additional rules for old students. The way I understand it, I’ll be sleeping on the floor and won’t be allowed to eat after noon. The goal is to fully experience reality without any distractions or activities to escape it. Obviously, you’re not allowed to bring any book, music, cellphone, etc. The rules may seem extreme, but I feel like they help tremendously with the practice.

Well, I have to pack my bags and leave, I’ll surely blog about my experience when I’m back from the retreat!

By the way, I have written an extensive description of my last year’s experience. You can read it by clicking here : My Vipassana Experience – Meditation Pushed to the Edge.

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Sleep Paralysis – What It Is and Why It’s Awesome

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What if you woke up and found yourself completely unable to move? You’re lying in bed and sense there’s something wrong with your room… Suddenly, a dark and spine-chilling entity approaches your bed, looking straight in your eyes and smiling threateningly ; it knows you can’t move. It slowly climbs your bed, staring at you malevolently. It moves over your chest and you feel its extreme weight preventing you from breathing. You desperately try shouting for help, but no sound comes out of your mouth. Sounds like a nightmare? No. This is a documented medical condition known as sleep paralysis … and it’ll happen at least once to half of you!

What is sleep paralysis?Sleep Paralysis attack

According to most people who’ve experienced it, sleep paralysis is one of the scariest episodes someone can go though. In history, it has been labelled as ghost attack, demonic possession, or even extraterrestrial encounter. Having experienced it myself, I can definitely understand how people may have been led to believe such things.

Typically, people will experience a sense of being “imprisoned” in their body and “feel” a malevolent presence in their room. At this point, most people start panicking, which strongly Sleep paralysisaggravates their sense of fear. Moreover, they often get terrifying auditory, visual and even tactile hallucinations. Strangely, the most commonly reported experience is that of being asphyxiated  by a demon or witch strongly pressing on their chest. I find it very intriguing that this episode has been reported by the majority of subjects who’ve experienced sleep paralysis. The painting on the left depicts this very scene, with the black horse representing Satan.

Fortunately, sleep paralysis has been studied by scientists and a satisfying medical explanation has been found. When dreaming, the brain naturally paralyzes the body for safety reasons so that, for example, our legs don’t move when we dream about chasing a rabbit. However, in rare circumstances, your brain can keep paralyzing your body although you’re mentally awake. You thus find yourself lying in your bed, fully conscious, yet only able to move your eyes, as they aren’t paralyzed during sleep. Since you’re still technically asleep, you experience the same hallucinations that you would in a nightmare, only with your eyes open. Obviously, the panic created by the paralysis creates a mental state much more prone to create very, very scary scenarios. Sleep paralysis can occur before falling asleep or upon waking up, the latter being by far the most common.

A misknown fact is that your eyes are indeed physically open during the experience, so what you see is indeed your “real room”, but mixed with the hallucinations created by your brain. I initially thought the room I saw was created by my mind, but recently, someone sleeping next to me noticed my eyes being open during an experience. Pretty freaky, isn’t it? :P

Why sleep paralysis is awesome

Clearly, at this point, you probably wish you’ll never experience sleep paralysis! I’ve actually had the “chance” to experience sleep paralysis more than a hundred times and thus have had the opportunity to study it extensively. I can say with strong confidence that although it may merely seem to be a frightening phenomenon to the inexperienced, if approached and understood properly, sleep paralysis can actually be used an an invaluable tool to help achieve altered states of awareness as well as a vast array of unconventional and fascinating experiences. For those of you who are curious, the surprisingly high occurrence of my sleep paralysis experiences is due to my alternative sleep pattern and the very high frequency of my lucid dreams.

So, what can you actually do besides getting scared out of your wits? The main two things I really love using sleep paralysis for are meditation and lucid dreaming.

Using sleep paralysis to meditate. Since most meditation techniques usually involve starting out by relaxing the body, we can definitely use the fact that our body is asleep to achieve much deeper meditative and trance-like states. Indirectly, most these meditation techniques initially aim to reduce your brain wave frequency. When awake, your brain will usually be in a “beta” state, which ranges from 13 to 30hz. Most relatively inexperienced meditators will achieve at most an “alpha” state, which ranges from 8 to 13hz…

But when you enter sleep paralysis, your brain automatically enters the “theta” state, which ranges from 4 to 8hz. This state allows for a much more profound meditative experience. given that you can tolerate the initial hallucinations caused by sleep paralysis. Personally, I simply close my eyes, ignore the hallucinations and start meditating. After experimenting with many, my favorite meditation technique is Vipassana, but feel free to try your own! You’ll likely get auditory and perhaps even tactile hallucinations for a little while but keep focusing on your meditation and trust me, they’ll quickly fade away if you don’t panic.

Using sleep paralysis to lucid dream. One of the fundamental goals when trying to enter lucid dreams consciously is to relax your body to the point where it is asleep while your mind is awake. These types of lucid dreams are called WILDs (Wake-Induced Lucid Dreams) and this technique requires you to relax your body very deeply before entering your dream.  The hardest step is performing a WILD is definitely the relaxation phase, so when you are in a sleep paralysis state, 95% of the work has been done for you since your body is already as relaxed as it can be! The only thing left for you to do is to close your eyes, imagine a dream and enter it! Personally, I’ve had great success imagining myself “sinking” in my bed and emerging in a new world of my choice.

Moreover, sleep paralysis will help you fight your fears since everything you’ll be experiencing is created by your own mind. With time, I have become less and less freaked out by the hallucinations and they have become less scary. Most of the time, I’ll just see random people looking at me, sometimes even friends of mine! They often talk to me, which is a great opportunity for me to “communicate” with my subconscious mind. ;)

Easily escaping sleep paralysis

Although I rarely want to escape sleep paralysis voluntarily since I prefer using it to meditate or to go back in a lucid dream, it is still useful to know how to break this state. This knowledge will also help you not panic and maintain a calm mind during the experience.

Most tips I have read about involve trying to move a toe or a finger to break the paralysis. Personally, I find this method’s efficiency to be very limited as, often enough, you won’t be able to move even the slightest inch of your body.

The key to getting back to full wakefulness is to send a signal that will get your body to realize that your mind is actually awake and that it should stop the paralysis. Since the only two things you’ll be able to control in a full sleep paralysis are your eyes and your breath, we will take advantage of the latter and escape sleep paralysis by altering our breathing pattern. The idea behind changing your breathing pattern, for example by taking deeper and longer breaths, is that your body will notice the change and respond to it by stopping the paralysis. From my experience, it will usually take less than 30 seconds to escape sleep paralysis with this technique.

Conclusion

Sleep paralysis is scary at first but it proves to be a fascinating phenomenon once you transcend the frightening stuff it induces. Hopefully, you’ll get new experiences that will blow your mind! :)

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How to Lucid Dream: Learn to Control your Dreams!

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What is a lucid dream?

A lucid dream is a dream in which you are aware that you’re dreaming. This awareness allows you to experience and remember your dream more fully but most importantly, control them. Lucid dreams are pretty similar to what people experience in the movie Inception (except you obviously can’t go in someone else’s dream). It’s not surprising that Chris Nolan, Inception’s writer, producer and director, is an avid lucid dreamer!

Although lucid dreaming normally occurs as a spontaneous and unplanned phenomenon, it is a skill that can easily be learned by anyone in a short period of time!

Why lucid dream?Lucid Dreaming

First of all, lucid dreaming is incredibly fun. With experience, you’ll easily be able to fly, create fantastic scenarios and visit places that will blow your mind! The feeling of freedom as well as the uniqueness and richness of the experiences you’ll get when lucid dreaming are absolutely outstanding.

Lucid dreaming can also be used as a source of inspiration as it greatly enhances creativity. Notably, famous scientists like Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla and Richard Feynman have been known to use lucid dreaming to visualize some of their theories and even help with solving highly challenging problems. Artists such as James Cameron (director of Avatar), Stephen King and Salvador Dali have also used lucid dreams to come up with fresh and creative ideas. A quick look at Dali’s paintings will give you a glimpse of how outlandish and fascinating lucid dreaming can be! ;)

Lucid dreaming also proves to be an invaluable tool for self-reflection and allows you to gain profound insight into your own psychology. According to Freud, dreams are the “royal road to the subconscious” ; lucid dreams thus allow you to directly and consciously interact with your subconscious. In fact, I often ask questions to my “dream characters” as a way to speak directly to my subconscious. I have gotten some highly valuable insight this way, some of which have proved to be nothing short of life-changing.

Moreover, various lucid dreaming studies were performed and showed that lucid dreaming was helpful in reducing not only sleep-related problems like nightmares and night terrors but also waking life ones such as depression and low self-esteem. Lucid dreams give you the opportunity to face your fears, outgrow them  and become a stronger human being!

How to lucid dream?

Lucid dreams can begin in one of two ways. Normal dreams during which, at some point, the dreamer becomes aware that he’s dreaming, are called “dream-induced lucid dreams” (DILDs). When you lucid dream straight from being awake without loss of consciousness, they are referred to as “wake-induced lucid dreams” (WILDs). Basically, when you do a DILD, you “add awareness” to dreaming but when you do a WILD, you “add dreaming” to awareness.

Dream-induced lucid dreams (DILDs)

The vast majority of lucid dreams star off as a “normal” dreams where eventually, the dreamer becomes aware. The key to maximizing your odds of having a DILD is to increase the frequency of your dreams and the probability that you will become lucid during these dreams. Most of the methods explained below work both ways for optimal results.

Reality checks. A reality check consists of verifying whether you are dreaming or not. The trick here is to make reality checks part of your daily routine so that you eventually do them by habit. The goal behind this is for this habit to continue while you’re dreaming, which is when you’ll get an opportunity to become lucid. Interestingly, some reality tests seem to always fail in dreams. Here are my favorite reality checks:

  1. Reading. Try to read something, look away and then look back at it and see if it has changed. If you’re in a dream, the words will often be scrambled or even completely unreadable.
  2. Breathing. Try to breathe with your mouth and nose shut. In a dream, you’ll almost always be able to.
  3. Solid surfaces. Try to pass your hand through a solid surface. Personally, I like trying to pass my fingers through the palm of my other hand, as this is more discrete and can be performed anywhere as opposed to trying to “go through a wall”.
  4. Light switch. Attempt to turn the lights on and off. Interestingly, this usually fails in a dream.
  5. Hands. Look at your hands. Do they look normal? Do you have any extra/missing fingers? Personally, my hands often “melt” when I look at them in a dream.

For these checks to work optimally, you should incorporate a few of them in your daily routine. Also, be sure to do them fully consciously. Genuinely ask yourself if you are dreaming. If you do them on auto-pilot and take for granted that you’re awake, you’ll likely not become lucid after an unsuccessful test.

Self-affirmations. Before going to bed, repeatedly say  to yourself “I will have a lucid dream tonight”. This will greatly improve your chances not only of having a lucid dream but also of recalling your dreams.

Wake-up, back-to-bed. Commonly referred to as WBTB, this technique first consists of waking up before your normal wake-up time, usually after 4 to 6 hours of sleep. Next, you must wake your mind up by performing an activity such as doing crosswords or even reading about lucid dreaming and then going back to sleep within an hour. The key here is to keep your body quite tired while waking up your mind. Although not as efficient as WBTB, taking a short nap in the afternoon yields similar benefits for most people.

Daily awareness. The more your are aware during the day and pay full attention to your daily activities, the more likely it is that you’ll be conscious during your dreams. If you’re always on auto-pilot, you’ll continue that bad habit during your sleep.

Note that these techniques above are not mutually exclusive, in fact, using as much of them as you can will yield the best results!

Wake-induced lucid dreams (WILDs)

WILDs are indeed pretty wild! ;) . Wake-induced lucid dreams are often much more realistic than normal dreams and in my experience, they allow for much more control over the dream. Although they demand more training to perform successfully, once you’re experienced, they’re definitely the most reliable way to lucid dream on a regular basis. The goal here is to fall asleep consciously, create your own dream and basically “jump into it”. Here are the steps to do a WILD:

  1. Relax your body. The first step is to relax your body as deeply as possible while maintaining your mind fully awake and alert. Lie comfortably and feel your body gradually falling asleep. If you have trouble relaxing, you may want to practice a relaxation technique. Personally, I like to gradually focus on each part of my body in a sequential manner and relax them one by one by concentrating on their “heaviness”. After a while, when properly relaxed, you should start seeing shapes and colors behind your eyelids. This is called “hypnogogic imagery”; once you experience them, you can move to the next step.
  2. Create your dream. What you then want to do is imagine and visualize a dream scene. Since at this stage you’ll be seeing shapes and colors, you can “play with them” to progressively create your dream. I usually create an infinitely long white corridor with hundreds of doors as it is relatively simple to visualize and also helps with the next step. When you can “see” your dream scenario, you can move on to #3. If you have trouble with visualizing, you can also try imagining sounds, tactile sensations or odors! See what works best for you!
  3. Enter your dream. The final step is to fully enter the lucid dream. Depending on the dream you have created, you may want to interact with an element from your dream or try to move within your “dreamland” and explore new places to fully immerse yourself in the dream. When I visualize my above-mentioned “long-corridor”, I simply open one of the doors and enter it, whatever may lie behind it! It’s a fantastic adventure every time! :D

Do not be disappointed if you can’t do WILDs yet, they take a lot of practice to master! Also, note that they work best when you attempt them in combination with the “Wake-up, Back-to-bed” method discussed above as your body will already be highly relaxed.

Conclusion

I hope this article will help you lucid dream, it is such a wonderful and enriching experience! You’ll be amazed by the outstanding power of your brain the first time you lucid dream. Be sure to let me know how it went, it’s always interesting and fun to read lucid dreaming experiences! :)

photo credit: h.koppdelaney via photopin cc

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