If you can get this to work you’ll have more lucid dreams quicker than you can imagine.
This post was meant to be about what the inner-voice feels like when it’s switched off, and it will be, but you need to experience if for yourself.
I had already wrote an article about what your body would feel like, what your head would feel like, and at what stages it would happen. But then I realized it was pointless because you need to live it.
I can explain what it’s like in one sentence. The inner-voice is switched off when you try to listen and no thoughts pop into your head. That’s it, basically. But we have much more important things to cover…
Why meditate lying down?
- That’s when you need to be aware
- It’s easier to play with your awareness
- Use the weight of your head as an anchor
That’s when you need to be aware
When you wake up in the morning and want to go back into the dream you will need to keep your awareness while lying down
When you attempt to become lucid from an awakened state you’ll do it lying down
It’s harder to meditate without falling asleep, so your awareness will be more advanced once you can do it
I personally think those 3 reasons are worth it on their own. I’d prefer to build up my awareness while in a position I’ll use the most.
It’s easier to play with your awareness
I’ve already spoke about what I do when inside the lucid trance:
- Imagine I’m floating in the sea
- Imagine I’m swinging side-to-side on a hammock
- Imagine I’m falling down a hole
I don’t know about you, but I prefer to experience those things while lying down. It feels comfier. There’s nothing more relaxing than imagining you’re rolling up and down with the waves while lying down. They’re invisible waves, because you don’t feel anything underneath you. Weightlessness.
Use the weight of your head as an anchor
This is the big one. This is how you’re going to switch off your inner-voice. It’s a technique I’ve been practicing for a while, but after speaking to someone over email I decided to publish it now.
Maybe I’ll come out with a more advanced version in the future, but this should switch off your inner-voice and allow you to feel all those weightless sensations.
Getting into position
The first thing you want to do is lie down on a bed, and don’t have any pillows underneath you.
Put your hands at your sides. If you put them on your stomach it feels very weird when you lose the feeling in your body.
Using your head
To begin, you should focus your awareness onto the base of your head. The part that’s touching your bed. There’s going to be a pressure there from the weight of your head.
I find it’s easier to focus your awareness on something when there is pressure to focus it on
Focusing on your nostrils or breath is great, but it’s a little abstract. It’s much easier to shift your awareness back onto something when there’s a physical presence to shift it back onto. I know your nostrils and breath is physical, but bare with me. They’re not touching anything solid, so they’re abstract for now.
That’s all you need to do (for now)
So whenever thoughts come popping into your head you have to shift your awareness back onto the base of your head where it’s touching the bed and feel the pressure. Focus your awareness on the pressure.
I don’t know if your awareness has ever been focused on anything before. When it is, it feels like nothing else matters. All you can sense is the pressure at the base of your head. You get the idea there’s things happening around it, but everything seems fuzzy.
Do this for a while until you get used to it. Once you practice shifting your awareness back onto the pressure and keeping it there you can move onto the next part.
Falling backwards
This is going to sound strange, but you need to separate your mind from your body. You need to think of them as two separate entities.
Have you ever been sleeping and felt yourself fall backwards before you suddenly wake up? Your body remained still, but your mind feel backwards. It was just a sensation, but that’s what I mean. Your mind disconnected itself from your body and fell backwards while your body stayed perfectly still.
So now you’re lying down and focusing your awareness on the pressure. Your body needs to stay still, obviously, but you need to try and disconnect your mind and fall backwards.
To do that you need to try and let go. The only way I can think to describe it is by trying to release all the tension in your body. You’ll know it’s working because your limbs will start feeling heavy.
(You can try this part on its own until you can do it. Just lie one arm at the side of you and try to let go the tension until it starts to feel heavy.)
Get ready for a fight
Once you start letting go and feeling sensations in your head, your mind will fight you. It’s not going to lie down without a fight. It’s at this point you have to realize it’s not a race. And it’s not a fight.
When you start to feel yourself fall backwards, even if it’s a tiny bit, your mind will put the brakes on. If you grabbed an electric fence, instead of letting go your hand would grip it tight. This is the same feeling you get in your head. Your mind is tightening up and when you try to relax you’re actually making the grip tighter.
All of this takes practice. All you need to do is relax. In the beginning you think you are relaxing, but you’re accidentally gripping tighter. In time you’ll be able to let go. It’s almost like you are accepting it. You have a deep sense of acceptance, a bit like you’re giving up. But you’re not giving up. You’re just giving up the tight grip.
Square block into a round hole
Do you remember when you were a kid and you had those toys where you had to learn shapes? You’d end up grabbing a square block and trying to put it into the round hole. Well think back to this time.
Imagine that the bed underneath your head is the round hole. Don’t even think about your body at the moment. Your mind is the square block and you need to put it through the hole.
How do you do it? Putting a square block through a round hole is impossible. You can try as much as you like, but it’s not going to happen in this lifetime.
Do you remember that pressure point where your awareness is focused? That’s your mind. Your awareness is focused there so that’s what we’re calling your mind.
Turn a solid into a liquid
You need to turn your mind into a liquid. You need to release the pressure point so you feel nothing. Before you can turn it into a liquid you need to try and relax as much as possible. So imagine you’re in the sea and floating up and down on the waves.
Focus your attention on your mind (the pressure point) and make it feel like it’s slowly bobbing up and down on the waves. If you focus your attention on the sensation you will begin to feel it. You have to convince yourself it’s fully relaxed and floating up and down. You have to believe it’s happening.
In English: The pressure point is where your head is pressed against the bed. You need the feeling of your head lying on the bed to disappear. So your head feels like it’s floating.
Now guess what?
First you should go back and feel your body. It should also feel like it’s floating up and down on the sea.
Now stop thinking for a second and try to listen for the voices. Hopefully none should pop up.
If this works you have entered the lucid trance. Now you know how to get into it and you can start playing with your awareness. In a future article I’ll talk about more things you can do inside.
But for now just keep practicing this until you get into the lucid trance then have as much fun as you want inside it.
Shifting awareness on the back of your head seems harder to me, I tried twice so far and each time fell asleep — I think it might be harder to continuously focus attention there when compared to the nostrils, because the stimuli doesn’t change with each breathe you take — Oh well! I’ll keep going.
Hey Cryzed,
That’s cool if you find the nostrils easier, or even if you enjoy doing it while sitting. I just mentioned the head and lying because I find it easier, although if you always fall asleep you could maybe learn not to once you get more practice with the nostrils. Learning not to fall asleep in this position will definitely play a big part in future lucid dreams, but I can understand why you’d want to get better with other ways first if you prefer it.
The main takeaway from the article I wanted to get across was that it was about more than simple awareness. It’s about moving past simple awareness and and starting to manually get your consciousness to change by using hypnotic techniques like falling back and turning your mind to liquid.
I totally agree Jamie. When I first learned how to meditate I thought I had to sit cross legged and have perfect posture and all that jazz.
After a while of experimenting I found that I was most comfortable lying on the floor. I think it made my mind and body more relaxed making it easier to reach levels of awareness that I couldn’t in the sitting position.
Take care. 🙂
Hey Justin,
Thanks for dropping by. Lying on the floor is another great idea and something I’ve done before.
Luckily my mattress at the moment is as hard as a carpeted floor and my actual floor is made of cold tiles, so I have to stick to my bed lol
Interesting take on lucid dream methods. I always thought that in order to lucid dream you had to be “naturally” good at it, or you had to always remind yourself to do reality checks (which didn’t work for me), but I’ll try your method tonight and see what happens. Thanks 🙂
Hey Misty,
It’s definitely not simple. I wish I could give someone a magic word to say and they would automatically become lucid, but unfortunately it takes a little work.
I’m in the process of trying to make the steps as easy and painless for people to keep doing them and slowly building up their skill, so hopefully you can join it. Of course there’s always the option for people to do it much faster, but it’s not needed.
Wow! This is amazing stuff! Great writing on a challenging topic!
Thanks Barclay,
Not sure how it went for you last night with mixing in hypnosis, but I’ve nearly finished a great post that has new ways to reach the trance state without concentrating on a fixed thing.
I’ll try this.
I’ve meditated on my back on the bed and find this helps focus as i ‘fight falling asleep’ helping me concentrate.
Haven’t tried this technique with head rear touching the bed but will.
I’ve used a ‘stethiscope’ listening to my ‘heart’ getting into it thinking about the physics, chemistry, biology and miracle of the ‘beating’, then get into the beating, beating, beating and stop ‘thinking’ and just ‘be’ with the beating then with ‘being’.
Another one is laying down and concentrating on ‘BEING DEAD’. Sound weird but it works. I imagine people looking down at me in my casket dead and i ‘get into being dead’ forgetting they are looking at me and perhaps imaging myself looking at myself but staying with the ‘idea’ i am dead and ‘getting into it’ to the point of ‘just being’.
Fun stuff
Hey John,
Some nice ideas there. I think I’d be too scared to do the heart one even though it sounds really cool, because when I can hear my heartbeat I always worry it will stop lol
The dead one also sounds cool. It’s how I’ve thought about describing shifting your awareness into the void, but not sure if people would understand what I mean.
Let me know what happens with the head thing. It’s definitely good for helping you to stay awake. I think you need some sort of anchor until you get so far into a trance otherwise the mind usually slips away from my grasp.
Good luck,
Jamie
Alright, I’m going to start meditating while lying down from now on because “that’s when you need to be aware” makes a whole load of sense to me.
I’m no stranger to meditation, but definitely kind of a stranger to lying down while meditating. I’ve just tried it again after a long time, and I must say, it’s more difficult to keep a silent/focused mind lying down than sitting.
I also get some weird sensations I can’t exactly explain.. After I relax, first my body starts feeling tingly for no apparent reason. Then if I manage to keep a quiet mind for a period of time, like it happened earlier, I get these sort of.. short “waves” that spread through my body and give me almost a “sinking” sensation, which makes my mind snap like “whoa what was that, what’s going on?!” But then I relax mentally again and it happened again. Also, I think I had some hypnagogia, which I’m not sure is a good sign.. A few times throughout the 20 minute session, my mind showed me some random images and said some things that made no sense whatsoever but I just observed them and didn’t think much of them.
Anyway I will definitely keep meditating while lying down from now on, I believe it is indeed more effective for lucid dreaming and can aid my current “all day self awareness” practice.
Hey Fox,
You just need to ignore those sensations and if you’re about to enter REM sleep you’ll eventually pass into a lucid dream as long as you can hold onto your awareness.
I’ve got a few other articles on the site that will help you speed things up. I know what you mean about it being more difficult, but it’s worth it once you build up your skills.
I think im doing something horribly wrong. I get all the way to the part where you fall back. I start tingling all over, im getting heavy, and then nothing. After this im very relaxed. And after a period of this, i just jump start. I feel like im choking on air, I inhale deeply and try to relax again. This is hard because I now have a stomping heart beat. I relax again, and it happens once more. I know that’s not supposed to happen when you relax. Im also listening to white noise through my headphones to block out my family. Hope that’s not the problem. Anyway, I made it to the 40 minute mark today before becoming unfocused and giving up. That’s good, right?