Sleep Yoga: Conscious During Sleep (Guide)

[Sempiternity]

This is amazing, thank you so much! I'm diving into all of this.

Would love to see more quality posts like this on this forum.

[GreenWoods]

Measuring Brainwaves with the Muse S

In this thread I made a few posts about my results from using the Muse S to measure my brainwaves.

Here I pasted the main points from the different posts into one post. If someone is interested in the Muse S, the original posts are more detailed.

- About the data:

• it's the average values of a couple of sessions:
• Consider the number as the strength of the particular brainwave. The higher the number, the more brainwaves in that frequency. When you measure your brainwaves you don't get a simple result as "10Hz". You always have some brainwaves of all frequencies
• "Baseline" is an average of: reading, watching youtube, thinking with eyes closed. It is difficult to determine your baseline levels because if you have your eyes open then that has an impact on your brainwaves. As well as any tiny movement or muscle contractions.  My high delta baseline is undoubtedly due to that (because movement and muscle contractions has its most influnece on delta)
• I never had perfect signal accuracy. But I think it was somewhat ok. Except during sleep. There it was a mess. So that data might not be reliable.

 

- Some findings from using the Muse S:

• the biggest difference between awake and sleep are lower gamma waves. Hence my emphasize on gamma and beta in my sleep yoga posts.
• Another big difference is an increase in delta. 
• change in gamma always coincides with the same kind of change (increase or decrease) in beta
• change in alpha, theta and delta coincide.

 

- I am doubtful of the accuracy of the data, because:

• My baseline brainwaves shouldn't be that similiar to the ones during trance (and meditation). And definitely not to those during light sleep, lol. (However, children's baseline brainwaves are similiar to those during their sleep. Even though sleep is a completely different state of consciousness. I'm confused. I think I don't understand brainwaves at all)
• I don't really see much difference in brainwaves when experimenting with different meditation techniques

 

- Conclusion

 I don't think the data of the Muse S is accurate enough to continuously compare my sleep yoga practice with light sleep and draw conclusions about my progress. That is too impractical. Subjective experience seems to be all that is needed. 

If you are interested in measuring your brainwaves, then I recommend the Muse S. I guess the Muse products have the best benefit/price ratio. They are said to be quite accurate and are relatively cheap (I think I paid around $330 for the Muse S on amazon). But If you are purely interested in sleep yoga progress, doing the techniques is all what's needed.

Edited February 8, 2021 by GreenWoods

[GreenWoods]

8 Approaches/Ways to achieve Sleep Yoga (Overview)

I might sometimes say contradictory things on how to achieve sleep yoga. That's because there are many different approaches.

1. Normal Approaches

- 1.1 Trance

• Trying to enter such a deep trance that your body can be considered asleep
• Alertness is given. So the major emphasis of trance work is on lowering your brainwaves (=making your body fall asleep) (that's way it's easier when you are tired). Once you enter deep brainwaves, you also need to make sure to maintain alertness.

- 1.2 WILD 

• WILD = Wake Induced Lucid Dream. For simplicity's sake, let's say that the technique is the same as the normal astral projection technique.
• The empahsis lies both on alertness and making your body fall asleep (=lowering brainwaves)
• The best time to practice is when you are in REM (after 3-7 hours of normal sleep). It can also work well when about to take a nap
• The key attribute of WILD: Tricking your body to believe that you fell asleep. Then the body enters sleep.
• That means you should avoid movement. Be wary of the roll over signal.
• You need a passive/relaxed concentration/alertness. Too much concentration and your body won't fall asleep. Too little and you lose consciousness. 
• relaxation of your body is very important, otherwise it won't fall asleep
• Doing Trance during a WILD attempt can be very helpful
• When you get to the point where you would normally enter a lucid dream or astral projection, you resist that. Thus you remain in this shallow level of void. With practice you can remain there longer and deepen the void (= as your body goes into deeper sleep stages).

- 1.3 Tibetan Approach

• Very similiar to WILD
• A big component is having awareness of awareness itself as the anchor to remain conscious.
• Their technique contains certain body positions and visualizations. As well as being helped by spirits.

 

 

2. Tiredness Approaches

Different degrees of Tiredness:

- A: Deliberate SWS core

• The way I described it in the first post of this thread
• Between 80 and 300+ minutes

- B: Sleep Deprivation Sweet Spot

• Sleep deprivation worth of 15-40 hours of no sleep. (Everyone experiences 15 h each day)
• After let's say 25 hours you can start practicing. The exact level of tiredness which you need in order to perform the technique is very individual
• If you let's say are awake for 25 h and then sleep for 10 minutes, you then might have a sleep deprivation worth of maybe 23 hours. If you then sleep another 60 minutes you might then have a sleep deprivation worth of 21 hours. So the reduction of sleep deprivation is not linear. The more sleep deprived you are the more just a few minutes of sleep are able to hugely decrease your sleep deprivation.
• So after around 1 day of no sleep you might be in your sleep deprivation sweet spot. You can remain in this range for as long as you like. But for health reasons it is recommend to take a break every now and then. You could for example have 1/1/3 shedule. 1 day no sleep, 1 day sleep yoga and remaining in the sweet spot range, 3 days as much sleep as your body likes. A more demanding schedule would be 1/3/1.

- C Extreme Sleep Deprivation 

• Sleep deprivation of 72+ hours.
• Here you experience hallucinations. 
• Some interesting reddit threads: link and link. The book "left in the dark" by Tony Wright has also a few very intersting pages about sleep deprivation. You can download the pdf version for free. Just google it.
• Your brain looks the same as the brain of someone who is asleep
• Your right brain half is more awake than your left
• Combining this level of tiredness with sleep yoga techniques makes it probably quite easy to remain conscious while the body falls asleep
• It is however not recommended because it is not good for your health at all.
• Besides, at this level of sleep deprivation 10 minutes of sleep probably result in 2-10 hours of sleep deprivation reduction. Thus you are quickly set back.
• And you are always on the edge of unintentional sleep. Potentially almost completely setting you back.

 

The Techniques (for 2. Tiredness Approaches):

- 2.1 Microsleep

• Repeatedly going over the edge. Your body falls asleep and you lose consciousness. Then you are quickly awoken with alarm clocks.
• This way you practice getting close to the edge 
• The biggest benefit is that by repeadetly making a very quick transition from awake to asleep, you gradually train the skill to induce that transition consciously with your intention alone. You basically get a mega powerful trance skill. 
• When you are extremely tired, you can fall asleep in less than 1 minute. So you can set alarm clocks (snooze modus) every minute. Thus there is a lot of practice.
• Every time you wake up, your body will be more relaxed.

- 2.2. Remain conscious no matter what

• You simply don't allow yourself to lose consciousness, no matter what. You only allow yourself to fall asleep, if you remain conscious 
• So a high degree of tiredness is required.
• The low brain waves are given. So the sole emphasis lies on remaining alert and conscious. You don't spend any effort on trying to fall asleep. Tiredness is the force that takes care of that. Don't split your attention. Only focus on remaining awake.
• There is no issue with movements (compared to the WILD approach) and you don't need to worry about body relaxation

 

 

3. Sleep Induced Approaches

- 3.1 DEILD

• DEILD. Once you are about to enter a dream, resist it and try to enter the void instead.
• I made several DEILD posts in the past.
• I find DEILD  a LOT easier than WILD

- 3.2 After Lucid Dream

• When the lucid dream dissolves, you then are in the void for 0-3+ seconds. With MUCH practice you might be able to prolong that.
• If you are interested in that, your focus will be in mastering DILDs

- 3.3 During Light Sleep or normal dreams 

• Spontaneously getting conscious during light sleep, or spontaneously consciously entering the void from a dream. This might be most likely to occur when your are about to wake up.
• Seems extremely unlikely but this has actually happend to me around 9 times. In the progress uldate post I said that I finally managed to be conscious during sleep a few times. I'm not 100% sure but I think it never was directly from the waking state but from the sleeping state. I believe the first few times were as a result of reaching out to spirits. And then it happened again a few times, this time I believe as a result of to listening to subliminals. Anyways, it doesn't really happen anymore (only very rarely). Most likely because I stopped the things I did (or at least the intensity), which I believe led to it (reaching out to spirits and listening to subliminals.  I still listen to subliminals but mostly for other reasons. And not in order to spontaneously get conscious during sleep. Because that approach takes too long. I currently do the " 2.2 remain conscious no matter what" approach. When I manage to get into my sleep deprivation sweet spot, I manage to consciously enter a very light form of light sleep. Subliminals are helpful for that approach as well.)

Edited February 14, 2021 by GreenWoods

[GreenWoods]

On 2/14/2021 at 3:39 AM, GreenWoods said:

8 Approaches/Ways to achieve Sleep Yoga (Overview)

I forgot to add:

- 3.4 Lucid Dream Induced 

• Consciously enter the void from a lucid dream. For example by deliberately dissolving the dream content (and then dissolving the whole dream).

[GreenWoods]

Update

Around mid February, I think some affirmations of my sleep yoga subliminal suddenly kicked in (or it was the result of other manifestation practices). I made it myself and included affirmations about sleeping 12 hours each day. I thought that is a good idea, because one of my obstacles had been that I wasn't tired enough and therefore couldn't practice much. The affirmations seemed to work in the way I envisioned, by increasing my sleep need, but it seems like they manifested in an unforseen way too, they somehow made it extremely difficult to stay wake when very tired. It got so much harder to resist the urge to just fall asleep, and thus the affirmations resulted in me sleeping more, and ruining my sleep yoga practice, lol. 

I struggled with that for around 2 weeks, then I overpowered the affirmations with my willpower, and was back to normal while keeping the ability to have higher sleep needs. Perfect. But then, almost at that exact time, I had my deepest awakening up to that point, which was a complete shock, totally unexpected realizations which recontextualized everything on a yet deeper level. I had thought awakening couldn't get too radical for me, LOL. For the next 4-6 weeks, I was basically just sitting on my couch trying to process it. And was completely unable to do sleep yoga. 

Around 3 weeks ago I managed to get back into the illusion far enough to have enough motivation and willpower to do intense stuff like sleep yoga again. 

At that point, my biggest challenge was that my alarm clocks were not reliable at all to wake me up after unintentionally falling asleep. Not even when setting them every minute (I didn't find an app with the snooze duration for less than 1 minute + the the option to ring only via headphones). Anyway, I came up with some solutions to deal with that. 

My LP is becoming a spiritual teacher, and I had been contemplating for quite some time how to become very skilled at awakening others. I think baseline consciousness is one of the most important factors. I had been thinking sleep yoga would be most powerful for raising my baseline consciousness (6h extremely deep meditation + 2h psychedelic lucid dreaming each day). That had been my motivation for sleep yoga. Around 2 weeks ago I discovered something which I believe is more powerful (at least for me) for raising my baseline consciousness. Or more precisely, raising baseline consciousness in the way I intend it. Because there is more than just one dimension to raising baseline. Anyways, I became  so enthusiastic about that new approach that I instantly dropped most of my practices like sleep yoga, self inquiry, meditation,...

My new goal is furthering the development of my light body.

I think the main difference between people like Buddha and the people here on the forum is, that their light body was much more developed. Their peak God-Realizations were probably similiar to those of advanced people here on the forum. But their baseline was probably astonishingly close to such peak awakenings. 

Such a high baseline is - the way I currently see it - always very closely related to a high development of the light body. The normal 21st century human body is not able to hold that baseline. You wouldn't be able to function that way, or you would just go insane, die or do mahasamadhi. To be able to sustain these higher states of consciousness requires an upgrade of the physcial body. Which is best done by developing the light body. 

The more developed your light body, the higher your baseline, and vice versa.

But the most effective way to further the development of the light body is not by raising your baseline, but by channeling a lot of divine energy into your body.

Over the past months I had noticed how I got a lot more energy sensitive and developed the ability to channel energy (I guess one of the biggest contributors during the past half year was devotion, contacting spirits and listening to YouTube Transmissions. Kriya yoga would be good for it too.). So that's what I'm currently doing, channeling divine energy to further the development of the light body.

 

I do think that at one point there will come a phase again when I will have high motivation for sleep yoga. And then I will go for it too. With my most recent technique upgrade + high motivation, it should be easy. I'm going to post the upgraded technique soon.

 

Ah, and here is my subliminal guide:

 

Edited April 28, 2021 by GreenWoods

[TheSelf]

@GreenWoods Meditating on AUM vibration can significantly increase your energy body, at least for me it is really the case.

To me practicing Kriya Yoga techniques specially Nadi shodhana and sushumna breathing to prepare the body to hear the vibrations then just meditating on it would the fastest & most powerful way to develop your energy body.

It's like directly receiving the shakti from the source.

 

Last year once in a meditation session I started hearing the vibration, then I switched to meditating on the sound and laid down in my couch then after a while a rush of burning energy started entering my spine, as I meditate on the sound, the energy got more and more intense, and was really hurting near the end of session. That meditation session lasts almost 3 hours.

After this experience I could feel my energy body all the time (intensity varies from time to time). Before this I had to do the techniques to awaken my energy everytime.

 

Edited April 26, 2021 by m0hsen

[GreenWoods]

@m0hsen Interesting, thanks for sharing!

I don't hear the om vibrations. Maybe I shouldn't have skipped Nadi Sodhana when I was practicing kriya yoga, but I thought it is weak sauce. I did the sushuma breathing though.

Chanting om seems to have a nice effect for me, maybe I should add it to some of my practices.

[TheSelf]

@GreenWoods 

Yeah in the beginning I thought too that nadi shodhana is a weak sauce, so i didn't practice it.

But I remember it was actually after I introduced nadi shodhana to my practises that after a while I started hearing the AUM vibration( in a very weak form btw, I had to be in a silence environment and do some Kriyas for 15 mins beforehand ).

So it seems like it's actually a powerful practise.

I did get a lot of benefits from AUM chanting too(loud), I'm doing it for about 2 months, and I love it!

it's said to be beneficial for energy purification purposes, but it's affecting my body at physical level too.

There's a book called "Science of Pranamaya" from Swami Sivananda

Very good book to learn lots of technical information regarding these techniques.

Edited April 27, 2021 by m0hsen

[GreenWoods]

@m0hsen If I ever get back back into yoga I'm gonna try nadi sodhana again. 

I had been thinking about getting into yoga again, but currently I don't think I will, because channeling energy is currently more intense than kriya supreme fire, so I guess I'm fine with that.

But I'm still doing some kriya supreme fire every now and then.

 

How long have you been doing kriya yoga?

[GreenWoods]

Technique 2.2: Remain conscious no matter what

My most recent version.

- Preparation:

• Get into your tiredness sweet spot. I guess mine is currently somewhere between 20 and 35 hours of no sleep.
• Alarm clock snooze option set on one minute. Less than 1 minute would be even better. If you don't find an alarm clock app with that option, you could just keep your eyes open for 20 seconds and then do the technique for the remaining 40 seconds. Or do some push ups lol. Or maybe even more brutal, reverse blinking. Or listen to some motivation music.

 

- The technique:

• FILD + counting each FILD movement. Start at cero again after snoozing the alarm. 
• So this is what is new. Upon snoozing the alarm you ask yourself some questions, only after seriously answering them are you allowed to continue practicing:

1. "Did I lose consciousness?" or "did I fall asleep?". If you did fall alseep and then woke up due to the alarm, you probably don't realise that you were asleep. And after snoozing the alarm, immediately fall back asleep without even trying to do sleep yoga. If you train yourself to always ask that question, this can be prevented.
2. Rate your sleepiness on a scale from 0-10. This requires that you put your attention on your level of sleepiness and find out how sleepy you actually are. Doing this, you might realise that you are more sleepy than you assumed. It also gives you an idea how quickly you are getting sleepy. And you will get a sense of what each number signifies to you. For example, you could make it as a rule that you switch to a more uncomfortable body postion if the number is above 5. So the question to ask is "what is my level of sleepiness?". And then give a number and continue accordingly.
3. " Will I notice the next alarm (in 1 minute) and ask the 3 questions?" This reminds you of it, so you don't forget. You are bringing it into your awareness and re-strengthening your determination.

• You don't need to ponder long. 10 seconds might be enough for all 3 questions. You can come up with your own questions suited to your personal challenges, or don't ask anything at all. But for my practice, these questions are important. You should ask these questions ALWAYS. Unless this is a strong habit, there is a good chance you won't do it if the alarm clock just pulled you out of sleep. And yes, asking these questions every minute gets boring AF haha.

If you still lose consciousness, you need to either increase your willpower, or reduce the time between alarm clocks, or increase discomfort (like holding one hand up), or do anything with similar effects. 

 

Tips:

• When you are tired but not yet in your sleepiness sweet spot, don't close your eyes (not even for a few seconds). Only close your eyes during sleep yoga practice. If you think you will just chill for 3 seconds, there's a good chance you will fall asleep.
• Add whatever other tools (like for example ellbow up or brainwave entrainment) seem helpful from my previous posts.
• If you want to further increase discomfort, you could vertically hold up one arm (straight), above your head, that it is in line with your upper body. And then switch arms one your muscles tire. And in case you lose consciousness, your arm drops all the way down, likely waking you up.

 

In my experience, when doing this technique properly, success pretty much only depends on your motivation, determination and willpower. Your meditation skills and brainwave skills are comparably insignificant. Which is good news because it means you can force results. No months of practice and experience required. If you want it bad enough, you might achieve it the first try. But that's still not likely, because you are likely to mess up the technique without even noticing it, for example by forgetting to keep counting your FILD numbers or answering all 3 questions, because your willpower and determination wasn't strong enough. So it takes many attempts to become aware of all the sneaky ways which make you fail. And then you need enough determination to prevent them the next time. This sounds easy in theory but then when you are damn tired it feels sooooo good to just close your eyes and fall asleep.

So all the months of my practice have been mostly about figuring out the right technique. 

 

There haven't been many instances where I did the technique + had the necessary willpower. But several times my willpower was enough for my body to fall asleep while remaining concious. So for me this technique + sufficent willpower works.

The shift in consciousness is pretty nice. It happens within a few seconds. But it never lasted long because my alarm clock always rings a few seconds later lol. The plan would be that with more practice you will be able to eaily return to that state after snoozing the alarm. And then you progressively lengthen the snooze time, so you can spend more and more time there.

 

Thinking about that post, and then writing it, actually hyped me a bit again for sleep yoga. I think I should keep doing sleep yoga, at least whenever my will power seems to be strong enough. 

The reason why I stopped sleep yoga was that I wanted to put all my attention on light body practices, because they are my clear number 1 priority currently. Doing sleep yoga might leave me with less will power for these practcies and they might make me more tired which would also reduce the efficency of the light body practices. 

But right now I think that I would make quickes progress spiritually if I do both at once. So that's my current plan. But let's see, I tend to change my mind quite often lol.

Edited April 28, 2021 by GreenWoods

[TheSelf]

7 hours ago, GreenWoods said:

@m0hsen If I ever get back back into yoga I'm gonna try nadi sodhana again. 

I had been thinking about getting into yoga again, but currently I don't think I will, because channeling energy is currently more intense than kriya supreme fire, so I guess I'm fine with that.

But I'm still doing some kriya supreme fire every now and then.

 

How long have you been doing kriya yoga?

@GreenWoods

About a year, but I've stopped all Kriya practises a long time ago cause energy was available all the time and  I just needed to lay down in a couch and simply close my eyes and meditate to make it go intense so I did that, I did lots of meditation on kutastha too.

I've been thinking about getting back to Kriya Yoga again, but I think I'm ready to straightly go for a full Kundalini rising but I'm not sure still.

meditating on sahasrara seems to be one of the most effective methods for Kundalini rising.

Btw still I'm not sure exactly what is the best thing to do for my next move. Should I go intense or stick to a more gentle path like Kriya.

What is your experience with energy channeling btw? Are you planning to go for a Kundalini rising or what?

I guess you start another thread regarding this topic of energy body, energy channeling, Kundalini, for experimentations, discussions etc. To avoid messing and mixing up with contents of this thread. keeping it clean!

Edited April 28, 2021 by m0hsen

[GreenWoods]

 

18 hours ago, m0hsen said:

I guess you start another thread regarding this topic of energy body, energy channeling, Kundalini, for experimentations, discussions etc. To avoid messing and mixing up with contents of this thread. keeping it clean!

I am intending to make a light body thread at some point in the future, once I have more experience. 

But you are right, it's a good idea to already make a thread about energy work in general.

Developing the light body will be more than just usual energy work. Energy work is an important foundation (in most cases). Tens of thousands of hours of energy work can be done, but it will most likely not lead to the light body, unless it is coupled with other crucial techniques. I'm gonna talk more about that in the light body thread, but first I gotta get more experience and deeper understanding.

So the energy work thread might build the foundation for the light body thread. I can then link it into the light body thread.

 

I'm gonna answer to your questions in the energy Energy Work Thread.

 

[GreenWoods]

Update

I can't believe I still haven't mastered sleep yoga. Never experienced so much frustration lol.

Since my last posting about sleep yoga, there have been a few periods of intense practice, one of them started 1-2 weeks ago. During these periods, I manage to enter similar states of consciousness as mentioned in a previous sleep yoga post, I suppose a shallow form of light sleep. But it only works if I manage to make no mistakes, which is very difficult. One tiny mistake and I lose consciousness, and ruin the practice because the alarm doesn't wake me up soon enough most of the time, so I usually need to wait many hours for the next opportunity. This is the biggest issue, that I have no reliable way of waking myself up after losing consciousness. I think the perfect thing would be (if the alarm doesn't manage to soon wake you up, as is usually the case for me) to have someone nearby who wakes you up if you don't hear the alarm. 

 

Upgraded technique in next post.

[GreenWoods]

Upgraded Technique 

On 4/27/2021 at 10:26 PM, GreenWoods said:

Technique 2.2: Remain conscious no matter what

Upgrade of this technique (but some elements can also be used in other techniques).

I wrote that the most important thing is basically willpower and determination, and that other stuff like your brainwave skills are comparably insignificant.

My new take: For success, you need both willpower and brainwave skills. If one of them is weak, the other needs to be extra good. So success is possible with weak brainwave skills but it requires insane willpower. More practical is if you improve your brainwave skills. Sleep yoga is basically a brainwave skill anyway. If you are conscious during all of your sleep, you are conscious with low brainwaves = good brainwave skills.

Every sleep yoga attempt improves your brainwave skills. The more time you spend being as close as possible to your current threshold point (point where you lose consciousness) the more you train your brainwave muscles. 

My current routine looks somewhat like that:

 

- A: Sleep Yoga (when extremely tired)

Motivation music right before practice.

• sitting up
• Delta binaural beats (2 Hz)
•  SAT video transmission by Gareth (explained later) (for example this)
• alarms every minute (snooze 1 minute)
• upon snoozing:

1.  rate closeness to losing consciousness (more important than tiredness level)
2. am I still fully conscious, focused, committed?
3. will I make it till the next snooze??? (and will I commitedly ask these questions again?)

• either FILD + FILD counting. Depending on how close to losing consciousness, doing the FILD with both hands, or doing very large FILD movements, or lifting one or both arms up, supported by ellbow on a surface, or without support. Or:
• PERFECT concentration. I'm currently experimenting with starting the practice with big FILD movements to remain conscious, and once I am reaaaaaly tired I swith either to very sublte FILD movements or only pure perfect concentration. Because I find that pure concentration without subtle FILD is stronger. But it's not possible to keep that up for long, therfore I only do it when I'm right at the threshold.
• Trance Triggers

 

- B: Normal Meditation 

 To ensure that I don't accidentally fall asleep:

• Either alarm clocks (snooze ranging from every 1-5 minutes, depending on closeness to losing consciousness) (+ plus rating closeness to losing consciousness when snoozing the alarm) or keeping my eyes slightly open. Either way, it sucks LMAO. 
• binaural beats over 20 Hz (I curenntly listen to ones going from 35-45)

-C: Brainwave Training (when not yet "extremely tired")

Some time ago I did low brainwave meditations ( when not tired enough for sleep yoga practice). By doing this practice, you can improve your brainwave skills even if you are not extremely tired.

• maybe start with Reverse Blinking
• alarm clocks or eyes slightly open
• Binaural beats below 8 Hz
• maybe FILD
• SAT video transmission by Gareth
• Hypnosis Trance Triggers
• trying to deepen trance

 

 

 

Describing some points in more detail:

- SAT Transmission

In terms of Transmissions, this forum is mostly familiar with RASA. RASA has little effect on your state of consciousness during the transmission (RASA's effect is for longterm baseline increase), but SAT can have strong effects during the transmission (apart from longterm baseline) (if you are sensitive). The SAT transmission aims for Brahman Consciousness, which I suppose is Godhead without body awareness. This is similar to being conscious during sleep. Therefore SAT transmissions can be helpful for sleep yoga, therefore I recommend letting a SAT transmission video play during your sleep yoga practice (it works with eyes closed). For a pure SAT transmission, go for a SAT video on Gareth's youtube channel that is at least 1 month old (from today). The transmissions from that point on later are a combination of SAT and pure Divinty. This combination is stronger for enlightenment, but for sleep yoga pure SAT might be more effective, idk, experiment. The stronger you are connected to the SAT force/energy, the stronger the transmissions, therefore I recommend that you join at least once one of his Zoom Transmissions (zoom transmissions are currently either a combination of SAT and pure Divinity or Shaktipat and pure Divinity) or one on one transmission, or at least a live youtube transmission (every Monday). But the more you join, the stronger your connection. If your connection is strong, the SAT force starts coming down during the day and during your meditations automatically, as is the case with many people (including me) who have often joined the zoom transmissions.

I will write more about SAT and other transmissions in the future.

 

- keeping eyes slightly open

When I do normal meditation I want to close my eyes, because it makes the meditation deeper. But I noticed that by keeping my eyes 5-10% open, I still get most of the benefits of closing the eyes. 

When it comes to accidentally falling asleep having your eyes 5-10% open is FAR safer than having them closed. It is surprisingly effective. If I do it, I usually don't accidentally fall asleep. And if I reach the point where it gets difficult to keep them open, I switch to my real sleep yoga practice. 

 

- Purpose of alarms 

For me, the main purpose of the alarms (which are usually every minute) is not to wake me up in case I lose consciousness. But rather to remind me to stay focused.

Edited September 14, 2021 by GreenWoods

[GreenWoods]

Something I wanted to mention in previous posts. If you want to practice sleep yoga with as little negative effects on your health as possible, you could do it something like that:

If you normally go to bed at 10 pm, wait till you are very tired, that might be between 11pm and 3 am, depending on you. And do sleep yoga practice then. If you have to get up soon in the morning you will have a lack of sleep. So this would be good to practice on the weekend. Or you could accept the lack of sleep, it will mean that you will get into "very tired" a lot earlier this day. Which means you will fall asleep a lot earlier, and possibly get your normal amount of sleep that night. 

Or set an alarm for the middle of the night and practice then, without turning on the light.

Ways to increase tiredness:

• No blue light in the hours before practice
• reverse blinking
• low brainwave binaural beats
• melatonin supplement
• practice while lying down
• ...

Edited September 16, 2021 by GreenWoods

[GreenWoods]

On 9/14/2021 at 3:35 AM, GreenWoods said:

I will write more about SAT and other transmissions in the future.

 

[Shweta Singh]

To sleep consciously, you should have no sense of body. Only if your identification with the body is completely broken, will you sleep consciously. When we are awake, we are conscious, but our energies are involved and engaged in many things. We have to sit up, we have to speak, we have to do some work, we have to do something else. But if I sleep consciously, my energies are completely consolidated, and I am still conscious – that means I am at my peak performance level. So when Shiva says, “If you are in trouble, I will sleep,” it means, “I will do the best possible thing for you,” because then he is at his best.

[GreenWoods]

17 hours ago, Shweta Singh said:

To sleep consciously, you should have no sense of body. Only if your identification with the body is completely broken, will you sleep consciously. 

How to achieve that though. I guess body sensations only completely dissolve once you are solidly asleep.

Though I read that some people remain slightly conscious of their body even then. 

During the beginning of sleep, body sensations are definitely still present for me, though they are a bit distant and feel very weird.

 

@Shweta Singh You have been experiencing conscious sleep? That is awesome   How did you learn it?

[herghly]

do you have experience with yoga nidra?

[GreenWoods]

18 hours ago, herghly said:

do you have experience with yoga nidra?

Isn't yoga nidra = sleep yoga?

Yoga nidra has some relaxation practices which I haven't mentioned here. They don't have much value for the approach I've been focusing on in these posts. But for the classical WILD/AP approach, they can be useful.