To start, lay down flat on your back. Do not use any form of pillow (it will restrict blood flow, and hinder the body’s restful state). Place your feet between six and twelve inches apart, and rest your arms beside your body, close but not touching. This position is not comfortable for most people for sleeping, but it is very relaxing and easy on your body. It’s a great way to meditate, or calm down before sleeping. If you can actually sleep in this position, it will be rewarding!
Second, ensure that when you breathe, only your stomach moves up and down, and your chest remains still. This is called diaphragmatic or circular breathing, and is the ‘natural’ way to breath. More importantly, it uses fewer muscles and encourages slower breathing and better relaxation. Interestingly, newborn babies breathe in this way.
Next, relax your body. Starting from your toes and working up, tighten small groups of muscles (holding for a count of five seconds) and then release them. When you release the tension, try to keep that part of your body relaxed, and do not move it again. I use this order: Toes, feet/calves, Thighs/hamstrings, butt, stomach/lower back, chest/upper back, hands/forearms, upper arms/shoulders, neck, face. Remember to breathe with your stomach the whole time.
You should be very relaxed by now. At this point you should focus again on your breathing. When you breathe in, do so by pushing your stomach out. When you breathe out, do not push the air out! Simply relax your entire stomach, and let the weight of your stomach push out the air on its own. In this way you will be totally relaxed when you breathe out. If you get a strange energized feeling when this happens, you are doing very well, and you should try not to fight the feeling.
At this point it is up to you. I like to let my thoughts drift and enjoy the feeling of being so relaxed. At this stage I have also tried listening to my tinnitus (the constant sound in your inner ear), which can potentially allow you to go to a deeper level of meditation, and possibly enter directly into a lucid dream. It is normal for the sound to grow louder, and for you to develop a falling sensation as you drift towards a trance/dream state.
Please post any ideas, additions, successes, failures. I’d love to have some feedback on this!
You’re welcome I wish it gave me an LD! Could you describe what you did in more detail? Did you wake up from sleeping first? Did you eat/drink anything specific? Were you very tired or just a little? Was it warm or cold? etc. Thanks for the feedback!
I usually do something like this when I go to sleep. Also, over the past few months, I have been sleeping in a position similar to the one you described (but I use a pillow) and I have noticed that when I wake up, I hardly moved the whole night. Before I slept like this, my bed sheets and covers would be all over the place when I woke up, but now they are nice straight . Id say this is a very comfortable position, and I will try without the pillow tonight.
I have read many variations of the “tighten and relax your muscle groups” idea to relax before attempting WILD, etc., but my question is, what if I have crappy muscles? LOL
I’m 34 years old and not in the best of shape and have trouble tightening up a lot of my muscles so it’s hard for me to “tighten, then relax them”.
It’s hard enough for me to try to figure out where my muscles are to try tightening them and then concentrate on breathing with my stomach at the same time!
Awake. I think it was a good thing, I’ve been trying this before, not with as much tips as this though. I got very close to falling asleep or WILDingn and was very numb and relaxed. Allthough it got too hot for me, after a little time so I needed to stop the experiment.
I tried this last night and I simply lost conciousness and woke up an hour afterwards. I think it was sort of hard for me to just breath with my stomach since I’m used to breathing with moving my chest. I’m going to try this again tonight and post anything else that happens.
I tried it last night too. The relaxation worked well, I loved the relaxed feeling so much. Although, just like Robin, I got a bit too hot after a while too and I lost my concentration.
I tried this again twice today. I woke up within an hours time for both. I had no recall of how I fell asleep and I don’t remember reaching the barrier. I did however remember that my body felt numb and it began to get hot under the blankets. Am I not supposed to have blankets on? Also I used a pillow is there a difference?
This broke my laziness and gave me a ld. Thank you. Thank you.
. Id say this is a very comfortable position, and I will try without the pillow tonight.
and lost my concentration. Anyways I enjoyed the meditation feeling.
