I finished my morning practice around 15 or 20 minutes ago (I think), and I’m still not fully grounded in this reality.
I tried writing in my journal but couldn’t keep coherent thoughts or progression in my mind long enough.
After eating some coconut puree and a couple of guacamole mini packs, my partner put some grounding essential oils on me and gave me some carrots to eat. It’s helping as well as typing out my thoughts now.
Anyways, the first big insight involves yoga Nidra and dreams.
Last night during Nidra, I had a recurring dream that keeps showing up during it.
I’m in a military hospital bed on the upper floor of what might be a warehouse. And there is this continuous death-rattle noise coming from my throat. When I become aware that I am making the noise, I try to stop because I imagine it is disturbing the other people there.
In the meantime, Amrit is saying stuff in the Nidra that I know isn’t in the Nidra.
And that’s my clue that it’s a dream.
In my mind, I think the death rattle is happening in this reality as well, so rather than allow it to continue to occur in the dream, I still try to make it stop.
At first, by breathing through my nose, but that doesn’t work. Then I try and stop breathing to make it stop, and it still doesn’t work. However, now I can’t breathe, and I’m freaking out because now I’m thinking that I can’t breathe in this reality as well.
I’ve got to wake up.
Now, I’m struggling to wake up; I’ve got to get out of this dream state; otherwise, I might die (that’s what I’m thinking)
Then, I somehow managed to break out of the dream state and enter a red static screen, almost like when a TV station lost its connections and went all static except its red.
Then, I wake up in this reality, and Amrit is barely halfway through the Nidra.
After, I make sure that I am breathing and everything is okay.
I’m surprisingly well relaxed and rested even though I couldn’t have been asleep for more than 10 or 15 minutes.
The big insight was Yoga Nidra is offering me the opportunity to enter into lucid dreams more often and more readily IF I stop fighting them.
And by that, I mean I have these dreams in Nidra reasonably often, but I usually dismiss or forget them for whatever reason.
Hopefully, now that I’m writing it down and talking about it, I will be able to move beyond the fear and find out what’s on the other side of it.
The second big insight, which caused me to raise my vibration and enter into a floating state rather than remaining grounded, is doing the box breathing to the metronome for the entire practice.
The insight was that I had created a Brule (b.s. rule) that for box breathing to be effective, it had to be at least to a beat of 5.And because of that Brule, doing Half Sun Salutations with box breathing wasn’t an option.
However, today I let go of that rule and did the Half Sun Salutations to box breathing at a beat of 4.What an experience. And, it also allowed me to remember why I love yoga so much.
This morning, before my practice, the question that was lingering in my mind was, “What would happen if I went through my day with breathing being my number 1 priority?”
That’s when I was like, my yoga practice is essentially a microcosm of my day so let’s see what happens.
An insight within the insight that I discovered is that my breathing changes based on what I’m doing, the challenge of it, and the intensity.
This meant that at times I had to be okay and relax with my do less so I could do more mantra.
In Half Sun Salutations, this was abundantly clear. The box breathing had me moving through the sequence slightly above half of my usual pace.
In my mind, that means less challenging.
Yet, 10 minutes in, I’m aware of a new kind of sweat dripping from my body; I’m processing old long-forgotten memories much more quickly and efficiently. AND I’m debating on going back to my old place of 5-beats in and 5-beats out because this box breathing is surprisingly intense.
It’s an entirely different level of PRANA.
But I stayed with it.
Towards the end, I would do a recharging breath of 5-beats in and 5-beats out when my hands were at the Heart Center, and even that was deeper and more opening than when that’s my entire practice.
The other exciting part about this morning is I was sharing a lot this morning when my partner woke up when usually it’s a real struggle to communicate even the basics.
And even this is longer than usual.
I am going to continue with the Box Breathing experience during more of my practices. I am excited to see what will be revealed and resolve to stay in the dreams no matter how intense.
