Importance of Meditation

Meditation is a mental discipline by which one attempts to get beyond the conditioned, "thinking" mind into a deeper state of relaxation or awareness. It often involves turning attention to a single point of reference. It is a state of experiencing a state of consciousness that has the qualities of enlightenment. By meditating you are learning how to be free of thought, feeling, emotion, and time.

Meditation originated from Vedic Hinduism which is the oldest religion that professes meditation as a spiritual and religious practice. Evidence of the origins of meditation extends back to a time before recorded history. Archaeologists tell us the practice may have existed among the first Indian civilizations. Indian scriptures dating back 5000 years describe meditation techniques. From its ancient beginnings and over thousands of years, meditation has developed into a structured practice used today by millions of people worldwide of differing nationalities and religious beliefs.

Meditation is also practiced outside religious traditions. Different meditative disciplines encompass a wide range of spiritual and/or psychophysical practices which may emphasize different goals -- from achievement of a higher state of consciousness, to greater focus, creativity or self-awareness, or simply a more relaxed and peaceful frame of mind.

Yoga is one of the six schools of Hindu philosophy, focusing on meditation. In India, Yoga is seen as a means to both physiological and spiritual mastery.

The Bhagavad Gita stresses the importance of meditation as follows "Make a habit of practising meditation and do not let your mind be distracted. In this way you will come finally to the Lord who is the light-giver, the highest of the high.

Meditation has always been central to Buddhism and considered a key tool in spiritual development. The historical Buddha himself, Buddha Shakyamuni, was said to have achieved enlightenment while meditating under the Bodhi tree.

What is REM Sleep all about?

This is a normal stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes. REM sleep can be further classified into two main categories; tonic and phasic, which was first identified and defined by Kleitman and Aserinsky in the early 1950s.

REM sleep in a normal healthy young adult takes up about 20-25% of total sleep, which translates to about 90 to 120 minutes of a night’s sleep. During the course of a normal night of sleep, humans usually experience about 4 to 5 periods of REM sleep; they are relatively short at the beginning of the night and longer towards the end. Most people tend to wake, or experience a period of very light sleep, for a short time immediately after a bout of REM. The relative amount of REM sleep varies considerably with age. A newborn baby spends more than 80% of total sleep time in REM.

During REM, the activity of the brain’s neurons is similar to that during waking hours, for this particular reason, the phenomenon is called paradoxical sleep, which means that there are no dominating brain waves during REM sleep.

REM sleep is physiologically different from the other phases of sleep, which are collectively called non-REM sleep. Vividly recalled dreams mostly occur during REM sleep. These dreams are also those dreams that most likely to be remembered upon waking up. It is felt that that the length of the REM sleep cycle might be correlated to the brain size.

Hobson’s reciprocal-interaction model gives a biological explanation to the chemical transaction that take place during REM. REM is generated in the pontine reticular formation and REM is turned on by cholinergic neurotransmitters. Serotonergic and noradrenergic neurotransmitters inhibit the cholinergic neurotransmitters turning REM off. The function of REM has not been definitely determined. One theory is an evolutionary, adaptive function. Another function may be a restorative process for some types of memory during REM sleep, but it has been firmly established that REM is when dreaming occurs in the sleep cycle.

Once it was established that dreams are generated during REM, it became very important to find out the reasons for dreaming and to get into the details of the functions of dreaming. There are two fundamental theories that describe the function of dreaming. One is an adaptive evolutionary function and another is restorative memory function.

While psychoanalysts argued that we dream to forget and not include certain traumatic memories into our dreams, neurobiologists insisted that dreaming is a phenomenon during which suppressed and repressed memories are brought to the surface. Neurobiologists concluded that disturbances in REM sleep end up in nightmares and horrifying dreams; which could also result in narcolepsy because of an increase in REM latency and a decrease in REM time. Hence they felt that people who have gone through violent experiences try not to allow these experiences to be part of their long term memory and that the entire function of dreaming was a step towards memory consolidation.

Current research suggests a more involved chemical exchange in the reciprocal-interaction model than was once thought. Though dreams may not have meaning as Freud suggested, dreams still seem to reflect an individual’s stored memory and emotion brought about by chemical exchanges in the brain and brainstem.

Luciddreaming.com Submits Idea for Google Project 10100

Project 10¹⁰⁰ is a call for ideas sponsored by Google to help change the world by helping as many people as possible. They're also committing $10 million to implement the best picked projects. Luciddreaming.com submitted a Google questionnaire and is anxiously awaiting the results on January 27, 2009. We won't give out the exact details concerning the Lucid Dreaming Project but we will say that it combines our community-centric website along with aspirations of a research center.

Lucid Dreaming Community Videos

As you can see in the embedded video, people around the world are attempting to lucid dream and become educated. Allison discusses induction methods and dream signs in her Youtube video.



http://www.luciddreaming.com/usr/member.php?id=2&t=videos&play=true&playno=106

Lucid Dreaming - Induction Methods

Mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD)
The MILD technique is a common technique developed by Dr. Stephen LaBerge, used to induce a lucid dream at will by setting an intention, while falling asleep, to remember to recognize that one is dreaming, or to remember to look for dream signs when one is in a dream.

Wake-back-to-bed (WBTB)
The wake-back-to-bed technique is often the easiest way to encourage a lucid dream. The method involves going to sleep tired and waking up five hours later. Then, focusing all thoughts on lucid dreaming, staying awake for an hour and going back to sleep while practicing the MILD method. A 60% success rate has been shown in research using this technique. This is because the REM cycles get longer as the night goes on, and this technique takes advantage of the best REM cycle of the night. Because this REM cycle is longer and deeper, gaining lucidity during this time may result in a lengthier lucid dream.

Cycle adjustment technique (CAT)
The cycle adjustment technique, developed by Daniel Love, is an effective way to induce lucid dreaming. It involves adjusting one's sleep cycle to encourage awareness during the latter part of the sleep. First, the person wakes up 90 minutes before normal wake time until their sleep cycle begins to adjust. After this, the normal wake times and early wake times alternate. On the days with the normal wake times, the body is ready to wake up, and this increases alertness, making lucidity more likely.

Wake-initiation of lucid dreams (WILD)
The wake-initiated lucid dream "occurs when the sleeper enters REM sleep with unbroken self-awareness directly from the waking state". There are many techniques aimed at entering a WILD. The key to these techniques is recognizing the hypnagogic stage, which is within the border of being awake and being asleep. If a person is successful in staying aware while this stage occurs, he or she will eventually enter the dream state while being fully aware that it is a dream.

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Luciddreaming.com becomes more Ajaxian

Luciddreaming.com becomes a little more Ajaxian and also integrates a new layout to its profile page. Our new and improved layout should help users navigate more easily throughout their pages. With the addition of Prototype technologies we're on a fast track to utilizing its latest features and improving your user experience. Stay tuned for more updates and interesting news.

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