The past few weeks I have taking you through the steps required to create the life you have always wanted, doing what you have always dreamed of doing.  But recently I have been getting emails from people telling me that they have lost their dream years ago, and have no idea on how to access that part of themselves.  So I thought I would repost an article I wrote for Spiritual U http://spiritualu.eu/.  In which, I talk about the massive benefits that day dreaming can have on our lives.

Enjoy! 
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How many times in your life has someone said to you “stop day dreaming and pay attention”?  How long have you struggled with trying to focus on this or that only to find yourself, up in the clouds?  Well what if I told you that day dreaming is a vital component to achieving our highest potential?  It is true! 

Through my entire life, I have struggled with keeping my focus and attention on the task at hand; whether it was homework, house work or my taxes, my mind would constantly want to wonder.  I once had a teacher tell me that when I day dreamed I “check out” of her class and “check into the clouds”.  I began to notice a pattern in my life, when times got tough, I would start to clean out things in my house; things such as a closet or drawer.   When I would do this would shift into this auto-pilot state or trance like state and would clean things out without really thinking about anything, ie day dreaming.  It was a type of meditation for me.  

While in college I found my day dreaming was getting out of hand.  I was determined to beat this pesky need for day dreaming once and for all, so I enrolled in a Yoga class in hopes that I would finally beat my desire to day dream.   In the middle of the first class, I was thinking “Oh good grief, when will this end?” The physical part was fun and challenging but the mental part was painful.  “Just Notice” the teacher would always say…. “What?” I thought?  “Notice what?  This is ridiculous.”  I dreaded the next few months in this class.  But as the days went on I noticed that when he would say, in the middle of a pose, “Just notice” my mind began to wander and wonder about my body, my breath, my life and my purpose.  I found my life started to flow more fluidly and more efficiently.  I couldn’t quite pin point what it was exactly that had shifted but I began to feel freer. 

It wasn’t until after I had completed the class and had moved on to other classes and other activities that I felt the urge to day dream again.  I begin to think there may be a correlation between “Just noticing” the present world around me, my body and my peace of mind in relation to my state of being.

In his book “Just Notice…Just This” My yoga instructor and author Richard Stathem say’s this:

“The word YOGA is a Sanskrit word which literally means union. What is united in yoga varies with the level and the type of practice. Yoga may refer to the union of interpersonal relationships, union between the various physiological systems of the body, union between the many psychological systems of the mind, union and integration between mind and body, or the union between ones worldly self and the vast, nameless Spiritual Essence. Yoga refers to the joining together, the uniting, of all of the many selves and identities we all have like the hub connects the spokes of a wheel and as the wheels rim surrounds it all. In our daily yoga practice, which includes all that the day offers, we focus on the philosophy of yoga. Yoga philosophy is neither eastern nor western ... it is universal as stated in the title of this book: just notice; just this. Above all else, yoga is a philosophy of common sense a philosophy of being in the moment. Yoga philosophy holds that we are whole and complete just as we are, but many of us have lost touch with an awareness of that perfection by becoming attached to the things of this world ... including (and especially) attachment to, and identification with, the body.”

When I read “…the union of interpersonal relationships, union between the various physiological systems of the body, union between the many psychological systems of the mind, union and integration between mind and body, or the union between ones worldly self and the vast, nameless Spiritual Essence… & …we are whole and complete just as we are, but many of us have lost touch with an awareness of that perfection by becoming attached to the things of this world…”  It stopped me dead in my tracks.  How many times have we looked for approval or answers from outside sources?  Whether it is friends, relatives, drugs, alcohol etc… We beat ourselves up for things we feel we cannot control or things we can control but choose not to.  What we should be doing is looking within and just noticing what our bodies and minds are telling us: noticing through day dreaming and just being with our mind, body and breath.  Through this noticing of ourselves we start to gain a deeper understanding of our true purpose in life and start to give ourselves the freedom to be our authentic self.

I started researching this to see if I could find studies that proved day dreaming or just noticing could do for our minds and state of being.  Many studies and journals pin pointed these correlations but one in particular really stood out from the rest. 

In the award winning study published in the May 12, 2009 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it finds that day dreaming activates the brain in the areas associated with high-level and complex problem solving even more so than when we were consciously working on highly complex situations.  Day dreaming allows your ego to “check out” and your unconscious brain to “check in” to what is the most ideal approach or solution to things without consciously working on it.  By day dreaming we can actually achieve our highest potential by allowing our brains to sort things out instead of our egos.

So I began to experiment this theory by just sitting quietly for 5 min a day to just be with myself and my thoughts.  At first it was very difficult to just sit and do nothing, but after a week or so I really got the hang of it.  I also noticed benefits of this while doing active meditations such as walking or gardening, a perfect time for the body to be busy and the mind to wander.

An exercise I give my clients to help them regain the ability to freely (without guilt) day dream, is to just sit for 5 min a day and start to notice what is around them.  Actively notice all that is around you and mentally note it…”I see a cup, a silver lamp, a window…oh wow, I need to wash the windows…It’s so nice outside today… etc…”  When you start to notice the things around you, then your mind will begin to wander where it needs to go and by just sitting there allows this natural pattern to emerge with little resistance.  This allows your mind to be free from the daily focus of our ego and our tasks, and work on the more complex issues in our lives. 

Often times you will get the best ideas or breakthroughs after you have had a session of day dreaming; whether it is from just sitting or doing something like walking, gardening or painting.  When we go with the flow of life and allow our minds the freedom to day dream, we are allowing our brains to work on the more complex problems in life for us instead of having to worry about the best way to solve them ourselves.

So the next time you find yourself “checking out” or “having your head in the clouds” know that you are actually doing something very productive and give yourself a break and the freedom to dream.