Dream Yoga Resources

What is Dream Yoga?

We spend one-third of our life, or an average of 20 to 25 years, asleep. Dream yoga is a way to discover in one’s sleep, a hidden space, in which to practice meditation —and further one’s spiritual development. Many people think, “I don’t have time to practice.” But if you use sleep and dream as a way of practicing, it is like discovering many more years of time in your life for practice.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche writes: “If we cannot carry our practice into sleep, if we lose ourselves every night, what chance do we have to be aware when death comes? Look to your experience in dreams to know how you will fare in death.” In the Tibetan tradition, the ability to dream lucidly is not an end in itself, rather, it provides additional context in which one can engage in advanced and effective practices to achieve liberation. 

What is Sleep Yoga?

We spend one-third of our life, or an average of 20 to 25 years, asleep. Centuries ago, Tibetan yogis developed the practice of sleep yoga to transform these dark hours of ignorance into a path to enlightenment. A powerful tool for awakening, sleep yoga is more than a practice of the night. It helps us to integrate all moments — waking, sleeping, meditation, and even death — with the clear light of awareness.

What is a Lucid Dream?

A lucid dream is a type of dream where the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming. This occurs during REM sleep when the dreaming mind is activated in a way that is similar to the waking state.

Lucidity is not all-or-nothing, instead it occurs on a range that changes from dream to dream.

Pre-Lucid Awareness: the dreamer has the feeling that something is up, but does not fully come to realize the dream for what it is and continues to be bound to the situation and narrative of the dream.

Partially Lucid Awareness: the dreamer realizes they are dreaming, but does not have full awareness of the implications - they may still feel confined by the rules of the dream reality and not realize that they can change their circumstances or engage with total freedom.

Fully Lucid Awareness: the dreamer realizes that they are dreaming and has full agency over themselves and over the dream narrative and environment. They can remember their waking self and remember any intentions set before sleep.

What Can I Do with Lucid Dreaming?

Lucid dreaming is a natural human ability that no two people use in the same way. From having frivolous fun to paradigm-shifting realizations, what you do with this tool will depend on your needs, your motivations, and where you are on your journey.

You can use it to:

• Solve problems

• Find creativity and inspiration

• Develop intuition

• Discover and overcome fears and obstacles

• Heal physical and emotional trauma

• Experience new or distant settings

• Have encounters with others (real or imagined, dead or alive)

• Explore your sexuality and personal identity

• Engage in deep spiritual inquiry

• Have mystical experiences

Lightning. In the night sky, lightning flashes. Suddenly the mountains are illuminated, each peak seemingly a separate object, but what we are really experiencing is a single flash of light being reflected back to our eyes. Just so, the seemingly separate objects in a dream are actually the single light of our mind

Reflection. The dream is a projection of our own mind. It is not different from the mind, just as a ray of sunlight is not different from the light of the sun in the sky. Not knowing this, we engage the dream as if it were real, like a lion snarling at the face it sees reflected in water. In a dream, the sky is our mind, the mountain is our mind; the flowers, the chocolate that we eat, the other people, all are our own mind reflected back at us.

Excerpt from The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep

Books:

The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep

The Essential Journey of Life and Death by Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche & Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche

Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light - Namkhai Norbu

Tsongkhapa’s Six Yogas of Naropa

Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism

The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet

Awakening The Sacred Body

Meditation, Transformation, and Dream Yoga:

"Although we define sleep as unconsciousness, the darkness and the experiential blankness are not the essence of sleep. For the pure awareness that is our basis there is no sleep. When not afflicted with obscurations, dreams, or thoughts, the moving mind dissolves into the nature of mind; then, rather than the sleep of ignorance, clarity, peacefulness, and bliss arise. When we develop the ability to abide in that awareness we find that sleep is luminous. This luminosity is the clear light. It is our true nature.”

~Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

RESOURCES:

☁️ Western Approaches to Lucid Dreaming

Stephen LaBerge - Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming 

Robert Waggoner- Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self

☁️ Bridging Western Lucid Dreaming & Tibetan Dream Yoga

Alan Wallace - Dreaming Yourself Awake: Lucid Dreaming and Tibetan Dream Yoga for Insight and Transformation

Andrew Holocek - Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep

☁️ Tibetan Buddhist Dream Yoga from Living Masters

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche - Tibetan Yogas of Dream & Sleep 

Lama Lena Rinpoche - Dream Yoga: 3 Part series (Free) 

☁️ Liminal Dreaming as a Practice

Jennifer Dumpert - Liminal Dreaming: Exploring Consciousness at the Edges of Sleep

☁️ Yoga Nidra & Clear Light Sleep as a Practice

Michele Loewe:

- Guided Yoga Nidra (ends with poetry reading):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv64OoPxqac

- 45-Min Guided Yoga Nidra from a retreat at Menla (Q&A starts at 50 min):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N9vs3jy0co

☁️ More on the Six Realms as Experiential States

David Nichtern - Awakening from the Dream: Reimagining the Buddha’s Wheel of Life

☁️ Deepening Meditation Practice

Alan Wallace - The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind