Sleep Yoga Practice

Sleep Yoga Practice

To prepare for sleep practice, practicing staying on the nature of your mind as much as you can is a good preliminary daytime practice. Clear Light practices are good too. The more confidence and stability you have with your ability to stay on the nature of your mind the better base or foundation you will have for sleep yoga.

Before you engage in sleep practice, you have to have the confidence during the day that everything you see, hear, feel, think are all created by mind. You need to have this confidence in the illusory nature of phenomena during the day so that it will be there when you sleep.

Before you go to bed, stay in a quiet place with less distractions. This means cultivating an outer environment for rest. This includes stepping away from our activities, electronic devices, and conversations and getting into your bedroom, saying goodnight to your family, closing the door, and making a deliberate attempt to start your sleep practice. It can be very beneficial to stop your "screen time" on devices thirty minutes to an hour before you prepare for sleep.

The posture is the same posture used in dream practice. Lie on your right side with your right hand cupped under your head and your left arm resting on your left side. Traditionally, you would face towards the eastern direction with your head to the south. 

Place a soft, natural-colored light source above the headboard of your bed (like a battery-powered votive or warm night light). It should be out of your direct line of sight, but enough to lift your wakefulness through the night. This light represents the dakini of sleep, Seljé Dö Drelma (Formless Clarity), above your head.

Then imagine the dakini Seljé Dö Drelma, white in color, holding a curved knife up high in her right hand, and a skull cup in her left hand at her heart. She stands dancing above your head. 

Then imagine that from the heart of the dakini, clear light or nectar comes down from her heart to your head dissolving into your crown chakra and then all of your body. Through the clarity of this clear light nectar, your whole body becomes clear light. Through this clear light nectar, you receive the blessing of clear light sleep. Your body is pure clear light. Your emotions are pure clear light. Your sleep is pure clear light sleep. 

Imagine this again and again, 7, 9, or 13 times. When your mind drifts away, just bring it back to the visualization again and again. This helps to remind us again and again through mindfulness.

Then visualize yourself as the blue yidam Sangchok Gyalpo, Supreme King of Secrets. He is blue in color, with seven heads and sixteen arms holding sixteen skullcaps, each containing a heart. Think “I am the blue yidam Sangchok Gyalpo sleeping with my consort, the white dakini above my head.” 

If these visualizations are not clear for you, you can simply imagine the Buddha, or your own teacher or master above your head.  Practice in this way till you have some felt sense of confidence in being Sangchok Gyalpo and receiving the blessing. 

Recall your specific intention and repeat it to yourself in your own words “I will abide in clear light sleep. I will recognize the clarity of sleep.”

Then imagine four blue lotus petals in your heart. In the center of this four-petaled lotus is a clear light sphere. Often we call it white, but it’s like a crystal ball. It even takes on a bluish tint from the reflection of the lotus petals. The sphere is very luminous.

Next upon each of the four blue petals, arise a yellow sphere of light, a green sphere of light, a red sphere of light, and finally a blue sphere of light. You can slowly imagine each color one by one in order. Letting each slowly arise by itself, then dissolve into emptiness before the next colored sphere arises. Let each one pull you away from each of your senses and bring you deeper and deeper into your heart center.

When the last blue sphere of light dissolves, all that remains is emptiness. Let your mind rest into emptiness. 

Then naturally enter clear light sleep.

Traditionally, one’s teacher would come to check in on you after one hour, gently waking you up to ask you about your practice. Since we are most likely practicing alone, when you awake, spend some time journaling about your experience and quality of clear light sleep. You can do several sessions like this throughout the night.

How to know if you are sleeping in clarity? Only you can tell, so you have to reflect. Emptiness and clarity arise together. Here emptiness means the nature of your mind, where there are no samsaric dreams – no delusion in the mind – such as thoughts or dreams. Clarity refers to an awareness or knowing that is beyond thoughts – beyond subject and object. The practice is to stay in this empty clarity as much as you can as your body sleeps. If someone asks you “were you sleeping?” if your answer is “maybe yes” and then they ask “were you not sleeping?” and your answer is also “maybe yes” that is the clear light sleep. Maybe you are not sleeping, but maybe you are sleeping. If you have that experience, you are really in the clear light sleep. 

It is the same with staying on the nature of your mind – you can feel it but you cannot tell. You can feel it, but you cannot express it with thoughts or words. It is beyond thoughts and speech, an unexpressable state. If your experience cannot be expressed in any way, that is the clear light sleep.

There are only two distractions mentioned in the root texts, procrastination and laziness. This practice is very simple, and since we sleep every night, we have the opportunity to practice it every day. And nobody has to know but us. Only putting off practice, and being lazy can stand in the way. Therefore, generate the motivation and energy to practice every night.