Dream Yoga
What is Dream Yoga?
Dream yoga is a practice of working with dream and sleep that is common to both the monastic, yogic, and shamanistic traditions of Tibet. “Yoga” means to yoke, or unite. In this sense, Dream yoga is designed to integrate one’s experience of day and night, conscious mind with unconscious mind, and mundane ego with transcendent wisdom.
The purpose of these practices is to integrate lucidity and flexibility with every moment of life and to let go of the heavily conditioned way we have of seeing reality. Through Dream Yoga we discover the common threads that run through our every experience and we release them to find ease, joy, and compassionate connection.
How is it different from Lucid Dreaming?
Lucid dreaming just means becoming aware within a dream. What you do there is up to you. With dream yoga, we engage in the practice with the specific aim of learning, growing, and healing. Instead of using your mind as an entertainment center, we turn it into a laboratory. You’re the experimenter and the subject of study!
The View of Dream Yoga: Life is “like a dream”
In dreams, we believe that everything we’re experiencing is fact. We’re bound to the limitations of the story, our feelings, and our experience of ourselves and others. But when we become lucid, we suddenly realize our tremendous capacity to change! This realization leaves us feeling light-hearted, energized, and transformed.
In waking life, we are also in a kind of dream. What we perceive is completely unique to ourselves and is shaped by our past, by our expectations, and by our limiting views. When we don’t realize this subjectivity, we take our perceptions to be fact. We get stuck in our stories and have a hard time seeing our situation from other perspectives. Everything seems very serious and unchangeable. Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche calls this our “pain identity” - we hold tight to a self concept that is bound by limitation.
In this sense, during both the night and day, we’re in a dream. Both are expressions of our habitual mental and emotional energy. Healing happens when we uncover these habits and release them. Dream Yoga is not about judging or denying our outer situations, but instead, it’s about waking up to the limitless capacity we have to transform our experience of the world.
Intention & Motivation:
Having a clear sense of why you’re practicing, how you would like to grow, and what you would like to accomplish in a dream or while awake is one of the strongest predictors of success and longevity in practice. Intention is the inner compass that guides our practice and signals its importance to the unconscious mind.
Preparing For Sleep:
Our days are busy and leave us feeling scattered. Just like we might brush our teeth or have a shower before bed, we also cultivate good mental hygiene by intentionally creating space for practice. Here, we develop a habit or ritual for cultivating an atmosphere of relaxation, safety, and inspiration.
Sleep & Dream Practice:
There are hundreds of techniques from the Indian, Tibetan, and Western traditions that help us gain lucidity in the dream state and give us specific tasks or activities to do once we are lucid. Which ones are right for you will depend on your personality, preferences, sleeping habits, and free time. Approach this journey joyfully, as a lifelong practice of fine tuning and trial and error.
Waking & Journaling:
How we emerge from sleep is just as important as how we prepare for it. Here we cultivate a practice of waking up mindfully, paying attention to our memories of the dream and any hypnopompic images that flow into the waking state. We spend time journaling and setting intentions for the day.
Day Practice:
Both the Indo-Tibetan and western scientific traditions have a battery of practices for carrying our budding lucidity into the waking hours. From state checks, to prospective memory practices, sensory check-ins, and meditations, the practice of the day is a fundamental aspect of practice. Through it, we integrate our whole path and can come to recognize the creative awareness that is present in all states.
Meditative Training:
A daily practice of relaxation and stable attention (known traditionally as Shamatha or Shiné) will help you cultivate a stilled and settled state of mind that is able to recognize the dream state during sleep and able to live more lucidly during the day.