Tibetan Dream Yoga

For centuries, Tibetan masters have taught their students how to use dreamtime and dream space to further spiritual progress by increasing awareness during the dream state, otherwise known as Tibetan dream yoga. The Yoga of the Dream State, an ancient Tibetan manual on the practice of dream yoga and lucid dreaming, teaches that we can learn five spiritually significant wisdom lessons through this path of awakening:

1. Dreams can be altered through will and attention
2. Dreams are unstable, impermanent, and unreal — much like fantasies, magical illusions, mirages, and hallucinations
3. Daily perceptions in the everyday waking state are also unreal
4. All life is here today and gone tomorrow, like a dream; there is nothing to hold on to
5. Conscious dreamwork can lead us to the realization of wholeness, perfect balance, and unity

Tibetan dream yoga practice comprises three parts:

1. Daytime practice, designed to help us recognize the dreamlike nature of all existence and thereby prepare us to experience our dreams as vividly as we do our waking activities
2. Morning wake-up practices that help us recall our dreams, and confirm our determination to recall more of them
3. Night time practice, which prepares the ground for lucid dreaming and spiritual

Daytime Practice: 

During the day, practice these four points:

• Contemplate the body as illusory and unreal
• Contemplate the mind and mental activities as similarly insubstantial
• Regard the world, phenomena, and experience as dreamlike, insubstantial, impermanent, and unreal
• Recognize the relativity and ungraspable quality such as time, space, knowledge, and awareness

Wake-up Practice:

The moments immediately after waking are the most fertile for recalling dreams. The following practices are designed to support and strengthen your recall. Upon waking in the morning, practice:

• The lion's out-breath - breathing out with the sound "ah"
• The lion-like posture for awakening and purifying - sitting up in bed with raised head and gazing and emphasizing the exhalation, repeating the "ah" out breath three times
• Raise the energy - standing up, reaching the fingertips to the sky, and repeating the lion's out-breath 
• Enter into mindful reflection on the transition between the states of sleeping, dreaming, and waking reality - coming into the present moment, recording dreams. Thus, you will enter the day recognizing that all things are like a dream, illusion, fantasy.

Nighttime Practice:

After going to bed, practice these four points in order to create the conditions for mindful, lucid dreaming.

• Chant the following prayer three times to remind you of and strengthen your resolve to awaken within the dream, for the benefit of the ultimate awakening of all beings: “May I awaken within this dream and grasp the fact that I am dreaming, so that all dreamlike beings may likewise awaken from the nightmare of illusory suffering and confusion”.
• Lie on one side with your legs together and knees slightly bent. Let your bent arm take the weight of your torso by resting your head on your open hand. This is the posture of the sleeping Buddha
• Visualize the letter "A" (symbolizing infinite space) on the surface of the moon.

“There are some who are awake even while asleep, and then there are those who, apparently awake, are deeply asleep” – Lalla