Dream Yoga: The Practice of Dreaming Your Way Awake

- From Richard Linklater's Waking Life

The first time I heard the phrase dream yoga, I imagined its practitioners bending their bodies into the many asanas and then proceeding to fall asleep and dream in these postures. Certainly this would be quite a challenge (shoulder stands, anyone?), but the practice of dream yoga is, in fact, quite a bit more challenging (and interesting!) because it involves exercising the consciousness rather than the body.

The idea behind dream yoga is that of cultivating full and complete awareness in ALL states of consciousness. In other words, the path of dream yoga is one that leads to being fully present, all the time, without necessarily having to continually remind oneself where ones awareness should be. Being fully present becomes second nature.

One of the main goals - at least for the beginning practitioner - is that one train oneself to carry full conscious awareness into the dream state and continue working with this exercise for about two hours at a stretch throughout the night. This cycle, as you can see, is repeated at least several times on any given night. The two hour interval is advised because it keeps the sleep light which helps prevent one from falling into what is called the sleep of ignorance.

The sleep of ignorance is pretty much exactly what it says, and it's something we all do from time to time, no matter how advanced a dreamer or dream yogin we may be. This kind of sleep is the kind where we seemingly fall into a dark pit, void of light or imagery, and wherein we recall nothing of our night's activities upon waking. Our bodies may feel refreshed, and even our minds. But what were we doing all night long?

Clear light - the pure, nondual awareness - is what we're after, but don't expect to get there in one night! This is a lifelong practice that will take most of us years to fully understand and years beyond that to even dream of mastering. At the heart of this practice is discipline, yet, like wild horses, our minds resist such attempts to reign them in. We must be gentle and patient, but persistent if we are to progress on this path.

We must also guard against developing attachment to the phenomena we encounter when we undertake the practice of working with dreams and within dream states. It is for this reason we work to develop our understanding that all such phenomena are inherently insubstantial. In dreams, for example, you may find yourself trying to pick up and object. But what is it that is being acted upon? Who or what performs the action?

With the above statements, I am not trying to suggest that working with the imaginal phenomena which arise in dreams and dream states is a fruitless, worthless undertaking (or an exercise in mental masturbation, if you will). I personally strive for and advocate a balanced approach to working with dreams that honors the decidedly Western approach to analyzing and refining the contents of our consciousness (sub and otherwise) by way of contemplating and associating the images which arise in dreaming while maintaining a degree of detachment from the images, thoughts, feelings, and experiences we have there. A degree of detachment from our own material is key to gleaning the fullest insight and learning possible when we start working with what reveals itself to us in dreams. Being too close - or too attached - to our own material makes learning from it difficult, if not impossible.

If you want to read more on the topic of dream yoga, I highly recommend The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.