Dream Yoga

[Ahimsa]

Hello, friends of Project Avalon!

I want to share with you the practice of dream yoga or lucid dreaming.

What is dream yoga?

Simply, dream yoga is a Tibetan practice of lucid dreaming. Combined with Buddhist spirituality,Tibetan native folk religion of Bon, and Indian yogic practices, dream yoga helps the experiencer to become fully aware within the dream. The purpose of dream yoga is to enable the dreamer to undergo a meditative state within the dream world and get closer to enlightenment or realizing their “clear light” mind.

What is the difference between lucid dreaming and astral projection?

Lucid dreaming is going inward into your mind and having having lucidity while you're dreaming; Astral projection is when your soul leave your body. Your soul does not leave your body while you're dreaming. Quite the opposite.

In dream yoga, your consciousness moves from your gross mind to your subtle mind. The gross mind is your everyday mind; It is the mind that you have during your waking state which you're actively using to perform activities like working, talking, eating, drinking, driving, etc. (You are thinking with your gross mind right now!) The subtle mind is the mind that you use while you're in the dreaming state. After your gross mind dissolves into your subtle mind, your subtle mind takes over.

It's the subtle mind that is active in the dreaming state. It could be why we have difficulty remembering our dreams, because our consciousness has not been trained to go from gross mind to subtle mind and back to subtle mind to gross mind.

How do we train ourselves to remember our dreams?

We can practice lucidity everyday by practicing mindfulness. Start by being mindful of the activities you're doing—doing one activity at a time. For example, when you're drinking tea, be mindful that you're drinking tea. Take your time drinking tea by remembering the taste or by smelling its aroma. Drink the tea slowly and not gulp it down in one sitting. Remember that we're trying to practice mindfulness so that we can practice awareness in our dreams. (Try not to multitask unless your job requires you to do so.) Tea-drinking is a good time to practice mindfulness. You don't have to only drink tea. You have other beverage substitute like coffee, lemonade, juice, water, etc. (Avoid alcohol. It's hard to be mindful when you're drunk. Unless you're a highly-attained monk or yogi (or someone similar) who can drink alcohol and not be affected by it.) Extend mindfulness to other activities like driving, reading, or any other activities that requires your attention.

We can also induce awareness in our dreams by being actively inquisitive in our waking state. Try asking questions like, “Am I dreaming right now?” or “Is this a dream?” This method is suppose to help you get into a habit of questioning yourself while you're dreaming. Thus, triggering lucidity as you remind yourself.

Concurrent with our gross mind and subtle mind, we have our gross body and subtle body. As the name suggest, the gross mind is connected with our gross body and our subtle mind is connected with our subtle body. Like how the gross mind is our waking, everyday mind, our gross body is our physical body. Likewise, our subtle body is connected with our subtle mind. We use our subtle body to traverse our dreaming state. The subtle body could be the astral body as well—which can cause the confusion between a lucid dreaming and astral projection. However, lucid dreaming is internal and astral projection is external.

Since this is dream yoga, grasping the understanding of our subtle mind/subtle body would further help us reach our final destination which is realizing our very subtle mind. The very subtle mind is where our “clear light” mind, our true mind, or true consciousness is located. Dream yoga is a very internal process.

What are the techniques of dream yoga?

I find the Sleeping Lion Posture very helpful when trying to lucid dream. The Sleeping Lion Posture is where you lay on your right side and covering your right nostril with your right thumb while you sleep. This technique is suppose to induce lucidity as you're dreaming. Since I been using this technique, I have been dreaming every single night!

The Buddha is depicted in many statues and images in a Sleeping Lion Posture.

You can feel your subtle body through music. You can examine the state of your subtle mind by the vibration or energy of the music you're listening to. Some people use meditative music to not only help them through meditation, but also lucid dreaming.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is amazing at teaching dream yoga. Here's a video lecture:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Sa2zvm2jjo4

I'm currently reading “Dream Yoga” by Andrew Holecek. He covered a lot of materials on Dream Yoga, the science of lucid dreaming, practices and techniques on how-to lucid dream. It's pretty good read if you want to learn further.

If you guys have any recommendations on books, lucid dream teachers, websites, or any lucid dreaming techniques that works for you, feel free to share!

Good luck, oneironauts!

[TomKat]

I used to lucid dream for a short time in my early 20s. I had been trying to astral project, and read Oliver Fox's book on the subject. I had a split-sleep schedule and it made it fairly easy. However, after doing it for a month or so, I came to the conclusion that I was only dreaming I was projecting, that I was actually lucid dreaming. I might have kept it up, but I found it was no substitute for real sleep. Unlike the reports of others, I found that I needed mindless regular sleep, and lucid dreaming made me tired.

When I started to suspect my "astral projections" were just dreams, I decided to pierce the "astral plane" (dream) environment, to see what was behind it. When I did that, I saw my body on the bed, from the perspective of only an inch or so away. Which is about the distance people normally exteriorize when asleep...

I did have a couple of experiences that I believe were true projections, though, one involving a dog. I got caught up in its aura of pure, intense hostility that was interesting -- precipitated by me when I wondered what it would be like to operate a dog body. Served me right! :-)

[skyhigh]

This is the first time I came across Dream Yoga and I find it interesting. I do a Yoga Mudra daily for about 30 minutes while walking and it's effective in mitigating my skin allergies. I also use the Dream Control technique which I read from a Silva Method for Business Managers book many years ago. It's effective for solving some problems in my life and it also gives me more lucid dreams. I also tried and used Sapien Medicine's Attunement Card and Lucid Dreaming Card and they also work for me. They are easy to use and free. If one is interested, then you can just go to Sapien Medicine Instagram Account. I had screenshots and printed the two cards but one can just look at the card for a minute or so on your phone or computer screens as I did and it will still work. The Attunement Card is necessary to condition your system and after that, you can already use the other cards, depending on what you want. As you continue using them for a period of time you will not need the cards anymore and just think of a particular card and it will work according to Sapien Medicine.

[leavesoftrees]

I found this pdf I've had for a few years. May be of interest

[Rich]

I watched a video where Jürgen Ziewe said that meditation in the astral is easier because you don't have to overcome "gravity".

Posted by TomKat (here)
I used to lucid dream for a short time in my early 20s. I had been trying to astral project, and read Oliver Fox's book on the subject. I had a split-sleep schedule and it made it fairly easy.

That split sleep schedule is probably a good idea, heard that it's supposed to help, thx for the reminder. Do you know how much time you have to be awake between the splits? Because lately I just stay awake for an hour at night, I dont know if that is enough?

I came to the conclusion that I was only dreaming I was projecting,

If the vibrational state happens before you experience it then it is a sure sign that you are OOB, but I don't know if that always happens and if one is always aware of it but I think usually yes.