Dream yoga

Dream yoga is a Tibetan Buddhist practice of cultivating awareness and disciplined activity during dreams. It uses lucid dreaming to develop insight and recognize experience as dreamlike.

Lucid dreaming: Lucid dreaming is dreaming while knowing that one is dreaming. Recognizing the dream as a dream provides the awareness dream yoga trains.
Tibetan Buddhism: Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism shaped by Indian Buddhist traditions and Tibetan cultural history. Its tantric and contemplative frameworks provide dream yoga’s religious setting.
Naropa: Naropa was an eleventh-century Indian Buddhist master associated with tantric teachings transmitted to Tibet. The Six Yogas named for him preserve a lineage in which dream yoga is taught.
Dream yoga practice: Dream yoga practice comprises contemplative exercises performed before sleep, during dreams, and upon waking. These exercises translate the tradition’s aims into a sequence of daily training.
Lucid dream induction: Lucid dream induction comprises techniques intended to increase the likelihood of becoming aware during a dream. Secular induction typically targets lucidity itself, while dream yoga places it within Buddhist training.
Tibetan Six Yogas of Naropa: The Six Yogas of Naropa are a set of advanced Tibetan Buddhist tantric practices. Dream yoga is traditionally taught within this broader system of yogic practices.
Mahamudra: Mahamudra is a Tibetan Buddhist meditation tradition centered on realizing the nature of mind. Its teachings on mind’s nature inform the insight sought through dream practice.
Marpa Lotsawa: Marpa Lotsawa was an eleventh-century Tibetan translator who traveled to India to study Buddhist teachings. He transmitted Naropa’s teachings to Tibet, including the tradition surrounding dream yoga.
Sleep yoga: Sleep yoga is a Tibetan contemplative practice aimed at maintaining awareness during deep sleep. It extends dream yoga’s continuity of awareness beyond ordinary dreaming.
Yoga Nidra: Yoga Nidra is a guided practice of conscious relaxation that explores the border between waking and sleep. It uses sleep-transition awareness but belongs to a different practice history and framework.

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Six Dharmas of NaropaBroader topic: It turns sleep and dreaming into settings for meditation.