Thread: Dream Yoga, FINAL WORD. Does it work for you?

Ummm, Does it work for what? It is a complex art, not one technique.

Originally Posted by sivason

Ummm, Does it work for what? It is a complex art, not one technique.

Forgive me if you find my wording simple or coarse. I understand it is a religious tradition going back to Indian yoga techniques such as Yoga Nidra and i greatly appreciate this. I've studied Hinduism and Buddhism for over a decade and am a practicing Buddhist.

For better or worse there are a vast number of people who are treating it as a lucid dream induction technique only and do not pair it with their religion. I am seeking their opinions AND those that practice it completely within their Tibetan Buddhist or Hindu practice on whether or not it has successfully helped them induce a lucid dream or dreams.

For the purposes of this poll it is both a religious art and a singular, secular lucid dream induction technique.

No matter how the reader defines "Dream Yoga" I want to know if it works for them or not in inducing lucid dreams.

One could ask a monk: "Do you practice Dream Yoga as a monk living in a monastery? Yes? Great, are you having lucid dreams? How many? How often?"

Or a person with no Buddhist ties at all: "Tried the Dream Yoga tutorial on Dreamviews in your spare time between work and college? Yes? Great, are you having lucid dreams? How many? How often?"

Originally Posted by sleepyzac

For the purposes of this poll it is both a religious art and a singular, secular lucid dream induction technique.

No matter how the reader defines "Dream Yoga" I want to know if it works for them or not in inducing lucid dreams.

OK, can you show me where I can read about this singular technique. I have never seen a tutorial about a single Dream Yoga technique for inducing lucids, but I would be interested in reading about it.



As far as my own experience I am a Dream Yogi as far as my religious practices, and general training. I have been involved in Lucid dreaming for about 27 years and dream yoga for about 25 of those.

Anyways, in my opinion I am not sure how likely it is that anyone could really master lucid dreaming with out some form of dream yoga. Take a look through my dream journal to get an idea of my lucid dreaming skills. I can not induce lucid dreams 100% of the time, and I am not sure anyone can. I do attribute all of my own skill to Dream Yoga.

Originally Posted by sivason

OK, can you show me where I can read about this singular technique. I have never seen a tutorial about a single Dream Yoga technique for inducing lucids, but I would be interested in reading about it.



As far as my own experience I am a Dream Yogi as far as my religious practices, and general training. I have been involved in Lucid dreaming for about 27 years and dream yoga for about 25 of those.

Anyways, in my opinion I am not sure how likely it is that anyone could really master lucid dreaming with out some form of dream yoga. Take a look through my dream journal to get an idea of my lucid dreaming skills. I can not induce lucid dreams 100% of the time, and I am not sure anyone can. I do attribute all of my own skill to Dream Yoga.

not really. i could try but you would counter every example i give by saying that each one is not a singular technique for some reason. for example i could reference exploring the world of lucid dreaming where laberge presents it as just one technique among many, you surely would counter and say that it's still an art within dream yoga for such and such reason.

this is because in the end it's 100% a matter of opinion and how you interpret information. if you were a totally non religious person and wanted to learn to lucid dream for fun you may even read something like the tibetan yogas of dream and sleep and see nothing more than a potentially good technique for inducing lucid dreams surrounded by a bunch of religious nonsense.

instead you see it as a spiritual art and cannot even fathom separating the technique from the art.

there's nothing wrong with being on either side of the fence. i'm just explaining why i can't really give you an example.

i myself am torn between the two and so it's easy for me to see both sides of the idea. i've studied many types of buddhism and hinduism. i lean towards zen and vedanta. the ultimate non duality in the simplest way possible and from that perspective there's really no discussion to be had about anything really. if you ask a zen master if dream yoga is important as an art or is just a technique he/she may just clap and leave the room, or say "what is being awake?" and then tell you "no." no matter what your answer is. they see things differently (trust me i've been there, it's frustrating. in a good way ). the same is true for many vedanta masters (or so i've gleaned from some readings).

on the other hand when i was studying tibetan buddhism and patanjalis yoga sutras i found dream work to be EXTREMELY important!

and finally when i was a silly teenager i saw it from the perspective of a totally secular person, just a technique surrounded by absolutely nothing at all.

currently i'm blending lucid dreaming with my zen practice. i want to work on my koan in the dream state! so i find it to be part of an art but can see where one could have the opinion that it could be otherwise.

also i was careful to make the final option that it works ALMOST all of the time i know there are few who have lucid dreams EVERY dream.

I would not argue, but I would like it if I could see and review "the technique." Did Stephen Laberge actually give a specific technique he called dream yoga, or did he just mention that it was a technique and not really cover it?

I refer to it as an art, not because of any religious leaning, but because it involves many many techniques and skills which when put together become a yoga (discipline)

Here is a link to the stuff I know about on DV, Dream Yoga It is a class in the DVA section that I teach. With what I have posted so far (far from the whole art) there are no less than 10 separate exercises, each distinct and different. They each help develop the brain in ways that enhance lucid dreaming skills.

When I think of the term "technique" I think of something like "front snap kick from Kenpo" as were Kenpo itself is an art.

So, I am just curious, in a very friendly way, if you have seen a single technique someone referred to as Dream Yoga (maybe from the book you mention by Labarge). The book you mentioned about yoga did not hold my intrest very long, but it seemed to me that many meditation like techniques were mentioned, but my house caught on fire and I lost the book before I really spent much time studying it (so I could be wrong.) As I no longer have that book, I will hope you have it and ask if it mention one specific technique.

If not, do not worry, I am not looking to debate, just expressing interest.

If any one technique could be called Dream Yoga in my mind it would be the version of WILD in which you never loose awareness (as opposed to staying aware up to the moment of sleep.)

oh okay forgive me again please. i assumed you already knew all these things and were just working backwards.

laberges book is about lucid dreaming in general and gives five or six techniques to experiment with. i don't recall what he calls it specifically but it is nearly identical to the core practice found in tenzin wangyals book. and it is just a few pages, the final page of the section is one exercise (or technique) that involves awareness and telling yourself you're dreaming under all circumstances, which is the main technique in tenzin wangyals as well.

taking away this technique from either book would make it highly unlikely that one would have a lucid dream by using this method. the section in the laberge book would be mostly blank pages and the tenzin wangyal book would be a book on buddhism and lucid dreaming with absolutely no suggestions on how one might achieve a lucid dream state.

so where dream yoga is the art, the core practice without which one would not likely have lucid dreams is what i and many others are now calling "dream yoga".

imagine if in kenpo there were many moves that were blocks or light strikes and only one that was a full forced strike, like a snap kick, without which the fighting style would not be likely to inflict any damage. now imagine a forum with a heavy focus on full force strikes that inflict damage that discusses many different fighting styles, one could simply say "the kenpo technique" and we could all assume we're talking about the snap kick.

this site is heavy on lucid dreams so this seems logical to assume that when i say "dream yoga" most will assume i'm speaking about it as an induction technique like WILD or MILD or whatever else.

also i'm sorry for reading you wrong above!!!!!!

i misjudged your questions and thought they were more of an examination and that you were asking questions that you already knew the answers to and had counters ready for.

my mistake, i'm jaded from dealing with difficult people on the internet for too long!

sivason please delete my poll!!!!!!

i just skimmed your dream yoga stuff and it's totally different from the technique i'm referring to!

or edit it to make it say: Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche style Dream Yoga: does it work for you?

or something! i have no idea how to differentiate for poll takers, your teaching style is almost totally different from tenzin. actually it looks like a pretty elegant blending of laberges other techniques and tenzin.

this poll should not include your class and these other teachers in one question as they are not the same. The data will be unfair to you likely. I dont find many or any who have luck with the tenzin/laberge technique so this poll may get a huge negative result that will be unrelated to your methods yet will still be associated with them.

So delete?

i see why you are puzzled by my poll.

Ok, I made the change. Sorry for the miss-communication. I should find a copy of those books and review this.

Originally Posted by sivason

Ok, I made the change. Sorry for the miss-communication. I should find a copy of those books and review this.

thanks! yes there must be some way to differentiate. frankly your techniques sound better than tenzin. he gives the ONE technique and sets you adrift with a few meditation techniques and visualizations to keep you company. whereas you seem to delve much more into the entire process and explain it better.