Sleep Yoga
With some proficiency in dream yoga, you can progress into sleep yoga, which is connected to Yoga Nidra in Hinduism and Luminosity Yoga in Buddhism. This track will support the formless meditations that prepare for this yoga, and show you how to use lucid dreaming as a platform into lucid sleep. Sleep yoga explores what Hinduism calls “causal consciousness,” or the foundational awareness from which all other states of consciousness emerge. If we’re lucid to it, we’re in the most direct contact with nonduality in deep dreamless sleep, and sleep yoga shows you how to access this highly refined state. In Buddhism, sleep yoga is considered “full lucidity” while dream yoga is “partial lucidity.” Sleep yoga follows the progression of transcend but include: it goes beyond both lucid dreaming and dream yoga, while incorporating both.
The Practice of Sleep Yoga
Sleep yoga, simply put, is the practice of sustaining awareness as we go from waking consciousness to dreamless sleep. I recommend sliding into the practice of sleep yoga with a three-stage progression of daytime mindfulness meditation.
Introduction to Sleep Yoga
Just as dream yoga is a step beyond lucid dreaming, sleep yoga is a step beyond dream yoga. It’s called “sleep yoga” because it brings lucidity or awareness into deep dreamless sleep.
How To Do Sleep Yoga
Just like with all the other nocturnal meditations, there are things to do during the day to prepare for sleep yoga and things you can do at night. Using the tenet that lucid dreaming is partial lucidity while lucid sleep is full lucidity, you can use the lucid dreaming state as a halfway house to lucid sleep.
Sleep Yoga
If lucid dreaming and dream yoga are a form of “night school,” with sleep yoga and bardo yoga we enter “graduate school.” They’re not for everyone. Don’t worry if they don’t speak to you. But these more advanced practices are in the traditions, and just knowing about them can vastly expand your horizons in terms of what’s possible in the night.