Tibetan Dream Yoga

We spend roughly a third of our lives asleep, somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years. Tibetan Dream Yoga treats that time not as a blank interval but as ground for awakening. This meditation retreat with Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA invites you to bring awareness into both the waking and sleeping states.

Dream yoga is a practice that spans every moment, waking and sleeping, and it has been used for hundreds of years by the great masters of the Tibetan traditions. Its foundational practices change your relationship to all experience, develop conscious awareness, and often lead to lucidity in dreams. Unlike Western psychological approaches to dreaming, the ultimate aim here is the recognition of the nature of the mind itself.

If you are curious about lucid dreaming, drawn to the contemplative side of sleep, or ready to explore how dreaming relates to waking life and to death, this workshop offers a clear path into the teachings from a living master of the tradition.

What to Expect

Over the course of the workshop, Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche teaches the principles and methods of dream yoga in a setting made for reflection and exploration. The teachings include:

- The relationships between dream and waking, and between dream and death
- How the causes of dreams are related to the six chakras, and how blocks in the chakras can be healed
- The "four preparations" for sleep
- The uses and methods of lucid dreaming

You leave with practices you can bring into your nights and days, and a different way of regarding the experience of sleep. Recommended reading includes The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep and Sleep & Awakening the Sacred Body, both by Rinpoche.

About Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is one of very few masters of the Tibetan Bön Dzogchen tradition living in the West. He founded Ligmincha International and is known for his ability to make Tibetan practices easily accessible to all students. He is the author of nine books, including Wonders of the Natural Mind and The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep.

Venue & Logistics

The workshop takes place in person at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, CA. Registration options include a workshop with an on-site stay, a workshop with an off-site stay, or an individual day pass. The on-site workshop experience includes housing, three meals a day, coffee, tea and snacks, access to the hot springs and other campus features, and classes on the open schedule. Healing arts sessions such as massage, specialty coffee, tea or alcohol from the bar, and bookstore purchases are extra. A scholarship application is available for those who need one.

Travel to Big Sur has been affected by Highway 1 closures and travel advisories, so review Esalen's current advisory and plan your route before you travel.