Dream Yoga

“I keep going back and repeating the lessons and love how one can progress at one’s own pace. I think I will be looping this course for many years to come!

It’s already had a positive impact. The line between waking and dreaming ‘reality’ has become less rigid. I love the notion that you can participate in your dreams and affect them, and also shift your awake experience at the same time. It’s quite profound, and it works!”

—Molly Coxe, student in Dream Yoga and author of Lumi: Adventures in Kindness

What is dream yoga?

Rooted in the Tibetan Bön Buddhist tradition, dream yoga is an advanced spiritual practice in which you can rediscover your dreams as potent vehicles for enhancing awareness in both dreaming and waking states. These vehicles can help you to move toward transforming your consciousness and your life, leading toward attaining ultimate liberation.

The eventual goal of dream yoga is not solely to learn to dream lucidly, but also to recognize the illusory nature of both dreams and waking life and to realize the true nature of reality. Dream yoga is also a preparation for death: as Rinpoche teaches, your ability to be grounded, peaceful, and aware during the dying process will depend on the success of your previous dream yoga practice.

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How does dream yoga help us attain liberation?

As Rinpoche teaches in this course, the purpose of the Dharma is to see the empty, illusion-like nature of reality so that we can be free of that illusion.

Why is this so hard to do? The reality we live in can seem so real and so concrete that we can find it very difficult to truly see its empty nature.

But when we awaken from sleep and dreaming, we know that we were dreaming. What dream yoga teaches us is that if we can know that we’re dreaming while we’re dreaming, we can start to do the same in our real lives.

Dream yoga helps us to see the dream-like, empty nature of reality. Even amidst life’s greatest challenges, if we can apply this wisdom, we will have less suffering.

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We spend a third of our life sleeping, and every night we participate in profound mysteries—moving from one dimension of experience to another, losing our sense of self and finding it again; and yet we take it all for granted. We wake up in the morning and continue “real” life, but in a sense we are still asleep and dreaming. 

If we’re lucky, a third of our life might be 25 years or more—and imagine having 25 more years to deepen your practice and awaken your mind! Every single night is a chance to grow and discover new qualities in yourself.

In sacred sleep, find a new possibility for spiritual development.

Discover for yourself how the practice of dream yoga can lead to remarkable transformation in your waking life.

• When does the course run? Enrollment is currently closed. We will re-open enrollment in July 2024 for the next run of the course, which will start August 30, 2024. Return to this page in July next year to save your seat!

For more about our terms, please see the Wisdom Academy FAQ.

• Friday, August 30, 2024: Lesson 1
• Friday, September 6: Lesson 2
• Friday, September 6, 11:59 PM EST: Enrollment closes.
• Friday, September 13: Lesson 3
• Friday, September 20: Lesson 4
• Friday, September 27: Lesson 5
• Friday, October 4: Lesson 6
• Friday, October 11: Lesson 7
• Friday, October 18: Lesson 8
• Friday, October 25: Forum discussions end

The course begins by introducing the importance of dreams and their connection to waking life and goes on to guide students through the teachings on and practices for dream yoga.

Each lesson explores specific aspects of the practice, offering techniques and exercises to help participants guide their dreams and further their spiritual evolution. All teaching sessions conclude with detailed practice instructions and a guided meditation. Curated readings enhance the student’s experience and deepen their understanding.

It is said that the practice of dream yoga deepens our awareness during all our experiences: the dreams of the night, the dream-like experience of the day, and the bardo experiences after death. It’s a powerful tool for awakening, used for hundreds of years by the great masters of the Tibetan traditions. 

1. If you want to learn dream yoga practices from Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche.

2. If you’re facing challenges in your life and want to access profound inner resources to help you.

3. If you want to learn how to train a mind that will be at ease at the moment of death.

Founder and spiritual director of Ligmincha International, Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is a respected and beloved teacher and meditation master in the Bön Buddhist tradition of Tibet. He has students in more than 25 countries, teaches around the world, and reaches thousands of students through his online programs.

Trained as a Bön monk, Rinpoche now lives as a householder, allowing him to more fully relate to the needs and concerns of his students. Known for the depth of his wisdom and his unshakeable commitment to helping students recognize their true nature, he is the author of many books and online courses.

Photos of Rinpoche are by Janine Guldener.

Wisdom is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. When you purchase from Wisdom or make a donation, you are helping us to continue our mission to make the Dharma as widely available as possible. Thank you!