THE WISDOM ACADEMY PRESENTS
Niguma’s Dream Yoga
An Online Course with H. E. Kalu Rinpoche
Building on H. E. Kalu Rinpoche’s popular course The Illusory Body and Mind, this next chapter delves even deeper into the luminous wisdom of Niguma.
Journey through the Six Yogas of Niguma with Rinpoche as your guide, exploring foundational practices like guru yoga and tummo before guiding you into Niguma’s dream yoga. Together, these practices have the potential to create profound shifts in awareness and being.
Discover how to cut through the noise of praise and blame, identify and overcome distraction, and embrace impermanence—not as a limitation, but as a gateway to boundless compassion and joy. Rinpoche’s vivid teachings and guided visualizations open the door to abandoning identity, knowing the true meaning of renunciation, and inhabiting the essence of the path with clarity and courage.
This course represents a powerful encounter with dakini wisdom, rendered timeless through the voice of a remarkable teacher.
The course begins March 14, 2025. Scroll down for a full schedule.
Save $50 with code NDY50 when you enroll before February 5, 2025.
Full Tuition: $297
Early Bird Tuition: $247
Includes lifetime access for enrolled students!
After enrolling, check your email for a welcome email with instructions on how to take the course. When you enroll in any Wisdom Academy course, you agree to our terms of use. Enrolled students have lifetime access to course materials. Wisdom is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Your tuition supports the creation of more courses like this one. Thank you! For more about our terms, please see the Wisdom Academy FAQ.
Benefits of Taking This Course
Learn about the physical posture, breath control, and visualization involved with the tummo practice, which transforms negative energies into clarity and calmness while gradually building the physical and mental stamina to achieve a deep meditative state and enhanced focus.
Learn how to practice Niguma’s dream yoga and truly experience the practice’s benefits, such as enhancing your understanding of death and the bardo state.
Gain deep inspiration for practice and life as you experience a remarkable teacher who has an exceptional ability to help students journey to new depths of realization and practice.
The course also includes teachings on guru yoga, how to still the mental chatter that arises during meditation, how to view your consciousness as lacking true existence, how to cultivate profound equanimity, and much more.
Receiving this heartfelt and deeply inspiring guidance along the path of awakening, we think you’ll discover transformative new depths to your practice, and new potential for your awakening.
Rinpoche possesses a rare ability to communicate profound inspiration and motivation to his students, coming from a place of deep experience. He opens a door to vividly sensing the preciousness of your human life and the potential of your practice. Some of the benefits of studying with him include:
• You’ll be able to move through life with greater grace, ease, and confidence as you learn how to free your mind from fixation.
• You’ll find a powerful support for your practice as you learn how to develop a heartfelt connection with your root guru, and how to visualize yourself as a deity.
• As Rinpoche teaches you how to contemplate emptiness and dreamlike appearance, you’ll hone the wisdom and clarity of your mind.
Save $50 with code NDY50 when you enroll before February 5, 2025.
Full Tuition: $297
Early Bird Tuition: $247
Includes lifetime access for enrolled students!
After enrolling, check your email for a welcome email with instructions on how to take the course. When you enroll in any Wisdom Academy course, you agree to our terms of use. Enrolled students have lifetime access to course materials. Wisdom is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Your tuition supports the creation of more courses like this one. Thank you! For more about our terms, please see the Wisdom Academy FAQ.
Kalu Rinpoche has a rare ability to invite you into the mysterious, boundlessly powerful inspiration that lies at the heart of the Dharma.
His teachings express a deep understanding of the struggles we all face, such as fear, clinging, and conflict in relationships. He has the ability to meet students where they are, amidst all the stressors of modern life, and reveal the way to the deep, quiet, unlimited possibility of awakening. This is one essential aspect of what makes his teachings so profoundly inspiring: he reveals how anyone and everyone can be liberated, and helps you to truly feel that potential within yourself.
Practicing with Rinpoche is like discovering a deep, ancient well of timeless, pure, and deeply sacred wisdom.
We invite you to experience this remarkable teacher for yourself in Niguma’s Dream Yoga. As Rinpoche reads and explains Niguma’s original teachings, you’ll learn about
• specific ways to train your mind for greater calm and clarity,
• how to cultivate the mental attitudes that will most support your practice,
• knowing impermanence as an essential practice for joy,
• discovering the true meaning and power of renunciation,
• abandoning identity,
• and much more.
Save $50 with code NDY50 when you enroll before February 5, 2025.
Full Tuition: $297
Early Bird Tuition: $247
Includes lifetime access for enrolled students!
After enrolling, check your email for a welcome email with instructions on how to take the course. When you enroll in any Wisdom Academy course, you agree to our terms of use. Enrolled students have lifetime access to course materials. Wisdom is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Your tuition supports the creation of more courses like this one. Thank you! For more about our terms, please see the Wisdom Academy FAQ.
Lesson 1: The Foundations, Benefits, and Greatnesses of the Yoga
H. E. Kalu Rinpoche relates his background, personal motivation for creating this course, and the benefits he has derived from Niguma’s dream yoga and associated practices. He introduces some of the foundational topics for engaging in guru yoga, including renunciation, the preciousness of your human life, and impermanence. You’ll also receive key guidance for distinguishing between ordinary distraction, subtle distraction, and mental clarity.
Lesson 2: From Subtle Fixation to Mental Clarity
Rinpoche guides you through the preparation, motivation, and visualizations involved in a special guru yoga practice linked with the Niguma yogas. He also shares powerful anecdotes to emphasize the importance of pure vision, the precious human rebirth, impermanence, and combating delusions such as fixation. You’ll gain familiarity with how to practice a powerful new guru yoga technique and how to maintain the perception of your reality as the illusory body and mind.
Lesson 3: Deepening Your Guru Yoga Meditation
Rinpoche continues explaining the cycle of visualizations from the special guru yoga associated with Niguma’s dream yoga. He conveys the deeper significance of this practice, including the practice’s link to the illusory body and mind. You’ll learn how to develop a heartfelt connection with your root guru and how to contemplate emptiness and dreamlike appearance.
Lesson 4: Two Profound Methods of Practice
Rinpoche elaborates on the two practice methods of visualizing oneself as a deity and seeing all illusory appearances as they are, helping you progress in your spiritual journey. You’ll develop an understanding of how to visualize yourself as a deity, see that deity as the appearance of your consciousness and the illusionary mind, view your consciousness as lacking true existence, and gaze toward your observing mind, letting it be as it is, unfabricated.
Lesson 5: Revisiting and Reinvigorating Your Illusory Body and Mind Practice
Rinpoche provides greater detail on how to gently analyze and dissolve the mental chatter that naturally arises in the midst of meditating on appearances and the illusory body and mind. He then takes you deeper into both the guru yoga and illusory body and mind practices. You’ll also discover more about the three key attitudes for proper practice between formal meditation sessions.
Lesson 6: Blazing the Inner Fires of Tummo
Rinpoche explains how the practice of the illusory body and mind reduces attachment, aggression, pride, and fixation, allowing you to cultivate a state of equanimity where the mind is not disturbed by various external stimuli such as praise or criticism. You’ll also learn about the physical posture, breath control, and visualization involved with the tummo practice, which transforms negative energies into clarity and calmness while gradually building the physical and mental stamina to achieve a deep meditative state and enhanced focus.
Lesson 7: Beyond Heat Generation Alone
Rinpoche further reveals the physical and mental preparations for tummo practice, emphasizing the importance of cultivating mental clarity and resilience rather than mere physical warmth. You’ll learn about the benefits of combining breath control, deity yoga, and internal energy to cleanse negativity, loosen spiritual knots, and manifest clear and blissful awareness.
Lesson 8: The Titular Dream Yoga
Rinpoche guides you to the culmination of what you have studied with him thus far: Niguma’s dream yoga. He describes how to channel your steadfast determination, balanced mental attitude, awareness of impermanence, connection to guru yoga, and recognition of subtle distractions into dream yoga to truly experience the practice’s benefits. You’ll learn about how incorporating these principles into your practice can enhance your understanding of death and the bardo state and ultimately elevate your spiritual journey through the deeper awareness and transformation that can become possible within your dreams.
Your Course Includes
HD Video Teachings
Guided Meditations
Curated Readings
A Discussion Forum
Ongoing Access for Enrolled Students
“I wish to express my deepest gratitude for your teachings. Your simplicity, clarity, and depth of explaining the Shangpa Kagyu tradition has helped me immensely in my personal practice. I will revisit these lessons again and again. This course has provided a new beginning and aspiration in my ongoing practice.”
—Kathy Bond, student in The Illusory Body and Mind
Save $50 with code NDY50 when you enroll before February 5, 2025.
Full Tuition: $297
Early Bird Tuition: $247
Includes lifetime access for enrolled students!
After enrolling, check your email for a welcome email with instructions on how to take the course. When you enroll in any Wisdom Academy course, you agree to our terms of use. Enrolled students have lifetime access to course materials. Wisdom is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Your tuition supports the creation of more courses like this one. Thank you! For more about our terms, please see the Wisdom Academy FAQ.
• March 14: Lesson 1 released
• March 21: Lesson 2
• March 28: Lesson 3
• April 4: Lesson 4
• April 11: Lesson 5
• April 18: Lesson 6
• April 25: Lesson 7
• May 2: Lesson 8
His Eminence the 2nd Kalu Rinpoche was born on September 17, 1990 in Darjeeling, India. His father, Lama Gyaltsen, was a nephew of the previous Kalu Rinpoche and had also been his secretary since his youth. The 2nd Kalu Rinpoche was recognized on March 25, 1992 by Tai Situ Rinpoche. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has officially confirmed the recognition.
On February 28, 1993, he was inducted into Samdrub Darjay Chöling (Sonada). His father passed away in 1999 and he asked to live in the monastery of Bokar Rinpoche in order to grow and study under his direction. In 2004, he began the traditional three-year retreat, which he completed in 2008. In 2009, he received from Tai Situ Rinpoche all the transmissions of the Shangpa Lineage. On this occasion, he undertook to confer 108 times the cycle of initiations of the lineage from which he is now holder.
In 2010, Kalu Rinpoche traveled to the West and took charge of the meditation centers created by the first Kalu Rinpoche around the world. In 2014, he returned to Palden Shangpa La Boulaye in France to teach and to resume the tradition of Monlam Shangpa initiated by his predecessor. He has done the same in the United States in 2019.
Each year, Kalu Rinpoche gives initiations and teachings around the world.
Excerpted from Timeless Rapture, by Ngawang Zangpo:
In the Shangpa tradition’s collections of the early masters’ life stories, Kunga Ö’s Biography of the Wisdom Dakini Niguma covers a mere six pages, most of which amount to verses of praise. Only the following words are pertinent to her life:
This wisdom dakini was born the daughter of the great Brahmin Shantivarma [Zhiwé Gocha] and the Brahmini Shrimati [Palgyi Lodrö]. Her name was Shrijnana [Palgyi Yéshé]. She was pandit Naropa’s sister and a member of the Brahmin caste. During three previous incalculable eons of time, she actualized her training on the spiritual path.
In the continuity of that path, during this lifetime she received a little instruction from a few accomplished spiritual masters and, based on their teaching, directly saw the truth of the nature of reality. Her illusory body of obscuring emotions appeared as a pure body of enlightenment. Having reached awakening’s three pure stages, she actually met the great Buddha Vajra Bearer [Dorje Chang, Tib, Vajradhara. Sanskrit] and received from him the full four empowerments of Great Way tantra within an emanated sacred circle of deities.
The wisdom of her understanding of every sacred teaching, such as Buddha’s discourses and tantras, profound instructions, and treatises, flowered to include direct [knowledge and sight] of the nature and multiplicity of all phenomena. She reached awakening’s tenth stage, Cloud of the Doctrine.
Her obscurations of knowledge became finer and finer until no veils remained; she became one with enlightenment, an epitome of the three bodies of enlightenment. She reached perfection in renunciation and realization, the achievement of her own goal. Her enlightenment’s two form bodies appear for the benefit of others until the end of existence and bring benefit to beings in ways that can purposefully guide them. In particular, she watches over those who preserve her lineage with a compassion that knows no distance; she blesses them and ensures the success of their enlightened activity.
Biography source: Sukhasiddhi Foundation.
The Wisdom Academy is the leading provider of high-quality online courses about Buddhism and meditation.
The Wisdom Academy was founded in 2016. Since then, we’ve grown to be the leader in online Buddhist learning, with over 50 courses and thousands of students enrolled.
In the Academy, dedicated students come together with beloved teachers to learn authentic philosophy and practices for awakening.
Our courses offer teachings on Dzogchen, shamatha, mahamudra, vipassana, mindfulness, jhana, and much more. The clear, progressive structure of the courses will support you in learning about the profound philosophy and practices of the Dharma. You’ll discover the vivid and immediate ways that the teachings can create more ease, joy, and freedom in your daily life. Click here to learn more and explore our course catalog.
