Speaker 1 · 0:03Hi, everybody. I'm really fascinated by today's expert and topic. Our friend Andrew Holicek is here. Andrew Holicek is an author and a spiritual teacher. He offers talks, online courses, and workshops all over the US and abroad. He's a longtime student of Buddhism. He frequently presents this tradition from a contemporary perspective, blending the ancient wisdom of the East with modern knowledge from the West. Drawing on years of intensive study and practice, he teaches on the opportunities that exist and obstacles, helping people with hardship and pain, death and dying, and also problems in meditation. Known as an expert on lucid dreaming and the Tibetan yogas of sleep and dream, he's an experienced guide for students drawn to these powerful nocturnal practices. Andrew is the author of many books and offers seminars internationally on meditation, lucid dreaming, and dream yoga. He's the author of Dream Yoga, Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming, and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep, the Audio Learning Course, Dream Yoga, The Tibetan Path of Awakening Through Lucid Dreaming, Dreams of Light, The Profound Daytime Practice of Lucid Dreaming, and The Lucid Dreaming Workbook, A Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering Your Dream Life. He's also a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the author of several scientific papers on lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2 · 1:56I do now want to transition a little bit more overtly to lucid dreaming. This is the topic that has the most traffic these days. There are dozens of books on this. It's a fantastically kind of prolific area. This is that state of consciousness. I'm sure many of you listening have had it. When you're dreaming, something glues you into the fact that you're dreaming. You wake up within the dream. So you're still in the dream, but now you're aware of it, you're conscious of it. How is lucid dreaming different from dream yoga? Well, this is my languaging. Mostly once you get past the entertainment value, initially, when most people do lucid dreaming, and this is why it sells, you'll see things like fulfill your wildest fantasies and the privacy of your own mind kind of thing. And so this is one reason it's a little bit sexy, it sells because you're basically able to do fundamentally whatever you want within the context of your dream. So initially, there's a lot of entertainment value involved. It's like you become writer, producer, director, actor in an Academy Award winning production of your own mind. You can pretty much do whatever you want. In terms of maturation, that type of lucid dreaming eventually people wonder after a while, isn't there something else? Can I do something more than that? Well, yes. This is where the vast array of benefits that come from more formal, higher-level, intermediate, higher-level dimensions of lucid dreaming. We can talk about that when I talk about the benefits. That's where that comes in. You can use lucid dreaming largely in this arena for purposes of self-fulfillment and for psychological development. Fantastically rich. I would argue that lucid dreaming in particular represents a type of pedagogy of the future, a hyper pedagogy, the ability to learn in a concentrated, accelerated way, where you're working with consciousness in a refined unconscious. Lucid dreaming is sometimes called a hybrid state of consciousness. Lucid dream is a mindful dream. I'm totally going to tie this into how you can use your mindfulness, what you're doing right now, as a ramp into these practices. So when we're doing these practices, we're actually inviting a completely new relationship to these deep unconscious processes, hybrid state of consciousness where the conscious mind can face the unconscious mind directly, that is extraordinarily rare, and therefore transform these unconscious elements at their base. So it's like you're working with the tectonic place of your experience here, or another metaphor. You're working with the roots of your life. And so the trees and the branches, that's self-help stuff, that's even traditional meditation. You got the leaves, you get the branches, you got the trunk, and then you've got the roots. And so the farther down you go, the deeper you go, the more transformative and the more efficacious are these methodologies. And that is one reason why these practices are so transformative. And so these things I can tell you from my own experience. I have never had a near-death experience, but I've talked to many who have. I've read the literature quite extensively. But I have had a number of what are called hyper-lucid dreams. And a hyper-lucid dream, these are these extraordinarily impactful dreams where they're so real, they're so vibrant that when you wake up from one of those types of dreams, this appears to be the foggy dream that's more real than this. And I've had several myself, and I know others who have that have changed the entire course of my life, just like a near-death experience has the potential to do. You don't have to have an NDE and near-death experience over and over to have it irrevocably change you. Why? Because it's so foundational, it goes to the ground of your being. And so it's the same with these hyper-lucid dreams. You can have one dream tonight, who knows? You may have a hyper-lucid dream tonight, and it can change the entire trajectory of your life because it is so true, it's so foundational. I've done informal polls on this for many, many years in my own teaching programs, non-scientific, anecdotal. How many people here meditate, hands go up? How many people here if I had a lucid dream? Same hands go up. So, in addition to the technique of intentionality, tonight I'm going to have many dreams. Tonight I'm going to remember my dreams. Tonight I'm going to wake up in my dreams. Stephen LeBaire, through his research, has shown, just to give you some other tips and tricks for attaining lucidity, that if you engage in what he calls the wake and back to bed method, which I will share with you, it's very easy, very brief. Your chances of attaining lucidity are increased 16-fold. And so the way this particular technique works, there's several ways to do this depending on how interested you are in having these dreams. But you set your alarm to go off, and this is where you have to play with it a little bit because it's different for everybody. Our sleep patterns are not the same. But my experience is generally set your alarm to go off 2.5 to 3 hours before you normally wake up. Wake up, go to the bathroom, do not turn on the lights. Definitely do not go to your phone. Do not check your computer. Why? Because you don't want that blue light again. If you do that, you won't go back to sleep. Stay up from anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes. Again, it depends on people. At that point, you can engage in some meditation, some gentle breath work, reestablish the intentionality to have lucidity, and simply allow yourself to drift back into sleep. It takes advantage of this prime time dream time, the later phases of the night when we're mostly in REM sleep, and it allows you to interject awareness, consciousness, wakefulness during that kind of fruitful ripe period. For those of you who are interested in things like supplements, there are dozens and dozens of supplements on the light that one can work with. If I'm in a lab and I absolutely positively have to have a lucid dream, in addition to what I just shared with you, the other thing I do, this resonates with some people, but not with others, is there is a very interesting agent over the counter called galantamine. You may have heard of it. It's an acetylcholinesterase. And so what it does is when we're dreaming, there's a particular neurotransmitter that's in high concentration in the brain called acetylcholine. You can order it. Galantomind is one. That's a brand name. I've tried a number of these. I've noticed no difference whatsoever. It is, however, an unregulated industry. You never know exactly what you're going to get, but I've never had any issues with it. What it does is it inhibits the breakdown of the enzyme, acetylcholine esterase. It inhibits the breakdown of that enzyme that breaks down acetylcholine, which means what? That neurotransmitter, acetylcholine itself stays in high concentrations. And what it does is it won't overtly trigger lucidity as in a lucid dream, but in the vast majority of people, and I just did another dream yoga program last week in Aspen. We had tremendous luck with this as well. Studies have shown this, a number of scientists have studied this one. I've been involved in these studies as well. The likelihood of having increased clear dreams, lucidity in that sense, the dreams are more vibrant, more acute, more clear. That gives you greater accessibility, availability to work with attaining lucidity in that dream. And so what I do if I'm in a lab, I have to have a dream tonight. I'll take either four or eight milligrams of galantamine at that wake-in-bed, primetime dream time period, 2.5 to three hours before I normally wake up. I take that, I go back to sleep. I'll have a lucid dream every single time. So the next thing that I recommend in conjunction now, this is another daytime practice that you can do, is work with what are called dream signs. And these are really playful, interesting, fun things to do. And what a dream sign is, it's kind of like what it sounds like. It's any quirky, unusual, dreamlike event that occurs during the day. Like, for instance, I'm sitting here in the study. If a big bird slams into the window, that's what's called a weak dream sign. Something unusual, or I'm sitting here in the lampshade behind me falls off, or a strange dog walks into your garage or house. Anytime anything unusual happens, what you want to do is conduct a state check, or what's called a critically reflective attitude. And what this is, it couldn't be simpler. Whenever anything weird happens, and once you're sensitized to it, weird things happen all the time. You want to conduct a state check. And what a state check is, and there's many of them, I'll show you the easiest ones, so simple. That's what it sounds like. It's a way to check what state of consciousness you're in. There's many, but the one I do the most is whenever anything weird happens, is I'll jump up. I'm sitting in a chair right now. So if a bird was to hit the window, I would jump up out of my chair. If I'm walking along outside and something weird happens, I'll literally jump up. Why do you want to do that? Well, you're creating a pop-up, you're installing a pop-up, you're creating a habit. And then what'll happen is this habit will carry over into the dream. And the way this works is that one of the main reasons we don't wake up in our dreams is we take whatever happens in the dream at face value. We don't challenge it. A pink elephant walks into your living room in a dream, you just go with it, right? That's how you sustain and continue to go with your non-lucidity. But if you sensitize yourself during the day relentlessly, consistently, to do these state checks, then whenever any weird thing happens in the dream, which happens like every bloody night, you'll conduct a state check. And so that pink elephant appears in my dream tonight. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna jump up in my dream. And guess what happens? Half the time, I'll either go up, I won't come back. If I jump up, I just keep going. Hey, wait a second. I'm either dead, tripping, or dreaming. This must be a dream. Or I'll jump up and kind of fall down and go through the dream ground. Hey, wait a second. I can't do this in waking life. I must be dreaming. So the other thing you can do is literally you can just hold your hand up. You know, if something weird happens, you can hold your hand in front of your face. A little bit like Castaneda's trick. Pull your hand out of you, bring it back in. Steven LeBerge has also tested this one. I think it's like 95% of the time when you bring your hand back in, or if you bring a text back in, a little word I've used, little business cards I give out in my programs, literally just says, this is a dream. Pull that out, bring it back in, pull it out, bring it back in. Why do you do that? Because when you bring it back the second time, if you're dreaming, something's going to change. Another finger will pop out or disappear, the hand will change size, it'll change colors, something's going to change. And then what you do there is like, hey, wait a second, that can't happen in real life. I must be dreaming. And so this is another very effective way to start to bring about lucidity at night. Another thing you can do if you have recurrent dreams. Those of you who have recurrent dreams, from a brief kind of dream interpretation point of view, Tenza Wangal Rambache says playfully, recurrent dreams, unless it's PTSD type, basically are indicative that you're not a good listener. What did I think was Freud? I think Freud said an uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter. And so, just as a brief sidebar, many recurrent dreams, unless they're deeply traumatic ones, really have this kind of interpretive blindness. You're not getting the message. But that aside, what you do with these dreams, keep your dream journal. That's another very helpful thing for lucidity. Keep a journal on the side of your bed devoted exclusively for dreams. Don't write your shopping laundry or your shopping list or your laundry list on there. Just write your dreams, date them, title them. And then what you do with recurrent dreams, I've had a number of these, you highlight the main themes that repeat in the dream. Like, for instance, I used to have one of my childhood home in Michigan with waves crashing over my house. And so I wrote all that stuff down. I highlighted them, and then I became sensitized to those dream signs for my recurrent dreams. Whenever I had that dream in the future, hey, wait a second, wait a second. Dream slamming and house. This is my dream. This is my dream. I use that as a way to attain lucidity. So there's so many. There are literally dozens of these types of techniques. There's dream goggles you can get, all kinds of other supplements you can try. There's what's called a mild induction technique, there's prospective memory exercises. Obviously, the literature is voluminous, but I have found in my own experience that these handful of practices have been extraordinarily helpful. One last one is working with what's called prospective memory. Most of our memory is retrospective. Prospective memory is trying to remember to do something in the future. So what we're doing when we're incubating, or I should say, trying to bring about dream lucidity induction is we're trying to remember to wake up in the dream when we next have it. So we're working with prospective memory, whether we know it or not. And one way to exercise this memory muscle is sensitize yourself. You can say, okay, for the next day, every time I look in the mirror, I'm going to conduct a state check. Then you can say the next day, every time I hear a dog bark, I'm going to conduct a state check. And it's actually somewhat humbling, revelatory, how often we forget. And so as we sensitize ourselves to do that, every time I look in the mirror, every time I brush my teeth, every time I go to the bathroom, I'm going to conduct a state check. This is a way to actually cultivate this prospective memory capacity that will then also translate into proficiency with recollection of the dream state at night. And so these are my personal top, what, maybe five techniques. And the most important ones, just to reiterate, hands down, number one, intentionality. Don't let the simplicity belie the efficacy. This thing really works. Number two, meditate. And then you can augment it with all these other different ones, depending on what you may have resonance with or not. How dream yoga is different from lucid dreaming, is that dream yoga transcends but includes lucid dreaming. So instead of self-fulfillment with lucid dreaming, dream yoga is more about self-transcendence. Instead of psychological orientations, it's more spiritual orientations. One reason, by the way, that Carl Jung, one of the most sophisticated dreamers in the psychological world of the last century, he knew all about lucid dreaming, but he was very cautious, very reluctant to endorse it, because he saw all the potential shadow sides of self-aggrandizement, all the things that you can do that aren't necessarily so beneficial. But for purposes of counter distinction, lucid dreaming, psychological, dream yoga, spiritual, lucid dreaming, self-fulfillment, dream yoga, self-transcendence. And so, in terms of what you would do, like I just want to give you one sense of what you would do in dream yoga. In the classic texts of dream yoga, there are three fundamental stages. The first stage is what's called the stage of recognition. And this basically is lucid dreaming. If you can't recognize the fact that you're dreaming while you're dreaming, you're certainly not going to practice dream yoga. One third of dream yoga is attaining lucidity. The second third is the stage of transformation. This is where you work to transform the contents of your dream. The third general classification of dream yoga is what's called the stage of liberation. And this is where, again, you're not interested in transforming content. You're interested in liberating dream content. And this is where it becomes really deeply meditative, similar to what we do with meditation during the day. Higher forms of meditation are about liberating the contents of your mind as they arise. And so, to give you one brief sense of how this actually works, let me share with you one example that you can start to play with tonight. And so, what you would do here is next time you have a dream, let's just say there's a pen in your dream. What you want to do is simply take this pen and transform it into a glass. Or if there's a pink elephant in your dream, transform it into an airplane, transform a chair into a table. It doesn't matter. It's not as easy as it sounds. The idea is literally to try to change the dream images from one to another. And so one might ask, okay, well, is this just like some cognitive video game? Like, why are you doing this? Well, here's the reason you're doing it. When you're working with your dreams, even at this level, what are dreams made of? Dreams are made of your mind. And so by learning how to change your dreams, you're quite literally learning how to change your mind. And so I wanted to share a wonderful short supporting statement from Tenzan Wang Yo Rimbache. He's one of the leading continual teachers on this topic from the Bun Buddhist tradition. And this is what he says. And then I'll share from my own personal life and experience how this has worked for me. It's no small thing. Just as dream images can be transformed in dreams, so emotional states and conceptual limitations can be transformed in waking life. With experience of the dreamy and malleable nature of experience, we can transform depression into happiness, fear into courage, anger into love, hopelessness into faith, distraction into presence. What is unwholesome we can change to wholesome. What is dark we can change to light. Challenge the boundaries that constrict you. Let me say that again. Challenge the boundaries that constrict you. The purpose of these practices is to integrate lucidity and flexibility with every moment of life. And to let go of the heavily conditioned way we have of ordering reality, of making meaning, of being trapped in delusion. End quote. So I've done this, I can't, you know, hundreds of times in my dreams when I did dream yoga in my retreat, and this is part of the curriculum. And so the way this started to manifest for me was the following way. I would say there's so many examples, but let's say I'm in a difficult conversation with my partner, with my boss, and I don't like where it's going. I don't like what I'm hearing. I can start to feel myself contracting and getting really kind of pissed off. I'm about to lose it. I am not kidding. The image of changing this pencil to this glass from last night's dream will pop into my mind. And it's really like those annoying pop-ups that you get on your computer. When you're engaging in these practices, it's a bi-directional process. Dream yoga and lucid dreaming at the higher stages, you're installing in your unconscious mind these pop-ups that will then, during the course of the day, ping that will pop into your mind when you least expect them and when you need them the most to bring about a moment of lucidity. And by this, what I mean is if I'm involved in a difficult conversation and I'm about to lose it, I'm about to go non-lucid in an angry response, that is in fact an instance of non-lucidity. And so this is the genius of these meditations. The mindfulness, awareness, lucidity I'm cultivating at night, same consciousness, just different medium of expression, will ping back into my mind during the day and wake me up just before I'm about to lose it in an emotional upheaval. And so this is incredibly important because lucid dreaming leads to lucid living. That's the point. The point is to take the insights from a nocturnal mind and then bring them back. It's like literally opening interstate commerce between two previously different states of consciousness. You're opening up this traffic of wisdom running in unconscious dimensions where insights are basically ferrying back and forth. And this works again, it's a two-way street, it's a bi-directional process. When you're trying to work with lucidity at night, you work with installing pop-ups during the day that then pop up at night to say, hey, wait a second, wait a second, this is just a dream. You wake up, you're lucid. And lucid dreaming doesn't have this much. This is mostly dream yoga. Dream yoga then takes exactly that same process and brings it back into the day. So the insights I derive from my dream state, now I'm ferrying back into the waking state to help me wake up and become lucid during the day. This is no small thing. And this is what it means to be lucid, like the Buddha, arguably the awakened one, literally. The Buddha was the ultimate lucid dreamer. And this is part of this kind of trajectory or charter of these nocturnal meditations, is to bring kind of a bi-directional lucidity between two previously disparate states of consciousness as a way to enhance awareness and lucidity in both. And so I recommend you try this. It's a relatively accessible type of dream yoga. And it's also revelatory. This is the other thing about these practices that makes them just a tad bit more advanced. Because dreams are truth tellers. The psychologists will tell you that. The moniker for dream yoga is literally in the Tibet tradition, the measure of the path. Your ability or lack thereof to do these changes, these practices in dream yoga will show you where you are. They're profoundly diagnostic and prescriptive. They will show you where you're stuck, they will show you where you're trapped. And so, in this regard, it's the fantastic aspect of these practices. Even the failures are successes because the failures will show you where you're stuck.
Speaker 1 · 25:38Thank you very much.
