How dreams can help -Cultivating our innate ability to wake up within the dream can -Awakening within a dream -The six yogas of Tibet -Spiritual benefit of Tibetan dream yoga -Dreaming -The practice of Tibetan dream yoga -Daytime practice -Mirror practice -Partner exercise -Wake-up practice -Night time practice -Deepening your practice - The life long practice of Tibetan dream yoga His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama said: "Tibetan Buddhism considers sleep to be a form of nourishment, like food, that restores and refreshes the body. Another type of nourishment is samadhi, or meditative concentration. If one becomes advanced enough in the practice of meditative concentration, then this itself sustains or nourishes the body." Dreams are a significant part of our life. They are as real and unreal as life itself. Dreams are extremely personal - and transpersonal, too. Our dreams are a reflection of ourselves: in dreams, no matter how many characters appear, we meet ourselves. Dreams are mirrors to our soul. They can help us to better understand ourselves, our world, and the nature of reality. Dreams introduce us to other dimensions of experience. Here, time and space are much more liquid and plastic; they can be shaped and reshaped almost at will. Dreams hint of other worlds, other lives. They are a glimpse of our afterlife. Everyone dreams, although not all dreams are remembered equally. Fifty-six percent of Americans have had a lucid dream - that is, a dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. Twenty-one percent say they have a lucid dream once a month or more. Meditators report vividly clear, self-aware dreams weekly and even more often. How Dreams Can Help Us Great healers have long recognized the power of dreams to inform and support us. Hippocrates said, Dreams are one of the most important ways to diagnose a patients illness." Sigmund Freud's turn-of-the-century work. The Interpretation of Dreams, marked the beginning of the era of modern psychology and psychoanalysis. Certain dreams can convey subconscious, valuable information to the dreamer. A week before the event, Abraham Lincoln dreamed that he would be assassinated. The emperor Constantine dreamed of radiant Greek letters spelling the name of Christ and was converted, leading to the dramatic conversion of the entire Byzantine Empire. I, myself, have received messages, teachings, and blessings through my dreams from the spiritual masters I have known and loved in this lifetime. Some contemporary psychologists consider lucid dreaming a valuable practice for personal growth. This model is, however, different from Tibetan dream yoga. The spiritual practice goes deeper, helping us work with the great passages of life and death. Tibetan dream yoga teaches us how to navigate the groundlessness of moment-to-moment existence, which typically makes no intellectual sense. It is at this level that we cut through the illusory nature of mind and truly experience our marvelous human existence. Cultivating our innate ability to wake up within the dream can: Increase clarity and lucidity, both waking and sleeping Help us realize the transparent, dream-like nature of experience Free the mind Release energy blockages and accumulated