Category Archives: Dreaming & Healing

Dream Yoga

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Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light, by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, provides training on how to remember your dreams, and a world of additional dreamy advice.

Dream Yoga

Dream Yoga

 

 

By focusing in a prescribed manner (detailed in the book) and practicing, you will begin to develop “the natural light”, the space of consciousness we normally miss. This experience of consciousness exists between the time that we drift off to sleep and the time our dreaming starts.

Doing this greatly enhances the clarity of your dreaming, and the recollection of your dreams is improved too.

Chögyal Namkhai Norbu began to give Dzogchen instruction in the West, first in Italy, then in numerous other countries. He quickly became a respected spiritual authority among many practitioners, and has created centers for the study of Dzogchen around the world.

He has published the following books:

  • Dzogchen and Zen (1984), ISBN 0931892082
  • The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen (1988). Routledge & Kegan Paul. ISBN 0140190848
  • The Cycle of Day and Night: An Essential Tibetan Text on the Practice of Contemplation (1987). Station Hill Press. ISBN 0-88268-040-4
  • Primordial Experience: An Introduction to Rdzogs-Chen Meditation (1987). Shambhala Publications. ISBN 0-87773-372-4
  • The Dzogchen Ritual Practices (1991). London: Kailash Editions. Restricted distribution.
  • Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light (1992). Snow Lion Publications. ISBN 1-55939-007-7
  • Dzogchen – The Self-Perfected State (1996)
  • The Golden Letters (1996) (Foreword). Snow Lion Publications. ISBN 1-55939-050-6
  • The Mirror: Advice on the Presence of Awareness (1996). Station Hill Press. ISBN 1886449104
  • Self-Liberation: Through Seeing with Naked Awareness (2000). Station Hill Press. ISBN 0-88268-058-7
  • The Supreme Source: The Fundamental Tantra of the Dzogchen Semde (1999). Snow Lion Publications. ISBN 1-55939-120-0
  • Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light, Revised (2002)
  • Drung, Deu and Bön (2002). India: Paljor Publications. ISBN 81-85102-93-7
  • Journey Among the Tibetan Nomads (2002). India: Paljor Publications. ISBN 81-86470-10-7
  • Dzogchen Teachings (2006). Snow Lion Publications. ISBN 1-55939-243-6

Michael Katz is the editor “Dream Yoga and the Practice of Natural Light”. His website is DreamYoga.net.

No News is Good News

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I needs me a News Fast!For the month of March, we have taken the NO NEWS Vow. We will not read newspapers, not watch or listen to news, not click on media news sites on the Internets. We will not even watch much TV, or keep up with the political machinations of the Obamachine (trademark), “the Stimulus”, or the pundits and comedians.
 
WHY? This is a part of our 2009 New Years Resolution. Which began as a consensus to do something, but not necessarily for the whole year. So over the holidays, we decided to give up Alcohol for a month. No wine, no scotch. No Jaegermeister or peppermint schnapps. Nada. Enough of a challenge that we would be reminded of it during January, but not an impossible challenge, as in forever.

Then, for the month of February, we gave up Coffee.

And why give up anything, you might ask? Because we feel like we have to give up something, some times. The old world we lived in (circa 2008) is truly no longer sustainable, in so many ways. (And I’m not just talking about Tax Cuts.) Since we personally are not marching on Washington or reducing our gas consumption much, we are looking “within” to find ways to flex our adaptability, at least for ourselves. 

So one of the lessons we have learned with our January and February experiments is that we can do it. No big surprise, but there’s a welcome sense that we are more conscious, more aware, and more able to choose our actions. That’s at least a little empowering.

News Fasting is healthy! Dr. Andrew Weil, who published “Eight Weeks to Optimum Health” actually recommends periodic fasting from the addictive habit of daily news. Not a bad idea. Certainly a good exercise, even if just for a week, or a day. (Your actual mileage may vary.) And why not try it yourself?

What are the rules?

  1. No reading newspapers, or magazines. (Not a biggy for us anyway, since that series of tubes has come of age.)
  2. No Fox TV. (OK, we gave this up long before the 2008 election cycle, happily. The whole family of stations is owned, and not in a good way.)
  3. No news shows, talking heads, or comedians (painfully, not even Colbert!). None.
  4. No radio. Which of course includes the comedian Rush Limbawful. Sirius/XM Music is OK.
  5. No Internet news sites, magazine sites, current events sites, etc. (No DrudgeReport, DailyKos, or news.google.com.)
  6. No reading Breaking News Alerts (etc.) in your Inbox.
  7. When News enters our awareness, we can simply not pay attention to it, by focusing elsewhere.

Conversation: When people talk to us, we listen. And people do talk about news and media-based ideas and events. We will be paying attention (probably close attention!) to all sorts of talk about current events, news, politics, and opinions. The keys (I speculate) are to Listen, Observe, and Experience the message. Contributing is fine, but only Original thoughts and observations, not regurgitations of the “facts”, or the statements of others. Including the “experts”.

No doubt we will adapt these rules as necessary. In subsequent posts, we’ll share how it goes, or how it went. And what is on deck for April!

Healthy Dreaming

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Normandale Community College is offering a class on Healthy Dreaming

Total health and wellness take into consideration the need for physical, emotional, mental, aesthetic, and spiritual balance if we are to be genuinely healthy. Dreams are a daily part of our lives and can also help us towards greater awareness and fulfillment. 9 ways in which dreams can benefit our overall health:

  1. Dreams help us to know ourselves more intimately by giving us access to parts of ourselves we might be unaware of, and we can consider, examine, and even dialogue with these parts when we are awake.
  2. Dreams allow us to process material from our day in ways that help us release concerns and worries.
  3. Dreams can provide answers to our questions and solutions to our problems that are difficult to find when we’re awake. Try writing down a question before you fall asleep and ask for a dream that will provide an answer. Be sure to write down your dreams in the morning.
  4. Dreams can provide ideas for using our creativity, insights into breaking a creative block, and material for our creative expression.
  5. Dreams stretch our experience beyond the limits of our physical selves, making our lives fuller and more exciting.
  6. Dreams can tell us what we need to know and alert us to actions we need to take.
  7. Dreams can inform us of physical illnesses and psychological issues we need to address.
  8. Dreams allow us to practice new behaviors, try on different identities, and explore unpredictable responses to the experiences that life presents to us.
  9. Through our dreams we can gain new insights into our relationships and learn new ways to improve intimacy with others.

I started to sign up for this seminar, then thought to myself I’d rather do some research on my own at home.

Jill Bolte Taylor’s powerful stroke of insight

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Jill Bolte Taylor was a neuroanatomist at the Harvard Medical School who had a stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain in 1996. She wrote a book called “My Stroke of Insight” and gave a talk in February 2008 at TED. This video – Jill Bolte Taylor’s powerful stroke of insight – is a powerful description of her unique experience of herself as an energy being, when she was able to live in her right brain. She felt connected to all others and now is spreading a message of peace. She says that she realized all of us can experience that too.

She has a website,mystrokeofinsight that has useful links. She has created a mnemonic device for remembering atroke symptoms:

  • S = Speech, or problems with language
  • T = Tingling, or numbness in your body
  • R = Remember, or problems with thinking
  • O = Off-balance, or problems with coordination
  • K = Killer headache
  • E = Eyes, or problems with vision

Stroke is a medical emergency. Dial 911.

Learning to Breathe!

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The Science Of Breath (Large PDF file – http://www.arfalpha.com/ScienceOfBreath/ScienceOfBreath.pdf )

Now that you’re an adult (and/or old enough to read this), you may take more interest in the act of breathing. Why would you want to do that? Maybe because it’s the one thing you do more than any other thing you do in your life?! (On average, most people breathe 15,000-25,000 times per day.) So if you take an hour or two to learn more about this popular activity, you can:

  • Improve your health and peace of mind
  • Reduce stress on your whole system
  • Live longer (or your money back)
  • Improve your potential for excellently spiritual experiences.

I could go on. Instead, just dive in. There’s more to it than you might think, and the Yogi’s have been seriously studying this for thousands of years. About a hundred years ago this 70-page Handbook for Breathers was written to help you. You do not need to be a Hindu or live in a cave to benefit from this. However, you are cautioned not to read The Science of Breath while driving.

Alternative Note: If you can’t open this PDF file on your computer, click this link for a website that talks about things like just breathing deeply.