Night School: How to Meditate While You're Asleep | Andrew Holecek

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 July 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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This is a fun, weird, extremely interesting and inspiring episode.

It's about lucid dreaming, something that people might perceive as hippie nonsense, but is actually deeply woven into ancient and time-tested Buddhist traditions.

Our guest today has been studying and practicing Buddhism and what he calls nocturnal meditations for more than four decades. And he has remarkably simple and down to earth tips for doing this in your own life. He argues anybody can do this. And the proposition is pretty compelling. We're asleep for a huge percentage of our life, and from a perspective of contemplative development, or training your mind, that's a huge stretch of land that is lying fallow.

Andrew Holecek is an expert on lucid dreaming and the Tibetan yogas of sleep and dream. He is a member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, and the author of scientific papers on lucid dreaming. He has also written many books on the subject, including: Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep.

In this episode we talk about:

The Five Nocturnal Meditations, which include: liminal dreaming, lucid dreaming, dream yoga, sleep yoga, and bardo yoga
Why bother with these nocturnal practices in the first place?
How these nocturnal practices might be the next phase of human evolution
The problem of wake-centricity
Practical tips for trying this stuff yourself
And if lucid dreaming is meant for everyone – including those of us with sleep issues

For tickets to TPH's live event in Boston on September 7:

https://thewilbur.com/armory/artist/dan-harris/

Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/andrew-holecek-620

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% happier podcast.
0:07.3	I'm Dan Harris.
0:11.2	Hello, everybody.
0:20.6	This is a really fun episode, fun, weird, and extremely interesting and inspiring.
0:26.7	I will say I had heard of lucid dreaming before the idea that you can wake up in the middle
0:31.6	of a dream and actually make decisions in that dream and have agency, go flying or whatever.
0:36.7	I was actually assigned once many years ago to do a story on lucid dreaming for nightline,
0:41.0	but I ended up not being able to do it for one reason or another and some other correspondent
0:45.2	took the job.
0:46.2	Anyway, I walked away with the impression that lucid dreaming was just hippie nonsense.
0:51.5	I did not actually have any indication at the time that lucid dreaming was actually deeply
0:55.6	woven into some ancient and time-tested Buddhist traditions.
1:00.6	So my takeaway was just another case of me being dismissive and judgmental.
1:05.6	My guest today has been studying and practicing Buddhism and what he calls not turnal meditation,
1:10.6	which comes in many flavors for more than four decades.
1:13.7	And he has remarkably simple and down-to-earth tips that you can use to give this a try in
1:18.6	your own life right away.
1:20.2	He argues anybody can do this.
1:22.6	And the proposition is pretty compelling.
1:24.4	We are asleep for a huge percentage of our lives.
1:27.2	And from the perspective of contemplative development or training the mind, that's a huge
1:32.0	stretch of land that is lying fallow.
	...

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