Lucid Dreaming, Lucid Waking: Tibetan Buddhist Imaginal Practices

This workshop explores how imaginal capacities of mind are mobilized via specific Tibetan Buddhist contemplative practices across the thresholds of sleeping, dreaming, and waking. We will learn conceptual and practical know-how associated with Tibetan Buddhist practices of dream yoga and corollary daytime practices of illusory forms. To understand the liminal traversal of lucid dreaming and waking, an emphasis will be on continuities of psychological flexibility, imaginal simulation, and somatic awareness along with paradigms of imaginal world-making. The workshop will present excerpts of Tibetan dream yoga manuals in conversation with insights from the contemplative sciences. We will conclude with a discussion on current dream yoga research, parallels with immersive technologies, and possible contemplative futures.

Michael R. Sheehy, PhD is a meditation researcher whose expertise on contemplative dynamics abides at the junctures of the history of religion, empirical phenomenology, and the cognitive sciences. With a PhD in Buddhist Studies, Michael trained extensively in Buddhist Asia, including three years in a monastery in far eastern Tibet. He is a Research Associate Professor and the Director of Research at the Contemplative Sciences Center, University of Virgina. The CIRCL, Contemplative Innovation + Research Co-Lab, that he directs is a transdisciplinary experimental collaboratory that investigates how contemplative practices work in bodies and minds, cultures and ecologies, ourselves and our worlds. 

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