Friday October 11 & Saturday, October 12
Dharma Collective presents: Yoga Nidra, Liminal Dreaming, Oneirogens
Friday evening, 7:30 pm – 9:00
Discovering liminal dreaming: beginning exercises and yoga nidra
Saturday afternoon 10:00 am – 4:00 pm (lunch break at noon)
Dreamhacking: liminal dream practices
SF Dharma Collective
2701 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110
All Dharma Collective events are donation only. Nobody turned away for lack of funds. These suggested donations are meant solely to provide guidelines:
Friday night $15 – 20
Saturday all day $40 – 60
Saturday 10:00 to noon $20 – 30
Registration for Saturday event: click here
Exploring Mind through Liminal Dreaming
Liminal dreaming occurs at the boundaries of consciousness between waking and sleep. Hypnagogia, the hallucinatory dream state through which we pass as we sink into sleep, and hypnopompia, the floaty, mesmerizing dreams we have as we surface back into waking, together make up liminal dreaming, one of the most unusual brain states we experience. We all possess the ability to simultaneously maintain waking, rational consciousness while sinking into the free associative, kaleidoscopic realms of the subconscious. Yet few of us develop this powerful tool for exploring mind.
Over this weekend workshop, we’ll explore the concept and the practice of liminal dreaming. Participants are welcome to attend either day or, of course, both days.
Friday evening, we’ll experience liminal dreaming through discussion and practices. Participants will be led into hypnagogia using yoga nidra techniques. They will also learn a series of easy exercises for accessing liminal dream states that they can use to continue experimenting with liminal dreaming on their own. Jennifer will provide background about liminal dream understandings and practices drawn from religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions, from Tibetan Buddhist dream yoga to the Sufi concept of mundus imaginalis to indigenous uses of oneirogens, herbs, roots, or anything else that promotes vivid dreaming.
Saturday, our inquiry into liminal dreams will delve deeply into the continuity of consciousness between waking and sleep. We’ll explore a wide range of practices for developing the ability to locate and linger in hypnagogia and hypnopompia. We’ll also explore using liminal dream states for a variety of purposes, including:
- Mindfulness: In liminal dream states, the ego steps back yet awareness remains. Categories of self and other fade, leaving only the unfolding moment. This creates ideal circumstances for deep meditation.
- Consciousness Exploration: Humans are hard wired to play with mind. Liminal dreaming provides an extraordinary experience of altered consciousness.
- Creativity. Access the visionary power of hypnagogia and hypnopompia using liminal dream practices developed by Thomas Edison, Salvador Dali, and other great minds
- Problem Solving: Engage the dreaming mind to help answer personal or intellectual questions, encourage the healing process, or enliven intuition using dream incubation practice that comes to us from the ancient Greek cult of Asclepius.
- Healing: Through the practices of yoga nidra and active imagination, we’ll pursue the idea that your body and subconscious already hold the wisdom you need to heal both body and mind.