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B. Alan Wallace joins to us to compare and contrast two fantastic dream practices. One comes from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, going all the way back to India, with the yogi Naropa. This practice, called Dream Yoga, is a type of insight practice which utilizes the dream state in order to wake up. The other practice, called Lucid Dreaming, comes out of the pioneering research of Dr. Stephen LaBerge. Lucid dreaming breaks down the same goals that Dream Yoga aspires to, but into smaller and more attainable goals. It is also firmly grounded in the scientific method.

Listen in to hear Dr. Wallace, who is authorized to teach both of these methods, discuss the similarities and differences in these two different approaches.

Hey Daniel,

The book Ryan was referring to was "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming." It's Dr. LaBerge's most significant writing (that I'm aware of) on Lucid Dreaming.

As per your question about entertainment in the dream state, I obviously can't answer for Wallace. However, I can say from the perspective a long-term practitioner that entertainment becomes much less of a problem as one makes headway in their practice. It is quite common for practitioners to take spirituality extremely seriously initially, and to demonize entertainment, exploration, etc. From my own experience, once one has begun to really awaken to what the Buddha was pointing too, there is a way in which it is so down-to-earth, so integrated with life, and so this-worldly that all of those initial impulses to escape the earth (which are none other than aversion) start to chill out quite a bit, and one can re-enter the world with open hands (as they put it in Zen) and not be so suspect of healthy forms of entertainment and exploration. Of course, B-Al ;) might have a different answer, but that's my take. :)

Thanks for your comment...