Winter Seasonal Immersion
The Dark Season
A winter dream immersion with Lama Tasha
Turn toward the night. Dream yoga, sleep yoga, and the practice of clear light, in a ten-week cohort to hibernate with.
Thursdays at 3pm ET, Dec 3 to Feb 18. Online.
Winter asks us to go to bed. It's dark by 5pm, and cozy nooks full of warm duvets pull us into the rhythm of the night. This immersion is ten weeks of leaning into the season.
We'll spend the darkest stretch of the year practicing dream and sleep yoga, the Buddhist practices for finding clarity in the very place we usually lose it.
In the Tibetan tradition, dreaming is a bardo, one of the in-between states where the mind gets loose and malleable. Dream yoga invites us to wake up inside the habitual confusion of sleep and begin to inhabit ourselves more fully. That clear seeing spills into our whole lives: we start to see how dreamlike waking life is, and even begin to prepare for the great dreamlike bardos of death.
You'll learn and practice...
- Why dreams are a great opportunity for practice
- How to integrate the dreamlike nature of day and night
- Bedtime rituals to set up your night
- Western & Tibetan methods for lucid dreaming
- Intentional napping and the gift of hypnagogia
- Dream journaling, and how to work with dream contents
- Troubleshooting sleep and dream obstacles
- Sleep yoga and the nondual clear light of deep sleep
- Bonus: you'll have an excellent reason to cancel your plans and go to bed early ("sorry, I have dream yoga homework")
Maybe you'll have enlightening lucid encounters. Maybe you'll finally understand that reocurring dream where you're grocery shopping naked. Maybe you'll recognize your own true nature as clear light mind. It's an all-encompassing path to awakening no matter what kind of sleep you're having.
Think of this as a winter dharma cohort to hibernate with: a crew of fellow weirdos to compare dream notes with, luxuriate in rest with, and explore the path of the night alongside.
Ten weeks into the night
We start with the view and the daytime practices, then move step by step deeper into sleep: from dusk, through the dream, all the way down into the clear light of dreamless rest.
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Dec 3Week 1
Why Dream?
The big why. The confusion that carries us through a dream is the same one that carries us through waking life and death, so recognizing it in one place loosens it in the others.
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Dec 10Week 2
Waking Life Is a Dream
The daytime practice that makes nighttime lucidity possible: seeing the day, your problems, and yourself as dreamlike.
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Dec 17Week 3
Preparing for the Night
How to go to bed on purpose, and what to do in those bleary first moments after waking. The solstice is a few days later, so you'll get the longest night of the year to try it out.
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Dec 21Solstice
Winter Solstice Yoga Nidra
Deep rest on the longest night, open to the whole community. No call on Thursday the 24th.
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Dec 31Break
Holiday break, no call
Pillow Talk is still open on Monday the 28th for a check-in. Otherwise, sleep in, eat cookies, keep jotting down dreams.
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Jan 7Week 4
Falling Asleep: Intention
Falling asleep on a mantra, an intention, or a mnemonic so you can wake up inside the dream.
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Jan 14Week 5
Falling Asleep: Visualization & the Edge of Sleep
Dream yoga's classic night practice, carrying a simple visualization into sleep. Plus the trippy threshold of hypnagogia, and slipping into a lucid dream straight from waking.
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Jan 21Week 6
Awake in the Dream
You're lucid, now what? How to stay in the dream without waking up, and some first things to try.
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Jan 28Week 7
When It's Not Working
Can't remember your dreams? Wake up the second you get lucid? Lying awake at 3am wondering why you signed up for this? We troubleshoot, and bring in the humble nap as a sneaky extra window for practice.
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Feb 4Week 8
Reading Your Dreams
Most dreams aren't lucid, and they still have plenty to show us about the patterns hiding in our blindspots.
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Feb 11Week 9
Going Deeper in the Dream
Time-tested activities to try, places to go, and enlightened beings to meet once you're lucid, and what it all shows you about the illusory nature of everything.
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Feb 18Week 10
Clear Light Sleep & Integration
Resting through dreamless sleep in the luminous awareness that's the ground of every bardo, and carrying the night practice into the rest of your life.
Your winter den
Ten live weekly sessions
Thursdays at 3pm ET
Every session is recorded, so you can catch up whenever and wherever you are in the world if live doesn't work.
Pillow Talk
Mondays
The chat channel opens live in the Bodhisavage community space so we can check in, ask questions, and troubleshoot together. It keeps going over the holiday break.
Winter Solstice Yoga Nidra
Monday, Dec 21
A deep rest practice for the longest night of the year. It's open to the whole community, and a lovely place to try out your new bedtime rituals.
A private cohort space
All season long
Share dream journal entries, weird synchronicities, 3am revelations, tips that worked, and dreams so bizarre they need witnesses.
The night curious
This is for people who are excited to bring the night into their path of awakening.
It helps to have a meditation or mindfulness practice of some kind (even a very new or loosey goosey one), or to be willing to start one alongside the immersion. Dream yoga builds on the same continuity of awareness you cultivate on the cushion, so even 15 minutes a day of calm abiding makes the night practices much easier. I'll give you some simple daily meditation to anchor the ten weeks.
If you live with something that affects your sleep, energy, or mood, you're very welcome here. Check in with your doctor or therapist before we start, and treat every practice as an experiment: try it, notice what happens, and adjust or skip whatever doesn't sit right. Wondering if it's a good fit? Write me.
A Dream yogi
Dream yoga has been one of my own core practices for 15 years, both in retreat and in daily life. I've practiced it in the Nyingma, Kagyu, and Bön traditions, and have been encouraged to teach it by my own root teacher, Lama Lena Yeshe Kaytup Rinpoche.
Dream yoga has been a profound catalyst for insight and connection for me, and I get super excited to pass these practices along. I hope some of that enthusiasm rubs off on you, and that we can build a bubbling community of night practitioners together!
“No one else on the planet sees things the way Tasha does. She adventures through consciousness and is hell of fun doing it.”
“Tasha's practice is fierce af, always pointing towards enlightenment, towards the bodhisavage in us all.”
“Thank you for putting your experience of Buddhism into the world to show the vast, wondrous, messy, liberating weirdness of our paths.”
Join the Cohort
Everyone gets the full immersion, whatever you choose. Pay what fits your life this winter.
The regular price. This is what keeps the lights on (errrr, dimmed, I guess, for sleeping purposes 😴).
Register at $250Covers your spot plus the difference for someone at the supported rate. You're tucking a fellow dreamer in for the winter, too.
Register at $392If $108 isn't possible right now, email me and we'll figure it out.
FAQ
Do I have to come live?
No. Every Thursday session is recorded, and Pillow Talk on Mondays is a good place to bring questions if you're following along on the recordings.
What time is that where I live?
3pm Eastern is noon on the West Coast, 8pm in the UK, and 9pm in central Europe.
How long do I have access to the recordings?
Until the next winter immersion starts in December 2027, so you'll have a full year to revisit them.
I've never had a lucid dream. Is that okay?
Very okay. Most dreams aren't lucid, and a whole week of the immersion is about working with the ones that aren't. Dream yoga is a path to awakening whatever kind of sleep you're having.
Do I need to be Buddhist?
Nope. What you do need is an open mind. These practices point you into nondual experience, which is beyond the categories of lineage or tradition altogether. It also helps to have a meditation or mindfulness practice of some kind, or a willingness to start one alongside the immersion. I'll give you some simple daily meditation to anchor the ten weeks.
I have insomnia. Can I still practice?
Yes. A lot of the practice happens during the day, and time spent awake at night can become part of the practice instead of a battle. Skip anything that interrupts your sleep, lean on the rest practices, and bring your questions to Pillow Talk. If your insomnia is severe or tied to a medical condition, check in with your doctor first.
I have a health condition. Can I still join?
You're very welcome. If it affects your sleep, energy, or mood (like bipolar disorder, epilepsy, a sleep disorder, or trauma that disrupts sleep), please check with your doctor or therapist first. You're always in charge of your own mind and your own path, so adjust or skip any practice that doesn't sit right with you.
Is this group therapy?
No. It's a practice container, and you're in charge of your own mind and path. If you're working through something heavy, please keep your therapist or counsellor in the loop.
Turn toward the night
Ten Thursdays, Dec 3 to Feb 18, with Lama Tasha and a crew of fellow dreamers.
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