Dreamwork for Yogis

I think everyone who practices yoga should also work with their dreams. As spiritual practices go, the two are very complimentary — one emphasizes body and breath, while the other emphasizes psyche and emotions. And something that is not widely talked about in spiritual circles is that cross-training in more than one discipline really does help your focus and progress in each.

As a dreamworker and yoga student myself, I have developed a couple different methods to merge the two disciplines. The main one I use came about during a restorative yoga session four years ago. I’d recently had a very powerful dream in which there was a strange spinning object in the sky — almost a planet, maybe a moon or a satellite, but in the end I had no idea what it was. It was a pivotal piece of the dream, yet try as I might I couldn’t arrive at its meaning using symbolic associations.

As I lay there relaxing on the mat, I held the picture of the spinning object in my mind. With each breath I allowed the image to move through my energy body, almost like passing a jigsaw piece very slowly over a half-finished puzzle to see where the perfect fit lies.

In a yoga asana, once we are in a pose we relax and settle into it, noticing any places of strain. We send our breath to loosen up any tightness and let the energy flow freely from our feet through legs, pelvis, torso, arms, hands, and head. As I let the image of the spinning object settle more fully into my body, I felt it come slowly to rest in my heart. Suddenly, something clicked. The puzzle piece fell into place and I realized the importance of the image: it was a picture of all the different influences — some natural, some man-made — spinning through my heart as I prepared to make an important life decision.

That was the first time I understood how valuable a somatic practice is to the interpretation of dreams. Very often dreams come with information about how our life choices affect our physical health. The mind alone is not always enough to grasp the full meaning of these symbols and images — we need to use the body itself to feel into them as though they held the resonance of a yoga asana.

Using dream images as though they were yogic poses has deepened my regular yoga practice. I move into each asana now as though it were a brand new posture, one which may unfold in surprising ways if I only stay curious and open-minded, and follow my breath. And now that I am better at entering deeply relaxed states in general, I can do my somatic meditation with dream symbols anytime I choose, whether on the mat or off.

Of course, there are times when we just want to think about a dream symbol until we figure it out, and times when we just want to move through our yoga routine to get a good morning workout. There is no single right way to approach dreams, yoga, or any spiritual practice for that matter. But there is always the possibility of deepening our practice, whatever it is, and using insights from one to illuminate our path in fruitful, unexpected ways. And if those rewards are truly possible, doesn’t it make sense to aim high?

This piece first appeared on the Huffington Post.