Dream Yoga with Dr. Gabriela Torres-Platas

Welcome back to AND THE SUN, a newsletter about creative, artistic, and inventive approaches to meditation. We’re glad to have you here with us in this waking life. 👁️👁️

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This week we interview Dr. Gabriela Torres-Platas, a neuroscientist at Northwestern who studies dream yoga. Various spiritual traditions, including Tibetan Buddhism and the Toltecs, describe detailed practices for meditating while dreaming – dream yoga. Gaby is studying the brains of Tibetan monks while they practice dream yoga.

Before we start, a quick AND THE SUN update: Iván and I just returned from a trip to New Mexico. Among other adventures with friends, and a veritable vintage shop pillaging, we successfully collected some stones. We’re not ready quite yet to tell you why we collected stones, but here’s a little teaser of the haul:

An Interview with Dr. Gabriela Torres-Platas

Ivan: Hi Gaby! Can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to contemplative practices and your current work?

Gaby: I was born and raised in Mexico, and I decided to study biology because I loved animals and wanted to focus on conservation. Choosing biology was one of the best decisions I ever made—I absolutely loved it.

At some point, I became fascinated with telepathy. I began reading metaphysics books, which deepened my interest in understanding whether telepathy could actually be proven. I thought neuroscience might be the closest field of study to work on this.

In undergrad, I studied mechanisms of neurotransmitter release. When I moved to Montreal to pursue a Ph.D at the Douglas-Bell Canada Brain Bank, I changed my focus to study gene expression and white matter inflammation in depression and suicide. But at some point, after five years of being at the microscope, I started to ask myself, “Where can I really see my work being impactful?”

I then joined a lab to conduct clinical research to assess the effects of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on people suffering from psychiatric disorders.

Ivan: What contemplative practices were you exploring at the time?

Gaby: Besides my training in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, I was practicing Vipassana meditation and mindfulness. I was fascinated by the power of the mind to somehow heal itself.

During this period, I happened to read a very interesting book called A Course in Miracles, which posed questions about the nature of reality and dreams. At some point in the book it says, “This is a dream, you are dreaming right now. The same way that in your dream, you're creating all these characters, you are a character created by the mind.” And that just blew me away like, wow, what if this is a dream? How do you know you're not dreaming? That's when I got very interested in dreams and really started questioning the illusory nature of our life.

While on maternity leave, I began researching Dream Yoga, particularly in the Tibetan tradition, as it aligned with these ideas.

Ivan: Can you define Tibetan Dream Yoga and its variations?

Gaby: Tibetan Dream Yoga (TDY) is a contemplative practice focused on understanding the illusory nature of reality. Practitioners learn to have lucid dreams, becoming aware within the dream state. This awareness allows them to work on changing subconscious patterns and gain insights about how they experience reality. The Tibetan tradition is very systematic and scientific, with clear, established manuals that you can follow, where you know what the results should look like.

Interestingly, other traditions, like the Toltecs in pre-Hispanic Mexico, also integrated dreams into their spiritual practices. Unfortunately, much of the written records and oral traditions were either destroyed or hidden during the Spanish colonization of Mexico, but some fascinating theories and writings have survived. One such source is Sergio Magaña’s book, The Toltec Secret, which explores these practices in depth.

In the Toltec framework, dreams are used not only for lucidity but also for deeper transformation, with nine progressive levels of dream work. Magaña describes a multi-level system of working with dreams in the Toltec tradition, where lucid dreaming represents only the very beginning—essentially step one or two. He likens these levels to the structure of the pyramids found in Mexico, proposing that each tier symbolizes a deeper stage of dream practice. At the early levels, practitioners focus on achieving lucidity and understanding the dream state. Progressing to the next levels, they develop the ability to enter others' dreams and even influence waking reality through dreamwork. Magaña hints that what is considered advanced dreamwork in contemporary practices is merely the starting point in Toltec traditions.

Ivan: How does the practice differ between novices and experts?

Gaby: Dream Yoga involves two key dimensions: lucidity and control, both of which exist on spectrums. Novices typically begin by simply recognizing they are dreaming. Lucid dreamers will often aim to influence their dreams for fun or personal purposes, but this is typically not a spiritual practice. In contrast, Dream Yoga practitioners focus on mastering both lucidity and control over many years, with the goal of transforming their dreams into a deliberate, contemplative practice.

While no one claims to have absolute control over lucidity, advanced practitioners are remarkably adept at inducing lucid dreams intentionally. The degree of lucidity varies, but their control is extraordinary. Even the most skilled practitioners acknowledge they do not have complete mastery over their dreams, describing their influence as volitional rather than absolute. The best way I’ve heard it described is that you’re sort of "flirting with a dominatrix," where you have to learn the rules governing the dream state.

Ivan: Can you describe what your personal Dream Yoga practice looks like? How often do you engage in it, and what you try to accomplish when you achieve lucidity?

Gaby: I notice significant improvements when I dedicate myself to the practice, but I’m not as consistent as I’d like to be. Techniques like “wake back to bed” have worked for me, and I’ve even experimented with a supplement called Galantamine. Every time I use it, I manage to achieve a lucid dream. When I’m lucid, I usually start with small experiments, like changing the color of a screen in my dream, but I often lose lucidity quickly. Honestly, I’m still a novice in many ways.

Avery: Sometimes when I’m dreaming, I’ll think “Oh, I’m dreaming!” but I question whether I’m truly lucid or just dreaming about being lucid. How can you be sure that you’re lucid in a dream?

Gaby: That’s a great question, and it’s something we think about a lot in our research. To confirm lucidity, we rely on two-way communication with participants in the lab. We can’t fake that interaction. For example, when a participant realizes they’re dreaming, they signal us with prearranged eye movements—left, right, left, right, center. This indicates they’ve achieved lucidity, and they often respond to auditory prompts or carry out specific tasks they’ve agreed on beforehand, like flying or walking through walls.

Avery: Can you elaborate on how you measure and confirm lucidity?

Gaby: In our lab, we work with Dream Yoga practitioners, often experts, and hook them up to an EEG to monitor brain activity, eye movements, and heart rate. During REM sleep, where muscles are paralyzed except for the eyes, we use eye movements as a communication tool. For example, we might play a specific sound in their dream—a sound they’ve been conditioned to associate with a particular practice, like flying or passing through walls. The participant acknowledges hearing the sound and performs the action, signaling us when they begin and end. This allows us to isolate and study brain activity during these moments of lucid awareness.

Avery: I heard Andrew Holocek, who's a lucid dreaming expert, say that if you really examine it, when you're dreaming, you don't have a sense of self. So is lucid dreaming just your sense of self starting to come back, or is there something fancier, maybe more metaphysical happening?

Gaby: It’s hard to say if there’s anything metaphysical at play. From a physiological perspective, when you’re dreaming, parts of your cortex are inactive—particularly those responsible for logic and judgment. This is why dreams often don’t make sense, and we don’t question them. Without external sensory input, the mind generates its own content, which we experience directly.

When you become lucid, you’re essentially engaging with your subconscious mind without the filters and judgments present during waking life. This makes lucid dreaming a powerful tool for addressing patterns, phobias, and other deeply ingrained mental constructs. In this sense, working with the subconscious could feel as profound as anything metaphysical, as it allows you to face and transform inner challenges with clarity.

Ivan: What kinds of goals or transformations do people pursue with Dream Yoga, either in traditional Tibetan contexts or modern life?

Gaby: A teacher described waking life as heavily constrained by the mind’s conditioning. From birth, we’re taught to perceive the world in fixed ways, which shapes our understanding of reality. Dream Yoga challenges these constructs. For example, sometimes practitioners will practice walking through walls in dreams, because the solidity of walls is such a deep part of our perception of the physical world.

One practitioner explained that at first, even in the dream, the wall wouldn’t yield. But by repeatedly working through the doubt and gradually altering their mindset, they could eventually pass through it. Interestingly, they noted that even a moment of hesitation caused the wall to solidify again. This practice isn’t just about the dream—it’s about transforming the mind’s rigid patterns, which could influence waking life as well. Some people even share stories about influencing waking life, such as monks who reportedly left their robes embedded in walls, as evidence of advanced Dream Yoga mastery.

Ivan: That’s fascinating. How do you balance the esoteric aspects of Dream Yoga with rigorous scientific research?

Gaby: It’s a challenge. Historically, dream research was dismissed as pseudoscience because there were no objective measures. This changed about 60 years ago when researchers like Stephen LaBerge began using eye movements during lucid dreams to timestamp specific events. Now, we can combine tools like EEG and two-way communication to analyze these experiences with precision.

In our lab, we use methods like micro-phenomenology, where participants describe their experiences in detail, paired with physiological data like brain activity. This allows us to study dreams in a systematic, scientific way. While we may not yet have the tools to measure how changing your mind alters physiology, that’s the direction I’m most interested in. It’s about showing what we can prove rigorously, while remaining open to exploring what’s beyond current scientific capabilities. Our work aims to build a foundation of evidence that can eventually support deeper exploration.

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Lucid Dreaming 

If you want to try lucid dreaming for yourself, Gaby shared some techniques you can use!

Have you ever had a lucid dream? Have you ever realized or created something in the dream world that you’ve brought back out to your waking life? Tell us about your most interesting or creative dream experience. At AND THE SUN, we’re exploring the idea of producing a work of art directly from within a dream… 💤