Sleep Alchemy: Secrets of Daoist Sleep Practices for Inner Peace and Renewal

What if sleep could be more than rest? What if it could be a portal to transformation and self-discovery? Ancient Daoist sleep alchemy offers powerful techniques to access profound rest while maintaining deep awareness. Rooted in the Wudang Daoist San Feng lineage, the Hibernating Dragon and Five Dragons Sleeping methods guide practitioners to harmonize body, mind, and spirit, transforming sleep into a practice of deep peace and subtle awareness.

This workshop will provide a historical introduction to this lineage and its teachings and explore how foods, lifestyle choices, and embodiment affect the quality of sleep. We will delve into the Daoist understanding of sleep as a cosmological process and present practical tools for cultivating deep rest and resilience. The workshop will also examine classical Daoist teaching methods of story and conversation through stories such as Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream and Lü Dongbin’s Yellow Millet Dream, which offer insights into the Daoist perspectives on rest and transcendence.

Participants will practice introductory and more advanced Wudang sleeping methods to enter, sustain, and deepen sleep states. By the end of the workshop, you will be intimately familiar with practical techniques to deepen sleep, enhance well-being, and dream the dream of life more deeply and lucidly.