Andrew Holecek

Lucid dreaming―waking up and becoming fully conscious in your dreams―has intrigued legions of those seeking to explore their vast inner worlds. Yet for many, "getting lucid" for the first time can be elusive. And for those who have, there are few resources that show us how to use this extraordinary state for the greater goal of awakening to all of reality, day or night.With Dream Yoga , Andrew Holecek brings us a practical guide for meditators, seasoned dream travelers wanting to go deeper, and total beginners eager to experience lucidity for the first time.Here, you’ll join this expert teacher of dream work and meditation to How to awaken in your dreams naturally by using modern scientific principles with the insights and practices of Tibetan dream and sleep yoga• Proven guidance to overcome common obstacles, enhance dream recall, focus and amplify awareness while dreaming, work with nightmares safely, resolve emotional blockages, and glean wisdom from your dreams• A wealth of practices and tips that have helped thousands enjoy successful dream-time exploration• Essential Buddhist teachings and tools for navigating the many realms of sleep (dreaming is just one of them)• Direct insights into the continuation of consciousness beyond the physical body and death• How to bring your skills together to engage with the hundreds of thousands of dream opportunities that most of us forget or dismissHave you ever wondered what happens when you sleep and dream? Desired to wake up in your dreams and have the time of your life? Or wanted to use your sleep hours to fully explore these dimensions, heal, and evolve? Dream Yoga answers these questions―not academically but directly―by showing you how to access this profound universe for yourself.

A world-renowned expert in lucid dreaming and Tibetan dream yoga guides us into the tradition’s daytime practices, a complement to the nighttime practices taught in his previous book Dream Yoga.Most of us are absolutely certain that we’re awake here and now—it’s a given, right? Yet, according to Tibet’s dream yoga tradition, ordinary waking life is no more real than the illusions of our nightly dreams.In his previous book Dream Yoga, Andrew Holecek guided us into Tibetan Buddhism’s nocturnal path of lucid dreaming and other dimensions of sleeping consciousness. Now, with Dreams of Light, he offers us an in-depth, step-by-step guide to its daytime practices.Known as the “illusory form” practices, these teachings include insights, meditations, and actions to help us realize the dreamlike nature of our lives. Through an immersive exploration of the tradition, beginners and seasoned practitioners alike will learn everything they need to deeply transform both their sleeping and waking hours.“If you’ve struggled to awaken in your dreams,” teaches Holecek, “these techniques will often spark spontaneous lucidity during sleep. And if you’re already a successful lucid dreamer, they will open you to new depths of experience throughout your day.”For those wishing to explore Tibetan Buddhism’s profound path for awakening to the true nature of reality—day or night—Dreams of Light shows us the way.

We all face death, but how many of us are actually ready for it? Whether our own death or that of a loved one comes first, how prepared are we, spiritually or practically? In Preparing to Die , Andrew Holecek presents a wide array of resources to help the reader address this unfinished business.Part One shows how to prepare one's mind and how to help others, before, during, and after death. The author explains how spiritual preparation for death can completely transform our relationship to the end of life, dissolving our fear and helping us to feel open and receptive to letting go in the dying process. Daily meditation practices, the stages of dying and how to work with them, and after-death experiences are all detailed in ways that will be particularly helpful for those with an interest in Tibetan Buddhism and in Tibetan approaches to conscious dying.Part Two addresses the practical issues that surround death. Experts in grief, hospice, the funeral business, and the medical and legal issues of death contribute chapters to prepare the reader for every practical concern, including advance directives, green funerals, the signs of death, warnings about the funeral industry, the stages of grief, and practical care for the dying.Part Three contains heart-advice from twenty of the best-known Tibetan Buddhist masters now teaching in the West. These brief interviews provide words of solace and wisdom to guide the dying and their caregivers during this challenging time. Preparing to Die is for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for death from a Buddhist perspective, both spiritually and practically. It is also for those who want to learn how to help someone else who is dying, both during the time of illness and death as well as after death.

Disruptive practices to revolutionize your relationship with meditation and fully engage with the full breadth of your experience.Why do we meditate? The main reason most modern people start meditating is because it helps us feel better―reducing anxiety, improving sleep, decluttering the mind, and so forth. “But where does your meditation go when things go bad?” asks Andrew Holecek. “Where is your spirituality when ‘rock meets bone,’ as they say in Tibet―when the crap hits the fan?”Reverse Meditation is for anyone who wants to bring the challenges of life onto the path of awakening. When things get hard, it’s time to turn your practice on its head―and throw out any assumption that meditation exists to insulate you from the confusion, difficulties, and uncertainty of life. “By putting your meditation into reverse,” Holecek teaches, “you’ll actually find yourself going forward. Step into your pain and you can step up your evolution.”With his signature blend of depth and accessibility, Holecek invites you to • Three core forms of meditation―mindfulness, open awareness, and the boundary-smashing reverse meditations• How to know when you’re ready to engage with reverse meditation• On-the-spot practices for snapping into a meditative mindset in difficult situations• Contraction and expansion―how to dismantle habits of avoidance to become more open, resilient, and fully alive• How reverse meditation opens you to a direct experience of the fundamental perfection of reality―just as it is“These unique meditations are designed to reverse our relationship to unwanted experiences, which means going directly into them instead of avoiding them,” says Andrew Holecek. “It’s not an easy journey―yet this path leads to the discovery of unconditional happiness, basic goodness, and true freedom in the most turbulent situations.”

We all encounter obstacles on a daily basis—from small inconveniences and nuisances to the really big hardships wreaking havoc with our lives. Sometimes just the small things are enough to set us reeling. Andrew Holecek offers us a progressive path beginning with common, easily understood hardships and moving on to more subtle and challenging ones that commonly arise on our spiritual journeys.

Awaken to the transformative power of your dreams, travel to the most exotic locations free of charge, and bring back a treasure trove of insights to benefit yourself and others in your waking life! Have you ever realized you’re dreaming— inside your dream? If so, you’ve experienced a lucid dream. Lucid dreaming, also known as conscious dreaming, is simply knowing that you’re dreaming while being able to remain in the dream without waking. And by learning to stay aware inside your dreams, you can learn more about yourself, the world, and the universe than you ever imagined! In this exciting guide, lucid dreaming expert Andrew Holecek offers a step-by-step approach for developing and honing the skills necessary to awaken to these dazzling dreamscapes—and the amazing truths to be discovered there. This engaging workbook blends ancient wisdom with modern knowledge to teach you the science behind lucid dreaming, the benefits of practicing this visionary art, and a variety of ways to induce these remarkable dreams. Use this wonderous workbook With these exercises and meditations, you’ll embark on an incredible journey to explore the deep inner space of your dreaming mind and learn how to take control of your dreams to guide them toward the experiences you want to have. You’ll also learn about the stages of lucid dreaming, how they interconnect, and how the spiritual aspects of dreaming are related to life and death. Lucid dreaming can take you to places you’ve never been before—and this book has everything you need to start having these astounding dreams tonight.

Discover what comes after mindfulness―an expansive guide to the limitless possibilities of meditative practice.Mindfulness is everywhere―touted as an essential part of a healthy lifestyle like exercise, diet, and good sleep. Yet many of us who practice mindfulness “Now what?” For anyone who has sensed the potential for something much deeper and more profound than stress relief within the stillness of the present moment, expert teacher Andrew Holecek presents an essential guidebook on what is possible in the vast, transformative world of meditation beyond mindfulness.With I’m Mindful, Now What? , Holecek reveals how the form of mindfulness many of us know is merely one thread in a much older, greater tapestry of contemplative practice. Here he presents an encompassing survey of the many dimensions of meditation―including paths for opening your heart, nurturing compassion, connecting with your body, expanding your dreaming life, and investigating the fundamental nature of reality. In accessible language, he shares insights and tools to help you develop your practice, navigate the limits and pitfalls of mindfulness, use “meditation snacks” to explore new directions, and much more.Meditation can be so much more than 20 minutes of tranquility each day. As Holecek “With some initial practice, you’ll bring a mind that is more present, open, sensitive, kind, and aware into every facet of life. Wherever you go, your wondrous mind will go with you.”

Is your life busier than ever? Are the forces of distraction, speed, and stress getting the better of you? You’re not alone. Many of us are getting swept away with the demands of life, and losing touch. Smart phones, iPads, Facebook and Twitter are stealing our attention and bankrupting our sense of meaning and happiness. Can you feel the loss? Meditation in the iGeneration offers a solution. This remedy has been tried and tested for thousands of years. It works, and it’s free! The only thing you have to pay is proper attention -- which is precisely the art of meditation. It’s simple, available to anyone, and easy to learn. And it can change your life.Drawing on four decades of personal experience and exhaustive research, Author Andrew Holecek joins the timeless wisdom of the East with modern knowledge of the West to provide a comprehensive yet gentle introduction to the magic of meditation. Meditation in the iGeneration offers everything you need to know to start meditating. It tells you exactly what meditation is, dispels the myths of what it is not, and shows you how to find peace and happiness through calming your mind.With warmth and humor, this book provides meditation instruction that anyone can do. Loaded with personal stories and backed up by scientific studies, this book offers dozens of tips, including: How to get started and how to keep going Making meditation part of your life Avoiding common traps and challenges How to teach it to your kids Meditation is sweeping the globe and causing a sensation in the scientific community. Thousands of studies prove its benefits. What are those benefits, and why the explosive growth? How can meditation make you feel better? We are in the midst of a meditation revolution. ˃˃˃ Learn why and how meditation can literally save your life. Scroll up and grab a copy today.

"En estas páginas, Andrew Holecek, un practicante de meditación de más de 45 años, describe su experiencia en un retiro de tres años en un monasterio tibetano y cómo este entrenamiento le permitió desarrollar una comprensión más profunda de la meditación y su capacidad para transformar la vida. Se centra en la necesidad de ir más allá del mindfulness y explorar prácticas más avanzadas para enfrentar los desafíos de la vida cotidiana, por ejemplo, cuando nos sentimos abrumados, o con dudas, o cuando estamos atravesando momentos especialmente difíciles.El autor aborda temas como la transformación de la conciencia, la apertura del corazón y la aplicación de la meditación en la vida diaria. También destaca la importancia de compartir estas prácticas con el mundo para abordar los desafíos globales y promover un cambio positivo."

A groundbreaking guide from trusted teacher Andrew Holecek on dark retreat—the Buddhist meditative practice of being in complete darkness. We need darkness as much as we need light. Yet we live in a distracted age that privileges light and marginalizes darkness. Beloved author Andrew Holecek shows that light doesn’t always reveal—it often conceals. With this groundbreaking book, he introduces readers to the ancient practice of dark retreats, a previously secret practice that invites spiritual seekers to remain in complete darkness without any external distractions. Dark retreats invite profound self-reflection—dropping practitioners into deeper understanding of themselves, uncovering new levels of mindfulness and meditation, and illuminating new dimensions of being.“Darkness is a truthteller,” writes Holecek. “Darkness is exacting. The question to reflect upon is how willing are you to be exposed?” In this book, Holecek invites readers to reconnect with darkness and rediscover its many benefits. He introduces readers to the ancient wisdom of dark immersion, providing step-by-step guidance to help them determine if this practice is right for them, how to practice it safely, what kinds of challenges arise from the practice, and how to integrate its insights.Full of wisdom teachings, easy home practice, checklists, and his own stories of over thirty years of dark retreat practice, Holecek makes this ancient practice accessible for our modern age, reintegrating darkness into our light-polluted lives.

Discover the Hidden Dimension of Your Life—The Dream Realm"Sleeping and dreaming," teaches Andrew Holecek, "offer nightly opportunities for spiritual awakening." When you know how to wake up in your dreams, you transform sleep into a portal to the deepest experiences of reality.Can anyone awaken in their dreams and explore their true depths? For decades, this gifted author and instructor has launched spiritual oneironauts (dream travelers) from all beliefs and backgrounds into the magical world of dreams—even those who have never meditated or had a lucid dream. Dream Yoga brings the best from modern science and Tibetan wisdom to offer you this extraordinary opportunity. With expert guidance you'll learn everything you need to know to penetrate the mysteries of the night, Meditations for calming and clarifying your mind How to have lucid dream states naturally using Tibetan practices and contemporary dream induction techniques Practical tips for overcoming common obstacles, enhancing dream recall, working with nightmares, and gleaning insights from your dreams Bringing your skills together to explore the deepest dimensions of awakened consciousness Each night you touch into the possibility of enlightenment. With Dream Yoga you will emerge from the darkness of ignorance into the luminous experience of awakening—in every moment, day or night.