Episode 7: Dreams and the Subtle Self

Welcome to Mental Hygiene, a space to care for the mind like we care for the body, daily, gently and with love. Posted by Yogi Chiru and Susan Huu, this podcast brings ancient Yogi wisdom into modern life, offering practical tools to cleanse the mental clutter, restore inner stillness, and reconnect with your true self. Take a breath, you're exactly where you need to be. Welcome to Mental Hygiene. Hello everyone, welcome to Mental Hygiene, my name is Susan and I'm here with my incredible teacher and friend Yogi Chiru and today we're talking about a very fun and fascinating topic of the dreams. Yogi Chiru, yes, welcome everyone, I am Yogi Chiru. It's been a pleasure to work with my dreams over three decades. It's part of the Rishi culture to be able to look at the mind, look at thoughts that goes in and out of the mind when we are awake and also when we are sleeping. So the dream world is very important to the Rishi culture. Mm-hmm, amazing. And every single one of us, we are dream and night. Sometimes we don't remember them. Sometimes we have nightmares. Yogi Chiru, what are dreams from a more Yogi's perspective? So the Yogi culture teaches that when you meet a fellow human or if you have a pet, it's a very complex organism and we call it layers or cautious. So we have the physical layer that's made up of the elements, earth, water, fire, air, eater. Those tattoos, those elements then mutate into atoms and atoms into cells, into tissues, into organs, into systems and so we have a lot of systems here in this physical body. And then we have this subtle body we call it, the subtleer co-shelves and that is the Pranamaya coach, the energetic body and we have the mental body, the manamaya coach. So right now you're looking, if you're looking at me, you can see my body, Susan's body, but you can't see our minds. But Susan has a mind, I have a mind, you have a mind, but no one can see. Then we have another part of the subtle body we call it, the Vigyan Maya coach already, intellectual sheet, the intelligences in every species. So you have intelligence, I have intelligence, you don't see that part of the person. And then we have another part of the subtle body we call it, a Hankar already, ego. Everyone has an ego. You don't see the ego, but it's there. So the Rishya culture teaches that we are spiritual beings and as spiritual beings we animate the subtle bodies as well as the physical body. Now when you, if you were to see a go to a funeral and you see the body there, you will only see the physical body. Because the subtle body and the spiritual being the atma, the soul has left. Now the soul travels with the ashram body. So we are left with what's in the coffin is just the element earth, water, fire, air body. Now when you go to sleep at night, it's like you're having a physical, that basically every night, every time you dream because the physical, we're engineered with the neurons and the brain. So when we go to sleep to put this body into paralysis, you can't move it. It's like the body is like that. And God engineered our bodies or our complex organism this way. Because when your physical body goes into that paralysis, then your subtle body works. So the person is going to dream they're climbing a mountain, they're going to dream they're running from a dog, they're going to dream they're flying, they're going to dream they're swimming. So whatever we do in the physical world, quite frankly, it continues into the subtle body, into the mind. So if the body doesn't go into paralysis, someone you'll be kicking your spouse, you'll be acting out your dreams with your limbs. So the body is like paralysis, like almost that, like at that body. But then your subtle body is traveling. Your subtle body is going to go to your old school, it will go to the playground. It might even steer right in the same home in my body, my move from my bedroom to the living room. You might have a gym in the living room, you might have a gym, you visit your aunt over there in that part of the planet, that country, that city. So as your body, as that subtle body, the mind, the intellect and the ego, that body moves around, you are experiencing the dimensions and the subtle body experience, extruded subtle senses because the subtle body has eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin as well. So normally, when if you ask a military person who lost a limb, a finger or arm, you say, I can still feel my fingers or the limbs that they lost. The subtle limb is there. So that same subtle body has subtle eyes, subtle, yeah. So when we dream, we can see, if you get good at it, you can experience the dream world with all your five senses, just like we experience this physical dimension, 25 senses, when we put them to sleep, we can know experiences subtle body with the five senses. And that's why when people say, oh, I remember that dream, they're going to say, oh, I saw this person, I saw this place. Sometimes they might say, oh, I can remember the conversation I heard on a rare occasion. It was, oh, it might be my pasted conclude. I can't sound, that's rare. On rare occasion, you might hear someone says, oh, I smell that perfume. So mostly in the dream, there's two of the five senses that are sharper, they're visual and they're on the hearing, scene and hearing. So you hear, you're having a conversation. And then when you wake up, oh, the physical body, oh, I had a dream and then you remember. So all of us are engineered with dreams. My teacher is a failure. Two things, all of us, we breathe in oxygen and exhale and we dream. Everyone. And so if we're engineering, do these things, then we want to go deeper into them. So we just ignore it because in our culture today, we don't catch dreams. But our ancestors were very into their dream world. And then some of our, and some, some dream cultures on this planet would say, oh, this world is an extension of that world. And so because information trouble from physical to the stuff of the world, to the physical. Amazing. So basically, when we're dreaming is we're having an experience where our physical or gross body is separating from the subtle body. Your physical body goes to a state of depriolization in that stillness where we're not moving or not doing anything. But a subtle body travels having different experiences. Sometimes we go to the past, sometimes we go to the future, and sometimes we go to a different dimension having spiritual experience as well. And when we are dreaming, we can always get so much information, but not all of us remember the dreams. I've had so many conversations with friends, sometimes friends who are like, I never dream. And you're like, why is that some people we don't remember any of the dreams? How can we train ourselves to actually learn to learn from those dreams and work with the dreams? So most of the time when someone says, I don't dream. What they're really saying is I don't remember the dreams. Our brought up in a culture today where we don't put a lot of emphasis on the dream world. Because we have lost our intuition skills that the inner world, that astral world really does affect this physical dimension. Because we're living in these different dimensions, then we have to pay wing awareness to both of them. Those people who say, I don't dream, I always ask them, do you day dream? Yes, I do. I do dream self-dream. You also? Nightmare. Nightmare. And then I always ask those people who say, I never dream or I don't dream. I say, have you ever had a nightmare? 99% of the time they would say? Yes. I had a nightmare before. So why is that is they remembered a nightmare? The nightmare was so daunting that they jumped from their sleep. Oh, wow, that was a dream. So the nightmare was so scary that it awakes them. And they remembered it. Oh, their attention. But if it was a pleasant dream, they get, alarm goes off, you get up, you forget it. So that tells us, wait, if I have a pleasant dream and my alarm goes off and I get, so then there's a way to retrain the subconscious mind to start to catch dreams. All you need to do is to, before you go to sleep, just when you shut, when you take off the light, you turn every year in your bed, just reprogram your mind. Your mind can be our best friend and your mind can be a worse enemy. So you can reprogram your mind. You can tell the mind, tonight I will catch my dreams. And if you run over in your mind for like half a minute, one minute, two minutes, you fall asleep. I guarantee you, within a week's time, you will get up catching a dream. It's amazing how we can refine to get back into that practice. Because it's already a part of us. We already know the practice of catching dreams. We just forgot. And we weren't born into a culture that emphasized the dream world. So if you just restructure, you'll get the most of them. They say you don't use a muscle, you lose it. So this is one of those muscles. You ain't it. You'll get it back again. And I've trained so many people to work with their dreams. When they went from no dreams a night to start a catching five, six dreams every night. And these are people who say, I don't dream. And they get there, right? I can test to that. That was one of the first things I learned from you, which I heard when I first started meditating with you. Before that, I never thought I would write down my dreams. I probably have bought dream catchers when I'm traveling because it's a cute little thing. I never understood a meaning behind it. But then with that intention of, okay, I want to learn from my dreams. I want to work with my subtle body catching dreams becoming such a beautiful part of my day to day self care. It's like a day to day self routine cycle shower every day. Of course, you catch your dreams every day. Yeah. And remember that there's one West African tribe that I can't remember the name, but they respect your dream so much that when they write up biography, like if you go into the bookstore today and you go biography section, you see so many biographies, autobiography, this biography, that biography. But they only write about the experience when they were awake. This West African tribe, when they write a biography, they write about this external along with the dreams. That's incredible. Because they understand the dream is a big part of our life. Why is it so important? Someone might ask, why should I catch my dreams? This is why. In the rich culture, we get wisdom from the inner worlds. But it's only when we are silent, can we listen to it? So for the common human who doesn't meditate to quiet down and get the information from there, they're only way ordinary humans when they're spent each day. When they go to sleep, they shut down, they brainwave drop, they're parasympathetic visions common. So a lot of the things we use in our culture, we're brought into this dimension from someone who entered the dream state. Just right off the top of my head, we have the Russian scientist Dr. Mendeleev. He figured out the periodic table. Me, you were using so many things in our homes and our life because of the periodic table. He was trying to figure it out. And he was in his lab, in trying to figure out the elements and the sizes and the guests, which gas goes in the way, and he fell asleep. And he fell asleep. And what did he get in that sleep? Had a dream. And the periodic table came to him. And he woke up from the dream, when he created the periodic table. So he brought that subtle, subtle information from the subtle worlds into this reality. Yes. And I think since then, the problem added on like maybe 20 or 30 more elements. But he created from the dream world. You're like the Beatles. I remember they're powerful musicians, the Beatles, right? They. Yesterday. Yesterday, right? Yesterday. Yes. So he had that inner dream. He wrote the words. So if you are whatever you do, you're an engineer, a business person, a lawyer, a doctor, right? And so how did it came from a dream? So we get a lot of inspiration from a dream when we pay attention. Knowledge is there. For the common person, the only time they shut down and go in there is when they sleep. Now the dream is so powerful, it wakes you up. And I think, you know, people, so one, we get knowledge from there. We can also be, we have dreams of the future. The French term is deja vu, right? That's the coin that frees, right? Yes. And psychologists. But you understood, wait, our mind, when people go to sleep, people's mind are able to go into the future, have a total experience. And sometimes these dreams in the future, what are they doing? They are warning us or giving us a hint of what we eat or do or not do. So you can, so when people wake up, he understood, oh, they wake up and something trigger, they had a dream, but they can't remember it. And then a week later, a month later, sometimes a year or two later, the person is going through the modes of this dimension, right? Oh, I've been here before and I see the person and, right? Like I remember, I had, this is just before I came to yoga, I was maybe 12. I had a dream of crossing this one bridge in Belize. And in front of me, a lady was with her, with that gentleman and she had a high heels, but enough like semi high heels and they were in front of me and they were looking at each other walking, happy, I was in the back and there was a hole and she didn't see the hole because she was looking at each other and she stepped in on, twist her ankle. That was my dream. And I remember because she was wearing a beautiful yellow dress about a year later. I'm walking across the bridge and what the thing is, the same bridge or dream. The same bridge and the dream, with the yellow dress and that's what the color yellow, I saw it and what did I do? It reminded the lady. You know, excuse me. I said, there's a hole there and then it's a step over it. So you can use the knowledge, you can get warnings from the dreams, right? From if we go in the future. And then or mine in the over culture we understand or mine also projects in the past. A lot of time people come to you, oh, can you tell me about my past life? No, no, no. I'm not going to read your past life. I can show you a technique, there are techniques that can help you to see. Go back to your past experiences. That's when the real healing starts to happen. When people are in that state again, when we are quiet, when the body feels safe, when the mind is in a place of peace, then when we re-experience those things, the past trauma, past experiences that we were holding on so tightly wouldn't like off, that's a time of processing. Yeah. And so when you, when you're mind projecting the past, you see certain four-bias, certain traumas, maybe from early in this life, maybe from previous lives. Maybe you start to see, oh, why I love engineer, why did I go to engineer classes? I did. I did I go to business. What I did I become a doctor because you will have dreams of your past and they told they show you you were a doctor in your past life, you were engineer, you're a, you're a, oh, you have a full bill for getting in a lift. Oh, wow. I had access. Excellent. We carried those experience with us into this life. And so the dream world then is a world where we can start to heal or some conscious mind. And for us to grow holistically, we want to grow physically healthy with the physical body, keep it pure. We want to keep this subtle body, pure and healthy as well. And so we have to exercise this muscle, right? It's a language means speak spoken to us. It's a gift just like you breathe. We take it for granted. Show me one human who watches one percent of their breath. A yogi. As a yogi, we're not all people. Oh, yeah, I breathe. Yeah. No, it's the backdrop to your life. It is the most important thing. Now when you go to sleep, how often do you sleep? Everyday. Good. Now when you go to sleep, I guarantee you you enter the dream phase every night and scientists have proven this about three to four times. You and they call it Ari. And so this is what's then they have shown it. Your eyelids are closed and your eyes will go like this. Very through the rapid eye movement. Yeah. So that tells they can pinpoint when someone is dreaming, right? And you have four to five of those phases every night. And that makes sense. If we pay attention, if we can remember them, we can catch four or five different dreams every night as well. And so the art of wow. So we have for then come to the first to the conclusion, wait. My experience of life is not just when I'm awake. My experience of life is also when I'm asleep. So if you sleep, then these percentages come out, right? And scientists back it up. That if you live to 100 years and you sleep six to seven, six to eight hours every night, and you reach 100 years, you have slept for about 30 years. That's incredible. Yeah. It's a long time. So then you can say, well, I was awake for 70 years. But how if you could tell someone, wow, 30 years, I can turn that 30 years into learning as well. All problems solving. I can use that to get inspiration. I can have, right? Heal. And you mentioned earlier, mediumistic dreams, right? A lot of times, a close friend, a family member, you have attention with them and you stop talking to them and they pass away. It's a hole in your mental and heart space. Oh, I should have dropped the grudges. I should have healed it. Okay, you still can. So what happens is one of these days you will fall asleep and you will dream of someone who crossed over. I have met most people who just catch started catching their dreams and say, yes, my grandfather absolutely. My mother visited me, my mother visit my own different. So then if you get good at catching your dreams, it's not just catching, but you can get to us a week and then start to. When they visit us, when our loved ones pass away, we unresolved issues with them. When they visit us, you can then omble it back for forgiveness. And I've done many healing work on my own self like that. I aunts and who crossed over and I was too young to tell them tanks and things like that. So healing, profound healing can take place. So we call that type of dream, mediumistic dream, when you dream of your loved one, it can even be your pet. Absolutely. Totally. It's too past over and the pet come and heal us and so much transformation. So this is a powerful aspect we've been engineered with. Why ignore it? Yeah, I love that. When I remember Yung Chui, for a while, when we were having our regular dream, Sangha, we were all pretty much every week I have dreams of my grandparents who left this world. And it's the most empowering but also inspirational experience knowing that when we learn about those philosophy, yes, I am not this body, I'm not this mind, I'm a divine spiritual being that lives on forever. But when we have those dreams, that's when those realizations, they come to, they come to and not in a, not in a meditative way, even better than a meditative state when you get to experience that. Yeah, you wake up with so much happiness, so much joy. I tell you so, so conscious mind has healed, so now you can move forward. Totally. So yes, so then you can have dreams of, so why do I want to catch dreams? Because you have the ability to meet profound guides in whatever genre of life you take. And get a teacher who teach you medicine who teach you dance. I, someone, one of someone who did the dream course with us once told me, like two months ago, she said, she read an article about Beyonce and a dream of writing a song and all the , and the choreographed it and how the technique, the dance techniques, and she woke up and she put it out together. Oh wow. So yeah, so, so you can go and do get so much guidance. You can get, if you're on a, if you're on a spiritual search, you can meet a profound spiritual teacher, right, who can come to you and guide you. I had a performance here. I met Sheila Prabhavad, my first, in that dimension. And he gave me certain instructions, do this, do this, and I followed through it. And I, so you can get profound spiritual guidance. You can even reach the yoga is eventually yoga is used in the world because it's not just our dream world. It is an extension of the meditation. So the body, when you're meditating here, we go to sleep that also becomes a meditative state. And that's amazing. I've had experience with dreaming off a yoga pose I was working on and then months later finally getting there. But dreams gives, we can learn so much from the dreams. So you'll be sure, if someone who's still very new to learning about dream, working with dreams, how can we start? What are a few practical techniques that we can do to help us, you know, make friends with the mind, get inspiration, find healing through the dream world. So the first thing is you have to want to have a desire, your dreams. So as you have that desire to want to work with the inner world, right? Then, first thing you do is tonight. Let's start tonight. Next to your bed, get a pen and paper. And that paper is going to be a scrap paper so that as you go to sleep, you're going to, like I said, you're going to mention as mental repeat, if you're with a spouse, do it in the mind. If you're a single, you can do it out loud. But even more mental is more convincing. You're restructuring the muscle of the mind. Tonight, I will catch my dreams. I will catch my dreams. And then you go to sleep, like you do it for half a minute, a minute, go to sleep. And when you wake up, before you even open your eyes, oh, I'm awake, just ask us what was I doing just now? And when your eyelids close, search the mind and the dream will start to come. And then you get your pen and scrap. And maybe that might come, say you go to sleep at 10 o'clock. That one might come at like 12. You don't have to open your eyes. It's still me. And I just, but you write on your scrap paper, the gist of the dream, this building, that person screw you. And then, eyes close, go back to sleep. Then closer to, when you wake up, say you're going to wake up at five or four, closer to the time you're going to wake, the dream world, the REM state is bigger. So you will catch more dreams closer to the time you wake up. So then you catch the, wow, and then you went, oh, I'm right, the scribble again, the gist of the dream, gist of the dream, that, that. And then when your alarm gets up, you turn off the alarm, see if there was a dream you caught again. And then maybe you catch another dream. Now when you wake up, you look at your script, your paper, it'll be all scribbling. Right. But then, as you look at the gist of what you wrote, as you start to read it, because it's meant, the whole dream will come back. Then you get a dream journal, and then you write your dream in the journal. So one thing, you go get a new dream journal. And a new pen. And that's right. And once those are already, you're making, you're already working with the inner worlds. You can see all you want to connect with us. We're going to reach out to you. So it's us and that inner dimensions starting to work. There's a funny story. When I first tried to do that, I remember I had a piece of paper by my bed, and I woke up in the middle of the night, I wrote down some keywords. I was pretty sure I did that. Then when I woke up, there was nothing on that paper. I had a dream that I was writing on my dreams. At the beginning of the set of the video, it was really fun. And so then, you know, so that's what you can do. New dream journal and get a pen. And that pen is only going to use for your dream journal. So that soon as we touch that pen, we're also sending a subconscious minus signal. Okay, now it's time to work with the set of parts of me. And then you write the dream one dream per page and then you give it a date. And because once you start to date it, then you start to see rhythms. Because according to the cycles of the moon, so full moon, you have certain type of dreams. New moon, certain type of dreams. Half moon, so you start to see a pattern in your own structure of your mind. Because the moon affects our mental energy. So when you write on your dream, also write down your moon face off the day so that we can over time start to recognize the pattern. Because everything in this world is cyclic. It's engineered like that. The yogisana said, God engineered this world, right? In a urgent way. So we all want to be happy. Now how to live in this world happy, this physical dimension, and how to live in the astral world in the happy state. Like we said earlier, most people remember a dream because it's a nightmare. Mm-hmm. Here's our actually healing dreams as well. But that's in a course. We teach those how to work with nightmares, how to work with restructuring the mind and stuff like that. But the first step is just start catching our dreams. Start to remember the dreams right at all first in the morning before you turn on your phone. And when we are able to at least start to bring the information to this reality, then we can start to recognize, okay, is this the dream from the past to help me heal? Is the dream potentially happening in the future? Give me some sort of warning or is it a medium mystical dream that's taking me to a different dimension that I can come back to that I can work with people that might not be in this world anymore? And then. Or is it a dream that, oh, I'm dreaming for a planet? Mm-hmm. Mendally of dream of the pure that held the whole planet. Absolutely. You can bring information from that world, not just for yourself, but to benefit the planet. Wow. And we have this potential. Everyone of us is not like, oh, only one soul. No, no, all souls. We all have this ability to bring information for ourselves, but also to bring information that can take the evolution of the human planet. And every night when we go to sleep, we have an opportunity to practice it. So if you are interested in catching your dreams, starting today, catch your dream, find your dreams, you are not your dream pen. And just one day at a time, one dream at a time, maybe even just a few small pieces of information that you're getting from a dream world, just like you were saying earlier, it's like a muscle. The more we work, the more stronger it gets. And then we can really learn to work with a dream for our evolution, for the evolution of everyone else. And your biography become even bigger. Yes. Is there in a world? And your auto world. Don't let your biography just be the auto world. Let it be bold. Amazing. Yogi Chari, can you guide us through a quick meditation where we can maybe use before we go to sleep even to help us tap into that dream world? Yes, certainly. So come into a nice comfort level, seated pose. Bring the palms and the knees, that's the tip of the thumbs, tip of the next fingers. Close the eyes softly. And as you close your eyes, center the mind into the present moment to the breath moving in and out of the nostrils. You breathe every day, every night. Your subtle body during the day, we say people are day dreaming. Your body is in front of another human, but your subtle body, your mind is somewhere else. You're having a conversation in them, but your subtle body went somewhere else. That when you bring your subtle body back to the present, what did you say? So you day dream. So every night, just like we breathe, we also dream every night. It's a part of the way we're engineered. Your pet dream, humans dream. And so as you go to sleep, I want you to know, bring your gaze, center of your eyebrows, and imagine your bed, how you sleep. And I want you to imagine you put a new pen and a new dream journal next to your bed. See yourself putting it next to your bed. And then on top of the dream journal, see yourself putting a scrap paper. That scrap paper is where you're going to write the gist of every dream in the night. And now see yourself getting in your bed. Your top tin lights are out. As you close your eyelids, you see yourself mentally repeating tonight, I will catch my dreams. And see yourself doing it for a minute or two in the mind silently. Now see there's a clock in your room and see it's midnight or 1 a.m. And see yourself reaching for your pen and your scrap paper and your scribbling one of the gist of the dream. And see yourself go back to sleep. Then the clock is now 3 a.m. See yourself retry your pen, scribbling another gist of that dream. See yourself go back to sleep. And see this clock is now 5 a.m. 5 30. You reach and you get more scribbling the gist of more dreams. Then you go back to sleep. And now visualize your alarm goes off. And as you get up, see yourself turn on the light. You look at your scribble and a smile comes on your face as you start to remember the full dreams and you start to write each dream in your dream journal. You write the date, you write the moon phase, you write the most profound type of emotions that dream give. And this way you start to live a life of 24 hours of learning as we circle the sun and as the moon circle us. 24 hours of evolution using our sleep time to rejuvenate the physical body and to grow with the astral body, the subtle body. When you're wearing us back to the breath, take a deep inhalation, sail slowly, breath to normal, bring the palms to the heart lower the head towards the higher self. Knowing that you live in the physical body and you live in the subtle body as well. And what connects your physical to the subtle is your breath. Your breathing throat and your breathing in the waking state. The breath is going to help us to connect to the dreams. Scary dreams, breath is shallow, beautiful dreams, breath is long and relaxed. Grateful for the ability to breathe, grateful for the ability to dream. Namaste. If the end, the eyes are young. That's it. Thank you, Yuchara, for such a sweet meditation, preparing us for beds. And for our listeners here, I hope you can use this recording. Tonight, before you go to sleep, give yourself a moment to wind down, prepare for your resting, listen to the recording and then see if we can start catching those dreams. Whether they're scary dreams, they're sweet dreams, dreams from past, from the future or from a different dimension and allowing those dreams to really help us to all evolving together. Thank you all so much for joining us. Thank you for sharing the podcast with your family and friends. Thank you, Brenda. Thank you, Susan, for hosting us. And hopefully, Yogi Chauro, we can do another dream training, a dream sangha sometime, maybe in 2026. When in 2026, maybe around May, May, we'll do a new dream training, yes. Amazing. Looking forward to that. And before that, I hope we can all have some sweet dreams, some inspiring dreams every day. Thank you. Thank you, Yogi Chauro. Yogi Chauro. That's it. Yogi Chauro. Thank you for joining us with Mental Hygiene, where ancient wisdom meets modern life, one breath and a tale. If this episode brought you peace, insight or inspiration, we invite you to subscribe, leave a review and share with someone you love. To go deeper, connect with Yogi Chauro and Susan Hoo. Follow the journey on Instagram at Mental Hygiene Podcast. Until next time, keep your mind clear, your heart open, and your spirit grounded. Be well. Be still. [BLANK_AUDIO]