Feasibility of a Mental-Health Intervention Based on Contemplative Sleep Practices

This customized contemplative training will guide participants in exploring techniques used in Tibetan Dream Yoga, including somatic awareness and intention-setting prior to sleep. Strategies in Tibetan Dream-Yoga manuals are thus transferred to a modern context and adapted as a group intervention. Goals will be set for dreaming that include gaining a degree of volitional influence over the dream. Participants will be instructed on how to work with their dream-world self-concept, which can include changing the environment deliberately, making other individuals appear, and switching identities with other individuals in the dream. Wearable devices will be used to present cues during sleep both to provoke lucidity and to remind individuals of Dream-Yoga exercises to be engaged during sleep. The intervention includes both wake- and sleep-based instructions, with instructions on learning to apply the new orientation in their daily lives. Participants will be contacted individually to assure

The control group will receive a modified version of the Health Enhancement Program (HEP), which was developed as an active control condition for mindfulness-based interventions, with a particular focus on sleep hygiene. It controls for several non-specific factors such as expectations of positive change, group support, behavioural activation, facilitator attention, at-home practice, treatment duration, and format (MacCoon et al., 2012; Rosenkranz et al., 2013). Our modified HEP will be structurally equivalent to the Dream-Yoga condition, with high similarity on non-program-specific factors, including timing and number of sessions. The two VR sessions will focus on health enhancement. Participants will be taught positive health-enhancing practices, such as healthy diet and gentle exercise, with activity-based sessions covering exercise, sleep, dreaming, stress, anxiety, nutrition, journaling, music enjoyment, and drawing. Home practice and implementation of health-enhancing habits will