Within the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Naropa is remembered above all for a concise but profound curriculum of tantric disciplines known as the Six Yogas of Naropa. These are presented as methods for rapid spiritual maturation, yet they are rooted in a very precise understanding of mind and experience. The first is Tummo, or Inner Heat Yoga, which involves generating an inner fire that purifies the subtle body and gives rise to a distinctive warmth and bliss. This practice is not merely physiological; it is framed as a way to burn away obscurations and to support direct insight into the nature of reality.

Alongside this stands the yoga of the Illusory Body, which trains practitioners to recognize that the body, other beings, and all phenomena are like illusions or dreams. By repeatedly contemplating and experientially tasting this insubstantial quality, attachment to inherent existence is gradually undermined. Dream Yoga extends this insight into the nocturnal realm, cultivating lucidity within dreams and using them as a field for practice. In this way, both waking and dreaming states become complementary arenas for realizing that all appearances are, in essence, dreamlike.

The remaining yogas deepen this trajectory by working with ever more subtle levels of consciousness and transition. Clear Light Yoga focuses on recognizing and stabilizing awareness of the fundamental clarity of mind, especially in deep sleep, in meditative absorption, or at the threshold of death. Bardo Yoga addresses the intermediate state between death and rebirth, training the practitioner to remain lucid amid shifting appearances so that this interval can serve as an opportunity for liberation rather than confusion. Phowa, or Consciousness Transference, is practiced to direct awareness at the moment of death, sending it through the central channel and out the crown of the head toward a pure realm or a state conducive to awakening.

These six yogas are traditionally embedded within a broader tantric framework that includes devotion to a realized teacher, the cultivation of bodhicitta, and a view informed by Mahamudra or Madhyamaka. They are said to operate through the subtle channels, winds, and drops of the body’s vajra system, transforming ordinary experiences of sleep, dreaming, dying, and the intermediate state into a path. Taken together, they exemplify Naropa’s vision of spiritual practice: not an escape from the conditions of embodied existence, but a radical reorientation in which every state of consciousness becomes workable material for awakening.