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This article in Time magazine explains how beyond sleep simply being helpful to consolidate things we have already learned, we can actively influence our sleeping mind to help us remember better. While sleep hypnosis CD’s have claimed this for years, the article explains how a sound heard in deep sleep can be linked to a memory on waking – jingling keys to remember were they were hidden as an example. Other examples cited have used smell instead of sound in their examples.
Science has a long way to go in understanding these links between memory and sleeping, but these type of experiments start to prove that sleeping is not simply a passive exercise, and that we can influence if not actively control what happens in our sleep to our benefit. We don’t have to wait for science to prove to us what is possible, we can begin by becoming actively involved in our own sleeping and dreaming life, and making the most of the time we spend asleep!
Read the full article here: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1943283,00.html
Feel confused or don't know the answer? Maybe you should sleep on it
What to do, what to do, what to do??? We’ve all had the experience, where some issue just doesn’t seem clear to us, some decision just seems impossible to make, some problem just seems too difficult to solve. We may have wrestled with the issue in our our minds, maybe tried writing a list of pros and cons, perhaps spoken to friends, family or experts. And yet some how the way forward still isn’t clear. We may feel torn, anxious or just at a dead end. So, what to do?
It may seem like a meaningless cliche, but the advice to “sleep on it” is not as useless as it may at first seem. In our sleep our subconscious mind takes over. It is the role of this part of our mind to make meaning, to make sense of things. This part of mind, freed from the normal waking constraints of annoying things like logic, laws and social convention, can also be our most creative. We know our minds in this state ignore all the usual rules and regulations, or else how else could we fly or breathe underwater, and why else would we turn up to class naked or become another person as we do in our dreams? It is precisely this kind of free thinking that can solve problems for us.
But dreams aren’t simply random creative ideas, dreams are the way our subconscious attempts to resolve conflict. If there is something in our lives that is not working, if we hate our job or don’t know how to confront our parents with our true feelings, dreams will try and work it out for us. The trick is to recognise the answers when they come.
This can be difficult when we have not even admitted to ourselves or recognised exactly what our issue or concern is. But it is much easier when we know what the problem is, but we just don’t know the answer. We can actively look for our answers in our dreams. There are some tricks and techniques we can use to help tis process be more effective:
- Get as much advice, or do as much research as you can while awake about whatever the particular question of concern is. This is like feeding our minds. It doesn’t matter if we don’t remember it all or process it consciously, the information still goes into our minds, and when are asleep our subconscious can take over, looking for connections we may have missed, drawing conclusions we couldn’t grasp while awake.
- Think about the problem or question just as you go to sleep. Write it down, draw it or even say it out loud. Stating the problem clearly makes it easier to understand the answer. Give a message to your own subconscious, tell yourself what you need to know and repeat this silently in your mind as you fall asleep. This can trigger the subconscious to start working on that problem straight away. It knows where to focus and will take up where you left off when you were awake.
- Think about the question you had as soon as you wake up. Write down any fragments or images or words that come into your mind, however fleeting and irrelevant they may seem. Take time to try and remember you dreams clearly, and record it in as much detail as possible.
- Persist and persist! If the answer does not come after one night, do not give up! Give it time, let your subconscious grapple with all the complexity, let it also try to formulate an answer in a way that in your waking state will make sense to you. This kind of thinking is a skill, like any other, that requires time and practice to master.
Our subconscious mind may find creative solutions our waking mind can't see
But the rewards are well worth it. Scientific breakthroughs, ideas for great works of art and literature, mathematical equations – all have come to people who cultivated their dreams to help them understand and resolve waking life issues (see “Famous Dreams” post). But more simple, and yet more profound breakthroughs can happen for all of us on a very personal level. It might be whether to leave our job, whether this person is the right one to marry, or how to tell someone that significant secret we have been harbouring. Whatever it is, if we feel lost, confused, and don’t know which way to turn, we can always find support and guidance by looking within, by listening to the voice inside of us, through the special language of our dreams. We would all do well to heed the advice, and “sleep on it”
Dreams can take us to amazing new places in our imaginations
Want to improve the vividness, the colour, the interest and excitement of your dreams, and even make them lucid, so you know when you are dreaming? With dreams, like so many other areas of life, it can be a case of what you get out depends very much on what you put in. The subconscious responds well to all our senses, so by enriching our lives, we can expect to enrich our dreams equally. We can effectively plant the seeds of what we want to dream of by focusing on the chosen thing through-out the day, and especially right before bed. We can try to focus on a specific thing, or simply open our minds up and see how far and wide we can reach and to what lengths our imagination can go.
To create more vivid or colourful dreams, we can try looking at art, childrens’ books
How can you feed your imagination to help your dreams fly?
with bright illustrations, watching films with inspiring cinematography, or even magazines with images that get our minds going. Fantasy books are particularly good, as are fashion, costumes,nature (try bizarre deep sea creatures, tropical birds or insects to get your mind going.) Listening to music, focusing on the sounds of individual instruments, bells, wind chimes, the sounds of nature can all help us notice sounds in our dreams. The same goes for the other senses – by touching things and focusing on their texture we can enhance our tactile dreams, although smell and taste can take a concerted effort to start noticing in dreams. But it is well worth the effort when we start smelling beautiful flowers, or tasting delicious nighttime feasts without even waking up!
The key is to stimulate our imaginations. Of course the best thing is always to go to new places, try new things and meet new people, but where we can’t do that, our minds can take us on trips to even more amazing places. If we feed our minds with images, music and words, it is like fertiliser that can help our dreams sprout into fascinating new blooms, and surprise us with the capabilities of our own mind. If we feed out heads, we can be rewarded with an imagination that grows wild and free.
What kind of alarm are you really hearing?
Sounds are one of the most invasive things into our dreams. But rather than wake us up, sounds often become incorporated into our dream, the external sound woven into the fabric of the dream as though it really belonged there. This can be the sound of an alarm that instead of waking us as planned, we hear and try to make sense of. This may result in us actually “hearing” the strange sound of a fire engine in the distance, someone in the traffic honking their horn, or even in some bizarre cases, the words that some dream character speaks to us. Perhaps even stranger is that we might even understand their weird braying alarm noise voice. Noises like roadworks, storms, parties at the neighbour’s house, can all slip into our dreams.
These kind of external influences that creep in from the outside to dominate our dreams may have a particular meaning, but often they are simply a distraction. If the alarm goes off in the morning, and instead of waking we dream of a fire engine, that is not to say that fire engine has any special significance in our waking life, other than the fact that at a subconscious level, we have a sense of urgency. We know deep down we need to wake, as that is why we set the alarm in the fist place. It is fascinating that our dreaming mind won’t simply create a dream image that seems to match the sound we are physically hearing, but also one that portrays the relevant emotion. Thus, when we fail to wake at the alarm, the fire engine we dream of doesn’t just sound like a fire engine, but also creates tension and a sense of urgency in our sleep. This “emergency” feeling, combined with the persistence of the sound, may be enough to wake us as we had intended. This is almost like an “emergency exit” from our dream.
We may hear voices and music from a party, and actually dream we amongst those people in the party. Or we may be having a relatively normal dream of an adventure through the countryside, when the road works outside cause us to dream they are laying a new road right through the forrest we are in. If there is no urgency, we simply fall back into deep sleep when the noise subsides, but if it persists long enough we are likely to wake. And it is likely our dreams will become increasingly distorted or frustrating until we do. This is the external waking world overwhelming the relaxed sleeping mind.
We can't turn off our ears even when we are asleep!
In a similar way, we can use pleasant sounds to induce pleasant dreams. Going to sleep with the calming sound of waves or the wind in the trees may not just result ina tranquil rest, but can also help seed images of the sea and nature into our sleeping mind. Particular music may have different effects as well, depending on our emotional reaction to it.
However, sometimes this kind of continual external influence is enough to stop us from dropping into deep sleep. This makes it more likely we will have dreams, but may result in feeling tired the next day. Noises outside that keep us on the edge of waking and sleeping can also help to elicit lucid dreams in those who seek them.
The important thing to remember is that though our dreams can be invaded by the external stimulus of sound, this does not necessarily mean our dream symbols in such cases have any relevance beyond the sound itself. And that while sounds that can cause us tension may distort our dreams, pleasant sounds can be a useful tool to relaxation and dreams we enjoy. We can’t turn off our ears even in sleep, and it is a good thing to know that if we need to wake up when we hear a certain noise, our dreaming mind will make sure we can’t ignore the sound, and that we will wake up.
Our dreaming minds may play back to us images we have seen and responded to
Our dreaming mind is very efficient. When looking for symbols to communicate its message, our dreaming mind will pull from almost anywhere to give us a powerful and multi-layered message. As we have looked at in previous posts, people we know often star in our nightly personal stories as symbolic representations (see”Dream Symbols: Other People”), but sometimes the people who star in our dreams we have never met at all. Indeed, we may dream of movie stars, politicians and sports heroes. Like dreaming of other people we know, we need to try and look at what this person represents to us, rather than literally interpret their presence.
This is sometimes easier than it may be for dreaming of people close to us. If we start by asking ourselves what it is we like or dislike about this person, we can get a list of values, behaviours and character traits that the famous person may stand for. We then need to look at how those characteristics may be present or missing in our own lives.
It is not just the stars themselves that may sneak from the waking world into our dreams. Our dreams can be influenced by the plots we watch in films and movies, and by the emotions that they raise in us. For this reason most parents know not to let young children watch scary movies, especially before bed time, as they may give the child nightmares. While as adults we may not be as sensitive or susceptible to the fear these kind of films can create, we can still be influenced by the images and feelings films and TV shows evoke. This is especially true when the film resonates with us, when it is showing us something that we find familiar to our own lives. Our dreaming mind will leap on such opportunities. This is a way for our subconscious to say “great! The conscious mind recognises this deep inside me, I am going to use this language to play back my message because I know the waking mind already partly understands this.”
We can learn the language of images from tv and films
Because dreams communicate to us in images, they have much in common with how we watch films. There is even some evidence to suggest that people of a previous generation who used to recall dreaming in black and white (instead of colour) may have done so because they watched black and white TVs and films. This might indicate that we learn the language of images in dreams from the images we see in waking life. So dreaming of presidential campaigners and movie stars should be remarkably common for us in this day and age!
Relax! Is it time to take a mental break?
By now it should be starting to become apparent that we can’t work on dreams without working on our self, and vice versa. Our dreams are a product of our mind, and all that we think and feel, and consequently say and do, comes from what is going on in our minds.
As a result, the common stress and anxiety that we feel day to day can have far reaching implications. If we think of our dreams when we are happy and healthy as like clear, vivid, full colour, high definition film or TV, then dreams when we are stressed or anxious are like trying to watch TV when the aerial has gone, or when static interrupts the channels. It as if we can see something is going on, sometimes we can make a vague picture, or understand the odd word, but we can’t grasp enough of what is going to make sense of it all. Anxiety is like static in our brain.
Often we suffer from a consistent but “low-level” anxiety. This means we are not majorly stressed by worrying about a particular big bad thing (such as the stress of a partner or loved on passing away, moving house, divorce, changing jobs, adding or losing new members to the household and so on), but more that we have a constant sense of worry, of things being not quite right, even though we aren’t sure exactly why. With low level anxiety like this we may have confusing or stressful dreams that try to work through our concerns, or we may experience the exact opposite. Sometimes when we are so distracted with stressful thoughts through-out the day, the dreaming mind likes to take a bit of a holiday when we are asleep, and use the excuse to forget about all our hassles and concerns and let our imagination loose on something fun and light and happy and above all – stress free. This can be a great release for us, a way to cope with pressures that otherwise might feel too much to bear.
The trouble is, we are so used to thinking these stressful thoughts that when we wake, the first thing that pops into our head are all the things we have do that day, all the things we didn’t finish yesterday, all the things we have to worry about tomorrow. And any memory we might have had of a happy, stress-free dream vanishes like snow under a blow torch.
Now, if we can learn to remember our happy dreams, we can carry that feeling into our waking lives and feel less anxious. If we can learn to remember our problem solving dreams, we can apply those solutions in our waking life and feel less anxious. And when we fell less anxious, we are more likely to remember our dreams, because we won’t be worrying the first thing when we wake up, right? So this is what we refer to as positive reinforcement.
The trick is to break the negative loop that makes us feel anxious and forget our dreams. We can do this by a few different approaches. Try different ones and see what works best for you, it may mean focusing on one thing or a combination of methods.
- Identify the cause. I am personally a great believer in trying to identify the cause of my anxiety. It is usually something I have put off doing that I know I really should, or something I don’t want to think about. I find, by simply doing the task at last, or facing up to the thing I have been avoiding, is often enough to make my anxiety vanish.
- Make a list of what you can control and what you can’t. Tell yourself there is really no point worrying about the things you can’t change, but then put steps beside the things you can and give yourself a nice, unstressed time period to do these things in. If you feel powerless but anxious about global warming, chose some activities that make a real difference in your life, such as taking up recycling, catching public transport, or even joining an action group; if it is economic concerns, try drawing up a personal budget, making an appointment with a financial planner or setting out a plan to get rid of your credit card debt. What ever it is, recognise that you can take control over your own situation. As you gain a a sense of personal power, low level anxiety often diminishes or goes away completely.
We can use our awareness to reduce the static that anxiety causes in our minds
- Practice self awareness. Anxiety is often a gnawing feeling at the back of our mind, and even though we feel uncomfortable, we don’t admit it to ourselves. If we start to recognise that we are in fact stressed, we can start to do something about it. If we practice paying attention to what the first thoughts are that come into our minds when we wake in the morning, this is often a good clue. We should all most of the time wake thinking “mmm, what a lovely sleep, what fascinating, beautiful dreams, oh I am so lucky to be alive! What a wonderful day I have ahead!” (Wouldn’t it be nice?) On the other hand, if we wake thinking “Got to get up, got that meeting today and didn’t finish the presentation yesterday so best get in early, and didn’t do my ironing last night but need to wear my good shirt for the presentation, and think it’s rubbish day today, and when is the credit card payment due?…” You get the picture. As we start to notice what we think, we can start to change it if we don’t like it. We can take back control of our run-away thoughts.
- Practice physical and mental relaxation. We all have our own ways. For some it is meditation or yoga, for others it is golf or running, or sewing, gardening, fishing or making model planes. Whatever it is that makes you relax, take time out, and focus the channel of your mind so you get rid of that static, it is a good idea to make time for that in your life. It really can make a difference.
- Remember to breathe. I know it sounds crazy because we all breathe to stay alive, sure. But whenever you feel anxious when you are awke, when you first wake from sleeping, just stop the run-away mind for a moment and breathe. Do it consciously, deliberately – think about it. Beathe in and out deeply. Do this at least three times and chances are you will better than you could have expected for such a seemingly simple thing. Breathe…….breathe………………breathe………………………………..
So it may seem strange to some to say that fishing or paying off the credit card will help you remember your dreams better, but the fact is, the more we can free our minds to do what they are meant to do, which is help us, teach us, heal and inspire us, the better our minds will be able to serve us. Our dreaming lives and waking lives are not as separate as we may think. A few small changes in one area can result in great rewards in another. And the beauty is, that once we start making positive changes, the reinforcing loop will help keep us going for the better.
Are your dreams striking or unsettling? It may be the weather..
Next time you have a particularly interesting or vivid dream, pay attention to what the atmospheric conditions are. Some people have wild dreams when storms are imminent, while other people are effected by pressure systems. This is not all that unusual, when you think that our ancestors used to be much more in touch with our environment and the natural world than we are in our busy and civilised lives. It does not mean that we have lost the skill of understanding the weather, simply that we have forgotten how to pay attention, to listen to our instincts. Often our dreams will tell us things that we know instinctively, but our conscious waking minds no longer value as important and therefore relegate to the subconscious. Once, detecting the signs that a storm was coming could have been a matter of survival if it meant avoiding flash floods or being caught out in the open and the risk of being hit by lightning. At the very least, knowing to protect your home and batten down the hatches, or ensure a crop was either harvested or protected before storms would have been a valuable skill. These days in Western society, knowing a storm is coming often (though of course in notable exceptions, not always) means little more than staying indoors or carrying an umbrella. Similarly, to our ancestors knowing that you could relax and let the crops grow, or safely go on the hunt would have created a great peace of mind. It is possible for us to re-tune ourselves to the subtle messages nature gives us, by re-tuning ourselves to our own subtle natures. One of these ways is through listening to our dreams.
As you keep your dream diary over time, notice where particular images, themes or symbols seem to recur with certain weather systems, be they storms, lightning, a prolonged high pressure system, snow, rain or winds. You may also wish to pay attention to the cycle of the moon, and the way you may attune your self to periods of waxing (growing, expanding energy) and waning (retreating, introspective energy.) You may also see themes change in line with the changing seasons, with periods of growth and counter periods of consolidation and inward reflecting.
Being in tune to the world around us, and understanding the patterns, the drivers and the cause and effect of things is not the same as being a psychic, though with time you may develop your intuition and ability to sensitively read the weather to such a degree, that to other people your predictions may seem to be so!
It is quite distressing that often when we have a nightmare, it doesn’t occur in isolation, but recurrs with a frightening persistence. As if having one nightmare wasn’t bad enough, but to have them frequently! It just doesn’t seem fair! But it makes more sense when you realise why you are having these bad dreams. When something is not quite right in our life, or in our mind, there is some level of us that wants to put things right. This is our subconscious. While consciously we may not want to admit that something is not right, because that would mean facing up to it, and that might mean getting hurt, humiliated, risking shame or a sense of failure, our subconscious refuses to let us forget, and will keep trying to send a message to our conscious mind to do something about it. It will keep shouting and shouting until it is heard. One of the strongest ways for our subconscious to make us pay attention to it is by giving us nightmares. These images are so intense and so startling that we can’t ignore them.
The sad thing for us Westerners is that we live in a society that does not in general place a great deal of value on dreaming, so we are not encouraged to value them, to discuss them, or to learn how to work with them. When this means we miss out on the opportunities for growth and delight dreams can give us, this is a shame, but when it means we can’t manage our own nightmares, it is a far more serious affair. As we grow into adults our dreams should mature with us. As we become more skillful, balanced and wise with years, so too should we dream in a more balanced and rewarding manner. But studies show that in Western society the dreams of anxious adults do not differ much from those of children. We still feel anxious and afraid, we are still pursued – maybe not by a big hairy monster as child would be, but perhaps by a vicious knife wielding bandit, and we all still dream of being attacked by wild animals. As adults we differ hardly at all from children in our response to these threats as well – we flee, we run, we get stuck, we are eaten, hurt, trapped. In short, we remain victims.
To stop having adult nightmares or bad dreams, we need to face up to what we are afraid of, we need to honestly admit to ourselves what is not working in our lives, we need to really grow up. It is hard. Our society does not encourage talking about our fears, it judges perceptions of failure, and we don’t teach our children the skills they need to work on their own inner selves so they can mature into self-aware adults. So the only thing we can do is start learning now.
We can learn how to overcome our fears, even in our dreams
Facing a scary threat in a dream can be a very difficult thing to initiate. This is especially so if we aren’t practised and confident with working with our dreams! That is why confronting the thing in waking life is often an easier way to start. Try imagining your dream when you are awake. Sit somewhere comfortable where you won’t be disturbed, and play the dream through your mind like a movie. Remember, you are the director of your dream, so tell yourself you don’t like the ending, and imagine a new one for yourself.
Another useful method you can adopt while awake that may have a carry over effect to helping deal with nightmares, is to actually do in waking life what you can’t do, or what you need to do, in your bad dreams. This often means learning a new skill, which can be confronting, difficult, frustrating or embarrassing at first, but the commensurate feelings of ease, satisfaction, confidence and pride that you should feel upon mastery will make it well worth the effort. Nightmares of sharks? Try swimming with them in a safe tank. Have a nightmare you are lost and can’t read a map? Try learning orienteering, how to read a map and use a compass. Have a nightmare someone is hurt and bleeding, and you can’t help? Go on a First Aid course and learn how to treat wounds. It may sound simple, and even silly, but actions such as these send a clear message back to our subconscious – it lets our deeper self know we have heard the message, we are listening and we care enough to do something about it. That is a very strong message indeed. It can even be enough to stop our subconscious from shouting so insistently at us, and go back to a normal tone, breaking the repetitive cycle of bad dreams. At the very least, actions such as these give our mind an alternative to work with. Instead of thinking of sharks as something that always eat us, when you have been with them safely your mind now has a clear, conscious (and no doubt very emotion charged!) image of you being with sharks and them not eating you. In fact the more emotion charged these images are, the deeper they are likely to penetrate our mind, and the stronger and more effective they can be in helping us imagine a new and happier outcome. The greater the fear, the greater our exultation can be on overcoming it.
Tomorrow, looking at a special kind of nightmare…
If we all dream, why don't we all remember?
Just as surely as your dreams want to be understood, so too do they want to be remembered. And yet not remembering dreams, or denying even having them, is one of the most common remarks I hear about dreaming. We now know that scientific evidence indicates that everyone dreams, whether they recall those dreams or not. There do seem to be some very rare exceptions, and these cases involve damage to a particular part of the brain.
If you or someone you know isn’t remembering their dreams, there could be a variety of reasons why, including:
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They don’t want to. This could because they don’t value their dreams, they might see dreams as just random firings of the brain, they may have been ridiculed when young for talking about dreams and this learned behaviour taught them dreams were trivial and unimportant. Another reason is that the dreams they have might be too confronting or difficult to deal with in everyday life. This sometimes happens when people have been traumatised in some way, their dreams are trying at a subconscious level to deal with their suffering, and it might be too much to for the waking mind to deal with straight away.
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Alcohol and drugs, particularly certain sleep inducing medication, have been shown to reduce the quality of REM sleep, where dreams often occur and are easier to remember. This creates the effect of feeling that you have had a deep sleep, and even though dreams can occur in non-REM sleep they are far more difficult to recall. (Some drugs however, especially nicotine patches and hypertension medication are know to have the alternative effect and induce strangely vivid dreams or even nightmares!)
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Being over-tired. The sleep of the exhausted is somewhat similiar to the sleep of the intoxicated, in that the natural sleep cycles are altered, with far less REM sleep and greater “deep sleep.”
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Sudden waking and a busy lifestyle. Waking to an alarm or baby crying, leaping immediately out of bed and rushing to do whatever it is needs to be done means the mind has no time to reflect on what was just going on in sleep. If you have the luxury of waking naturally, maybe even just when on holidays, you should notice that with a little effort, your dream recall can increase quite dramatically – provided of course you weren’t out getting totally drunk the night before!
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Paying attention. The ability to remember dreams comes very naturally to some, but even they can improve and someone who never remembers their dreams at all can learn to by giving it a little attention. Like any skill, it improves with practice and dedication.
So the good news, if you really want to and you are committed, chances are you can do a lot to remember your dreams. But if you are harbouring some latent skepticism, mistrust, fear or disrespect of your dreams and your subconscious, you will eventually have to address those hidden feelings before your dreams come to you freely.
- Well, well well – 3 holes in the ground!
The dreams you have when you are travelling can take on a whole new flavour inspired by the country you are in. It can be fascinating to see how your mind will pick up on local images and customs to influence the characters and locations of your dreams. Often these dreams will still include fragments of your home mixed with experiences from your travels, so dreams can become rather confusing. It is not uncommon to have dreams like “I’m at home, only it looks like my hotel room” or “I dreamed I was on the beach, but everyone was wearing work clothes.”
My first couple of nights in Dubai, my mind leapt upon the imagery of the men and women in local costume, their bodies covered completely with white robes for men or black for women. My dreaming mind loved this new symbol to work with! And all the characters in my dream dressed this way were benevolent and helpful. In a chase dream I even hid my precious treasure (a baby) with them, and they looked after it for me. In this way, I knew my subconscious was both integrating the local culture into my mind, but also reassurring me that I would be safe here, and even that this place would be helpful in my own development and growth (the baby.) So keep an eye out for how the apparently different symbols of a new culture can filter into your mind and give you new amazing insights to both yourself, and the people of the place you are with.
