Latest / INSPIRE STORY / Dream Expert_ _If You Dream Like This_ DON_T Ignore It__ – It_s Trying To Tell You Something BIG
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: One third of our lives is potentially spent dreaming. Your
- 0:03waking life is feeding your dream life. That's a solar
- 0:06flare from your brain in a unique state that you
- 0:10can't get to during the day. Duel trained brain surgeon
- 0:13and neuroscientist doctor Raoul Jando the measurements of emotion in
- 0:18our dreaming brain can reach a top speed our waking
- 0:21brain can never reach. How are you processing? How are
- 0:23you metabolizing the most difficult thing in your day?
- 0:30Speaker 2: Hey everyone, I've got some huge news to share with you.
- 0:33In the last ninety days, seventy nine point four percent
- 0:37of our audience came from viewers and listeners that are
- 0:40not subscribed to this channel. There's research that shows that
- 0:44if you want to create a habit, make it easy
- 0:47to access. By hitting the subscribe button, you're creating a
- 0:50habit of learning how to be happier, healthier, and more healed.
- 0:55This would also mean the absolute world to me and
- 0:58help us make better, bigger, brighter content for you in
- 1:02the world. Subscribe right now.
- 1:04Speaker 1: The number one health and wellness podcast Jay Shetty, Jay
- 1:08Sheddy Sez shet.
- 1:13Speaker 2: Everyone, Welcome back to On Purpose, to number one health
- 1:16podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every one
- 1:18of you that come back every week to listen, learn
- 1:21and grow. I'm so excited because we've really been tapping
- 1:25here on purpose into things you're fascinated about, Questions that
- 1:29you're thinking about, topics you're exploring, themes that you're wondering about,
- 1:34and this was one of those that I can't wait
- 1:36to share with you. This has been a theme I've
- 1:38been fascinated about. We're talking to the expert, the person
- 1:41who's thinking about it differently, who's open to the idea
- 1:45of this truly being discovery, all based on curiosity. Doctor
- 1:49Raoul Johndel is a dual trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist
- 1:54at City of Hope in Los Angeles. Doctor John Deal
- 1:57leads the John Deale Lab, which explores the intersection of
- 2:01neurobiology and cancer. As part of his nonprofit that he founded,
- 2:06he teaches and performs pediatric neurosurgery in charity hospitals in
- 2:10South America and Eastern Europe. Today, we're talking about his
- 2:14newest book out now, This Is Why You Dream. Welcome
- 2:18to the show, Raul, John Dale Roll, It's great to
- 2:21see you.
- 2:22Speaker 1: Pleasure of mine.
- 2:22Speaker 2: Thank you for being here.
- 2:23Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to do this.
- 2:25Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really grateful. And like I said to you, honestly,
- 2:27this is usually when we're doing an interview, I'm like,
- 2:31all right, I'm gonna you know, I've got certain questions.
- 2:34I'm going to go with the flow and the amount
- 2:36of questions we've had from our team, our audience, our community.
- 2:40It's never happened before. I'm just telling you that. And
- 2:44so you're going to see me reading out questions from
- 2:46real people who've sent them in for you to understand
- 2:49more about dreaming, which I think is probably one of
- 2:54the most undiscovered, untapped, misunderstood, or completely ununderstood areas of
- 3:00our lives. So let's dive straight into it. And the
- 3:02first question I have for you is does everyone dream?
- 3:06Speaker 1: I think so. So here's how I describe it. I
- 3:09would first say, let's bust a major myth that dreaming
- 3:14and sleep is the time of rest for our brains.
- 3:17Our brains are not resting while we sleep. Just imagine
- 3:21somebody lying down and when they're sleeping, the heart is
- 3:24flickering a little bit of electricity from the EKG that
- 3:27we put on the surface of their heart. We put
- 3:29a bunch of stickers on the surface of the scalp,
- 3:31and there's vibrant electricity while we're sleeping. The electricity our
- 3:35brain generates while we sleep is as hot as the
- 3:40electricity our brains are generating now, So that's the first thing.
- 3:43The second thing is the heart. When it's pushing up
- 3:45the blood, the brain is mopping up glucose, it's burning
- 3:49hot metabolically, So inside our skull while we're lying down,
- 3:53even though we don't remember a lot of it, we're
- 3:55burning hot and we're spark electricity. So people who remember
- 3:59their dreams and people who don't remember their dreams, that
- 4:02brain is still sparkling hot and generating a lot of electricity.
- 4:05So I think it's more of memory recall in the morning.
- 4:07At the same time, we all know about a nightmare,
- 4:10so we've all had one dream. The question is why
- 4:13do some people dream more, dream less, or remember their
- 4:16dreams more remember their dreams less. And that's something I
- 4:19think is related to the variety of human experience. We
- 4:22don't hold our waking thoughts to the same rigid contours, right,
- 4:25So our dreamscape, our dream life is individual between us,
- 4:29and we remember more when we're younger, we remember less
- 4:32as we get older, and then in certain diseases, dreams
- 4:35come to the rescue. And it seems now that at
- 4:38the end of life, like with my cancer patients, dreams
- 4:41return and they're filled with reconciliation. You would think in
- 4:45their struggle, like you know, there would be dark, but
- 4:47they're actually positive. So those patterns of dreams are there.
- 4:51The brain electricity is firing while we sleep, and that's
- 4:54the sort of foundation from which I try to find
- 4:56meaning and.
- 4:57Speaker 2: Dreaming absolutely, I mean, the book is called This Is
- 4:59Why You Dream? Why do we dream? And why is
- 5:03it important for us to understand why we dream? Because
- 5:05I think a lot of people say, yeah, I dream.
- 5:07Sometimes someone said don't, who cares? What's the big deal?
- 5:10But I'm fascinated by it. I know a lot of
- 5:12people are, So why do we dream? And why is
- 5:14it important to try to understand why we dream?
- 5:17Speaker 1: The it's not a big deal is completely off for
- 5:19those people who think it. If they understand one third
- 5:22of our lives is potentially spent dreaming, and the brain
- 5:27shuts the stand right, it's just one third, Like that
- 5:29can't be passive and it puts you down right like
- 5:32you get sleep pressure, like I got to sleep well
- 5:35when I was in training and surgical training. We skip
- 5:38a night of sleep. What happens when somebody skips a
- 5:40night of sleep? The next night they dream harder and earlier.
- 5:44If I can be so bold, I think sleep is
- 5:46for the brain. It's not for our thigh muscle, it's
- 5:49not for our liver. There are some metabolic changes. I'm
- 5:52not discounting all of it, but the real thing driving
- 5:54us to sleep is our brain. What does our brain
- 5:57do just vibranly when we sleep? So that's like my
- 6:01straight up answer about like that thing that's not happening
- 6:04on accident, right, that's not a glitch that didn't last
- 6:07through thirty thousand generations accidentally. And so then the question
- 6:11becomes if we have this vibrant one third of our
- 6:13lives that we partially remember sometimes remember sometimes there's an
- 6:18exciting journey, sometimes an erotic journey. Sometimes it's a nightmare,
- 6:21like what's that all about? You know? And the way
- 6:24I've come to understand it is, first, you know, given
- 6:27respect to people who've tried to come up with some
- 6:29ideas like it's a threat rehearsal if we're running from
- 6:32a wooly mammoth, and our dreams were better prepared for
- 6:34during the day. What I would say is maybe. And
- 6:37when I say maybe, you're likely, it's not a respect
- 6:39for you and your listeners. I don't want to be
- 6:41that guy that comes in here says yes no about
- 6:43something as big and magical as dreaming, So threat rehearsal.
- 6:47Maybe some people think it's a nocturnal therapist because towards
- 6:50the morning, when we have more of our vivid dreams,
- 6:53the emotional balance, the valence they call it, tends to
- 6:55be more positive. Maybe I like to think of it
- 6:58as something that's sparks creativity because of what happens with
- 7:02the dreaming brain. The dreaming brain looks for looser dots
- 7:06to connect. It's imaginative by design, logic is dampened down.
- 7:10So I think it's our creativity engine. And then the
- 7:13way I put it all together is with something straight
- 7:17up called use it or Lose it that people know
- 7:19about when we talk about the brain, right, they say, hey,
- 7:21use it or lose it. We know if we don't
- 7:22use our biceps the atrophy, but our day if you
- 7:26look at the brain activation electricity is so narrow the
- 7:29brain wants to be efficient, right, because it's an energy hog.
- 7:33It's only like four or five pounds, but it uses
- 7:35twenty percent of our blood. So the brain during the
- 7:38day to navigate the world task on outward executive network
- 7:42logic wants to be efficient, driving down the one to
- 7:46one easily, going on the tube easily, not have to
- 7:48activate everything to get that done. If we only use
- 7:52those limited parts of our brain during the day and
- 7:54didn't have some way to high intensity train them, those
- 7:57would go derelic we wouldn't use them, and we may
- 7:59lose them. So I think in the biggest way possible
- 8:03is that dreaming process. Dreams and dreaming is high intensity
- 8:09training for our brain. It keeps those corners engaged, It
- 8:12keeps those neurons firing that might not during the day,
- 8:15and those are available to us the next day for
- 8:18a creative process, for the next day, or the next year,
- 8:21or the next generation for an adaptive process. That's my biggest,
- 8:25most romantic way of thinking about about why we dream
- 8:29so hard.
- 8:29Speaker 2: Yeah, I like them, maybe because I think we've all
- 8:32had different dreams that you feel you had for different reasons,
- 8:36and there are some dreams that you did feel well.
- 8:39Like you said, like you're a nocturnal therapist, this feeling
- 8:42of like, Okay.
- 8:43Speaker 1: I'm healing them there, you're working something out.
- 8:45Speaker 2: Yeah, you're working something out. I've definitely had dreams where
- 8:47I feel like, oh my gosh, like this feels like
- 8:50it's mirroring my reality and I'm either preparing or I'm
- 8:53dealing with it internally. And I think you're so right
- 8:56that there's so many different processes and it's hard to
- 8:58nail it down to one. Is there a way to
- 9:02start to label and define or do you think that's
- 9:05unhealthy when it comes to dreaming?
- 9:07Speaker 1: Perfect question? So to the maybe, I'll add likely you know,
- 9:11not yes and not no when it comes to my dream,
- 9:14your dream infinitely wild. Okay, but what happens when you
- 9:18start looking at ten thousand dreams? What happens when you
- 9:22start So I'm over here, so there is no like
- 9:24professor of dream science right, So now I was like
- 9:27when they asked me, the publisher asked me like, can
- 9:28you put a book together about this? I think we're
- 9:30vibing about this before we uh, before we went live
- 9:33with this or recording with this. And it was like
- 9:36they're like, you wrote this thing about the brain, like
- 9:38you know, smart drugs, Alzheimer's creativity. Then you wrote this
- 9:42thing about the mind, like resilience and trauma and belief
- 9:46and about your own struggles. Why don't you put together
- 9:49something about dreams from a scientific perspective that everybody can read.
- 9:54And I was like, there's going to be so many gaps,
- 9:56And they said, then let us know where the gaps are,
- 10:00say maybe, say likely, and say I wonder, I believe,
- 10:04And that's what I've tried to do in the book.
- 10:06But to your question about when I started this process,
- 10:10when I looked at not your dream, my dream, but
- 10:12ten thousand dreams, Aristotle was writing about lucid dreaming a
- 10:17couple hundred years ago, they're still writing about being chased
- 10:20or falling. And I was like, wait a second, there
- 10:23are patterns to dream reports, like now they have dream banks.
- 10:26So the first thing I noticed was nightmares and erotic
- 10:29dreams are essentially universal. And I say essentially because it's
- 10:33ninety plus in this world is considered a hundred, right,
- 10:35because that's just how science works when you look at
- 10:39questionnaires and surveys, So everybody's at a nightmare, erotic dreams
- 10:43are almost all the way up there, and then chasing
- 10:46falling falling teeth that seems to be common. And then
- 10:51there was a dream that was very rarely reported doing math.
- 10:56I don't like math, so I was like, that's all
- 10:58good for me. But you start when you look at
- 11:00lots of thousands of dreams like why is that one
- 11:02so low? Then now walk with me over here. Then
- 11:05you start looking at brain scans and brain electricity and
- 11:09what happens. What's the difference between the waking brain and
- 11:12the dreaming brain? Right in a twenty four hour cycle,
- 11:15we're about two thirds waking brain and one third dreaming brain.
- 11:19And there are some transition zones that I love, like
- 11:21I call liminal states or blurry zones that we can
- 11:23get into. But that when you see that and you say, well,
- 11:27what's the difference? I started off with like they're both
- 11:30burning hot, they're both sparkling electricity, So what's the difference.
- 11:35So when you go from waking brain to dreaming brain,
- 11:38what happens is the need to look outward changes, right,
- 11:41And so the executive network, a collection of structures, not
- 11:44just one thing, dampens. Logic and math ability damp and
- 11:48they don't turn off. Nothing turns off on the brain.
- 11:50Otherwise that you know, you'd have a stroke. So it
- 11:52dampens the imagination network and the emotional systems called the
- 11:56limbic structures are liberated. So if we know now now
- 12:00that the dreaming brain as a measurement, not my opinion, right,
- 12:04we can talk about opinions, but this is a measurement.
- 12:06If the dreaming brain has dampened logic and reason and math,
- 12:10liberated emotion, hyper visual, it kind of makes sense why
- 12:14we don't see a lot of math, because that part
- 12:17of the brain that does that is to take in
- 12:19a back seat while we dream. So I said, okay,
- 12:21even if that's the only thing I can say in
- 12:23this book and some youngster you know, ten twenty thirty
- 12:26years from now, it takes more data from dream banks
- 12:28that are more inclusive and bringing in more people that
- 12:31patterns of how we dream, you know, and what we
- 12:34dream can be explained by the brain. I thought to me,
- 12:37that was fascinating. So dreams are not limitless. Yours is
- 12:42mine is. But when you look at a lot of them,
- 12:45nightmares happen universally. Erotic dreams happen essentially universally, and then
- 12:49we find very emotional, visual movement based dreams.
- 12:54Speaker 2: That's fascinating. I mean, you don't even think about it
- 12:57that way, and I think so often it's kind of
- 12:59it's it's interesting because it's a microcosm of how we
- 13:02live our lives. Like we live our lives thinking no
- 13:04one understands me, no one knows what I'm going through,
- 13:07only I have this experience. And then all of a sudden,
- 13:10when you zoom out and you look at the patterns,
- 13:12you're like, wait a minute, we're all struggling with the
- 13:14same thing. I was just talking to someone earlier and
- 13:16we were talking about how like we seem to be
- 13:18the problem solvers in our families, and then you start realizing, how,
- 13:22wait a minute, we're all trying to solve the same problems.
- 13:24We're dealing with the same emotions, and those patterns are
- 13:27so useful in finding So have they basically looked at
- 13:31dream patterns and then looked at stress patterns and lifestyle patterns,
- 13:35like is that what you're measuring them against? Or what
- 13:38are the patterns being measured against? So if out of
- 13:40the ten thousand people, nine thousand people dreamt about their
- 13:43teeth falling out. What then are we measuring in their
- 13:46life to make sense of that dream?
- 13:48Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. And also we tend to
- 13:51fall into the same traps, right. I think that looking
- 13:54at brain science shows that, yes, we're individuals, but what's
- 13:57driving us and what's holding us back is also something
- 14:00we share. That's why these conversations, that's why a certain
- 14:03book or a certain song or certain interaction can kind
- 14:05of liberate you. And so the way I would explain
- 14:08this is the dream patterns that they're looking at. And
- 14:12when I say they, I mean twenty forty years of
- 14:15different studies. I'm trying to stitch it together. Let me
- 14:17give you a specific one. There was one survey questionnaire
- 14:21where women going through divorce when their dreams they were
- 14:25reconciling in their dreams, that things were breaking up and
- 14:28people were moving on. Those as a group tended to
- 14:32recover from divorce better. And so when you just look
- 14:35into you just say, okay, that's very interesting. Those that
- 14:38were struggling in their dreams were also ones more likely
- 14:42to have depression longer. And so what that does to
- 14:45me is that invites a conversation. So does the dream
- 14:50or the dreaming brain kind of give a clue to
- 14:53how well you're coping with your real waking life stress.
- 14:56That by itself is powerful that one it knows about it. It
- 15:01ain't some other brain, it's your brain. It's just in
- 15:03this dreaming mode, so it knows about it. Your waking
- 15:06life is feeding your dream life. I mean, six seven,
- 15:10eight hours, how are you processing, how are you digesting?
- 15:15How are you metabolizing the most difficult thing in your day?
- 15:18And I think that's where I love it is that
- 15:19it's not distinct and that the dreaming brain can be
- 15:24your shepherd. It can be the thing that helps you
- 15:27process its emotional trauma. And for people with PTSD, it
- 15:31can actually actually play back flashbacks. So it's a wild
- 15:35space that leans emotional, leans visual. Let me give you
- 15:38a second example with my patients end of life cancer
- 15:43patients dreams are expansive, positive, filled with reconciliation. As they're
- 15:49asking for surgery and all that. You would think they're
- 15:52all going to be horrific because it's dark. Tis stress, right,
- 15:54You would think day stress is turned into dreaming stress.
- 15:58But the connection is not clear. And that's where I
- 16:02think there's power in our dream life. I think in general,
- 16:06when I look at all the surveys, dreaming is our
- 16:09shepherd at the end of life. I think nightmares and
- 16:13erotic dreams cultivate the young mind, much like our minds
- 16:16are cultivating adolescents. Dreams mirror and reflect what's going on
- 16:22during our life. For example, pregnancy dreams women who are pregnant,
- 16:26their dreams are very different rolling over in bed what
- 16:28the babies are gonna be called. So sometimes waking anxiety
- 16:31and dream anxiety clearly linked. I gotta give a talk tomorrow.
- 16:34I got a dream showing up naked. I gotta I
- 16:37gotta exam alarms. Sometimes they're clear. Sometimes they're your companion,
- 16:41pregnancy dreams, end of life dreams. Sometimes they are just jumps.
- 16:45Not everything's gonna make sense right, our waking life doesn't
- 16:47make sense. So I think when you start to look
- 16:49at those categories, the fourth category being universal dreams, nightmares
- 16:53and erotic dreams, and children, then the one we're left
- 16:56with that the one that now I spend even more
- 17:00time with, is that hyper emotional, hyper visual that lingers
- 17:05into the next day. What I would say is, don't
- 17:08let that one go. That's a solar flare from your
- 17:12brain in a unique state that you can't get to
- 17:15during the day. Hyper emotional, hyper liberated. The measurements of
- 17:19emotion in our dreaming brain can reach a top speed
- 17:22our waking brain can never reach. So for me, when
- 17:26I look at the whole thing, the hyper emotional hyper
- 17:30visual with a central image is a dream that has
- 17:34broken out from your dream life. That is about you
- 17:37that a therapist can't get to. I mean, it's your
- 17:39brain conjured it and that's one to reflect on. What
- 17:42I would say is like not every time, not everyone,
- 17:47but in our search for wellness and healing, that's a
- 17:51free and accessible portal. And when I was working on
- 17:54this book with the UK publishers, there were like seven
- 17:57or eight people who are like, we're dreaming more, We're
- 17:59remembering our dreams more. Some lucid you know, had lucid dreams.
- 18:03So that's the second thing I would say is that
- 18:05this can be induced and cultivated. You're not a passenger
- 18:10with your dream life and what you remember from your
- 18:12dream life. You can also cultivate that you're not a
- 18:15passenger at that stage either.
- 18:16Speaker 2: Let's talk about that a little. So I was going
- 18:19to ask you if you don't remember your dream if
- 18:22you don't make the subconscious conscious, does that mean that
- 18:26it doesn't have an effect? And are you encouraging us
- 18:30to take time to actually make the subconscious conscious and
- 18:34reflect on our dreams.
- 18:35Speaker 1: I would say the first question is I can't answer
- 18:38that fully. The second question is absolutely try to engage
- 18:41your dream life sleep entry when you go from waking
- 18:44to dreaming like Salvador Dali did or Christopher Nolan's talking
- 18:47about inception sleep exit, which we can get into lucid dreaming.
- 18:51The answer to the question should we engage our dream life? Yes, yes, yes,
- 18:55I got a lot of science on that. I got it.
- 18:57Speaker 2: Let's let's let's dive into that. I mean, there's anything
- 19:00I want to talk about. Butt's seeing as we've gone
- 19:02there now, let's dive into it now. So let's talk
- 19:05about the process of being more of a proactive leader
- 19:10in our dreams and not a passenger in our dreams.
- 19:12What absolutely look right? Because I would argue that anyone
- 19:15I talked to we're all passengers in our dreams. We
- 19:18simply go to bed, we may remember, we may not remember,
- 19:22we show up. It's like the car journey, right, We
- 19:24jumped in the car. You've got to see it for
- 19:25a bit. You got to the other side. Maybe you
- 19:27remember a tree you saw along the way, or your
- 19:29mom and dad did something when you were a kid,
- 19:30but you don't remember most of it. It doesn't really matter.
- 19:33Speaker 1: You're in the driver's seat of a car. You can't control.
- 19:34It seems that way that one will get to with
- 19:37lucid dreaming. But how you can affect your dreams because
- 19:40we've gotten to the science I believe the irrelevant. Let's
- 19:43take this first stage. You go from waking to dreaming
- 19:49right whatever time. That is, not every time, not for everyone,
- 19:52but just the fact that it's possible. That's something called
- 19:54sleep entry. Okay, with those surface electros on our scale,
- 20:00the electricity blends. It's like a liminal state. Like I
- 20:04used to be a scuba diver, and when you go
- 20:06from a freshwater river to an ocean, it's not like
- 20:09there's a crispline, there's a blurry zone. Similarly, when we
- 20:12go from waking to dreaming, there's about a ten to
- 20:16fifteen minute period called sleep entry. Salvador Dali and some
- 20:20current tech companies in San Francisco, they believe that during
- 20:25that period you kind of sort of have access to
- 20:28that divergent creative ideation of dreaming and that they can
- 20:31extract ideas from there. So much so Thomas Edison with
- 20:35the light Bulb, would like would fall asleep in a chair,
- 20:38and when he'd fall asleep and he'd start himself awake,
- 20:41he'd write down what he was thinking that that was
- 20:42a scene and inception. Right, So I'm just out bringing
- 20:45the science in, But that's there. Christopher Nolan's talking about that.
- 20:48Salvador Dolly wrote a book about that. You know, his
- 20:51stuff is surreal like the and so that period is
- 20:56the first entry into dream life that you can still
- 20:59hold on to. And what we're finding is that people
- 21:03have more interesting ideas, they have more divergent thinking and
- 21:07creative ideas at that window. Is that But to be clear,
- 21:11your trouble at work. You got to create a project.
- 21:14Is that going to guarantee it? No, But it's a
- 21:15habit of respecting that transition liminal zone as a portal
- 21:20to a state your brain is not in when you're
- 21:23awake or not in when you're dreaming. Right. So that's
- 21:26one thing that people can do to cultivate in that
- 21:29same area. Some people peel and report questionnaires and surveys,
- 21:33not measurements that what you think about at that time
- 21:37will be more likely to populate your dream life, whether
- 21:40you remember or not, and may lead to the aha
- 21:42moment the next day. Let me give you a specific example.
- 21:45I'm a cancer surgeon. Cancer eats some blood vessels and
- 21:47tissues in different ways on challenging cases. I'll flip the
- 21:51images through as the last thing I go to bed
- 21:53thinking about. And somebody asked me this in London. They said, well,
- 21:57your dream of surgery. I said, no, I've never dreamt.
- 22:00I've never dreamt a surgery. But I have a lot
- 22:01of dreams of scuba diving, navigating mazes, going through forests.
- 22:06And so what I concluded is my opinion is that
- 22:09that it's a three dimensional space, and I know I'm
- 22:12working on a three dimensional creative project, and that my
- 22:15dream life is somehow rehearsing that, practicing that, providing me
- 22:20with that maneuver in a complex surgery. And I say, manah,
- 22:24that was where did that come from? Sometimes I think
- 22:26it wasn't like in this scenario six, I will come
- 22:29up with solution four. No, like things arise during our
- 22:32waking life, and I think that dreaming brain builds that.
- 22:36So sleep entry for waking up intentionally and writing down
- 22:42your thoughts and journaling at that moment, journaling in general
- 22:45about what you want to dream about, for me, looking
- 22:48at pictures about a surgery. Those are specific things as
- 22:51you fall asleep that somebody can try.
- 22:53Speaker 2: Wow, that's fascinating because I think journaling has taken off
- 22:57so much in culture and.
- 22:59Speaker 1: I'm trying to bring some science to it.
- 23:00Speaker 2: I think the act of journaling straight after waking up,
- 23:04like immediately. I know for a fact that if I
- 23:07pick up my phone first thing in the morning, which
- 23:09I try to avoid to do, but when it does happen,
- 23:12I forget my dream immediately. Yeah, And I know I
- 23:15wake up kind of in a dream state and then
- 23:18I completely shut it off. Have you found links between
- 23:22going to sleep with your phone or without your phone
- 23:24and how that affects our dreams? Or if you watch
- 23:27a particular show and TV and how does that affect
- 23:29your dream and what you do in the morning. Does
- 23:31that have any correlation?
- 23:33Speaker 1: So that's a great question. The thing you said about
- 23:34waking up, I'll get to that at sleep exit, because
- 23:37there's some interesting science there. But when you look at
- 23:39all these surveys, that's why I open up with, like,
- 23:41we need more dream banks. We need people who have
- 23:44a great exposure to social media to start talking about
- 23:48the dreams. At this point, it doesn't look like they
- 23:50populate dreams. Let's take a specific example. Erotic dreams tend
- 23:55to be about a narrow group of people in your
- 23:58life family, even when you're younger, repellent bosses and celebrities.
- 24:02So I'm curious to see, like right, Like, so now
- 24:05that doesn't mean there's one hundred papers on that, but
- 24:08those are the spring. That's the sprinkling of information that
- 24:10I saw. Like, so, what becomes familiar to the bosses? Well,
- 24:13you know people can have like awkward dreams about bosses, right,
- 24:17they have sexual dreams about people they actually are not
- 24:19attracted to. That's a big category of erotic dreams.
- 24:22Speaker 2: But is there any reasoning to that specifically because of
- 24:25being erotic dreams about people you are not attracted to? Like,
- 24:29where does that come from?
- 24:30Speaker 1: I don't know. I think it's now we're getting into opinion. Yeah,
- 24:33I think I think it's a power dynamic play, and
- 24:35I think intimacy can be both collaborative and also a
- 24:38power dynamic in some mix of it. All right, but
- 24:40that's just that's an exploration. But erotic dreams, since we're
- 24:43there and we'll get back to sleep exit is they're interesting.
- 24:49We all get them. They come before we've done the
- 24:51erotic act, even if we haven't seen it. So it's
- 24:54it's almost like an instruction, if you will, an inheritance
- 24:58of thinking, not just taking or mental health, but we
- 25:03inherit those dreams. Even to people who never go on
- 25:06to have sex, they still have erotic dreams, almost like
- 25:08a playbook that's meant for a mind to activate our
- 25:11brain and bodies for the act to pro create. That's
- 25:13the big topic. The specific thing is across cultures, different
- 25:18over generations, the percentages are surprisingly similar ninety plus. The
- 25:23other surprising thing is that eighty to ninety percent in
- 25:27these reports, infidelity cheating is common erotic dreams. Whether you're
- 25:33in a healthy relationship, whether you're lying about in a
- 25:36healthy relationship and covening somebody else, or whether you're in
- 25:39a bad relationship. It's almost almost like a semi built
- 25:43in thing. And I think that's how I've learned to
- 25:46think about erotic dreams is that's just desire. It's like
- 25:49a flare of desire. It interestingly tends to be toward
- 25:53a narrow group, but the acts tend to be wild.
- 25:57Speaker 2: There's a few points that you made in the book
- 25:58that fascinated me as we're on the topic of erotic dreams.
- 26:01I was sharing it with the team earlier. So there's
- 26:03three things here, but let's go one by one. So
- 26:06erotic dreams are not fueled by masturbation or pornography. Walk
- 26:09me through that.
- 26:10Speaker 1: That's what some reports a decade ago mentioned. Now that
- 26:14might be changing, But what's interesting to me there is
- 26:18it's not what we do during the day that shows
- 26:24up in erotic dreams. It's actually what we fantasize about
- 26:28secretly during our day that's more likely to show up
- 26:31in erotic dreams. And scientifically, to me, I think that
- 26:35makes a lot of sense because the dreaming process is
- 26:38the imagination network liberated, So it makes sense that what
- 26:43you imagine in your dream life is more connected to
- 26:46the fantasy you're having while you're awake. It doesn't matter
- 26:50the sexual act the sexual person. That what brings someone
- 26:56to climax, the thoughts they have during that process with
- 27:01their lover, without their level. It's the internal thinking of
- 27:05desire during the day that tends to find itself in
- 27:10erotic dreams. And to me, that's consistent if you think
- 27:14about the dreaming brain as something that has the liberated
- 27:18imagination network. It's an imaginative process. Right, your eyes are closed.
- 27:22That movie you're making for yourself, So whatever you're thinking
- 27:25about during the day, you know that's the movie you're
- 27:27making at night.
- 27:28Speaker 2: So then getting back to what you're saying earlier, if
- 27:30someone's in a happy relationship, but you're saying it's still
- 27:33common for them to cheat in their dreams.
- 27:35Speaker 1: That's a separate pattern. Yeah.
- 27:36Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a pattern that you've seen. So is that
- 27:39an argument then that that doesn't maybe happy in the relationship,
- 27:42but then they're okay fantasizing.
- 27:44Speaker 1: I can't answer that. No, no, no, I love the question.
- 27:47That's a deep question. What I would say to you
- 27:49is from there, what people ask is if you have dreams,
- 27:52tend to have more bisexuality. So does that mean you
- 27:56have you're bisexual, you just haven't figured that out, or
- 27:58you're not sharing that with somebody during the day. I
- 28:00can't answer that but I think as we bring in
- 28:03more reports from dream banks and bring in more cultures,
- 28:07more backgrounds, more genders, and more diverse sort of perspectives
- 28:11on sexuality, we'll get insights into that. But that's a
- 28:14very individual thing. So as a whole, there's a lot
- 28:17of cheating in erotic dreams. As a whole, what shows
- 28:21up in our erotic dreams is what we imagine and
- 28:24then it leaves it to the person. That's why I
- 28:26open with, like, you know, people have asked me like,
- 28:29if you dream of your ex, does that mean you
- 28:31really want them? I was like, well, if you're just
- 28:33seriously thinking to still thinking, if you're hung up on
- 28:35them during the day you're dream about your ex, that
- 28:36means one thing. But if you're like, no, I've really
- 28:38moved on and the lover pops up in your dream,
- 28:42I think that's just a solar flare of desire. I
- 28:44wouldn't make much of that.
- 28:45Speaker 2: I think that's the hard part, right. I think what
- 28:48we don't know is how seriously to take some of
- 28:51these to take a dream or not, Because I feel
- 28:54like a lot of people exactly like you just said,
- 28:56you have a dream about something you're thinking, Oh, God,
- 28:58maybe I need that, maybe I don't, And is that
- 29:01a lack of self awareness? Is it because the dream
- 29:04is not clear? Like? How do we how have you
- 29:07thought about that as you've reflected on dreaming. How do
- 29:10we get better at knowing whether to take a dream
- 29:12seriously or not? Because I feel like that would help
- 29:15solve so much of our conundrum or dilemmas that's created
- 29:19by dreams.
- 29:20Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a big question. It's a big question. It's
- 29:22a big question.
- 29:22Speaker 2: I'd love to know your thoughts.
- 29:24Speaker 1: Yeah. My opinion about it is that one, dreams should
- 29:28not be neglected. Okay, nightmares, if they pop up and
- 29:32they arrive out of the blue, they shouldn't be neglected.
- 29:35I think dreams that are flashbacks after PTSD obviously should
- 29:39not be neglected. So there's some dreams that have an
- 29:43easier rule to follow if you will. But then what
- 29:45about those other dreams that you're bringing up right, like
- 29:49intensely emotional to linger with you during the day, and
- 29:52you're wondering like, wait a second, is that an insight
- 29:54to myself that I don't even have yet about myself?
- 29:58Should I discuss this with a thing therapist? Should I
- 30:00discuss this with my lover, and I think the way
- 30:03I've started to reflect on my dreams a bit more
- 30:07is that when they are hyper emotional, it's an invitation
- 30:13to look at your life differently. Right, I feel like
- 30:18I'm doing well, I'm high achieving, I'm doing this. I'm not.
- 30:21You know, you feel like, no, it's fine, I'm dealing
- 30:22with a broken relationship. But if you start having nightmares,
- 30:26or if you have emotional dreams that are filled with
- 30:29fright or regret. I'm not saying that that there's never
- 30:33an automatic link, right other than showing up naked at
- 30:36a podium or I'm not going off. But the one
- 30:38that's powerful haunts you, doesn't make sense. That's an invitation
- 30:44to think about something, and back to our original conversation.
- 30:47To me, that's a life well examined is paying attention
- 30:51to the emotional, powerful dreams that you have that linger
- 30:55with you. The dream is symbolic to get to your
- 30:58answer in the most specific the dream is a metaphor.
- 31:02The dream is symbolism because from the dreaming brain and
- 31:05you've hyper visual, hygher emotional, it's not going to spell
- 31:09it out for you. It's going to be metaphorical, it's
- 31:13going to be symbolic. Specific example, Vietnam veterans who had
- 31:17PTSD got better, they start going through divorce, they're not
- 31:22and they're struggling. They're not dreaming of divorce, they're dreaming
- 31:25of war again. So the experiences you're having, they're an
- 31:29invitation to reflect. The meaning is metaphorical and symbolic, all
- 31:33based on how the dreaming brain is built, and it's personal.
- 31:37It's hard to say a bridge or a light bulb
- 31:40in your life at this moment is going to be
- 31:43the same meaning for me at this at this moment,
- 31:45in my life, or my life ten years from now,
- 31:47not just former versions of myself. So I'm not here
- 31:51to refute anything. But it's a very personal process. Your
- 31:55brain made it. It's it's an emotion to a hyper
- 31:57emotional state. It could mean nothing, it could mean something.
- 32:01But what I'm here to say is take a look
- 32:03at it. Yeah, it's not just static.
- 32:05Speaker 2: No, I think that's I completely agree with you. I
- 32:07think it's a great point, and I feel like it's
- 32:10really interesting because it then goes back to the idea
- 32:13that humans are meaning makers and that we're storytellers. And
- 32:18if you're looking at a metal a.
- 32:19Speaker 1: Lot on that man.
- 32:20Speaker 2: Then you're trying to figure out and if you have
- 32:22a if you have a negativity bias in your conscious mind,
- 32:27I wonder how much like I'll give an example. I
- 32:30was talking to someone the other day and they were
- 32:31saying that they'd been dreaming about bears, and so I
- 32:35started googling what that means, and I was gonna ask you,
- 32:37and I was googling about it. It was really interesting
- 32:39because in a conscious state, a big bear feels scary
- 32:45and it feels like death, and it feels like run away.
- 32:49And that's how they saw a bear in their dream.
- 32:52But then when you looked at the dream spiritual version,
- 32:56whatever you call it, the interpret sorry, when you look
- 32:59at dream interpretation, the interpretation of that was bears represent
- 33:03strength and they represent courage, and they have the symbol
- 33:06in nawgo. So it's depends, right, Yeah, depends, Yeah.
- 33:09Speaker 1: It depends on which brain conjured up which image you
- 33:12work in the circus, bear means one thing you know,
- 33:15your hunter, bear means one thing you know. In culture,
- 33:18bear means something else. So I like that. But just
- 33:21to go back to something that you know, I've been
- 33:24I've been moving around and people have asked me stuff.
- 33:27The question you just asked is is something special about
- 33:31are we meaning makers? And now this is gonna take
- 33:34me a little time to open up on this. But
- 33:36but what's what's interesting, and again I don't have all
- 33:39the answer this conversation, is that in the dreaming brain,
- 33:45even though the logic and reason areas are dampened, specifically
- 33:49the dorsal ladder prefrontal cortex, it's right behind our sort
- 33:52of horns in the prefrontal cortex that pushed our brains forward.
- 33:56There's another area called the medial prefrontal cortex that's preserved.
- 34:01It stays throbbing, it's actually liberated a little bit. And
- 34:05you know what that one does. It does something we
- 34:08only figured out when we accidentally injure it or somebody
- 34:11has a stroke in that area. It stitches the story
- 34:14of our life together. Powerful, right, And so what's happening,
- 34:18this is cool. What's happening is your emotions and your
- 34:23vision centers and your movement centers are just firing up
- 34:26stuff linked directly and directly to the stuff you feted
- 34:31during the day, the stuff you life feted, right, your life,
- 34:34your memory plus the imagination and then the medial prefrontal
- 34:38cortex is they're putting a story to it. Dreams often,
- 34:42not always are stories. They have a narrative component. They're emotional,
- 34:47they're visual, they have a narrative component. Our brains want
- 34:51to make a cohesive story. I know that for a
- 34:54lot of reasons. And the dreaming brain is something that
- 34:58also preserves that. Some have even extended that say like,
- 35:01well maybe that's why we can you know, we get
- 35:04movies that have jumps of ideas, people go from one
- 35:06place to the other. Like our dreaming. The way we
- 35:09dream prepares us for the way we appreciate art, right,
- 35:12so we can let that go this way on this
- 35:15on this side, some of my patients with certain complications
- 35:18and certain tumors and different things, they'll wake up and
- 35:22they won't feel certain parts of their body and they'll
- 35:25develop something called neglect, or they'll develop something what it's
- 35:31called confabulation. It's a fancy word for lying. When the
- 35:34body signals are disconjugate, they don't make sense the brain.
- 35:40The mind will make up a story to make it
- 35:42all fit. And some patients have actually tried to throw
- 35:45a leg. They don't feel off the bed and they say, oh,
- 35:47that was a stranger. And so you see things with
- 35:50the injured brain and the healing brain, that there's a
- 35:53drive within us. Sometimes we'll even lie to ourselves and
- 35:57others to create a consistent or a story that makes
- 36:01sense to ourselves meaning. And I think if you look
- 36:04at that at the brain level, and you look at
- 36:07that at the dreaming level, what I try to tell
- 36:09people my first book is look at that at the
- 36:11life level. Like our maturation isn't done just with adolescents, right,
- 36:16The work has to continue to cultivate your brain and
- 36:19your mind and your life. So when you get through
- 36:21a struggle, and you get through it, that prepares you
- 36:24for the next one. If you're in a struggle now
- 36:27that's just overwhelming, like something difficult so hard, don't worry
- 36:30because you're cultivating that stress for the next one. And
- 36:33I think all of those pieces not measurements, but my
- 36:35opinion that we are meeting makers. We are storytellers in
- 36:40the moments of our lives, in our dreaming brain, in
- 36:43our life in general, and the area where stories and
- 36:47emotions are the wildest with our dreams. And that's where
- 36:51I think why we dream is something bigger than just
- 36:55threat rehearsal. I think it's something powerful when we wake up.
- 36:57And that clarity is because are some conscious has had
- 37:00its run?
- 37:02Speaker 2: Are people having when you look at the data, are
- 37:04people having the same dream again and again and again
- 37:07or are they having different dreams every night?
- 37:09Speaker 1: Well that's a good question. So there are recurrent dreams.
- 37:12It's a specific example. The only thing I can say
- 37:15with certainty, these dreams come from our brain. We do
- 37:17these exotics brain surgeries where we wake people up to
- 37:20map the surface of their brain. You don't feel. You
- 37:23wouldn't know if I touched your brain if the situation
- 37:25ever rose, which you won't. But like the brain doesn't feel,
- 37:28the brain feels through its nerves. So we can dissect
- 37:31the brain in somebody while they're talking. The point there
- 37:35is not to scare anybody. That's a therapeutic process. But
- 37:38when we tickle and map the brain, they'll say, oh,
- 37:42I remember this nightmare from when I was a kid.
- 37:44You can activate a recurrent nightmare in a patient by
- 37:47tickling the surface of their brain. So dreams come from
- 37:50the brain. There are recurrent dreams. There are that's individual.
- 37:55There are common dreams across people falling, being chased, teeth
- 37:59falling out out there, universal dreams, So you start to
- 38:02see all these patterns. A recurrent dream is a loop
- 38:05of electricity in that part of your brain that pops
- 38:08up again and again. It must be because if we
- 38:11take a little faint pen and tickle it and you
- 38:13have that dream again, that's built into the electrical flows
- 38:17of your brain. So we have to step back a
- 38:19little bit when you ask those questions, because there are
- 38:21so many different dream types and dream experiences. I don't
- 38:24want to give a single answer. But recurrent dreams are
- 38:27loops of electricity that happen over and over again. We
- 38:29can actually activate that, and then universal dreams, common dreams,
- 38:33and rare dreams is how I conceptualize it.
- 38:35Speaker 2: What does someone do if they have a recurrent dream
- 38:38that they don't want to have any big question?
- 38:41Speaker 1: Okay, so let's look at that. So now we got
- 38:44the foundation waking brain, dreaming brain, hyper imaginative, hyper emotional.
- 38:51You're cooking up, you're creating the events of your dreamscape.
- 38:54And I found this to be very powerful that nightmare
- 38:58since we imagined them. The treatment for nightmares is something
- 39:02called imagery rehearsal therapy. Now I'm not a therapist. I
- 39:06mean I take care of a lot of cancer patients.
- 39:08I'm more than ten thousand in my life. So there's
- 39:13a cultivation that I have benefited from them trusting me.
- 39:18So I think I have some sense of understanding of
- 39:20human nature. But therapy, when you try to help somebody
- 39:25through conversation talk therapy, right, that's great. It seems to
- 39:29be effective. That's out there. What they're finding is imagery
- 39:32rehearsal therapy. It's a new thing where imagine what you
- 39:35want to be, imagine something you don't want to have.
- 39:38And when I read that, I was like, I don't
- 39:40know if I can sink my teeth in that until
- 39:42I started reading about nightmares and learning about nightmares and
- 39:45across all different sciences that if you practice before you
- 39:49go to bed, going back a bit to your saying
- 39:52that we can actually feed our dreams, if you practice
- 39:55a new script for the ending of your nightmares, you
- 39:58can rescript nightmares through something called image re rehearsal therapy.
- 40:03People can look it up and not every time, not
- 40:06for everyone, but just the fact that nightmares can be
- 40:09rescripted is powerful. That you think you're out of control,
- 40:14but you can feed your dreams. You can steer your dreams,
- 40:17and lucid dreaming as the prime example of that, and
- 40:20and that therapy can guide you to a better conclusion
- 40:23in your dream. I love that as a scientist because
- 40:26it's the imagination network. You've imagined this nightmare, and it's
- 40:31powerful to think now you can actually imagine a different
- 40:35kind of ending for this nightmare. To me, that's all
- 40:37scientifically consistent. And to me, that's why I think it's
- 40:42powerful to look at dreaming as more magical, more fascinating
- 40:46that it is being driven by certain brain processes. Right,
- 40:50So you don't wake up and say, ah, that's that's
- 40:52a glitch, that's static. No, there's something drove that. Learn
- 40:56about the engine behind it, and then reflect about the
- 41:00the meaning about it.
- 41:01Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I mean I can relate to that.
- 41:03I feel like there have been parts of my life
- 41:05where I've been able to code the emotion and feeling
- 41:11and script that I wake up with by what I
- 41:14put into the code before I go to bed. And
- 41:17so at one point in my life when I was
- 41:19trying to wake up early and I didn't enjoy it,
- 41:22and my reaction to waking up early in the morning
- 41:25would be, Oh, I'm so tired. I just want to
- 41:27stay in bed. I just you know, and I wanted
- 41:30to wake up early. I believe that was a worthy
- 41:33pursuit and a habit to invest in, and so I
- 41:36would before I went to bed, I would say to myself,
- 41:39I am waking up energized, happy and healthy. And so
- 41:44even that rescripting in the evening, I found I would
- 41:47wake up and I would be saying that to myself
- 41:51when I woke up, and there was this direct link
- 41:53between a script that I didn't have it written in
- 41:56the morning. I didn't have it there, but that repetition
- 41:58would carry over in the morning. And I found whenever
- 42:01I used it, it worked, and whenever I don't use it,
- 42:03I can still wake up and feil love God, Why
- 42:05am I waking up so early? And so I've sensed
- 42:08moments of that, or I've had experiences of that, and
- 42:11that coding or that imagery rehearsal therapy that you mentioned,
- 42:16that would be I would love for our audience to
- 42:18practice a community to try it out and see how
- 42:21it shows up in your life, because I think what
- 42:23we don't realize is you're subconsciously rehearsing anyway.
- 42:27Speaker 1: Oh yeah, right, whatever you do, the work is going on,
- 42:30you're doing it, work with it.
- 42:31Speaker 2: Yeah, whatever you're watching, reading seeing that is imagery rehearsal.
- 42:35It's just not therapy and it's not conscious. But we're
- 42:38doing image rehearsal throughout the day and before we go
- 42:40to bed.
- 42:40Speaker 1: And it adds a big question here. So when you
- 42:43when you say something like that, it ties into positive thinking,
- 42:47wish fulfillment, all these these nebulous terms that I think
- 42:51some people really embrace. Other people poo poo, and they
- 42:54say that can't be true, or I say something in
- 42:55the middle that through studying about dreams and dream I've
- 43:01learned about, like what's the biology of how what you
- 43:04just described about? I think about something before I go
- 43:06to bed, and it helps me wake up and I'm
- 43:08you know, I'm feeling it more. I'm thinking about it
- 43:10more in the right way, Like that's just out there right,
- 43:13that feels like there's like a kite flight and flying
- 43:15above our head. What I'm trying to get people to
- 43:17understand is the dreams, if they can be defined, are thoughts, emotions,
- 43:24and activities that are actually happening at the brain level.
- 43:29That's what's sparking all the electricity. If I'm running in
- 43:32a dream, the motor strip that moves my legs, the
- 43:36neurons they are firing, the signals just aren't getting through.
- 43:39So then what that does is it opens up a
- 43:41whole new world of athletes practicing the shot in their mind,
- 43:46positive reinforcement, going to bed, and rescripting your dreams right
- 43:51journaling Like people are like, okay, so there's brain activity
- 43:55that's leading to this mind that I want to get
- 43:58my mind to lean as certain way, and the brain
- 44:01activities driving that. And so the people say, well, well,
- 44:04how that happened? I would give you the example of placebo.
- 44:08And so when you believe a medicine is going to
- 44:10help you, even if I tell you, look, that's there's
- 44:12nothing active in it. That's just like sugar. That's just
- 44:17something that has no capacity to change by the pill
- 44:21itself the physiology of your body. But belief is enough
- 44:26to make people feel less pain. And I can give
- 44:29you a scientific explanation about how that happens. Belief you're
- 44:33armed with neurotransmitters. That electricity that we're measuring the chemicals
- 44:38that are floating around. Think of the brain as like
- 44:40one hundred billion microscopic jellyfish, and is there's like electric
- 44:44storms and waves of neurotransmitters flying around in there. When
- 44:48you believe the pharmacy of your mind is actually releasing
- 44:52chemicals and things that generates different electricity, that alleviates pain,
- 44:57that prepares your brain and mind for rescripting the nightmare,
- 45:01that makes positive, gives you the scientific basis possibly for
- 45:05positive reinforcement. Positive relationships like these are actually not just emotions,
- 45:11but they're working at the level of the brain. That's powerful.
- 45:16Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I love that. I love that description. And
- 45:18as you were saying that, I was thinking about this.
- 45:22It's all coming back to an intentionality of programming, a
- 45:27like what I'm hearing from you is just this idea
- 45:29of get active, get involved, be conscious, be aware. I
- 45:35was thinking about I remember during the pandemic, I probably
- 45:39hadn't up until the pandemic, I probably hadn't watched TV
- 45:44or played video games for like ten years, like consistently
- 45:47at all. And I think the pandemic kind of you know,
- 45:51had had time and we were indoors and all the
- 45:53rest of it, and so I started watching TV. I
- 45:55remember one of the shows I was watching, which I
- 45:57really enjoyed watching, was Ozark, and I can I remember
- 46:01watching Ozark every day for thirty days in a row,
- 46:03and it's not even the scariest show. And while I
- 46:06was watching, I probably didn't feel anything. And somehow I
- 46:09felt that I had dream every night that my house
- 46:11was being broken into like that possible. Yeah, it was
- 46:14an experience that I was having, And I connected the
- 46:16two because it's someone who didn't have nightmares as an
- 46:19adult and as someone who didn't watch that much TV.
- 46:23Those are the only two changes that I'd at least
- 46:25know is.
- 46:26Speaker 1: Or if we get back to that, it's symbolic. Maybe
- 46:29is the stress of the pandemic. I mean, so it's
- 46:32never going to be pinned down exactly, But you're right.
- 46:36The paying attention to the patterns of your dreams more
- 46:40than just a dream unless it's hyper emotional. But the
- 46:43pattern of dreams, I think is an important thing to do.
- 46:47And how does our waking life feed our our dream life.
- 46:50What I would tell you is when color television arrived,
- 46:53the magazines the dream reports show a bump in people
- 46:57having color color dreams. There are more black and white
- 47:01dreams when TV was black white and I was like, wait,
- 47:03but the world is in color. And what I'm saying
- 47:06to you is that's why this topic is so fresh
- 47:08because it doesn't all make sense. The science gives some insight,
- 47:12and the exploration reveals there's so many things we don't understand.
- 47:15The take home is it's not a passive process. It's
- 47:20not something that is coming from the gods or omens.
- 47:25It's your brain giving you thoughts, emotions, dreams, and potentially
- 47:30insights that you can't have access to with your waking brain.
- 47:34And to me, that's a special portal. And how people
- 47:37cultivate that, I think it's up to them. I'm here
- 47:40to let people know that there's a rigorous science behind
- 47:43the brain biology, brain chemistry, brain electricity that drives dreaming.
- 47:47Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that bump in color television. I can't
- 47:50imagine when we have enoupdated to look at the social
- 47:52media bump, right, Because to me, it's bizarre to feel
- 47:56that I'm exposed you to show social media pornography. Being
- 48:02on the online world doesn't lead to specific or certain dreams.
- 48:06Speaker 1: Especially with the hours that people are putting it in, right, Yeah, exactly,
- 48:08so that would be the next wave. And my hope
- 48:11is that somebody listening to this, you know, as I mentioned,
- 48:14I'm fifty one, I've got three sons eighteen nineteen twenty
- 48:17two in college. Like, my hope is somebody walks away
- 48:19and says, oh wait, some of the stuff about dreams
- 48:22can be explained by the brain. Because imagine in twenty
- 48:25thirty years, how much more data will have through people
- 48:29with online dream banks, and how much more will know
- 48:31about neuroscience. Imagine the connections that somebody's sitting here playing
- 48:36different roles than us can make. And so it's more
- 48:39of a it's an inception. It's I want people to
- 48:41be ignited that dreams can some parts of dreams can
- 48:46be made sense of.
- 48:47Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to dive back into nightmares because as
- 48:50a child, I grew up having a lot of nightmares.
- 48:52I don't I remember one of them very vividly, even
- 48:57till today. I don't dream about it anymore, but I
- 48:59remember waking up in the middle of the night feeling horrified.
- 49:02And you talk about in the book how children have
- 49:03the most nightmares, Like it's common children have five times
- 49:06as many nightmares as adults. You say, even the gentlest
- 49:10childhood is no protection against nightmares. And I think that's
- 49:13really unnerving for parents when their kids are having nightmares.
- 49:17I have friends who have kids who will tell me like,
- 49:19oh God, she just doesn't sleep, she has nightmares, and
- 49:22it's like you're trying to figure it out. And I mean,
- 49:24you're a father, so it's interesting to hear how you
- 49:27may have felt about that. I'm sure a lot of
- 49:29us listening right now are thinking, God, I definitely had
- 49:31nightmares as a kid. When you're having that as a kid,
- 49:34it can be so unnerving, It can be so difficult,
- 49:37even more than as an adult, because you really feel powerless.
- 49:41What have been some Have there been any therapies or
- 49:44remedies that have helped? But then you go on to
- 49:46say that nightmares are needed, So walk me through there.
- 49:50Speaker 1: All right. So when I was thinking about this book,
- 49:52I was rolling around in La going to different spots
- 49:55and sort of just bouncing around people, you know, regular
- 49:57people at Dodger Stadium, and often I got the question, like,
- 50:00all right, you're going to talk about dreams and dreaming.
- 50:03You need to have a new take on it. But
- 50:05clearly nightmares can't be good for you, right, there's no
- 50:07use for nightmares. And I thought I got to take
- 50:09this one head on in chapter two. And so when
- 50:11I look at that, I would ask people to think
- 50:13of nightmares based on age, and we do that in
- 50:17the hospital and medicine and surgery and science where they're
- 50:20sort of age related. Pediatric and adult is what I
- 50:22would say. We've talked about adults, flashbacks, nightmares. If they arrived,
- 50:25pay attention to them. They could be a warning flair
- 50:28for some mental health issues. You get them more in depression.
- 50:31You know, we've left that. How to explain nightmares and
- 50:34kids is an exploration, it's a conversation. I think it's fresh,
- 50:39and I looked at a bunch of pieces that helped
- 50:42me sort of come up with an idea, a story,
- 50:45if you will. So if you look at the first
- 50:48thing about nightmares that struck me is you have to say, hey, Johnny,
- 50:53that was only a nightmare. It's only with nightmares that
- 50:58we tell our kids that's only a nightmare. So as
- 51:01a conversation, does that mean Johnny was blurring dreaming brain
- 51:07thoughts and waking brain thoughts until that moment? So that's
- 51:10that's a power. I'm not saying I have the answer.
- 51:12I'm just I'm leaving that with your audience. This one.
- 51:15Nightmares do that. By definition, nightmares wake you up and
- 51:18they see your memory. Okay, just like our kids learn
- 51:23to walk and talk, our mind is being cultivated. So
- 51:26they have these families that signed all the kids up
- 51:28to be woken up and talk about their dreams for
- 51:30like twenty years in a row. They're called longitudinal kids.
- 51:33When they start talking, their dreams are like a table,
- 51:36you know, a sweater. Then they get more imaginative, and
- 51:40what happens is five six' seven nightmares. Arrive what else is.
- 51:46Arriving they're developing visuospatial, skills and they're also developing this
- 51:52thing called theory of. Mind people can look up these
- 51:53terms that children at some point developed the ability to
- 51:59look at somebody and say that, SMILE i don't think
- 52:03they mean, well mind reading reading the other person's, intention.
- 52:07Right that arrives theory of mind at the same time as.
- 52:11Nightmares so my biggest way to conceptualize that is nightmares
- 52:17arrive in children to help them develop a sense of
- 52:20self versus other help them not a sense of, identity
- 52:23but that my thoughts and my experiences are. Mine my
- 52:27waking life and dream life are, separate and THAT i
- 52:31need to think of myself as different from my uncles
- 52:33and aunts and other people around. Me AND i think
- 52:36that's the function of nightmares and. Children you may have
- 52:40had them a, lot but they arrive and then very
- 52:43few of them lead to nightmare, disorder like it doesn't
- 52:45ruin there the next. Day so it's almost sort of
- 52:48like whereas an, adults nightmare disorder means the residue is
- 52:51lingering with. You so when you look at the, patterns
- 52:54children learn to, work will, walk and. Talk nightmares arrive
- 52:57around four or five six and most of them go. Away
- 53:00erotic dreams around like, eleven twelve thirteen and persist in some.
- 53:02Way adolescents arise around fifteen. Sixteen but these are cognitive.
- 53:07Changes the brain looks about the. Same it's not like
- 53:10a new low pops. Up these are cognitive changes that are.
- 53:13Happening SO i think nightmares cultivate the mind and. Children
- 53:17they arrive and. Fade things that happen that universally and
- 53:21science aren't. Accidental and it's the it's the dream we've
- 53:24always had that all of us have had as a.
- 53:26Speaker 2: Nightmare, yeah that's super fascinating to, me super.
- 53:30Speaker 1: Fascinating it's an.
- 53:33Speaker 2: Exploration, yeah and it's it is such a it's so
- 53:36interesting how we're so addicted to certainty and. Conclusiveness, yeah
- 53:43it's kind of.
- 53:44Speaker 1: Stifling, yeah it's very rigidity to, it, Right, yeah do,
- 53:47this don't do, this this will save. You this won't
- 53:49say like. No but the dreaming process leaves it, open, like,
- 53:52yeah we're just beginning to understand it's. Personal keep, digging keep,
- 53:57exploring fail. BETTER i think that's what that all shows.
- 54:00Speaker 2: Us WHY i feel like what the conversation we're having
- 54:04exposes a weakness that we have across so many areas
- 54:08of our, life which is that we're uncomfortable with. Uncertainty,
- 54:11yeah and we constantly feel discomfort when we can't. Control
- 54:17AND i think dreams are like the ultimate version of.
- 54:21Speaker 1: That dreams are, like, hey just to remind you you need. Uncertainty, yeah,
- 54:24yeah let me dig into that a little. BIT i
- 54:26have some ideas about, That like when we fall asleep and,
- 54:30dream the executive networks. Dampen let me reverse a. Bit
- 54:35most of the day is something we call task. On
- 54:37it's outward and the brain the executive. Network reason logic
- 54:41is paying. Attention of course food, scarcity, Right willie, mammits
- 54:45it makes sense those who are best at paying attention,
- 54:48outward navigating the world and using as little amount of
- 54:52calories and brain. Energy that seems like that would be
- 54:54a natural. Adaptation, well WHAT i would tell people, is
- 54:58when we're not tasked, on the brain doesn't rev down
- 55:02like your computer like goes and then you have to
- 55:04hit the keyboard to pop it. Up, no it creates
- 55:06a mental life of its, own, right that's the imagination.
- 55:10Network so during the day we're mostly executive network, outward
- 55:15but if there's nothing to do with mind wandering or
- 55:17things are, safe we turn back into our own. Head
- 55:20dreaming is the example of, that but just suffused with like.
- 55:25Uncertainty and so the question becomes the day is so
- 55:29focused on, thinking. Calculating adrenaline is. Up adrenaline finds the
- 55:35signal in the. Noise they've done studies where they change,
- 55:39that and then the dreaming brain is kind of the.
- 55:42Opposite adrenaline comes. Down you're looking for looser, patterns divergent.
- 55:47Thinking designing a, car not fixing an. Engine it to,
- 55:51me to, me the uncertainty that the dreaming brain goes.
- 55:57Through that's our genius built. In we Don't we actually
- 56:01don't want to become too rigid in our. Habits it
- 56:04might be okay today going on the, freeware going on the,
- 56:07tube as we, mentioned but that's not the process your
- 56:10brain needs to be in to be the most adaptive for,
- 56:13heartache for falling in, love for a, kid getting, sick
- 56:16for the uncertainty the environment will give, us and the
- 56:20uncertainty we almost want to engage in love affairs and.
- 56:23ADVENTURES i think that's the. Balance get things, Done try
- 56:28not to be too, rigid try to be open minded
- 56:31and appreciate that your dreaming brain is going to take
- 56:33you there whether you want it or. Not that's the
- 56:35love story of uncertainty and.
- 56:37Speaker 2: Creativity, yeah and It's i'm gonna flip fluff because we
- 56:40talked about uncertainty and. Creativity BUT i want to go
- 56:44into lucid dreaming and this idea of wanting some control
- 56:48in the. Uncertainty but before we get, THERE i wanted
- 56:52to go back to sleep exit BECAUSE i don't think
- 56:54we talked about sleep, entry but we didn't finish sleep.
- 56:56Speaker 1: Exit and that works because sleep, exit that dampened executive,
- 57:01network that damp in, adrenaline that looks for the signal
- 57:04and noise it seems to come back. On and if
- 57:09an alarm goes, off we know it comes back. On
- 57:11you could be dreaming and. Sleeping you smell. Smoke the
- 57:13executive network is the. Boss it will pop back on and.
- 57:17Dominate and so if you do grab your phone in
- 57:20the morning and check emails too quickly or jump On instagram,
- 57:24like your brain will go to that forward task on
- 57:27feature and the residue or the lingering feelings of your
- 57:32dream life will necessarily be put in the. Backseat and
- 57:35so if you do want to remember your dreams more
- 57:38as you wake, up if you have the luxury of
- 57:40a bed and time and not an, alarm that's a
- 57:43critical window sleep exit to sort of hold onto your
- 57:47dream thoughts and your dream. Experiences it's an imperfect, process
- 57:51BUT i can tell you people who have, tried they
- 57:53get better at. It and, again it's, free it's, accessible
- 57:57it's from your own. BRAIN i think it's one of those.
- 57:59Habits it's That i've incorporated my life for the last five,
- 58:02ten five ten. YEARS i get what, Exactly so WHAT
- 58:04i do is IF i have the, luxury BECAUSE i
- 58:06do NOW i didn't for a long. TIME i mean
- 58:09the phone calls and pages are going off in the
- 58:11middle of the. Night and now it's more like IF
- 58:13i wake up in the, MORNING i try to linger
- 58:16AND i try not to. Move and there's different types
- 58:18of yoga. There people have been talking about a lot
- 58:20of stuff like this for centuries and, millennia And i'm
- 58:23just adding some scientific pieces that support. It but That
- 58:26i'm trying to not have my executive network kick. In
- 58:30i'll keep my eyes. Closed i'll run through some, thoughts
- 58:32so that's, interesting hold none that WHICHHOULD i do? That
- 58:34LIKE i have my sleep exit thinking or, moments if you.
- 58:40Will and Then i'll reach over And i'll go to
- 58:42my notes. App it's write on the home screen And
- 58:45i'll write a few things. Down WHEN i have, IDEAS i,
- 58:49mean i'd say a great majority have come from. Them
- 58:51they're almost all bad, ideas but that is the idea.
- 58:53Generator If i've had a good, idea it's been during that.
- 58:56Time it's. Rarely it's, rarely like at two o'clock on
- 58:59a t rible. Espresso. Right that's important because we have
- 59:02to get things. Done but the dreaming, process sleep entries
- 59:05we talked, about and sleep EXIT i think are interesting
- 59:08portals where there are sort of blurry liminal states that
- 59:11we have a different type of thinking without it being
- 59:13just like wildly. Psychedelic you, know it's, measured but it's
- 59:17a fresh. Perspective it's a different take on the things
- 59:20that are important in your life at that.
- 59:22Speaker 2: Moment, YEAH i, mean even the language of sleep entry
- 59:25and sleep exit is so.
- 59:26Speaker 1: Powerful WELL i got to you, know but this calls
- 59:28hypnogogic and. Hypnopopic so the first Thing i'm out there is,
- 59:31like stop using these. Words that, suck, right like.
- 59:34Speaker 2: A Terrible, Yeah i'm so. Glad so, yeah even hearing you,
- 59:38Say I've i've never heard the word sleep entry and
- 59:41sleep exit. Before, yes really like that language BECAUSE i
- 59:45think we don't think about it like. That and it's
- 59:47so funny how we we ender, buildings we leave, buildings
- 59:51we enter, spaces we leave, spaces and sleep is kind
- 59:55of like. That and we are talking about evening routines
- 59:57and morning, routines but this resumor is a bit more
- 1:00:01intimate to both sides of.
- 1:00:03Speaker 1: That it's the essential routine now just sleep entry and sleep.
- 1:00:07Exit WHAT i love about it is THAT i can
- 1:00:11put stickers on your scalp our scalps and record the
- 1:00:14electricity and be, like, look the waves. Change you are,
- 1:00:19measurably not just by report, like, Hey i'm feeling. DIFFERENT
- 1:00:22i get. THAT i trust that that's. Individual but the
- 1:00:25brain waves during sleep entry and sleep exit have a.
- 1:00:32Pattern they overlap in a way that never happens while
- 1:00:36you're awake or while you're. Dreaming. Right so that's WHY
- 1:00:40i want people to walk away with, like it's not
- 1:00:42just his. Thing he's looking at the fact that he
- 1:00:44can measure that this is a different space right.
- 1:00:46Speaker 2: Now, yeah, Yeah now.
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: That doesn't mean it's powerful or. Not that's for you
- 1:00:49to figure. Out but we can measure sleep entry and
- 1:00:52sleep exit and it looks different on a twenty four
- 1:00:54cycle of brain. Waves and how long does it lost
- 1:00:56was different for different, people and people seem to cultivate.
- 1:00:58It But Solvador dalis written about it, said you, know
- 1:01:01anywhere from two to twelve, minutes.
- 1:01:03Speaker 2: That's how long you.
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: Have, yeah but it's it's, personal but it's real as
- 1:01:08for everybody to figure out for, themselves you.
- 1:01:10Speaker 2: Know BUT i like the two to twelve. Minutes it
- 1:01:12gives us a gauge sure as to how long do
- 1:01:15you not let your executive brain turn on in the.
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: Morning and because there's, science there's tech companies coming up
- 1:01:20with a little, uh you, know your iPhone Or apple
- 1:01:23watch is tracking your stages of sleep and when people
- 1:01:26are in that sleep, entry it'll buzz them to wake
- 1:01:28up Like dolly, tried and they'll and that that's their
- 1:01:31way of write down what you're thinking now as sort
- 1:01:35of the tech approach to. Creativity it's, interesting, Right how DOES.
- 1:01:38Speaker 2: I mean talking about the tech approach? Again another tangent
- 1:01:41because it is a Paspect i'm, like it's completely obliterated
- 1:01:44any form of, structure but it's it's. Great where do
- 1:01:48you see the cross section OF ai and? Dreams? Like
- 1:01:50where can it be? Useful where will it be helpful with?
- 1:01:54This where will it? Not will it help us ask better?
- 1:01:58Questions is it going to help us take better? Notes
- 1:02:01is again to help?
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: US i don't. Know i'm not a computer, scientist But
- 1:02:05i'll tell you two. Things they're making programs that add
- 1:02:07noise because sometimes the patterns and algorithms of computers become
- 1:02:11so rigid like our daily thinking that they can't handle
- 1:02:14the insertion of new data and that sort of mirrors
- 1:02:17what's going on like that's it's called. Overfitted the computer
- 1:02:21process and algorithm design is too, tight too, efficient and
- 1:02:25that learning from, dreaming they find that the computer system
- 1:02:29is more adaptive when they add in. Noise where artificial
- 1:02:33intelligence fits, In i'm not, sure but tech is all over.
- 1:02:36It they're tracking the data from smartphones and certain people you're,
- 1:02:40volunteering they'll play certain songs and you'll have people watch
- 1:02:44commercials and see if they dream about it more and
- 1:02:46then buy that product. More like that space is, here
- 1:02:49so if somebody's, listening like that's a massive. Space AND
- 1:02:52i just THINK i would remind people that we're not
- 1:02:54completely shut off when we. Dream we wake up to
- 1:02:56alarms and, smoke and that we should be careful about
- 1:03:00in that, vulnerable, precious, remarkable that unique state that somebody's
- 1:03:06not just taking marketing advantage of. It AND i think
- 1:03:08that's WHERE ai will extract, data figure out what's the right,
- 1:03:12buzz the right. Sound and just to riff on this
- 1:03:14a little, bit like one hundred years, ago they were
- 1:03:16like people are, sleeping they put their hand in like
- 1:03:18a bucket of, water see if they had more dreams about.
- 1:03:21Water in the modern, version they're going to be taking
- 1:03:23your data and trying to fine tune like the, song
- 1:03:27the scent and the picture to, put you, know to
- 1:03:29throw at you to try to get you to buy.
- 1:03:30Stuff So i'm a bit like dystopian about, that but
- 1:03:34BECAUSE i don't want you, Know i'm, private especially in
- 1:03:37my dream.
- 1:03:37Speaker 2: Life, yeah, absolutely, no IT'S i, MEAN i feel like
- 1:03:40some of my favorite movies have been about. Dreams you
- 1:03:42Mentioned inception EVEN i mean this isn't about, dreams but
- 1:03:46still in that in that space Of Vanilla, Sky, yeah
- 1:03:49With Tom cruise And Cameron. DearS that, movie if you're
- 1:03:52not seeing it's it's probably one of my. Favorites and
- 1:03:54just how that memory bank or some sort of like
- 1:03:57subconscious bank is created and, how and it's fascinating thinking about.
- 1:04:02That there's a few more things roll THAT i want
- 1:04:04to go over with you from the, book WHICH i
- 1:04:06think are so interesting for. PEOPLE i want to talk
- 1:04:09to you about before we get Into Lucid. DREAMING i
- 1:04:10want to talk to you a bit about how dreams
- 1:04:12can predict the. Future AND i think a lot of
- 1:04:15people worry that their, dreams their thoughts can create reality subconsciously.
- 1:04:23Somewhere we feel that LIKE i know people who have,
- 1:04:26illnesses or like OH i manifested, this LIKE i made this,
- 1:04:28happen or LIKE i have a disease and oh my,
- 1:04:31GOD i saw this, coming or you know that kind of.
- 1:04:33Feeling warning Dream, yeah warning, Dreams and that almost feels
- 1:04:37a bit worrying as, well because often when you have that,
- 1:04:40warning you, know constantly replaying and thinking about it while
- 1:04:44you're awake and while you're. Asleep can dreams predict the,
- 1:04:48future especially when it comes to.
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: Health in one specific, way dreams can absolutely predict the
- 1:04:54future of your, health and we'll get into. That That's,
- 1:04:56parkinson's but in general for, cancer for other, diseases it's
- 1:05:01hard to tease out whether my patients had the diagnosis
- 1:05:06and then sort of reverse, thought LIKE i THINK i
- 1:05:08had a dream about. That i'm not judging, Them i'm
- 1:05:11just totally open. Minded BUT i can't grip the data on.
- 1:05:14That but if you do have a dream about, disease
- 1:05:19statistically you're not more likely to have that. Disease they've
- 1:05:22been looking at these, surveys so it might just reveal
- 1:05:25a certain anxiety you're. Having again. Symbolic you might be
- 1:05:29struggling with something and then have a disease based. Dream
- 1:05:33so as long as we remember that most of the
- 1:05:36time they're symbolic and not, LITERAL i think that's. Important
- 1:05:41there are plenty of reports and surveys where breast cancer
- 1:05:46patients are, said, LIKE i had a, DREAM i felt
- 1:05:47the lump in these sort of. THINGS i respect, THAT
- 1:05:50i respect their whole. Journey SO i want to put
- 1:05:52that out. There the one specific way that dreams can
- 1:05:55predict the. FUTURE i need to unpack this one for
- 1:05:58a little bit because this was mind blowing WHEN i
- 1:06:00WHEN i learned about. It there's something called rem behavior,
- 1:06:03disorder Which i'm relabeling dream and act my. Behavior, yeah my,
- 1:06:08world thank, You, yeah thank, you my. World the words
- 1:06:11are they, confuse you, know dream and act my. Behavior
- 1:06:16middle aged men fifties acting out their, dream usually protecting
- 1:06:21their bed. Partner they come, in the bed partners maybe
- 1:06:26has an. Injury those men ninety four percent of the,
- 1:06:31time and that's essentially in, medicine it's. Universal fifteen years
- 1:06:35later will Develop PARKINSON'S i think you. Know so that
- 1:06:40is the one example and it's if it's the only
- 1:06:43example for every neuroscientists out, there every scientist out, there
- 1:06:47hear me with this that the first warning flare of
- 1:06:51the brain's deterioration With parkinson's is a change in dreams
- 1:06:56fifteen years. Ago i'll just leave it at. That for
- 1:06:59all the rigs people out there, saying, hey they're talking
- 1:07:01about stuff Like i'm questioning whether you know the science
- 1:07:04can really show. This look up rem behavior disorder cap
- 1:07:07all caps ram behavior, disorder WHICH i call dream and acta.
- 1:07:11Behavior it's In Scientific. American this isn't like one Paper
- 1:07:13i'm digging, up like this is. Thing this is stuff
- 1:07:16that's coming. Out behavior disorder Predicts parkinson's fifteen years. Later
- 1:07:23and WHAT i would say to the researchers out there
- 1:07:25is is that an opportunity for us to start with medicine.
- 1:07:28EARLIER i, mean it just says so. Much but outside
- 1:07:31of that one and all you need is one unicorn
- 1:07:33for unicorns to be. REAL i haven't found any evidence
- 1:07:36that dreams predict the. FUTURE i, mean they definitely don't
- 1:07:39give you lottery numbers and stuff like, that but at
- 1:07:41a more grounded, level they don't actually predict what's going
- 1:07:45to happen to, you but what happens to you maybe
- 1:07:49because of what the dream is symbolically mentioning you're going
- 1:07:52through a difficult, time or you lose your, job and
- 1:07:54you have a dream about losing your. Job SO i
- 1:07:56can see where those connections would, form JUST i just
- 1:07:59don't have So i'll leave it as a.
- 1:08:01Speaker 2: Maybe it's so interesting how, again it goes back to
- 1:08:04this idea of when you get a diagnosis or something,
- 1:08:08happens you then go back to finding that point like
- 1:08:10it's almost like you've been dating someone and you knew
- 1:08:14they were, wrong and then when they break up with,
- 1:08:16you LIKE i knew, it.
- 1:08:17Speaker 1: You go and you replay it.
- 1:08:18Speaker 2: All, yeah, yeah you replaying, it like and then you
- 1:08:20now you see all the red flags and again there's
- 1:08:22nothing wrong with, It but it's that feeling OF i
- 1:08:25remember AND i, know but we're not always good at
- 1:08:29trusting our gut in that, moment you know What i'm, Saying,
- 1:08:32like there's there's not a feeling of it's almost like,
- 1:08:36again And i'm not discounting anyone's, experience BUT i find
- 1:08:39EVEN i do it where you're living your life and
- 1:08:42then something, happens and you, GO i knew. IT i knew.
- 1:08:44It there was a part of you that sensed.
- 1:08:46Speaker 1: IT i call that hunch and. Instinct, yeah AND i
- 1:08:50think we we connect IF i, may, yeah please in
- 1:08:53the moment as we navigate, uncertainty and because we're not
- 1:08:57just reflexive, creatures, right there's this thing called counterfactual, thinking
- 1:09:01LIKE i can run out if this, happens then THAT
- 1:09:04i can play scenarios out and you know what does
- 1:09:06That the imagination, network the same thing that's liberating and.
- 1:09:09Dreaming we create a mental workspace what if this, Happens
- 1:09:12what if this, Happens what if this doesn't? Happen as
- 1:09:14we navigate the. Uncertainty so it's not just you, know
- 1:09:17pull back from a hot frying pan or you, know
- 1:09:19pull back from a scorching rock if you're a. Lizard,
- 1:09:22right those are. Reflexes we have the ability to. Choose
- 1:09:25AND i think when you look at what you're saying
- 1:09:27about hunch and instinct and how we kind of knew
- 1:09:31something and we should have maybe paid more attention to,
- 1:09:33IT i think that for me that's in the rear
- 1:09:36view when you're in the moment and things are imperfect
- 1:09:40as they often. ARE i believe that you are trying
- 1:09:45to create the outcome out of that imperfect, situation and
- 1:09:48when it doesn't, arise or it doesn't arrive for, you
- 1:09:50so we do look back and, say, hey you, know
- 1:09:53maybe we should have done things. Differently that is the
- 1:09:56cost of the freedom of choice that we have right
- 1:10:01now what to, do whether to grab this glass or.
- 1:10:03Not and just like heartache is the cost of exposing
- 1:10:06yourself to falling in, love you, Know And i'm familiar with,
- 1:10:09That SO i THINK i think people should look at
- 1:10:12that as, like that's that's what makes life. Exciting.
- 1:10:15Speaker 2: Yeah have you seen any connection between alcohol and?
- 1:10:18Speaker 1: Dreams, well it's a big. Question so this is a
- 1:10:20notable thing THAT i left out of the. BOOK i
- 1:10:23have patients waking up from. Anesthesia i'm floating above disassociative
- 1:10:26states like psychedelic, experiences ambient, dreams Fent noel. Dreams alcohol suppresses.
- 1:10:32Dreams people who smoke weed marijuana users in the, morning
- 1:10:35they don't remember their. Dreams, WELL i couldn't find. It
- 1:10:38it definitely affects. Dreaming to, me that says two. Things
- 1:10:42dreams are coming from the. Brain you take, drugs and
- 1:10:44your dreams. Change they're. Biological and the second thing IS
- 1:10:48i couldn't find a way to say antidepressants make this
- 1:10:51change your. Dreams you, know coke and meth makes this,
- 1:10:55change and alcohol and alcohol IF i just couldn't find
- 1:10:58something to wrap it. Arout, Yeah AND i tried BECAUSE
- 1:11:01i was, like that's going to be one of the,
- 1:11:02chapters AND i JUST i didn't find a clear link
- 1:11:07except for. One galantamine is this drug we give patients with.
- 1:11:10Dementia it works on a seat of. Coline it's one
- 1:11:13of the less famous. Neurotransferers we have a, lot they
- 1:11:15do a. Lot it's not dopamine does. This it's not
- 1:11:17that linear as we're seeing now and liberating people. Now is.
- 1:11:23Galantamine and so those people they take it and they're,
- 1:11:26like oh my, Gosh i'm becoming. Aware i'm dreaming While i'm.
- 1:11:29Dreaming that's lucid. Dreaming you double that, dose they have
- 1:11:34more lucid. Dreaming and the world of science that dose
- 1:11:38dependent escalation is as close as you get to you,
- 1:11:40know cause and. Effect so drugs definitely affect the. BRAIN
- 1:11:45i just couldn't put them Into knie categories because people
- 1:11:47are into depressants at this type of, dream people are
- 1:11:49on to cope the next day they had a different
- 1:11:51type of. Dream so that is a mixed, bag and
- 1:11:54alcohol is part of. That it's you, know it's a.
- 1:11:56Speaker 2: Chemical do you think we'll ever get closer to understanding
- 1:11:58the links more deeply as the memory banks dream?
- 1:12:02Speaker 1: BANKS i, Hope, SO i. Hope so WHEN i think
- 1:12:04that's an interesting, question the things That i'm looking at
- 1:12:08are what we're available to me, everywhere From aristotle a
- 1:12:10few thousand years ago to stuff happening now to questionnaires
- 1:12:14from twenty years. Ago, it's of course necessarily it's, imperfect
- 1:12:18BUT i think as people are more, honest and that's
- 1:12:21the liberated to fill the dream banks in with this,
- 1:12:25stuff somebody after me is going to take that and, say,
- 1:12:28OOH i think alcohol does this and antidepressants do. THIS
- 1:12:33i think IT'S i think it's quite. Possible but just as,
- 1:12:36like just to let everybody, Know i'm working with what's
- 1:12:38out there and trying to connect the dots between the
- 1:12:41gaps of like from you, know philosophy to brain science to,
- 1:12:46YouTube you, know ambient, Dreams Like i'm really trying to
- 1:12:49bring it together from every corner THAT i, could you,
- 1:12:51know look at.
- 1:12:52Speaker 2: How much do we dream in events in reality versus
- 1:12:58completely fantasy based, Events like how much of our dreams are?
- 1:13:03Replaying like you were saying that the, veterans for, example
- 1:13:06they dream about the. War it's like a real event
- 1:13:09that happened in their life.
- 1:13:10Speaker 1: There so that's a. Flashback, yeah it's a.
- 1:13:12Speaker 2: Flashback, Yeah but when they.
- 1:13:14Speaker 1: Dream about it when they're getting, divorced that's a symbolic
- 1:13:16dream representing.
- 1:13:18Speaker 2: Something what's going to breakdown of dreams of flashbacks versus?
- 1:13:22Speaker 1: FANTASY i THINK ptsd flashbacks are clearly replay of a
- 1:13:29bad experience in your, dreamscape the imaginative component of. Dreams
- 1:13:35when you look at these, surveys it's a complete mixed.
- 1:13:39Bag but WHAT i will tell you is That i'm
- 1:13:42trying to just add the information here to your, question
- 1:13:44which is a good. One but how much of our
- 1:13:48dream life is a replay versus just completely cooked up
- 1:13:52by the imagination? NETWORK i get that that's a good.
- 1:13:54Question and WHAT i would say, is in, flashbacks it's a.
- 1:13:58Replay if you're if your dream is, falling that's not
- 1:14:06a replay but indicative of. Something and then there's most
- 1:14:09stuff is in. Between it's highly, visual highly, creative jumping
- 1:14:13from social situations to visual. Situation, uh you, know you're
- 1:14:17on the top of a, building you're an awkward, situation
- 1:14:19you're finding with. Something there are these, jumps a little
- 1:14:21bit movie, like but it's not a. Hallucination and, this
- 1:14:26this is the BEST i BECAUSE i wanted to be
- 1:14:28able to answer this question like two years ago WHEN
- 1:14:30i was thinking of, this and this is with a
- 1:14:31gem THAT i. Found when you, hallucinate just bear with.
- 1:14:35Me it's a purple elephant in this. Room the the
- 1:14:40the landscape is, reality the element is inserted in. It in,
- 1:14:46dreaming the whole thing is. Imagined and SO i would
- 1:14:50say the entire process of dreaming leans heavily. Imaginative that's
- 1:14:55the best to, ANSWER i.
- 1:14:56Speaker 2: Can, yeah that's, Good, Onswer, Yeah, no it's it's interesting
- 1:14:59to me BECAUSE i, YEAH i always, wonder Like i'm,
- 1:15:02like we always. Do we have a dream in a
- 1:15:05space we've been in and seen in.
- 1:15:07Speaker 1: And even all of, IT i think all of. IT
- 1:15:09i mean that's so you have memory of places you've
- 1:15:12been and then you can, imagine and dreaming has access
- 1:15:16to both of that and IF i may the dreaming,
- 1:15:19memory like you go, up you get up.
- 1:15:22Speaker 2: To go to the.
- 1:15:22Speaker 1: Bathroom sometimes you can slip back in or, dream so
- 1:15:25it's not. Random and SO i always wonder is they're
- 1:15:28like access to memory our dreaming mind can have that
- 1:15:32are waking mind does not have access To like people
- 1:15:37with this is, fascinating like this a little bit heavier
- 1:15:40on the size, Part like people who have memory, issues
- 1:15:43like they've had a trauma and they can't remember if
- 1:15:46they played tetris or a video. Game they'll see pictures
- 1:15:50of it in their dreams but can't tell you about
- 1:15:53it when you ask them during the, DAY i, said,
- 1:15:55NO i never played A tetris, game BUT i had
- 1:15:56one in my. Dream and they're basically playing Their tetris
- 1:16:00being played in front of. Them so there's something going
- 1:16:02on where the dreaming mind has a memory. SYSTEM i
- 1:16:05THINK i don't have evidence for, this but there are
- 1:16:08little dots like, that like slipping back into a, dream
- 1:16:10getting up to go to the, bathroom people with amnesia
- 1:16:13being able to feed their. DREAMS i can't identify like
- 1:16:17on a map or you, know a, dissection but there's
- 1:16:21something unique going on with a dreaming. Memory and dreaming.
- 1:16:24Mind and that's why it's so inspiring for. Me, like you,
- 1:16:28KNOW i you, KNOW i use drills and take off
- 1:16:31pieces of skull AND i dissect with. Them i'm, Like
- 1:16:34i'm not that, guy, Right most people would, THINK i
- 1:16:36think that's why it's, powerful like brain surgeons talking about
- 1:16:39the dreaming. Mind but that's what it's done for. Me
- 1:16:42my man is like fifty one years in ten thousand
- 1:16:47patients operate in like ten, countries, suns you, know wild, love, affair,
- 1:16:55heartbreak all of, it intense. Emotions relationship with my partner
- 1:16:59for thirty is like all of. It and you start
- 1:17:02to think LIKE i Think i'm getting a, sense and
- 1:17:05then you then putting this book. Together it's it's almost
- 1:17:08like a. Rebirth there's too much of a. Statement but, like,
- 1:17:10oh wait a, second there's a dreaming mind memory. System
- 1:17:13wait a, Second. Parkinson's the first flare is a change
- 1:17:17in dreaming. Pattern so just WHEN i, thought, like you,
- 1:17:20KNOW i Think i'm figuring this, out you, Know i'm
- 1:17:24excited to have have the lens with WHICH i approached
- 1:17:29the world. Reset and that's what dreaming has done for.
- 1:17:31Speaker 2: Me let's talk about lucid. Dreaming we've been talking. About
- 1:17:35we've been kind of like peppering it in the whole.
- 1:17:37Time first of, all let's just. Define and a lot
- 1:17:39of the QUESTIONS i ask are very, Simplified and the
- 1:17:43reason for that is BECAUSE i think a lot of
- 1:17:45these terms ideas are out there and most people don't even.
- 1:17:48Know AND i, think as you're simplifying language from a
- 1:17:50very scientific point of, view my goal is to try
- 1:17:53and simplify topics that we all hear. About and you
- 1:17:56might even here around a conversation and you're sitting there,
- 1:17:58GOING i don't even know what that. Means, YEAH i
- 1:17:59don't know if anyone knows what that, means but we're
- 1:18:01all pretending to. Know so it's, like what is lucid?
- 1:18:03Dreaming how common is? It and then how do we do?
- 1:18:06It so let's go go lucid.
- 1:18:09Speaker 1: Dreaming here's the WAY i explained it to you, first
- 1:18:10a little bit of a story about. It WHEN i
- 1:18:13was constructing this, book it's lucid. Dreaming oh, NO i
- 1:18:15don't want to cover. This there can't be any science for.
- 1:18:18It two out of nine chapters aren't Lucid and so
- 1:18:21again that's it's refreshing for. Me and the most rigorous
- 1:18:25science on dreaming is about lucid. Dreaming so we talked
- 1:18:30earlier about the waking brain and the dreaming. Brain now
- 1:18:34we know that there's a sleep entry and there's a
- 1:18:37sleep exit in the middle of. Dreaming in the middle
- 1:18:40of the, night some people become, Aware, Hey i'm actually,
- 1:18:46dreaming and they become aware of the. Dream and somebody might, say,
- 1:18:50well why is that? Unusual, well most dreams are in
- 1:18:52the rear. View you wake up and you, say, oh,
- 1:18:54whoa that was a, dream because but LIKE i had a,
- 1:18:57VISUAL i had a vibrant one last. Night BUT i
- 1:19:00and only WHEN i woke, UP i was, like, okay
- 1:19:03that was only a. Dream but when the dream was,
- 1:19:05HAPPENING i was fully inhabiting the. Dream that was the
- 1:19:09dream was happening in my mind right and at the
- 1:19:12neuronal electrochemical. Level so sleep, entry sleep. Exit lucid dreaming
- 1:19:18is the return of awareness allowing people to know that
- 1:19:22they are actually in a dream while. Dreaming, okay not
- 1:19:26in the rear view LIKE i had this. Morning and
- 1:19:29so that's a big. Statement and WHAT i would say
- 1:19:32is there's proof for. It lucid dreaming can be proven
- 1:19:38by this experiment that they did and have been. Doing
- 1:19:41that's the thing about studies and experiments for your. Listeners
- 1:19:44if somebody breaks into something new and it's, real you'll
- 1:19:47see an explosion of data in the scientific literature for.
- 1:19:50That and in the seventies somebody, said wait a, second
- 1:19:53you're a lucid. Dreamer you're telling me you can become
- 1:19:57aware while you're in a dream while the dream is.
- 1:20:01Happening and so they did a couple of. Things they
- 1:20:04trained the person that rapid eye, movement which is like
- 1:20:07skittish eye movements when we sleep and. Dream they, said
- 1:20:10if you're in a lucid dream and consciousness has, returned
- 1:20:13can you can you communicate with me like with your
- 1:20:16eyeballs through like A morse? Code and people should look this.
- 1:20:20Up they, left, right, left. Right they train these eye
- 1:20:24pattern movements at the same time they put the electrodes
- 1:20:27on the surf of the, scalp because a guy like
- 1:20:29me will be, like he's just woke, up, Right, WELL
- 1:20:31i need to know more than. That and they prove
- 1:20:34by the electricity that the person is truly, asleep so
- 1:20:38you can't fake being asleep across a. Glass this person
- 1:20:42at a certain time in the middle of the, night
- 1:20:45proving they're, asleep starts to communicate with their, eyeballs and
- 1:20:49it still shows you're, asleep communicating with the outside world
- 1:20:53when you're. Asleep that's. Powerful that's lucid. Dreaming AM i
- 1:20:57a lucid? Dreamer? No HAVE i had one or? Two?
- 1:21:00Yes did people working on this book start? Two? Yes
- 1:21:03can it be? Induced? Yes and so lucid dreaming is
- 1:21:07powerful because, again it's a liminal, state, right it's a
- 1:21:10bit of, awareness it's a bit of waking consciousness that
- 1:21:15has bubbled up during dreaming. Consciousness and so nothing is
- 1:21:19rigid sleep. Entry you don't go from wake to sleep
- 1:21:22in a. Second it's not a hard. Line so there
- 1:21:24are all these, overlapping blurry states and lucid dreaming is.
- 1:21:28That two more points about. That when you put those
- 1:21:31patients not, patients participants into brain, scanners that executive Network
- 1:21:35i've been talking about logic and stuff is. Dampened they
- 1:21:39show more blood flow that, area not as much as
- 1:21:41when you're, awake but the blood flow to the frontal
- 1:21:44cortext that does reason and logic and awareness is. Halfway
- 1:21:49so you know exactly, Right and so if everybody's been
- 1:21:52a lucid dreamer and telling people of work and people
- 1:21:54are shaking you off like you're out of your, head
- 1:21:57tell them, no there's there's the left right eye movement.
- 1:22:01Proof there's brain scam. Proof galant, tomine that drug that
- 1:22:05makes lucid dreamers have more or have people start to
- 1:22:09loose ad. Dream there's a lot of scientific evidence for.
- 1:22:11That and the last thing, is so can we learn
- 1:22:14to lucid? Dream and the lucid DREAM i had was
- 1:22:17a trippy. ONE i was in the pandemic AND i
- 1:22:21was teaching the boys to, say we got this, BOAT
- 1:22:23i just like we. HAD i had to get them.
- 1:22:24Outdoors you can't have three dogs and puppies in the
- 1:22:27house and in a. Pandemic AND i, thought this is
- 1:22:29the LUXURY i. Have we're by the water here In.
- 1:22:30California it was Like i'm turning the helm, hard But
- 1:22:35i'm going, horizontal like on a giant like, river pouring
- 1:22:39off in a. Waterfall and it was just Like i'm
- 1:22:41trying so hard just to stand. Still and ye, KNOW
- 1:22:45i just remember the whole thing like this my right.
- 1:22:47Arm and this was during the construction of this, book
- 1:22:50AND i thought to. Myself that's. Interesting it's very. VISUAL
- 1:22:54i Know i'm in a. DREAM i mean there was
- 1:22:56a unique experiences for. Me, again as a brain they
- 1:23:00usually would not even explore these. Areas but WHEN i
- 1:23:03see the brain scan showing you're halfway between sleep and,
- 1:23:06wake WHEN i see that drugs bringing lucid, DREAMING i
- 1:23:09love pulling those two worlds together for, people you. Know
- 1:23:12So i'm fascinating now with fascinating now with lucid. Dreaming
- 1:23:15AND i think people who about a third of people do,
- 1:23:18it like when you're thirty to forty percent report it
- 1:23:22sometimes more sometimes less athletes tend to have, it more
- 1:23:25gamers tend to have more visuospatial creative people tend to
- 1:23:28have more lucid. Dreams and there are some techniques that
- 1:23:30are out.
- 1:23:31Speaker 2: THERE i was going to ask you if someone's a, beginner,
- 1:23:33yeah and they want to try it after watching, this
- 1:23:35they're going to get the book and they're, like all,
- 1:23:37RIGHT i want to play with. It what are the
- 1:23:39first three things someone should?
- 1:23:40Speaker 1: Do first thing they should do is look up mild
- 1:23:43lucid dreaming mild. Techniques so there are a lot of
- 1:23:45techniques written about since. Antiquity people have cultivated spirituality with
- 1:23:51that this massive topic.
- 1:23:52Speaker 2: Faiths.
- 1:23:53Speaker 1: Yeah so mild technique and what it is is waking
- 1:23:56up a bit earlier than you should you plan to or,
- 1:23:58should and then trying to hold on consciousness and waking
- 1:24:01life as you drift into sort of back into. Sleep
- 1:24:05the technique is described in the book and you can
- 1:24:07look it up. Online BUT i want people to know
- 1:24:10WHY i mentioned that technique after four or five is
- 1:24:13because there is a study when they took a bunch
- 1:24:15of people and they, said, okay we're going to teach
- 1:24:18you the left right left right morse. Code you practice this,
- 1:24:22technique then we're going to get you in the sleep.
- 1:24:24Lab it's not my experiment or it's not my. Investigation
- 1:24:27we're going to get you in the sleep. Lab, okay
- 1:24:30now prove to us with your eyeball movements that you're
- 1:24:32actually lucid. Dreaming everything before that was a survey, like,
- 1:24:35YEAH i did, it And i'm loucid dreaming. MORE i believe,
- 1:24:38people but you, KNOW i like that extra bit of.
- 1:24:40Proof so the mild technique is proven with the left
- 1:24:43right left right morse code technique that clearly shows you
- 1:24:47are asleep based on your brain electricity and you are
- 1:24:50using eye patterns so much so this is a. Banger
- 1:24:54they started doing a little bit of math two plus
- 1:24:57two and they'd have, code and somebody says to, ME
- 1:24:59i THINK i was In, paris AND i, said wait a.
- 1:25:01Second you said the dream brain doesn't do. MATH i, said,
- 1:25:04yeah BUT i also showed you the brain scans that
- 1:25:06show a bit of awareness and has come, back as
- 1:25:09does the bit of ability to do. Math SO i
- 1:25:12love seeing those pieces coming. Consistently that's.
- 1:25:15Speaker 2: Brilliant roll from all your research you've, done you, know
- 1:25:18tons of, research tons of, reading looking at. STUDIES i
- 1:25:22feel one of the biggest things That i'm taking away
- 1:25:24from this is often the questions we're asking about our
- 1:25:26dreams are the wrong. Questions we're, asking like what does this?
- 1:25:32Speaker 1: Mean is?
- 1:25:33Speaker 2: This you? Know is this? Real? Like you? Know what
- 1:25:36SHOULD i do with? This what would you say are
- 1:25:39the best questions we should ask when we've woken up after?
- 1:25:43Dreaming what should we be looking? For point us in
- 1:25:46the right? Direction BECAUSE i feel maybe we're wasting time
- 1:25:49and energy and effort in a different.
- 1:25:51Speaker 1: Direction SO i would, say When i'll tell you my approach,
- 1:25:55again that's that's a massive topic you've you've just asked of.
- 1:25:59Me is. One there are dreams that clearly reflect your waking,
- 1:26:04anxiety showing up, late alarming alarm doesn't go, off showing
- 1:26:10up naked at a podium because you're worried about public.
- 1:26:12Speaking so some don't require you to spend too much
- 1:26:16time on. Them number, two there are universal, dreams, nightmares
- 1:26:20and erotic. Dreams we've talked about that a little. Bit number,
- 1:26:23three their dreams are just. Static you, know let's not
- 1:26:25hold dreaming thought and emotions to what we wouldn't waking.
- 1:26:29Thought there's a lot of stuff we do with them
- 1:26:30today we don't even hold on too. Right, similarly the
- 1:26:34fourth our genre, dreams pregnancy. Dreams massive lifetime events are,
- 1:26:38Happening massive lifetime events are, happening and you're. Dreaming that's.
- 1:26:42Consistent the ones THAT i would say to people are
- 1:26:46to focus on are the ones that are hyper hyper
- 1:26:48emotional that you and they linger into the next. Day
- 1:26:52you can try to cultivate it with the morning. Technique
- 1:26:54we talked about a slower, rise not switching to email
- 1:26:58And instagram too. Quickly but the the hyper emotional dream
- 1:27:02is one to reflect. Upon here's why the emotional systems
- 1:27:08of your brain called the limbic. Structures the brain has
- 1:27:11the reptilian brain inside our throat sort of back. There that's.
- 1:27:15Instinct it makes you take a breath when you're. Underwater
- 1:27:18above it developed the emotional, brain much like what my dog.
- 1:27:21Has you, know they have, intuition they have. Instinct that's
- 1:27:27called the limbic. System and people can look this up
- 1:27:29and there's there's circuits in there like The pepe, circuit
- 1:27:32and it's a fascinating it's a fascinating part of the.
- 1:27:35Brain and then on top of it is a giant frontal.
- 1:27:38Cortex the frontal cortex has is integrated with all those
- 1:27:44they're all they're all. Intertwined there is no. Dopamine there's
- 1:27:46a reward pathway that jumps from the reptilian to the
- 1:27:49emotional to but to get things. Done our advantage and
- 1:27:53the thing that blossomed our foreheads forward was logic and,
- 1:27:56reason the executive and THE. Ceo SO i believe that limbics,
- 1:28:00system those emotional systems are dampened during the day for,
- 1:28:04productivity a conventional, productivity not. Creativity and what's happening with
- 1:28:08your dreams is the roles are reversed and the emotional
- 1:28:12systems can achieve a top speed that you're waking life.
- 1:28:16Can't so if you have, emotions, thoughts and experiences from
- 1:28:19a hyper, emotional hyper liberate, brain that's the one to
- 1:28:23reflect on within your. Life And i've given a few
- 1:28:27specific examples and the process of reflecting what it, means
- 1:28:30it's individual to. You if you are having nightmares and
- 1:28:36you don't have them and you think your, day, wait
- 1:28:39my day is, Fine i'm having a lot of nightmares
- 1:28:42WHEN i, don't let that be a warning sign to
- 1:28:46reflect more upon. Yourself if you're struggling with a relationship
- 1:28:50and you have dreams of falling or hyper emotional dreams
- 1:28:54of being, chased that's your relationship symbolically finding it self
- 1:29:00into your. Dreams if you are at the end of
- 1:29:04life and you're having a lot of dreams about, reconciliation
- 1:29:10are that's the dreaming process coming to your. Rescue the
- 1:29:14end of life dreams serve a different. FUNCTION i think
- 1:29:18they bring a solace and there's evidence coming out now
- 1:29:23that even when our heart is, stopped the last thing
- 1:29:25a brain does is have one massive dream in the
- 1:29:29last minute or two potentially experiencing the universal feature of
- 1:29:34near death. Experiences so know that a hyper emotional dream
- 1:29:38comes from a hyper emotional state that's individual to your
- 1:29:42brain and that no one can give, you no one
- 1:29:45has access. To and maybe it's your responsibility to turn
- 1:29:49over that feeling in those thoughts and then just to
- 1:29:51pause for a minute and take all the information coming at,
- 1:29:54you take all the stuff you've gone, through and actually
- 1:29:56step aside for a little bit and, say, hey what
- 1:29:58was that solar flare from my? Mind and if it's
- 1:30:03useful to, you, Great if the process helps you remember those, more.
- 1:30:07Great but if you just have that five to ten
- 1:30:10minutes during your morning where you just remember that you
- 1:30:13were not resting the night, before there was something wild
- 1:30:17and vibrant going on and you got a glimpse of.
- 1:30:20It what it means is up to, you but definitely
- 1:30:22don't neglect.
- 1:30:23Speaker 2: It, well said Doctor Raoul John. Diel the book is
- 1:30:26Called This Is Why You. Dream if you don't have
- 1:30:29your copy, already make sure you grab. It we dove
- 1:30:34into some of the, themes some of the. Topics there's
- 1:30:36so much more inside this book THAT i believe you're
- 1:30:37going to love and appreciate so that you can dream,
- 1:30:40better dream, bigger and dream more beautifully as, well which
- 1:30:44is WHAT i wish for each and every one of.
- 1:30:45You Rawl is there anything THAT i haven't asked you
- 1:30:47that you want to share that is on your heart
- 1:30:50and mind intuitively that you believe is important for our.
- 1:30:52Speaker 1: COMMUNITY i think there's too much judgment going on in
- 1:30:57the ways that people approach. Life and some people think
- 1:31:01they've got it all figured, out and some people are
- 1:31:04on the other end Saying i've got nothing figured. Out
- 1:31:06AND i got to tell, you, Listen i've been into
- 1:31:08that entire, range AND i would say a couple of.
- 1:31:11THINGS i would, SAY i think the dreaming brain in
- 1:31:16mind is a genius built in that gives us resilience and.
- 1:31:20RESILIENCE i want to leave people with a brand new
- 1:31:22definition of, it a psychological definition that there's systemic resilience
- 1:31:28and processive. Resilience systemic resilience is what you bring to the,
- 1:31:34fight and processive resilience is what the fight brings out in.
- 1:31:40You so wherever you're, at you're equipped with your dreaming
- 1:31:43brain as your. Ally AND i, think to, me that
- 1:31:47gives me a source of strength that there's this process cultivating,
- 1:31:51me protecting, me preparing me for the next. Day that's
- 1:31:54not one. Side that's rule speaking. Emotionally right on the other,
- 1:31:58side when you sit here and you say this brain
- 1:32:01surger is trying to rock this stuff about the brain
- 1:32:04and mind and all, That i'll leave you with SOMETHING
- 1:32:07i did not know in. Neuroscience RIGHT i got a,
- 1:32:10lab a PhD in neuroscience or a brain. Surgeon you
- 1:32:13start to think you're like the expert at. It but
- 1:32:16there are things in exploring dreams and dreaming THAT i was, surprised,
- 1:32:21like how DID i not know? That because it would
- 1:32:23have changed all the WAYS i would have acted through my.
- 1:32:27LIFE i would have been more, open more, exploratory more
- 1:32:31willing to accept other people's experiences because it doesn't all
- 1:32:36have to make sense even to the uber. Expert SO
- 1:32:38i leave people with something to search online called paradoxical
- 1:32:42kinesis p R a d. Xiclkinsis it's called we can't
- 1:32:47explain why you move that. Way that's my street translation
- 1:32:50for that medical. Term but what it is is those
- 1:32:53same patients that have dream and act and behavior that
- 1:32:56care act out their dreams and later on Their parkinson's
- 1:32:59develops and their brain with. Her the strangest thing is
- 1:33:02when The parkinson sets in and their voices are stifled
- 1:33:06and their movements are. Rigid when they act out their,
- 1:33:10dreams their voices are big and their movements are. Fluid
- 1:33:14the dreaming, mind somehow can access the body in a better,
- 1:33:22way in a more fluid, way in a more in
- 1:33:24tune way than the waking mind. Can and that that's
- 1:33:28WHAT i like to leave people, With, Like i'm excited about.
- 1:33:31THIS i hope you guys are, Too.
- 1:33:33Speaker 2: So, raoul you talk about how naps lasting sixty to
- 1:33:36ninety minutes can boost learning and creates a problem solving
- 1:33:39by forty. Percent why is this and when's the best
- 1:33:42time to take a?
- 1:33:43Speaker 1: Nap the napping thing is big these days and people
- 1:33:46are finding it's not work, harder work, longer and all,
- 1:33:48that but try to work with the different states of
- 1:33:51mind and brain that you have and napping if you
- 1:33:53get to sixty or ninety. Minutes people have done surveys
- 1:33:56and ask people to nap with puzzles and they find
- 1:33:59entering a dream state or the sleeping, state which, again
- 1:34:03as we've talked, about is, imaginative is divergent thinking that
- 1:34:06they solve problems, better they have more solutions to. Riddles
- 1:34:11and the big point there for people is there's a
- 1:34:14utility to. Napping you're not lazy because you, Nap and
- 1:34:17if you can do it in a way that doesn't
- 1:34:19disrupt your sleep later on in the, DAY i think
- 1:34:21that's another you, know in the world of. HACKS i
- 1:34:24think that's the hack that we've all got built.
- 1:34:26Speaker 2: In can you dream in that sixty to nine? Minutes,
- 1:34:29yeah and have those dreams shown to be any?
- 1:34:31Speaker 1: DIFFERENT i can't answer. That there isn't date on have
- 1:34:33those shown dreams shown to be any? Different BUT i
- 1:34:36would say one condition is, narcolepsi where people fall asleep
- 1:34:40suddenly and there's information coming out from. Them they suddenly
- 1:34:43fall asleep and then they wake up and they enter
- 1:34:45a dream. State but that's a whole space that's opening
- 1:34:48up the utility of, naps and it doesn't have to
- 1:34:50be every, day it doesn't have to be, rigid and
- 1:34:53if you have a big event or a big project coming.
- 1:34:56UP i think, personally What i've tried is just shutting
- 1:34:59your eyes in a quiet space and allowing that mental work,
- 1:35:02space allowing yourself not to be tasked on and drift
- 1:35:07inwards in your, thoughts whether you actually fall technically sleep or.
- 1:35:10Not to, me that's been.
- 1:35:11Speaker 2: Advantageous, yes, ABSOLUTELY i agree with. THAT i know many
- 1:35:14athletes who do that as, well before a big game
- 1:35:16or before a big. Performance you're not necessarily falling, asleep
- 1:35:20BUT i like. It you're an off mode. Definitely and,
- 1:35:23also last QUESTION i want to ask you was the
- 1:35:27question That elena. Mentioned so a lot of people when
- 1:35:30they're in sleep, entry they feel like they're. Falling why
- 1:35:33does that? Exist why do people have that?
- 1:35:35Speaker 1: EXPERIENCE i don't know IF i have an answer for,
- 1:35:38that And i've seen the, reports BUT i couldn't tie
- 1:35:40any signs to. That but sleep entry falling asleep is
- 1:35:44a time where activation of the movement centers is pronounced
- 1:35:50and falling is actually a. Movement it's not you, think,
- 1:35:54oh running is a. Movement falling something that, happens to,
- 1:35:56Know but the activation of the brain when people fall
- 1:36:00it has to do with the motor strip as well motor,
- 1:36:02sensory so during that transition there may be a link.
- 1:36:05Speaker 2: There, yeah it's even interesting language like falling, Asleep LIKE
- 1:36:09i guess you're falling onto your. Bed but the idea
- 1:36:11of falling is JUST i don't. KNOW i find. Entering,
- 1:36:15YEAH i find language really. Fascinating and WHEN i look
- 1:36:17at like falling to, sleep like that doesn't make any
- 1:36:20sense to me beyond falling onto your, bed which doesn't
- 1:36:24necessarily create a, RESTful peaceful.
- 1:36:27Speaker 1: Feeling take that back two thousand years and we memorize
- 1:36:30it by, heart and that's when we thought the heart
- 1:36:32was a. Center so absolutely language shapes the direction of our.
- 1:36:36MIND i mean the power of words and people finding
- 1:36:39handwriting is it activates more part of the brains than,
- 1:36:42typing and so definitely the communication and storytelling and building,
- 1:36:49meaning there's something. There i'll explore that hopefully in the years.
- 1:36:53Speaker 2: Ahead. YEAH i think sleep entry and exit is brilliant language.
- 1:36:55Though that has really stayed with, me and it's making
- 1:36:59me think even more intentionally and insightfully around those intimate
- 1:37:04moments just before waking, up especially those two to twelve
- 1:37:07minutes that you said before you go to bed and
- 1:37:09after you wake, up because evening and morning routines make,
- 1:37:12sense but there's an even more special time there that
- 1:37:15could be.
- 1:37:16Speaker 1: Managed, yeah that morning time for, me sleep exit is
- 1:37:19definitely SOMETHING i put to. You so a lot of
- 1:37:20the ideas in this, Book i'd read, Something i'd be
- 1:37:23flipping through a bunch of, Papers i'm, like what does this?
- 1:37:25Mean what does this? Mean and then it would be
- 1:37:27in the. MORNING i, oh maybe that maybe. That, yeah
- 1:37:30not a, guarantee but definitely a space to. Explore, yeah amazing.
- 1:37:33Speaker 2: Roll so we end every episode Of On purpose with
- 1:37:36a fast five final. Five these are questions that have
- 1:37:39to be answered in one word to one sentence, maximum
- 1:37:42and these are your final. Five so the first question
- 1:37:45is what is the best dreaming advice you've ever heard or?
- 1:37:49Speaker 1: Received or try to remember them?
- 1:37:50Speaker 2: More, okay second, question what is the worst dreaming advice
- 1:37:54you've ever heard or?
- 1:37:55Speaker 1: Received dreams are? Meaningless question number?
- 1:37:58Speaker 2: THREE a dream you wish you to have more more?
- 1:38:00Speaker 1: Often falling in love the first time.
- 1:38:04Speaker 2: Question before a dream that you wish people would have.
- 1:38:08Speaker 1: More, often reconciliation, dreams dreams of, forgiveness dreams of letting.
- 1:38:14Speaker 2: Go and are those ones that we can train ourselves to.
- 1:38:17Speaker 1: HAVE i don't, know but those are the ones that
- 1:38:20some people report toward the end of. Life AND i
- 1:38:22just wonder if we had that more in the middle
- 1:38:23of our, life we'd be you, know we would have
- 1:38:27we would have less, regrets and we'd be less you,
- 1:38:30know encumbered by the fuss of the.
- 1:38:32Speaker 2: Day why do you why is there any study to
- 1:38:35show why people having it later on in? Life?
- 1:38:37Speaker 1: No, wow that's, yeah AND i can tell you that
- 1:38:40from my own experience with cancer. Patients, yeah they're called genre,
- 1:38:44dreams end of life. Dreams and, again our last act
- 1:38:47might be a massive, dream and it tends to be,
- 1:38:49positive not always for near death. Experiences to, ME i
- 1:38:52call that a dreaming coming to our. Rescue.
- 1:38:55Speaker 2: Yeah could you imagine? That you're so right if you
- 1:38:57could have that earlier.
- 1:38:58Speaker 1: On like all that be to all that. Fuss you,
- 1:39:01know it's a great. Answer you, KNOW i WISH i
- 1:39:04could to let it go. Earlier, Yeah fifth and final.
- 1:39:07Speaker 2: Question we asked this to every guest who's ever been
- 1:39:09on the. Show if you could create one law that
- 1:39:12everyone in the world had to, follow what would it.
- 1:39:14Speaker 1: Be, yeah before you speak or, act do your best
- 1:39:18imagine yourself in that person's.
- 1:39:19Speaker 2: Shoes great, Answer doctor Ral. Johndale the book is Called
- 1:39:23This Is Why You. Dream thank you so much for
- 1:39:26joining us. Today if you don't. Already make sure you
- 1:39:28follow Doctor Raoul johndale On instagram across social. Media grab
- 1:39:33a copy of the. Book we'll put the link in
- 1:39:35the comments and the caption. Section And i'm so grateful
- 1:39:38for your time and energy. Today i've learned so. Much
- 1:39:41you've completely transformed my way of thinking about. Dreams honestly
- 1:39:45through your book in this, INTERVIEW i THINK i knew
- 1:39:47nothing about dreams before we. MET i had really poor
- 1:39:52ideas and maybe some limited, beliefs and speaking to you
- 1:39:55today has just opened up a whole new area of
- 1:39:59growth for me THAT i don't even THINK i was thinking.
- 1:40:01About SO i love the idea That i'm walking away
- 1:40:03with some simple yet clear tools to actually start implementing
- 1:40:08from tonight and. Tomorrow So i'm really excited about this dream.
- 1:40:11Journey AND i hope everyone who's listening and watching when
- 1:40:13you read the, BOOK i hope you're going to go
- 1:40:15on a dream journey with me, Too And i'd love
- 1:40:16to see you tag me and Doctor roll in some
- 1:40:19of the, experiments some of the tests that you're carrying
- 1:40:22out in your own. Life thank you so, much, Pleasure
- 1:40:25thank you so much for listening to this. Conversation if
- 1:40:29you enjoyed, it you'll love my chat With Adam grant
- 1:40:32on why discomfort is the key to growth and the
- 1:40:35strategies for unlocking your hidden. Potential if you know you
- 1:40:39want to be more and achieve more this, year go
- 1:40:42check it out right.
- 1:40:43Speaker 1: Now you set a goal, today you achieve it in six,
- 1:40:46months and then by the time it, happens it's almost a.
- 1:40:49Relief there's no sense of meaning and. Purpose you sort
- 1:40:52of expected, it and you would have been disappointed if
- 1:40:54it didn't.
- 1:40:54Speaker 2: Happen