The Art of Manliness - Night Visions — Understand and Get More Out of Your Dreams

00:00:00.000 we're at mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.900 when you really stop to think about it it's an astonishing fact that we spend a third of our

00:00:15.180 lives asleep and part of that time we're dreaming what goes on during this unconscious state that

00:00:20.440 consumes much of our lives and how can we use our dreams to improve our waking hours

00:00:24.680 here to unpack the mysterious world of dreams is alice rob the author of why we dream the

00:00:30.620 transformative power of our nightly journey today on the show alice first shares some background on

00:00:35.340 the nature of dreams why their content is often stress-inducing and how they can influence our

00:00:39.460 waking hours from impacting our emotional health to helping us be more creative we then turn to how

00:00:44.800 to get more out of your dreams including the benefits of keeping a dream journal and talking

00:00:48.620 about your dreams with others we also get into the world of lucid dreaming and some tips for how to

00:00:53.340 start controlling your dreams after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash dreams

00:00:58.420 all right alice rob welcome to the show thanks so much for having me so a while back ago you wrote

00:01:16.460 a book called why we dream the transformative power of our nightly journey uh where you take a deep dive

00:01:22.260 into the science and the cultural history of dreams what led you down that path why did you write a book

00:01:28.460 about dreams i have always been interested in dreams i have always had very vivid dreams ever since i was a

00:01:37.160 child which might be related to i haven't always been the best sleeper i might wake up a couple times

00:01:43.240 in the night and i remember when i was around the time that i started thinking about doing this as a book

00:01:49.380 i was just having such intense dreams some of them nightmares and they were impacting my day

00:01:55.260 so much i was working in a magazine and i would just find myself kind of like you know something

00:02:00.480 would trigger a memory of a dream during the day i would just be kind of um i felt impacted by them

00:02:05.520 and it felt like there wasn't really a way to talk about those experiences and that in the world that i

00:02:11.640 was you know moving in dreams were kind of seen as this taboo subject they were kind of boring maybe it's a

00:02:17.340 little narcissistic to talk about your dreams but i started reading more about them and i read some

00:02:23.540 you know i found that there was an amazing body of work from both the hard sciences the social sciences

00:02:31.060 on dreams and i just wanted to spend some time delving into that let's talk about what goes on in

00:02:36.320 the brain when we do dream if we dream it's going to happen in the rim cycle the uh you know the rapid

00:02:42.680 eye movement phase of sleep is that right yeah so one thing that sometimes surprises people is that

00:02:50.520 we all basically i mean unless we're you know maybe very drunk or very high or extremely depressed

00:02:58.840 we're typically having dreams every night every time you have a REM cycle so most people depending

00:03:06.600 how long you sleep have four or five REM cycles every night and they get progressively longer and

00:03:13.280 more intense over the course of the night so when you first fall asleep you might just have a little

00:03:17.920 bit of kind of playback like you're brushing your teeth again in your dreams and then it's towards the

00:03:23.260 end of the night that you're having those more intense story-like dreams that are the ones that we tend

00:03:29.160 to remember and talk about so that's why if you if you wake up more frequently during the night you'll

00:03:34.600 also have more opportunities to wake up during a REM cycle okay so we dream typically four to five

00:03:39.760 times during the night so it's not like one continuous dream the entire night it's going on

00:03:43.520 and off yeah you can have something called REM rebound where if you're deprived of REM you can

00:03:50.480 then have like a very intense your brain's kind of catching up on it so that if you're doing something

00:03:55.420 that suppresses REM like drinking or drugs and then you stop doing that you can have very intense

00:04:01.240 REM rebound and kind of dream all night but more typically it's distributed throughout the night

00:04:06.040 does anything change in our brain whenever we start dreaming like in the electrical signaling or the

00:04:13.280 chemical release yeah so the state that your brain is in during dreaming looks a little bit like your

00:04:21.800 brain when you're awake and free associating or daydreaming like it's a little bit like an intense

00:04:26.860 kind of fantasizing and this is partly why it can be very good for creative thinking because

00:04:31.880 the parts of your brain that produce emotion are very fired up and dopamine is is surging and the

00:04:41.480 parts of your brain that are involved in rational thinking and decision making are quieter we're going to

00:04:47.440 talk about the benefits of dreaming to our emotional health here in a bit but like do the researchers

00:04:52.900 who study this stuff do they think dreaming does it serve any physiological purpose like does our brain

00:04:59.680 physically undergo changes that we have to go through only through dreaming to maintain brain health

00:05:06.460 yeah well so it's a little bit hard to disentangle like what are the physiological benefits of dreaming and

00:05:13.680 what are the physiological benefits of sleep i mean we all know that sleep has enormous impact on

00:05:19.940 mental and physical health sleep deprivation leads to increased risk of you know strokes heart attacks

00:05:26.140 all kinds of diseases very detrimental to learning but there have been some studies that deprive

00:05:32.820 rats of REM sleep specifically there's one way they study this where when you go into REM sleep your

00:05:40.660 whole body is paralyzed except for your eyes so if you put a rat on like a little dish like a little

00:05:48.580 floating dish then they will fall asleep and they can sleep but then when they go into REM they'll fall

00:05:55.520 into the water and wake up so you can i mean if you're if you really want to torture a rat you can

00:06:00.340 deprive a rat of REM sleep in this way um and they found that rats that are deprived of sleep completely

00:06:08.460 will die in a couple of weeks and if they're deprived of REM sleep they will also die it might take like

00:06:15.760 four to six weeks and they'll also perform worse at like survival related tasks so if they're you know

00:06:22.300 in a maze and they've been deprived of REM sleep they won't do as well so i think being kind of into it

00:06:27.680 that some of this applies to to humans as well but REM sleep tends to be the really deep sleep where

00:06:33.500 you're kind of doing that like consolidating new memories and forming new associations well okay so

00:06:40.140 whenever we have REM sleep that's when we dream there are changes going on in our brain dopamine

00:06:44.920 is being released it's almost like we're awake and half asleep at the same time when we're dreaming

00:06:50.180 let's talk about dream content are dreams primarily visual is it just we see stuff or can we also hear

00:06:58.420 stuff in our dreams yeah they're very visual and but we all dream in different ways um first of all

00:07:06.380 which is why i mean people often will ask me to say you know i dreamed about this so what does it mean

00:07:14.120 and unfortunately unless i know them extremely well and know their dreaming patterns in history i can't

00:07:20.220 usually answer that because we all have our own dream repertoire and our own dream languages so if

00:07:26.060 you're an extremely auditory if you're a musician your dreams are more likely to feature music and sound

00:07:32.480 but yes typically our dreams are very visual uh visually intense and sight is for most people the the dominant

00:07:40.680 sense in dreams and most people now dream in color there was actually one really interesting study

00:07:47.860 i read that found that people who grew up with black and white tv were more likely to dream in black and white

00:07:55.300 and there was another study where a scientist had his students wear goggles all day that turned

00:08:02.660 everything red and have them sleep in a sleep lab woke them up and asked them about their dreams and

00:08:07.840 found that they started to have like red tinted visual imagery in their dreams so they can also be

00:08:14.800 impacted the way we dream can be impacted by our recent experience as well okay so we we can hear in

00:08:21.000 dreams so that does do blind people they just they typically just hear stuff in their dreams they

00:08:25.540 don't see things it actually depends at what age they lost their sight if they lost it very young or if

00:08:32.380 they've always been blind then they probably won't be able to see in their dreams but if they lost in

00:08:38.040 adulthood then they might still be able to see is the content of most dreams pleasant neutral bad what does

00:08:45.400 the research say there yeah so this really surprised me because when i went into this project i think i

00:08:52.760 had the stereotype that dreams are supposed to be pleasant i don't know we talk about things being

00:08:57.840 dreamy as a good thing um and freud talked about dreams as wish fulfillment and showing us our repressed

00:09:04.780 desires i think that was kind of a just a cliche for a long time and then in the 1940s there were a couple

00:09:11.400 of researchers who actually started applying content analysis to people's dream reports so they collected

00:09:18.280 thousands of dreams and then they basically coded them so they coded like different interactions and

00:09:25.520 they would label them as you know an instance of aggression or persecution or happiness they found that most

00:09:33.900 dream content was actually negative i think up to about two-thirds in this set which has been

00:09:40.320 borne out by other research and that the most common emotions and dreams were things like

00:09:45.420 anxiety fear helplessness so yeah dreams are actually pretty nightmarish for the most part which made me

00:09:56.380 feel better about my own dream life in this research where they code things and try to you know look

00:10:01.740 at content specifically are there things that people dream about the most is it about relationships is it

00:10:07.640 about scary situations what they ate during the day like what what are we typically dreaming about

00:10:12.960 yeah i mean it's different for different groups of people and it changes throughout the lifespan so

00:10:19.780 kids tend to have much simpler dreams very young kids will dream about just kind of basic sleeping and

00:10:28.420 eating and then you can actually kind of track with developmental landmarks how their dreams develop so

00:10:34.860 they'll start incorporating more human characters they'll start to take on a more active role and

00:10:40.680 kind of be the protagonist of their own dreams around seven or eight or so and then just continue to

00:10:46.920 develop in complexity but in terms of what people dream about i mean studies from the 40s found that

00:10:55.140 and of course i mean yeah there's there's a lot of bizarreness and there are certain motifs that

00:11:00.920 are common across cultures like flying and actually teeth falling out like that's like a human universal 0.63

00:11:08.400 dream it's a horrible one scientist things like might be from like these old memories we have of

00:11:15.240 losing our teeth as children but yeah i mean relationships a lot of survival related activities

00:11:21.320 which kind of fits in with an evolutionary hypothesis that i can talk about but they also found you know that

00:11:27.560 not a shocker like men tend to dream about sex more than women do men tended to also dream about

00:11:34.300 other men more than women tend to dream sort of evenly about both men and women may have changed since

00:11:41.200 the 1940s but yeah a lot of you know fear and flight and being chased by things these are all pretty common

00:11:49.780 dream scenarios it was interesting about two about dreams in the content of it going back to that idea

00:11:55.760 you said about kids when they first start dreaming it's very like i'm asleep i'm eating cheerios

00:12:00.420 but then eventually they have other characters popping up in their dreams and these other characters

00:12:06.900 they have their own agency like we understand that even though this is in my head i don't have control

00:12:13.800 over these other characters inside of my head they still have their agency and i have my agency

00:12:17.440 i think that's what's so interesting about dreams and why they're so powerful and why they do come up

00:12:25.220 so much in in religion because it yeah it feels like you can be surprised in your dreams which is

00:12:32.880 kind of a paradox right because you're the author you're making them it's like you know sometimes

00:12:38.180 fiction writers talk about you know this character just showed me who they were but it's like okay but

00:12:44.220 that is what's happening in dreams so they feel like they're coming from outside of ourselves

00:12:48.620 you know freud would say that every character in a dream represents a different aspect of yourself

00:12:55.020 which is something i think about when i'm trying to understand my own dreams

00:12:59.260 but there's something very kind of playful about that can the content of your dreams influence how you

00:13:07.140 experience real life or relationships the next day yeah definitely i mean dreams are so intense the

00:13:17.540 emotions are are so real combined with this we have this sense that even though we know we came up

00:13:25.460 with them we kind of feel like they're coming from outside ourselves and even when we forget them

00:13:30.080 we can be tricked because we do forget most most people forget most dreams but we can be triggered

00:13:34.860 during the day also dreams can show us things that we're trying not to think about so you know

00:13:41.060 maybe you do feel a certain way about a relationship and that person is being really mean to you in your

00:13:46.840 dreams and that makes you reflect on the relationship but even if it's totally like you don't see any

00:13:53.900 reason for having a dream where you've cast you know someone you love as a perpetrator that can

00:14:01.380 absolutely still impact how you treat them the next day there's a study that found like couples

00:14:05.360 were more likely to argue in real life if they had you know had a dream about cheating on each other

00:14:10.360 yeah i'm sure a lot of people listening to this podcast have had that experience where

00:14:14.240 their spouse they had like a dream where you did something wrong in the dream like i don't know

00:14:19.940 whatever you just could be anything it couldn't even be cheating it could just been like i i didn't uh

00:14:24.800 pick up the kids when i was supposed to and they get angry at you in the dream and then when they wake

00:14:29.840 up the next day like they're they're still angry at you and you're like what did i do i didn't do

00:14:33.940 anything why are you angry at me oh i got mad at you in my dream and i'm still mad at you you're 0.63

00:14:38.660 like okay yeah it's hard i mean the feelings are real you can't just uh can't just delete them

00:14:44.800 okay so for millennia humans have looked to dreams to find meaning about life's big decisions what role

00:14:52.740 did dreams play in early human cultures well they were much more integrated with life with daily

00:15:00.460 life so you know doctors would use dreams in diagnosis people would use dreams to try to

00:15:09.640 predict the future there were native american communities where dreams were really revered and

00:15:16.340 communities would even like act out their dreams together to prevent something from that had happened

00:15:22.100 in a dream from happening in real life they were just taken more seriously until maybe 100 years

00:15:28.860 ago or so 150 years ago yeah you even talked about some of the founding fathers i think it was john

00:15:33.460 adams and benjamin rush rush was a doctor so i'm sure this is why he did this but they would write

00:15:39.420 each other their dreams they would have these correspondences like well here's what i dreamed

00:15:42.420 about and yeah i had dreamed about this yeah it was just yeah it was something you did you just

00:15:46.300 talked about your dreams even families in the 19th century in america probably sat around the fire

00:15:51.420 and said hey i had this dream let's talk about what it means yeah there were dreams in newspapers

00:15:57.700 there was i mean like the late 19th century there were newspapers in new york that would like illustrate

00:16:03.820 people's dreams or there was like a dreaming contest where people would write in with their best dreams

00:16:08.720 i think there was just a lot more outlets for people to talk about this thing that we're all experiencing

00:16:13.540 every day and people would look to their dreams to figure out they would actually use it to predict the

00:16:19.360 future or like i saw this in my dream so this means this is going to happen but then freud came

00:16:24.560 along how did freud influence how we think about dreams in the west well freud was kind of a double-edged

00:16:32.940 sword for dreams because on the one hand he made dreams almost the center of psychoanalysis

00:16:40.520 the interpretation of dreams came out in 1900 very influential he asked his patients about their dreams

00:16:46.820 but on the other hand his theory was not totally right we now know so his theory of one of his theories of dreams

00:16:55.120 was that um dreams are usually wish fulfillment and they're showing us things that we secretly desire

00:17:04.040 but we can't handle you know that we desire it so we've suppressed it i mean i think he was right that

00:17:11.640 there's a lot of symbolism in dreams but he thought that most things in dreams were symbols for sex and i

00:17:18.560 think that made people kind of embarrassed to talk about dreams they came to seem like a little dirty

00:17:25.660 and i don't think there's that much basis for thinking that like climbing a ladder is actually a

00:17:32.440 sexual metaphor the other part of the freud picture is that freud became so associated with dreams that

00:17:41.560 when he kind of went out of style and he seems to be coming back which is interesting but when he went

00:17:48.100 out of style there's a big backlash to freud in like the 70s and 80s dreams got a little bit swept

00:17:53.500 under the rug and there were therapies like cbt which were more results based and didn't leave a lot

00:18:01.100 of room for dreams so i think dreams were a little bit neglected for a few decades post freud

00:18:07.360 well let's talk about this idea what the dream researchers are finding out now so freud had this

00:18:13.240 idea that you know dreams can mean something they're symbolic but do dreams have universal

00:18:18.900 archetypical meanings i'm sure everyone's seen those dream dictionaries where you're like well if i dreamt

00:18:23.960 about teeth falling out it means this if i dreamt about a snake it means this does that hold any water

00:18:30.320 yeah so dream dictionaries are very popular and i understand why because dreams can be so distressing

00:18:36.640 that you're like why did i dream about you know whatever my teeth falling out but unfortunately i

00:18:43.380 would not put a lot of stock in dream dictionaries because we all have such i mean different associations

00:18:49.900 like our dreams are you know they're inspired by our lives so if i dream about a cat i happen to hate

00:18:57.860 cats that cat is going to represent something very different for me than it is for someone who

00:19:02.580 loves cats for example but there are certain kind of archetypes and patterns that exist particularly

00:19:11.680 around like trauma and grief and mourning so there was one researcher who studied a bunch of people

00:19:19.860 who were grieving the loss of a loved one and found that their dreams actually followed

00:19:24.580 a trajectory almost like the stages of grief that we talk about so like in the immediate aftermath of

00:19:32.120 a loss they would have really disturbing dreams that the person was alive again there's still kind of like

00:19:38.700 a kind of denial and grief is a time when even people who don't remember a lot of dreams often say

00:19:44.800 that they do and then they might have as they kind of moved on in the grieving process they might have

00:19:50.120 dreams about the person saying goodbye or going on a journey or they see them at the tarmac and

00:19:56.500 they're getting on a plane and then later on maybe years later they would report like more pleasant dreams

00:20:03.280 about just seeing the person and kind of hanging out or exchanging words of comfort so it sounds like

00:20:10.360 dreams they can actually help with grieving sadness uh stress yeah definitely i mean there was

00:20:19.900 another study of people who were going through divorce that looked at their dreams right after

00:20:24.820 the divorce and then a year later that actually found that people who were having more dreams about

00:20:31.020 their ex right after the divorce were coping better a year later so there's definitely a lot of work

00:20:39.560 emotional work that we're doing in our dreams and actually um with like severe depression there's a

00:20:46.820 really marked decrease in dream recall so that might be kind of a chicken and egg thing where you're not

00:20:55.660 doing the work you you can't do the work of like emotional processing in your dreams and that contributes

00:21:01.140 to the depression and depression prevents dreaming but yeah and that can be a sign of a depression

00:21:05.120 lifting can be the return of dreams we're gonna take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:21:10.600 and now back to the show so what do dream researchers think is the purpose of dreaming psychologically

00:21:22.260 why do we essentially live another life inside of our heads when we're unconscious at night i mean

00:21:29.460 there are a lot of theories i mean there's this evolutionary hypothesis which is that we're

00:21:34.560 practicing for stressful events in a low stakes environment so take something like the exam dream

00:21:42.140 which is another almost universal dream that you um you have a test i mean i i still have this all the

00:21:48.340 time and i graduated from college more than a decade ago you're going to an exam and you overslept it

00:21:55.760 you forgot to take the test the test etc and the idea is that you do that and then you remember

00:22:02.300 in real life oh i have to set an alarm for that project or this presentation or whatever and that

00:22:08.380 also would kind of explain why in addition to these very modern anxiety dreams like exams we also have

00:22:15.140 these even people who live in cities will have dreams about like being chased by wild animals things like

00:22:20.220 that but yeah in terms of emotional processing i think it's dreams can be a kind of exposure therapy

00:22:25.580 where things that you aren't quite ready to confront in real life you can kind of start working through them

00:22:32.140 in your dreams there's an idea too that dreaming is a chance for our brains to be creative and even

00:22:38.640 solve problems what does the research say about problem solving in our dreams yeah well in your

00:22:45.180 dreams you're in this kind of looser state where you're working with a much wider range of memories

00:22:51.580 right so you're bringing in your it's like the soup and you've got like the sandwich you ate yesterday

00:22:57.580 but also like your friend from middle school who you hadn't thought about in years so it's this time

00:23:03.260 we're kind of letting ourselves go cognitively and coming up with yeah just like more unexpected

00:23:09.660 connections and i think this is partly why a lot of people find they're more creative right when they

00:23:15.660 wake up and yeah there's studies that show that people give like more surprising answers on word tests

00:23:21.840 when they're woken out of a rem stage things like that and of course i mean countless examples of

00:23:28.000 writers and artists and musicians coming up with breakthroughs in their dreams yeah i think was it

00:23:34.900 paul mccartney like it was uh which song let it be or no which one was it that he he had he had the tune

00:23:40.880 in a dream no it was yesterday it was yesterday yeah yeah you heard the tune for yesterday and he woke up

00:23:48.140 and he had the tune so he came up with like some like random lyrics it was something about scrambled

00:23:51.760 eggs and then he wrote the lyrics later yeah and yeah i mean i read like while i was working on the

00:23:57.700 book i read like graham green has a published dream dictionary nabikov has a published dream

00:24:05.020 dictionary like they've been such a part of um yeah of artist process yeah i think uh salvador dolly

00:24:12.140 he did hypnotic or hypno it's like yeah like hypnagogic imagery which are those are the images

00:24:18.500 like right as you're falling asleep i don't know if you've ever noticed them where you're like just

00:24:23.600 in between and you can it's almost like a little bit like lucid dreaming and that you have a little

00:24:28.020 bit of control you're kind of like seeing stuff and you're aware that you're seeing it but yeah those

00:24:33.260 are like kind of on the dreaming spectrum yeah so he would hold like a heavy key or something metal in

00:24:40.340 his hands and then whenever he fell asleep you know you become limp your body goes limp and he would

00:24:45.520 drop it and make a noise and he'd wake up and like whatever was in his head he's like all right i'm

00:24:49.880 going to paint melting clocks now yeah right yeah in addition to being related to creativity and

00:24:56.400 problem solving uh dreaming is also connected to just learning in general and language acquisition in

00:25:03.080 particular what's the connection there there was actually a study of students who were in a french

00:25:08.400 immersion program that found that they had not only did they have actually have spent a greater

00:25:14.980 proportion of the night in rem sleep while they were in the program but also the students who started

00:25:21.120 dreaming about french more made greater gains and there was a study at harvard in the 90s by a guy named

00:25:31.360 robert stick gold and he was inspired by an experience he had where he went mountain climbing

00:25:38.120 with his family and it was like really intense day and then as he was falling asleep noticed that he was

00:25:44.300 replaying a really difficult moment right kind of as he was falling asleep and then so he devised a study

00:25:51.700 where he got a bunch of students to sleep in the sleep lab and had them play tetris during the day

00:25:58.160 so he got like some people who had never played some people were experts and then he would wake

00:26:04.960 a researcher would wake them up um like at various points in the night and ask about their dreams and

00:26:09.700 found that most of them were dreaming about tetris and particularly the ones who were new to it so

00:26:15.300 they were kind of like working extra hard in their dreams to master this new skill and then dreaming

00:26:22.000 about tetris would correlate to doing better at it and it's been replicated yeah yeah so what all this

00:26:28.660 research is showing about dreams is that it does something in our brain like we can solve problems it

00:26:33.660 can help us process stress help us process grieving it can help us be more creative and so what this

00:26:39.640 research is suggesting is that you know we shouldn't uh take our dreams for granted we can actually

00:26:43.900 use them to our benefit we're kind of going back to uh the role dreams played in humans lives you

00:26:49.480 know 100 200 years ago so let's talk about what some of the research says about how we can get more

00:26:54.420 out of our dreams and one thing that the research shows that keeping a dream journal can be really

00:27:00.400 beneficial what are the benefits of keeping a dream journal yeah i mean it's so easy i think to get

00:27:07.440 more from your dreams because you are probably already having them you're just forgetting them so

00:27:15.160 it's a little bit like you know you have this whole source of of insight and knowledge and potential

00:27:23.620 creative ideas and if we don't keep a dream journal or do some practice to remember them we're just kind

00:27:29.400 of throwing away this potential gift and it's pretty easy for most people to remember more of their dreams

00:27:37.620 one of the biggest things is actually just um this might sound kind of woo but it's true but just

00:27:44.700 believing that they are important and do have insight and kind of saying that to yourself as you fall

00:27:51.980 asleep and reminding yourself of your intention to remember your dreams you know if we've convinced you

00:27:57.820 and yeah a dream journal i think is probably the most powerful tool when i was working on the book i kept a

00:28:06.240 dream journal i mean it's on my phone but just like in the notes app because i was thinking about dreams

00:28:12.060 all day like i was remembering dreams four times a night like i would wake up every couple hours write

00:28:17.940 them down and go back to sleep i wouldn't necessarily recommend that as a way of life but it was

00:28:22.060 interesting it's kind of proof of concept but yeah i mean there are apps you can use some people do

00:28:27.640 voice notes phone paper diary i think the other big thing with a dream journal is to really make it a

00:28:34.620 habit so even if you don't remember your dreams just write that in the morning like just write no

00:28:39.740 recall um just to kind of reinforce the habit and then also to do it literally first thing because

00:28:46.860 any kind of engagement with the physical world can just kind of eliminate those memories and when

00:28:54.860 you're writing this stuff down is it just stream of consciousness like you were like i dreamt that i was

00:28:59.760 writing a unicycle while listening it's just you don't you don't try to put a structure to you just

00:29:05.020 kind of just whatever okay and lots of i mean like if i'm doing it you know honestly there are lots of

00:29:10.320 gaps i think this is one of the reasons that dreams are hard to recall right is like they typically don't

00:29:14.960 come in narratives they're images and they're disconnected and sometimes people will try to like

00:29:22.560 impose a narrative on them but yeah i mean you don't have to do that you can just leave question

00:29:28.000 marks or let them kind of flow what insights have you gotten about your life from keeping a dream

00:29:33.540 journal i mean i'm kind of a believer that like one dream doesn't necessarily like i'm not going to

00:29:41.540 like change my life based on a dream but if i keep having a repetitive dream that's something to look at

00:29:48.240 in my life i think they've helped me realize things that i maybe didn't want to realize i definitely

00:29:54.440 think that doing it increased my self-awareness yeah were you able to notice a pattern with your

00:30:01.820 dream journal you know if you're having really distressing dreams were able to correlate that with

00:30:06.060 you're going through a stressful time in your life in awake world yeah sometimes i mean i think

00:30:12.520 sometimes if i was going through a truly stressful experience i would take a break like it could be too much

00:30:19.160 to keep a dream journal during those periods but other times they would kind of like you know they

00:30:24.800 can also be very funny i think your dreams have like a real sense of humor and they can make things

00:30:29.260 seem a little lighter like i don't know i remember i was stressed about my about this book coming out

00:30:34.640 and i had a dream about my agent and someone i knew in middle school chasing me down the street

00:30:40.080 and i don't know it's just kind of allowed me to be like okay this is like ridiculous

00:30:43.620 it's just a book but yeah i think they're fun dreams how can talking about your dreams with

00:30:50.340 other people help you gain more understanding because that's kind of like you said it's kind

00:30:53.980 of looked down upon because people like i don't want to hear your dream and also the problem with

00:30:57.720 talking about your dreams your dreams are so nonsensical there's no narrative arc so it's you

00:31:02.200 just telling someone just like random stuff that's happening in your head and like well that's not

00:31:05.420 really interesting but you've talked about there's actually groups of people getting together where

00:31:10.220 they can just talk about their dreams yeah so actually i learned about these this was a trend

00:31:18.280 in the 80s of dream groups um and i learned about it from a therapist where i was interviewing in

00:31:24.320 manhattan and i asked if i could come to one of his dream groups which was like kind of a cross

00:31:29.620 between group therapy and dream analysis and he said that that would be not really fair to the

00:31:37.720 participants but he offered to arrange one for a group of my friends and it's basically a way to

00:31:43.420 like impose a real structure on a dream conversation so what we did is i printed out a dream of mine

00:31:50.980 it didn't make a lot of sense i think it involved hillary clinton doing a line dance and we went through

00:31:58.040 it almost like we were doing like a passage analysis in english class so like first i read it then

00:32:04.100 people asked me questions to clarify the content of the dream so if there was a car they would say

00:32:12.040 like is it red and then in the next round they asked people everyone had to imagine that it was

00:32:16.460 their own dream so they would say okay you know if i dreamed about a line dance it would mean whatever

00:32:22.000 because i used to line dance with my family and then you kind of go through a series of stages like

00:32:26.640 this and it was really i mean we ended up spending like an hour and a half six people just talking

00:32:34.560 about one dream and we all enjoyed it and i am still in slash lead a dream group like what eight

00:32:44.420 years later and we meet once a month and we take turns bringing in a dream but it's like we were saying

00:32:50.980 people feel like they need to bring in like a good dream like it has to have a narrative arc and it has to

00:32:56.200 be a certain length but it's so not true because sometimes people bring in a dream that's like

00:33:00.800 four disconnected sentences and you still have just as much to talk about but it's it's sort of

00:33:08.920 therapeutic and ends up kind of feeling like a book club except that you didn't have to read a book

00:33:14.360 and imagine these other people they bring their own experiences and they might say well it means this or

00:33:21.160 it could mean this and it might not but it gives you something else to think about like well maybe it

00:33:26.080 could be yeah yeah or it brings up other associations for you and i mean i think that's

00:33:31.620 sort of how i look at my own dreams i try not to be literal about it but just like what feelings does

00:33:35.780 this evoke what does this remind me of yeah yeah so maybe start a dream group with your family when

00:33:40.780 your kids wake up taking to school that would be a natural one yeah just talk about your dreams

00:33:45.940 let's talk about this about dreaming lucid dreaming you talked about you went through a phase

00:33:51.500 i think you were in college yeah peru i went through a similar phase when i was in high school

00:33:56.480 where i found some weird website on the internet in the 90s about lucid dreaming what's lucid dreaming

00:34:02.800 so lucid dreams are dreams where you are aware that you're in a dream and you might even have

00:34:12.060 some level of control over what happens in the dream so this happens a lot to kids naturally it's a bit less

00:34:22.220 common in adults unless they're making an effort but it's super cool and i got into it when i read

00:34:31.380 i wonder if this is this book was by the same person you found in the 90s because steven leberge has really

00:34:38.060 done a ton of both academic and popular work on uh on lucid dreaming and training people to lucid

00:34:44.260 dream but i came across this book when i was on um an archaeological dig in peru in college and i

00:34:52.320 didn't have a lot of other things to do there was no internet so i read this book and started doing

00:34:58.420 these exercises and meditations and started having lucid dreams and yeah actually that was the other

00:35:03.960 origin story of the book because that was a big dream phase yeah so when you're in a lucid dream

00:35:08.400 you can tell yourself i'm dreaming i want to fly now so i'm going to fly yeah i mean so there's sort

00:35:15.000 of different levels of lucidity a lot of people actually experience lucidity when they're in

00:35:20.760 nightmares sometimes to get out of them so you might be you know let's say you're being like

00:35:25.500 chased by a monster and then you have kind of a flash of awareness and you're like

00:35:29.380 no this monster doesn't exist i'm in a dream you wake yourself up but if you were in a lucid dream

00:35:34.940 if you use that moment to like become lucid instead you could say oh okay this monster isn't real and

00:35:41.820 also now i'm gonna fly away and do whatever other like fantasies i might have and i went on when i was

00:35:49.700 working on the book i went on a whole like two-week lucid dreaming retreat in hawaii where we did

00:35:55.640 meditations every day and various exercises to induce lucid dreaming but i would say the main

00:36:02.180 thing before like trying to get into lucid dreaming would just be to improve your regular dream recall

00:36:08.380 because it's very easy to improve your dream recall it takes a bit more effort to try to do lucid

00:36:15.340 dreaming which i think might be why it tends to be like high school kids who get into it but although

00:36:20.740 it is extremely cool but if you increase your dream recall and get that to a really good point

00:36:25.480 often people will just have like a lucid dream or two naturally so what are some other things you

00:36:31.140 can do besides you know doing a dream journal what are some other things you can do to induce a lucid

00:36:35.880 dream so stephen laberge who i mentioned he was the first person to prove the existence of lucid dreaming

00:36:43.240 in the lab when he was a kind of hippie grad student at stanford has this method that he calls reality

00:36:51.620 checks so the idea is that throughout the day um like say once an hour you would do something to

00:37:01.860 you might um poke your hand with your finger and if it doesn't go through then you know that you're

00:37:11.140 awake or you might jump up in the air and if you fall back down that means you can't fly you're awake

00:37:18.120 but the idea is to really like pay attention to your surroundings and not make assumptions that

00:37:25.080 you're awake or asleep but actually ask yourself in a serious way and the idea is if you do this

00:37:30.800 regularly throughout the day because we dream about what we do during the day you'll ask yourself the

00:37:36.600 same question in your sleep and you might get a different answer right you'll notice your finger

00:37:41.120 going through your hand you're like oh i'm dreaming i've also marketed these devices where you

00:37:47.460 these goggles you put on your head and they can like tell if you're in rim sleep and then like it

00:37:51.660 flashes a red light and you're supposed to be able to see your red light in the dream and it's like

00:37:55.700 all right i see the red light i'm dreaming is there anything i mean i gotta be honest i would start with

00:38:01.180 a notebook for a dream journal i think there's been periodically you know people will get excited

00:38:06.820 about a new fancy goggle but i would start with the dream journal have you benefited from lucid dreaming

00:38:13.400 like have you had you gone into a dream like i want to have a lucid dream and i want to intentionally

00:38:18.100 explore x topic i mean do you do that so i think there absolutely are people who do that there are

00:38:24.700 people who you know masterful lucid dreamers who will relate like hack it and you know athletes who

00:38:32.780 practice their event in a lucid dream or you know explore a really dark topic i kind of resist the

00:38:40.020 idea that they need to be useful i've mostly just used lucid dreams to fly and i find it really

00:38:45.960 joyful but yeah i think they're fun okay and you also talked about another technique so you do the

00:38:53.380 dream recall do the reality checks another thing too um is you can wake yourself up you know maybe

00:39:00.700 before that last rim cycle so this is probably going to be about four o'clock three o'clock in the

00:39:06.300 morning and then go back to sleep thinking okay i'm going to have another rim cycle i'm going to

00:39:11.920 intentionally have a lucid dream and that can that can help too and i've that idea has helped me

00:39:18.100 reframe i've been getting up for some reason i've been waking up at four o'clock every morning for no

00:39:22.620 reason it was like wide awake and before i'd be like oh geez so frustrating could have slept another

00:39:26.720 two or three hours yeah now i'm like well i get this is a chance to maybe have a lucid dream so i'm

00:39:32.400 going to try to go back to sleep and maybe have a lucid dream yeah i mean i think that's one of the

00:39:37.160 things that i love about thinking about dreams and lucid dreams is that yeah it's a way to kind of

00:39:42.260 reframe those interruptions and they can be a new opportunity to either remember a dream or

00:39:47.280 set an intention but yeah so as with regular dream recall with lucid dreaming the kind of desire and

00:39:53.780 intention really matter and so we tend to have our most intense REM cycles later in the night towards

00:40:00.340 the morning so that's also going to be the best time to try to have a lucid dream and we're talking

00:40:05.780 about REM rebound earlier so if you've been deprived of REM through like an episode of depression for

00:40:10.740 example or sleep deprivation when you get back into it you can have really intense REM and the same is

00:40:17.500 actually true of like taking a nap and also so if you do like a quick sleep deprivation from like

00:40:23.580 4 to 4 45 or something and then if you fall back asleep you'll probably at the least have very

00:40:30.020 intense dreams but that would also be a really good time to try to have a lucid dream well alice this

00:40:36.440 has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work

00:40:39.700 oh thanks well you can google me alice rob and the book is called why we dream the transformative

00:40:49.340 power of our nightly journey and it should be available at all the normal online retailers

00:40:55.240 i also wrote a book that came out last year that's probably slightly less relevant to the art of

00:41:01.860 manliness podcast about uh which was a memoir about growing up in the ballet world in new york but that's

00:41:08.420 called don't think dear on loving and leaving ballet okay i've heard ballet can be really intense

00:41:14.320 uh it can yeah yes all right well alice rob thanks for your time it's been a pleasure

00:41:20.080 thank you so much for having me my guest today was alice rob she's the author of the book why we dream

00:41:26.300 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about

00:41:29.580 our work at our website alicerob.com that's rob with two b's also check out our show notes at

00:41:34.520 aom.is slash dreams we find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:41:38.800 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:41:50.160 artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that

00:41:53.980 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you haven't done so

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00:42:09.260 until next time it's brett mckay reminding you to listen to aom podcast but put what you've heard into

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The Art of Manliness - February 07, 2024

Night Visions — Understand and Get More Out of Your Dreams

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