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1/3 of our lives is potentially spent dreaming.
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Your waking life is feeding your dream life.
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That's a solar flare from your brain in a unique state that you can't get to during the day.
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Dual trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist Dr.
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Rahul Jandial The measurements of emotion in our dreaming brain can reach a top speed our waking brain can never reach. How are you processing?
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The number one health and wellness podcast Jay Shetty Jay Shetty The one, the only, Jay Shetty Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
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Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to listen, learn, and grow.
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I'm so excited because we've really been tapping here at On Purpose into things you're fascinated about, questions that you're thinking about, topics you're exploring, themes that you're wondering about, and this was one of those that I can't wait to share with you.
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This has been a theme I've been fascinated about.
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We're talking to the expert, the person who's thinking about it differently, who's open to the idea of this truly being discovery all based on curiosity. Dr.
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Rahul Jandial is a dual trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist at City of Hope in Los Angeles. Dr.
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John Deal leads the John Deal Lab, which explores the intersection of neurobiology and cancer.
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As part of his non-profit that he founded, he teaches and performs pediatric neurosurgery in charity hospitals in South America and Eastern Europe.
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Today we're talking about his newest book out now, This Is Why You Dream.
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Welcome to the show, Rahul Jandial.
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Rahul, it's great to see you. Pleasure's mine.
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Thank you for being here.
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Yeah, I'm excited to do this.
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Yeah, I'm really grateful.
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I like I said to you, honestly, this is usually when we're doing an interview, I'm like, all right, I'm going to you know, I've got certain questions, I'm going to go with the flow, and the amount of questions we've had from our team, our audience, our community, it's never happened before.
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I'm I'm just telling you that.
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And so you're going to see me reading out questions from real people who've sent them in for you to understand more about dreaming, which I think is probably one of the most undiscovered, untapped, misunderstood, or completely ununderstood areas of our life.
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So, let's dive straight into it.
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And the first question I have for you is, does everyone dream? I think so.
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So, there here's how I would describe it.
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I would first say, let's bust a major myth that dreaming and sleep is a time of rest for our brains.
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Our brains are not resting while we sleep.
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Just imagine somebody lying down, and at when they're sleeping, the heart is flickering a little bit of electricity from the EKG that we put on the surface of the heart.
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We put a bunch of stickers on the surface of the scalp, and there's vibrant electricity while we're sleeping.
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The electricity our brain generates while we sleep is as hot as the electricity our brains are generating now.
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So, that's the first thing.
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The second thing is the heart when it's pushing up the blood, the brain is mopping up glucose.
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It's burning hot metabolically.
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So, inside our skull while we're lying down, even though we don't remember a lot of it, we're burning hot and we're sparking electricity.
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So, people who remember their dreams and people who don't remember their dreams, that brain is still sparking hot and generating a lot of electricity.
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So, I think it's more of memory recall in the morning.
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At the same time, we all know about a nightmare.
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So, we've all had one dream.
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The question is, why do some people dream more, dream less, or remember their dreams more, remember their dreams less?
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And that's something I think is related to the variety of human experience.
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We don't hold our waking thoughts to the same rigid contours, right?
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So, our dreamscape, our dream life, is individual between us.
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And we remember more it when we're younger, we remember less as we get older, and then certain diseases dreams come to the rescue, and it seems now that the at the end of life, like with my cancer patients, uh dreams return.
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And they're they're filled with reconciliation.
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You would think in their struggle, like, you know, they would be dark, but they're actually positive.
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So, those patterns of dreams are there, the brain electricity is firing while we sleep, and that's the sort of foundation from which I try to find meaning in dreaming. Absolutely.
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I mean, the book is called This Is Why You Dream.
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Why do we dream, and why is it important for us to understand why we dream?
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Because I think a lot of people say, "Yeah, I dream sometimes, sometimes I don't. Who cares? What's the big deal?"
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But I'm fascinated by it.
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I know a lot of people are.
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So, why do we dream, and why is it important to try to understand why we dream?
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The it's not a big deal is completely off for those people who think it if they understand 1/3 of our lives is potentially spent dreaming.
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And the brain shuts us down, right? It's just 1/3.
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Like, that can't be passive.
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And it puts you down, right?
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Like, you get sleep pressure.
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Like, you I got to sleep.
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Well, when I was in training in surgical training, we skip a night of sleep.
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What happens when somebody skips a night of sleep?
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The next night, they dream harder and earlier.
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If I can be so bold, I think sleep is for the brain.
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It's not for our thigh muscle. It's not for our liver.
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There are some metabolic changes.
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I'm not discounting all of it, but the real thing driving us to sleep is our brain.
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What does our brain do just vibrantly when we sleep? It's dream.
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So, that's like my straight-up answer, but like that thing that's not happening on accident, right? That's not a glitch.
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That didn't last through 30,000 generations accidentally.
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And so, then the question becomes if we have this vibrant 1/3 of our lives that we partially remember, sometimes remember, sometimes is an exciting journey, sometimes an erotic journey, sometimes it's a nightmare.
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Like, what's that all about, you know?
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And the way I've come to understand it is first, you know, giving respect to people who've tried to come up with some ideas.
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Like, it's a threat rehearsal.
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If we're running from a a woolly mammoth in our dreams, we're better prepared for during the day.
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What I would say is maybe.
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And when I say maybe or likely, it's not a respect for you and your listeners.
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I don't want to be that guy that comes in here says, "Yes, no."
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about something as big and magical as dreaming.
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So, threat rehearsal, maybe.
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Some people think it's a nocturnal therapist because towards the morning when we have more of our vivid dreams, the emotional balance, the valence they call it, tends to be more positive. Maybe.
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I like to think of it as something that sparks creativity because of what happens with the dreaming brain.
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The dreaming brain looks for looser dots to connect.
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It's imaginative by design. Logic is dampened down.
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So, I think it's our creativity engine.
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And then the way I put it all together is with something straight-up called use it or lose it that people know about when we talk about the brain, right?
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They say, "Hey, use it or lose it."
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We know if we don't use our biceps, they atrophy.
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But, our day, if you look at the brain activation electricity, is so narrow.
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The brain wants to be efficient, right? Cuz it's an energy hog.
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It's only like 4 or 5 lb, but it uses 20% of our blood.
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So, the brain during the day to navigate the world, task on, outward, executive network, logic wants to be efficient.
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Driving down the 101 easily, going on the tube easily, not have to activate everything to get that done.
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If we only use those limited parts of our brain during the day and didn't have some way to high-intensity train them, those would go derelict.
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We wouldn't use them and we may lose them.
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So, I think in the biggest way possible is that dreaming process dreams and dreaming is high-intensity training for our brain.
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It keeps those corners engaged.
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It keeps those neurons firing that might not during the day and those are available to us the next day for a creative process for the next day or the next year or the next generation for adaptive process.
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That's my biggest, most romantic way of thinking about about why we dream so hard.
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Yeah, I like the maybe because I think we've all had different dreams that you feel you had for different reasons.
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And there are some dreams that you did feel well, like you said, like your nocturnal therapist, this feeling of like, okay, I'm I'm healing. I'm learning.
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You're working something out.
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Yeah, you're working something out.
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I've definitely had dreams where I feel like, oh my gosh, like this feels like it's mirroring my reality and I'm either preparing or I'm dealing with it internally.
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And and I think you're so right that there's so many different processes and it's hard to nail it down to one.
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Is there a way to start to label and define or do you think that's unhealthy when it comes to dreaming? Perfect question.
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So, to the maybe I'll add like sleep.
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You know, not yes and not no when it come my dream, your dream, infinitely wild. Okay?
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But what happens when you start looking at 10,000 dreams?
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What happens when you start So, I'm over here So, there is no like professor of dream science, right?
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So, when I was like when they asked me the publisher asked me like, can you put a book book together about this?
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I think we were vibing about this before we uh uh before we went live with this or recording with this.
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And it was like they're like, you wrote this thing about the brain, like, you know, smart drugs, Alzheimer's, creativity.
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Then you wrote this thing about the mind, like resilience and trauma and belief and about your own struggles.
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Why don't you put together something about dreams from a scientific perspective that everybody can read?"
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And I was like, "There're going to be so many gaps."
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And they said, "Then let us know where the gaps are, say maybe, say likely, and say I could I wonder, I believe."
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And that's what I've tried to do in the book.
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But to your question about when I started this process, when I looked at not your dream, my dream, but 10,000 dreams, Aristotle was writing about lucid dreaming.
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A couple hundred years ago, they're still writing about being chased or falling.
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And I was like, "Wait a second.
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There are patterns to dream reports."
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Like now they have dream banks.
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So the first thing I noticed was nightmares and erotic dreams are essentially universal.
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I say essentially because it's 90 plus in this world is considered a hundred, right?
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Because that's just how science works uh when you look at questionnaires and surveys.
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So everybody's had a nightmare.
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Erotic dreams are almost all the way up there.
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And then chasing, falling, uh falling teeth, that seems to be common.
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And then there was a dream that was very rarely reported, doing math.
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Now, I don't like math, so I was like, "That's all good for me."
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But but you start when you look at lots of thousands of dreams, you're like, "Why is that one so low?"
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Then now now walk with me over here.
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Then you start looking at brain scans and brain electricity. And what happened?
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What's the difference between the waking brain and the dreaming brain, right?
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In a 24-hour cycle, we're about 2/3 waking brain and 1/3 uh dreaming brain.
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And there are some transition zones that I love, like I call them liminal states or blurry zones that we can get into.
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But that when you see that, and you say, "Well, what's the difference?"
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I started off with like they're both burning hot, they're both sparkling like uh uh electricity.
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So, what's the difference?
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So, when you go from waking brain to dreaming brain, what happens is the need to look outward changes, right?
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And so, the executive network, a collection of structures, not just one thing, dampens.
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Logic and math ability dampen. They don't turn off.
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Nothing turns off in the brain, otherwise that, you know, you'd have a stroke.
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So, it dampens, the imagination network and the emotional systems called the limbic structures are liberated.
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So, if we know now that the dreaming brain, as a measurement, not my opinion, right?
12:03
We can talk about opinions, but this is a measurement.
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If the dreaming brain has dampened logic and reason and math, liberated emotion, hyper-visual, it kind of makes sense why we don't see a lot of math.
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Cuz that part of the brain that does that is it taking a backseat while we dream.
12:19
So, I said, "Okay, even if that's the only thing I can say in this book, and some youngster, you know, 10, 20, 30 years from now takes more data from dream banks that are more inclusive and bringing in more people, that patterns of how we dream, you know, and what we dream can be explained by the brain."
12:35
I thought to me, that was fascinating.
12:37
So, dreams are not limitless.
12:40
Yours is, mine is, but when you look at a lot of them, nightmares happen universally, erotic dreams happen essentially universally, and then we find very emotional, visual, movement may based dreams. Mhm. That's fascinating.
12:54
I mean, you don't even think about it that way, and I think so often it's kind of it's interesting because it's a microcosm of how we live our lives.
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Like, we live our lives thinking, "No one understands me.
13:04
No one knows what I'm going through.
13:06
Only I have this experience."
13:08
And then all of a sudden, when you zoom out and you look at the patterns, you're like, "Wait a minute, we're all struggling with the same thing."
13:14
I was just talking to someone earlier, and we were talking about how like we seem to be the problem solvers in our families, and then you start realizing how wait a minute, we're all trying to solve the same problems, we're dealing with the same emotions, and those patterns are so useful in finding So have they basically looked at dream patterns and then looked at stress patterns and lifestyle patterns?
13:34
Like is that what you're measuring them against or what are the patterns being measured against?
13:39
So if out of the 10,000 people, 9,000 people dreamt about their teeth falling out, what then are we measuring in their life to make sense of that dream?
13:47
Yeah, that's a great question.
13:49
And also we tend to fall into the same traps, right?
13:51
I think that looking at brain science shows that yes, we're individuals, but what's driving us and what's holding us back is also something we share.
14:00
That's why these conversations, that's why a certain book or certain song or certain interaction can kind of liberate you.
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And so the way I would I would explain this is uh the dream patterns that they're looking at and when I say they, I mean 20, 40 years of different studies.
14:13
I'm trying to stitch it together.
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Let me give you a specific one.
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There was one survey questionnaire where women going through divorce, when their dreams they were reconciling in their dreams that things were breaking up and people were moving on, those as a group tended to recover from divorce better.
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And so when you when you just look and you just say, "Okay, that's that's very interesting."
14:37
Those that were struggling in their dreams were also ones more likely to have depression longer.
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And so what that does to me is that invites a conversation.
14:47
So does the dream or the dreaming brain kind of give a clue to how well you're coping with your real waking life stress?
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That by itself is powerful.
14:55
That one, it knows about it.
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It it ain't some other brain, it's your brain.
15:02
It's just in this dreaming mode. So it knows about it.
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Your waking life is feeding your dream life.
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I mean 6, 7, 8 hours, how are you processing? How are you digesting?
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How are you metabolizing the most difficult thing in your day?
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And I think that's where I love it is that it's not distinct.
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And that the dreaming brain can be your shepherd.
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It can be the thing that helps you process its emotional trauma.
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And for people with PTSD, it can actually actually play back flashbacks.
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So, it's it's a wild space that leans emotional, leans visual.
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Let me give you a second example.
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With my patients, end-of-life cancer patients, dreams are expansive, positive, filled with reconciliation.
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As they're asking for surgery and all that, you would think they're all going to be horrific because it's dark times. Stress, right?
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You think day stress is is is turned into dreaming stress.
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But the But the connection is not clear.
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And that's where I think there's power in in in our dream life.
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I think in general, when I look at all the surveys, dreaming is our shepherd uh at the end of life.
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I think nightmares and erotic dreams cultivate the young mind, much like our minds are cultivated in adolescence.
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Dreams mirror and reflect what's going on uh during our life.
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For example, pregnancy dreams.
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Women who have who are pregnant, their dreams are very different.
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Rolling over in bed, what the babies are going to be called.
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So, sometimes waking anxiety and dream anxiety clearly linked.
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I got to give a talk tomorrow, I got a dream I'm showing up naked.
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I got a uh you know, I got an exam alarm. Sometimes they're clear.
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Sometimes they're your companion, pregnancy dreams, uh end-of-life dreams.
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Sometimes they're just junk.
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Not everything's going to make sense, right?
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Our waking life doesn't make sense.
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So, I think when you start to look at those categories, the fourth category being universal dreams, nightmares and erotic dreams in children, then the one we're left with, that the one that now I spend even more time with, is that hyperemotional, hypervisual that lingers into the next day.
17:07
What I would say is, don't let that one go.
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That's a solar flare from your brain in a unique state that you can't get to during the day.
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Hyperemotional, hyperliberated.
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The measurements of emotion in our dreaming brain can reach a top speed our waking brain can never reach.
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So, for me, when I look at when I look at the whole thing, the hyper-emotional, hyper-visual with a central image is a dream that has broken out from your dream life that is about you that a therapist can't get to.
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I mean, it's your brain conjured it.
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And that's one to reflect on.
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What I would say is like not every time, not everyone, but in our search for wellness and healing, that's a an a free and accessible portal.
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And when I was working on this book with the UK publishers, there was like seven or eight people who were like, "We're dreaming more.
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We're remembering our dreams more."
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Some lucid, you know, had lucid dreams.
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So, that's the second thing I would say is that this can be induced and cultivated.
18:07
You're not a passenger with your dream life.
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And what you remember from your dream life, you can also cultivate that.
18:14
You're not a passenger at that stage, either. Mhm.
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Let's talk about that a little.
18:17
So, I was going to ask you, if you don't remember your dream, I if you don't make the subconscious conscious, does that mean that it doesn't have an effect?
18:27
And are you encouraging us to take time to actually make the subconscious conscious and reflect on our dreams?
18:34
I would say the first question is I can't answer that fully.
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The second question is absolutely try to engage your dream life.
18:41
Sleep entry, when you go from waking to dreaming like Salvador Dalí did, or Christopher Nolan's talking about Inception, sleep exit, which we can get into, lucid dreaming.
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The answer to the question, should we engage our dream life? Yes, yes, yes.
18:54
I got a lot of science on that.
18:56
I got a lot of personal experience on that. let's dive into that.
18:58
I mean, there's so many things I want to talk about, but let's seeing as we've gone there now, let's let's dive into it now.
19:02
So, let's talk about the process of being more of a proactive leader in our dreams and not a passenger in our dreams.
19:11
What does that look like?
19:12
Because I would argue that anyone I talk to, we're all passengers in our dreams.
19:16
We simply go to bed, we may remember, we may not remember, we show up. It's like a car journey.
19:23
We jumped in the car, you went to sleep for a bit, you got to the other side, maybe you remember a tree you saw along the way or your mom and dad did something when you were a kid, but you don't remember most of it and it doesn't really matter.
19:33
You're in the driver's seat of a car you can't control. It seems that way.
19:34
That one we'll get to with lucid dreaming.
19:38
But how you can affect your dreams cuz we've gotten to the science, I believe they're relevant.
19:42
Let's take this first stage.
19:45
You go from waking to dreaming.
19:49
Right, whatever time that is.
19:49
Not every time, not for everyone, but just the fact that it's possible, that's something called sleep entry. Okay?
19:56
With those surface electrodes on our on our scalp, the electricity blends.
20:01
It's a It's like a liminal state.
20:02
Like I was I used to be a scuba diver when when you go from a freshwater river to an ocean, it's not like there's a crisp line, there's a blurry zone.
20:11
Similarly, when we go from waking to dreaming, there's about a 10-15 minute period called sleep entry.
20:19
Salvador Dali and some current tech companies in San Francisco, they believe that during that period, you're kind of sort of have access to that divergent creative ideation of dreaming and that they can extract ideas from there.
20:31
So much so, Thomas Edison with the light bulb would like have would fall asleep in a chair and when he'd fall asleep, and he'd startle himself awake, he'd write down what he was thinking.
20:41
That was a scene in Inception, right?
20:42
So, I'm just bringing I'll bring the science in, but that's there.
20:45
Christopher Nolan's talking about that.
20:47
Salvador Dali wrote a book about that.
20:49
You know, his stuff is real like the And so, what that that period is the first entry into dream life that you can still hold on to.
20:57
And what we're finding is that people have more interesting ideas, they have more divergent thinking and creative ideas at that window.
21:08
Is that But to be clear, your trouble at work, you got to create a project, is that going to guarantee it?
21:14
No, but it's a habit of respecting that transition liminal zone as a portal to a state your brain is not in when you're awake or not in when you're dreaming, right?
21:24
So, that's that's one thing that people can do to cultivate.
21:28
In that same area, some people feel and report, questionnaires and surveys, not measurements, that what you think about at that time uh will be more likely to populate your dream life, whether you remember or not, and may lead to the aha moment the next day.
21:43
Let me give you a specific example. I'm a cancer surgeon.
21:45
Cancer eats up blood vessels and tissues in different ways.
21:48
On challenging cases, I'll flip the images through as the last thing I go to bed thinking about.
21:52
And uh somebody asked me this in London.
21:55
They said, "Well, did you dream of surgery?"
21:58
I said, "No, I've never dreamt I've never dreamt of surgery, but I have a lot of dreams of scuba diving, navigating mazes, going through forests." Wow.
22:06
And so, what I what I concluded, it's my opinion, is that that it's a three-dimensional space.
22:10
I know I'm working on a three-dimensional creative project, and that my dream life is somehow um rehearsing that, practicing that, providing me with that maneuver in a complex surgery.
22:21
When I say, "Man, that that that was uh Where'd that come from?" sometimes I think.
22:25
It wasn't like, "In this scenario six, I will come up with solution four." Yeah.
22:30
No, like things arise during our waking life, and I think the dreaming brain builds that.
22:35
So, sleep entry uh for waking up uh intentionally and and writing down your thoughts and journaling at that moment, journaling in general about what you want to dream about, for me it's looking at pictures about a surgery, those are specific things as you fall asleep that somebody can try. Wow. That's fascinating.
22:53
Uh because I think journaling's taken off so much in culture, but I'm trying to bring some science to it.
23:00
I I think the act of journaling straight after waking up, like immediately.
23:05
I know for a fact that if I pick up my phone first thing in the morning, which I try to avoid to do, but when it does happen, I forget my dream immediately.
23:14
And I know I wake up kind of in a dream state and then I completely shut it off.
23:19
Have you found links between going to sleep with your phone or without your phone and how that affects our dreams or if you watch a particular show on TV and how does that affect your dream and what you do in the morning?
23:30
Does that have any correlation?
23:32
So that's a great question.
23:33
The thing you said about waking up, I'll get to that as sleep exit cuz there's some interesting science there.
23:37
But when you're looking at all these surveys, that's why I opened up with like we need more dream banks.
23:42
We need people who have a great exposure to social media to start talking about the dreams.
23:47
At this point, it doesn't look like they populate.
23:50
Dreams For let's take a specific example.
23:53
Erotic dreams tend to be about a narrow group of people in your life, family even when you're younger, repelling bosses, and celebrities.
24:01
So I'm curious to see like right like so now that doesn't mean there's a hundred papers on that, but those are the spring that's the sprinkling of information that I saw like so what becomes familiar to us?
24:13
Well, you know, people can have like awkward dreams about bosses, right?
24:15
They have sexual dreams about people they actually are not attracted to.
24:18
That's a big category in erotic dreams, but Is there any reasoning to that specifically because of being erotic dreams about people you're not attracted to?
24:28
Like where does that come from? I don't know.
24:30
I think it's a now we're getting into opinion.
24:31
I think I think it's a power dynamic play and I think intimacy can be both collaborative and also a power dynamic and some mix of it all, right?
24:39
But that's just that's an exploration, but erotic dreams since we're there and we'll get back to sleep exit is um they're interesting. We all get them.
24:49
They come before we've done the erotic act even if we haven't seen it.
24:53
So it's it's almost like an instruction if you will.
24:57
Um an inheritance of thinking, not just risk-taking or mental health, but we inherit those dreams, even the people who never go on to have sex, they still have erotic dreams.
25:07
Almost like a playbook that's meant for our mind to activate our brain and bodies for the act to procreate. That's the big topic.
25:15
The specific thing is, across cultures, different over over generations, the percentages are surprisingly similar, 90 plus.
25:23
The other surprising thing is that 80 to 90% in these reports rep- infidelity.
25:30
Cheating is common in erotic dreams.
25:32
Whether you're in a healthy relationship, whether you're lying about in a healthy relationship and coveting somebody else, or whether you're in a bad relationship, it's almost like a almost like a semi-built-in thing, and I think that's how I've learned to think about erotic dreams is that's just desire.
25:47
It's like a flare of desire.
25:50
It interestingly tends to be toward a narrow group, but the acts tend to be wild.
25:57
There's a few points that you made in the book that fascinated me, seeing as we're on the topic of erotic dreams.
26:00
I was sharing with the team earlier.
26:01
So, there's three things here.
26:03
But, let's go one by one.
26:05
So, erotic dreams are not fueled by masturbation or pornography. Walk me through that.
26:09
That's what some reports a decade ago mentioned.
26:11
Now, that might be changing, but what's interesting to me there is it's not what we do during the day that shows up in our erotic dreams.
26:25
It's actually what we fantasize about secretly during our day that's more likely to show up in our erotic dreams.
26:33
And scientifically to me, I think that makes a lot of sense because the dreaming process is the imagination network liberated.
26:39
So, it makes sense that what you imagine in your dream life is more connected to the fantasy you're having while you're awake.
26:47
It doesn't matter the sexual act, the sexual person, that what you uh what brings someone to climax, the thoughts they have during that process with their lover without their lover, it's the internal thinking of desire during the day that tends to find itself uh in erotic dreams.
27:10
And to me, that's consistent if you think about the dreaming brain uh as something that has the liberated imagination network.
27:18
It's an imaginative process, right?
27:20
Your eyes are closed, you that movie you're making for yourself.
27:23
So, whatever you're thinking about during the day, you know, that's the movie you're making at night.
27:28
So, then going back to what you were saying earlier, that if someone's in a happy relationship, but you're saying it's still common for them to cheat in their dreams.
27:35
a separate pattern, yeah.
27:36
Yeah, that's a pattern that you've seen.
27:38
So, um is that an argument then that that person may be happy in their relationship, but then they're I can't fantasizing.
27:43
I can't answer that cuz it would No, I love the question, but that's a deep question.
27:47
What I would say to you is from there what people ask is if you have dreams tend to have more bisexuality.
27:54
So, does that mean you have you're bisexual, you just haven't figured that out, or you're not sharing that with somebody during the day?
27:59
I can't answer that, but I think as we bring in more reports from dream banks and bring in more cultures, more backgrounds, more genders, and then more more diverse sort of perspectives on sexuality, we'll get insights into that.
28:12
But that's a very individual thing.
28:14
So, as a whole, there's a lot of cheating in erotic dreams.
28:18
As a whole, what shows up in our erotic dreams is what we imagine, and then it leaves it to the person.
28:24
That's why I opened with like, you know, people have asked me like, if you dream of your ex, does that mean you you really want them?
28:31
I was like, well, if you're just seriously thinking to still think If you're hung up on them during the day, you're dreaming about your ex, that means one thing.
28:36
But if you're like, no, I've really moved on, and a lover pops up in your dream, I think that's just a solar flare of desire.
28:42
I wouldn't make much of that. Mhm.
28:44
I think that's the hard part, right?
28:46
I think what we don't know is how seriously to take a dream or not because I feel like a lot of people exactly like you just said, you have a dream about something you're thinking, oh god, maybe I need that, maybe I don't.
28:58
And and and is that a lack of self-awareness?
29:02
Is it because the dream is not clear?
29:04
Like how do we How have you thought about that as you've reflected on dreaming?
29:08
How do we get better at knowing whether to take a dream seriously or not?
29:12
Because I feel like that would help solve so much of our conundrum or dilemmas that's created by dreams.
29:19
Yeah, it's a big question. question. It's a big question.
29:22
I'd love to know your thoughts, yeah.
29:24
Yeah, my opinion about it is that uh one, dreams should not be neglected, okay?
29:29
Uh nightmares, if they pop up and they arrive out of the blue, they shouldn't be neglected.
29:33
I think uh dreams that are flashbacks after PTSD obviously should not be neglected.
29:38
So there's some dreams that have a uh an easier rule to follow, if you will.
29:44
But then what about those other dreams that you're bringing up, right?
29:47
Like intensely emotional, that linger with you during the day, and you're wondering like, wait a second, is that an insight to myself that I don't even have yet about myself?
29:57
Should I discuss this with a therapist?
29:59
Should I discuss this with my lover?
30:01
And I think the way I've um started to reflect on my dreams a bit more is that when they are hyper emotional, it's an invitation to look at your life differently. All right?
30:16
I'm I feel like I'm doing well. I'm high-achieving. I'm doing this.
30:20
I'm not You know, you feel like, no, it's fine.
30:21
I'm dealing with a broken relationship.
30:23
Like But if you start having nightmares, or if you have emotional dreams that are filled with fright or regret, I'm not saying that that there's never an automatic link, right?
30:33
Other than the showing I'm naked at a podium or alarm not going off.
30:37
But the one that's powerful, haunts you, doesn't make sense, That's an invitation to think about something.
30:44
And back to our original conversation, to me uh that's a life well examined is paying attention to the emotional powerful dreams that you have that linger with you.
30:55
The dream is symbolic to get to your answer in the most specific way. The dream is a metaphor. The dream is symbolism.
31:01
Because the from the dreaming brain and you've hyper-visual, hyper-emotional, it's not going to spell it out for you.
31:10
It's going to be metaphorical.
31:12
It's going to be symbolic.
31:14
Specific example, Vietnam veterans who had PTSD got better, they start going through divorce, they're not and they're struggling, they're not dreaming of divorce.
31:23
They're dreaming of war again.
31:26
So, the experiences you're having, they're an invitation to reflect.
31:28
The meaning is metaphorical and symbolic, all based on how the dreaming brain is built. And it's personal.
31:37
It it's hard to say a bridge or a light bulb in your life at this moment is going to be the same meaning for me at this at this moment in life.
31:44
Or my life 10 years from now. Mhm.
31:47
Not just former versions of myself.
31:50
So, I'm not here to refute anything, but it's a very personal process. Your brain made it.
31:55
It's hyper it's a motion to a hyper-emotional state. It could mean nothing.
32:00
It could mean something, but what I'm I'm here to say is take a look at it. Yeah. It's not just static.
32:03
No, I I I think that's I completely agree with you.
32:07
I think it's a great point and I feel like it's really interesting because it then goes back to the idea that humans are meaning makers. Mhm. Absolutely.
32:17
And if you're looking at a metaphor on that, man.
32:19
then you're trying to figure out and if you have a if you have a negativity bias in your conscious mind, I wonder how much like I'll give an example.
32:30
I was talking to someone the other day and they were saying that they'd been dreaming about bears.
32:32
And so, I I Googling what that means and I was, you know, going to ask you, and I was I was googling about it.
32:37
It was really interesting because in a conscious state, a big bear feels scary, and it feels like death, and it feels like run away.
32:47
And that's how they saw a bear in their dream, but then when you looked at the dream spiritual version, whatever you call it, the inter- sorry. Mhm.
32:57
When you look at dream interpretation, Mhm.
32:59
the interpretation of that was bears represent strength, and they represent courage, and they have the symbolism.
33:06
Now I go, so it's a story Right. Yeah, depends. Yeah, depends.
33:09
Depends on which brain conjured up which image. Yeah.
33:11
You work in the circus, bear means one thing.
33:14
You know, you're a hunter, bear means one thing.
33:16
You know, in culture, bear means something else.
33:18
So, I like that, but just to go back to something that, you know, I've been I've been moving around, and people have asked me stuff.
33:26
The question you just asked is is is something special about are we meaning makers?
33:33
And now, this this is going to take me a little time to open up on this, but but what's what's interesting, and again, I don't have all the answers. This is a conversation.
33:40
Uh is that in the dreaming brain, even though the logic and reason areas are dampened, specifically the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex is it's right behind our sort of horns in the prefrontal cortex that pushed our brains forward, there's another area called the medial prefrontal cortex that's preserved. It it stays throbbing.
34:01
It's actually liberated a little bit.
34:05
And you know what that one does?
34:07
It does something we only figured out when we accidentally injure it, or somebody has a stroke in that area.
34:11
It stitches the story of our life together. Powerful, right?
34:16
And so, what's happening, this is this is this is cool.
34:20
What's happening is your emotions and your vision centers and your movement centers are just firing up stuff linked directly and indirectly to the stuff you fed it during the day, the stuff your life fed it, right?
34:32
Your life, your memory, plus the imagination.
34:36
And then the medial prefrontal cortex is there putting a story to it.
34:41
Dreams, often, not always, are stories.
34:43
They have a narrative component.
34:45
They're emotional, they're visual, they have a narrative component.
34:49
Our brains want to make a cohesive story.
34:52
I know that for a lot of reasons.
34:55
And the dreaming brain is something that also preserves that.
34:58
And some have even extended that to like, well, maybe that's why we can you know, we get movies that have jumps of ideas.
35:04
People go from one place to the other, like, our dreaming, the way we dream, prepares us for the way we appreciate art, right?
35:12
So, we can let that go this way.
35:12
On this on this side, some of my patients with certain complications and certain tumors and different things, they'll wake up and they won't feel certain parts of their body.
35:25
And they'll develop something called uh neglect.
35:29
Or they'll develop something uh what's called confabulation.
35:31
It's a fancy word for lying.
35:33
When the body signals are disconjugate, they don't make sense, the brain, the mind, will make up a story to make it all fit.
35:41
And some patients have actually try to throw a leg they don't feel off the bed, and they say, "Oh, that was a stranger."
35:48
And so, you see things with the injured brain and the healing brain that there's a drive within us.
35:55
Sometimes we'll even lie to ourselves and others to create a consistent or a story that makes sense to ourselves, meaning.
36:02
And I think if you look at that at the brain level, and you look at that at the dreaming level, what I try to tell people in my first book is, look at that at the life level.
36:10
Like, our maturation isn't done just with adolescence, right?
36:14
The work has to continue to cultivate your brain and your mind and your life.
36:19
So, when you get through a struggle and you you get through it, that prepares you for the the one.
36:25
If you're in a struggle now that's just overwhelming like something difficult, so hard, don't worry cuz you're cultivating that stress for the next one.
36:32
And I think all of those pieces, not measurements, but my opinion that we are meaning makers, we are storytellers in the moments of our lives, in our dreaming brain, in our life in general, and the area where stories and emotions are the wildest with our dreams.
36:49
And that's why I think why we dream is something bigger than just threat rehearsal.
36:54
I think it's something powerful when we wake up in that clarity is is because our subconscious has had its run.
36:59
Do are people having, when you look at the data, are people having the same dream again and again and again, or are they having different dreams every night?
37:09
Well, that's a that's a good question.
37:10
So, there are recurrent dreams.
37:10
So, specific example, the only thing I can say with certainty is dreams come from our brain.
37:15
We do these exotic brain surgeries where we wake people up to map the surface of the brain.
37:21
You don't feel You wouldn't know if I touched your brain if the situation ever arose, which it won't, but like the brain doesn't feel.
37:27
The brain feels through its nerves.
37:29
So, we can dissect the brain in somebody while they're talking.
37:33
The point there is is not is not to scare anybody.
37:36
That's a therapeutic process.
37:37
But when we tickle and map the brain, they'll say, "Oh, I remember this nightmare from when I was a kid."
37:42
You can activate a recurrent nightmare in a patient by tickling the surface of the brain.
37:48
So, dreams come from the brain.
37:51
There are recurrent dreams.
37:51
There are That's individual.
37:54
There are common dreams across people, falling, being chased, teeth falling out.
37:58
They're universal dreams.
38:00
So, you you start to see all these patterns.
38:02
A recurrent dream is a loop of electricity in that part of your brain that pops up again and again.
38:08
It must be cuz if we take a little faint pen and tickle it and you have that that dream again, that's that's built into the the electrical flows of your brain.
38:16
So, we have to step back a little bit when you ask those questions because there are so many different dream types and dream experiences.
38:23
I don't want to give a single answer, but recurrent dreams are are loops of electricity that happen over and over again.
38:28
We can actually activate that.
38:30
And then universal dreams, common dreams, and rare dreams is how I conceptualize it.
38:34
What does someone do if they have a recurrent dream that they don't want to have anymore? Mhm, big question.
38:41
Um, okay, so let's look at that.
38:43
Um, so now we got the foundation, waking brain, dreaming brain, hyper imaginative, hyper emotional.
38:50
Um, you're cooking up, you're creating the events of your dreamscape.
38:52
And I found this to be very powerful that nightmares, since we imagine them, the treatment for nightmares is something called imagery rehearsal therapy.
39:05
Now, I'm not a therapist.
39:05
I mean, I I take care of a lot of cancer patients.
39:08
I'm more than 10,000 in my life.
39:09
So, I there's a um, there's a cultivation uh that I have benefited from from them trusting me.
39:18
Uh, so I think I have some sense of understanding of human nature, but but therapy, and when you try to help somebody through conversation, talk therapy, right? That's great.
39:27
It seems to be effective. That's out there.
39:29
What they're finding is imagery rehearsal therapy.
39:33
It's a new thing where imagine what you want to be.
39:35
Imagine something you don't want to have.
39:37
And when I read that, I was like, "Uh, I don't know if I can sink my teeth in that."
39:41
Until I started reading about nightmares and learning about nightmares and across all different sciences that if you practice before you go to bed, going back a bit to your saying that we can actually feed our dreams, if you practice a new script for the ending of your nightmares, you can rescript your nightmares through something called imagery rehearsal therapy. People can look it up.
40:03
And not every time, not for everyone, but just the fact that nightmares can be rescripted is powerful.
40:12
The you think you're out of control, but you can feed your dreams, you can steer your dreams, and lucid dreaming is the prime example of that.
40:18
And And that therapy can guide you to a better conclusion your dream.
40:22
I love that as a scientist because it's the imagination network.
40:28
You've imagined this nightmare, and it's powerful to think now you can actually imagine a different kind of ending for this nightmare.
40:35
To me, that's all scientifically uh uh consistent.
40:40
And to me, that's why I think it's powerful to look at dreaming as more magical, more fascinating that it is being driven by certain brain processes, right?
40:49
So, you don't wake up and say, "Uh that's that's a glitch. Uh that's static."
40:53
No, there's something drove that.
40:55
Learn about the engine behind it, and then reflect about the the meaning about it. Yeah, for sure.
41:01
I mean, I I can relate to that.
41:02
I feel like there've been parts of my life where I've been able to code the emotion and feeling and script that I wake up with by what I put into the code before I go to bed.
41:15
And so, at one point in my life, when I was trying to wake up early and I didn't enjoy it, and my reaction to waking up early in the morning would be, "Oh, I'm so tired.
41:26
I just want to stay in bed. I just, you know."
41:29
And I wanted to wake up early.
41:29
I I believed that was a worthy pursuit and a habit to invest in.
41:35
And so, I would, before I went to bed, I would say to myself, "I am waking up energized, happy, and healthy."
41:43
And so, even that re-scripting in the evening, I found I would wake up and I would be saying that to myself when I woke up.
41:51
And there was this direct link between a script that I didn't have it written in the morning.
41:55
I didn't have it there, but that repetition would carry over in the morning.
41:59
And I found whenever I used it, it worked.
42:01
And whenever I don't use it, I can still wake up and feel, "Oh God, why am I waking up so early?"
42:04
And so, I I've sensed moments of that where I've had experiences of that.
42:09
And that coding or that imagery rehearsal therapy that you mentioned, that would be I would love for our audience to practice it, community to try it out and see how it shows up in your life because I think what we don't realize is you're subconsciously rehearsing anyway. Oh, yeah. Right?
42:27
Whatever you do is is going on. You're doing it. Yeah, yeah.
42:31
Whatever you're watching, reading, seeing, that is imagery rehearsal.
42:32
It's just not therapy and it's not conscious, but we're doing imagery rehearsal throughout the day and before we go to bed.
42:40
And it adds a big question here.
42:42
So, when you when you say something like that, it ties into positive thinking, wish fulfillment, all these seem these nebulous terms that I think some people really embrace, other people poopoo and they say that can't be true.
42:53
What I say is something in the middle.
42:56
If that through studying the about dreams and dreaming, I've learned about like what's the biology of how what you just described about I think about something before I go to bed and it helps me wake up and I'm you know, I'm feeling it more.
43:08
I'm thinking about it more in the right way.
43:11
Like that's just out there, right?
43:11
That feels like there's like a kite flying flying above our head.
43:15
What I'm trying to get people to understand is the dream dreams, if they can be defined, are thoughts, emotions, and activities that are actually happening at the brain level.
43:27
That's what's sparking all that electricity.
43:29
If I'm running in a dream, the motor strip that moves my legs, the neurons there are firing.
43:36
The signals just aren't getting through.
43:38
So, then what that does is it opens up a whole new world of athletes practicing the shot in their mind, positive reinforcement, going to bed and rescripting your dreams, right? Journaling.
43:51
Like people are like, "Okay, so so there's brain activity that's leading to this mind that I want to get my mind to lean a certain way and the brain activity is driving that.
44:01
And so what's the people say, "Well, well, how did that happen?"
44:04
I would give you the example of placebo.
44:08
And so, when you believe a medicine is going to help you, even if I tell you, "Look, that's there's nothing active in it. That's just like sugar."
44:15
That's just something that has no capacity to change by the pill itself, the physiology of your body.
44:23
But belief is enough to make people feel less pain.
44:28
And I can give you a scientific explanation about how that happens.
44:31
Belief you're armed with neurotransmitters.
44:35
That electricity that we're measuring, the the chemicals that are floating around.
44:38
Think of the brain is like a hundred billion microscopic jellyfish.
44:42
And there's like electric storms and waves of a of neurotransmitters flying around in there.
44:47
When you believe, the pharmacy of your mind is actually releasing chemicals and things that generates different electricity that alleviates pain, that prepares your brain and mind for rescripting the nightmare, that makes positive gives you the scientific basis possibly for positive reinforcement, positive relationships.
45:07
Like these are actually not just emotions, but they're working at the level of the brain. That's powerful. Mhm. Yeah, I know.
45:14
I love that I love that description.
45:17
And as you were saying that, I was thinking about this it it's all coming back to an intentionality, a programming, a like what I'm hearing from you is just this idea of get active, get involved, be conscious, be aware.
45:35
I was thinking about I remember during the pandemic, I probably had a up until the pandemic, I probably hadn't watched TV or played video games for like 10 years, like consistently at all.
45:49
And I think the pandemic kind of, you know, had a time and we were indoors and all the rest of it.
45:53
And so, I started watching TV.
45:54
I remember one of the shows I was watching, which I really enjoyed watching, was Ozark.
45:59
And I I I remember watching Ozark every day for 30 days in a row and it's not even the scariest show and while I was watching I probably didn't feel anything and somehow I felt that I dream every night that my house was being broken into. Like that Possible.
46:13
Yeah, that was an experience that I was having and I connected the two because as someone who didn't have nightmares as an adult and as someone who didn't watch that much TV, those were the only two changes that I had at least noticed.
46:24
Or if if we get back to that it's symbolic, maybe it's the stress of the pandemic.
46:29
I mean, so it's never going to be pinned down exactly, but you're right, the paying attention to the patterns of your dreams more than just a dream unless it's hyper emotional, but the pattern of dreams I think is an important thing to do like and how does our waking life feed our our dream life?
46:49
What I would tell you is when color television arrived and magazines, the dream reports show a bump in people having colored color dreams.
46:58
Like there were more black and white dreams when TV was black white.
47:02
And I was like, wait, but the world is in color.
47:03
And what I'm saying to you is that's why this topic is so fresh cuz it doesn't all make sense.
47:09
The science gives some insight and the exploration reveals there's so many things we don't understand.
47:15
The the take home is it's not a it's not a passive process.
47:18
It's not something that is coming from the gods or omens.
47:25
It's your brain giving you thoughts, emotions, dreams and potentially insights that you can't have access to with your waking brain.
47:34
And to me, that's a special portal and how people cultivate that, I think it's up to them.
47:39
I'm here to let people know that there's a rigorous science behind the brain biology, brain chemistry, brain electricity that drives dreaming.
47:47
Yeah, I mean that bump in color television I can't imagine we'll be having enough data to look at the social media bump. Right.
47:53
Because to me it's bizarre to feel that exposure to social media, pornography, being on the online world doesn't lead to specific or certain dreams.
48:03
Like Especially with the hours that people putting in, right? Yeah. Exactly.
48:08
So that would be the next wave.
48:08
And my hope is that somebody listening to this you know, as I mentioned, I'm 51, I've got three sons, 18, 19, 22 in college.
48:17
Like my hope is somebody walks away and says oh wait, some of the stuff about dreams can be explained by the brain.
48:22
Because imagine in 20, 30 years how much more data we'll have through people with online dream banks and how much more we'll know about neuroscience.
48:31
Imagine the connections that somebody sitting here and the playing different roles than us can make.
48:36
And so it's more of a it's an inception.
48:39
It's I want people to be ignited that dreams can some parts of dreams can be made sense of. Yeah.
48:47
I want to dive back into nightmares because as a child I grew up having a lot of nightmares.
48:51
I I don't I remember one of them very vividly even till today.
48:56
I don't dream about it anymore, but I remember waking up in the middle of the night feeling horrified.
49:02
And you talk about in the book how children have the most nightmares. Like it's common.
49:04
Children have five times as many nightmares as adults you say.
49:06
Even the gentlest childhood is no protection against nightmares.
49:11
And I think that's really unnerving for parents when their kids having nightmares.
49:16
I have friends who have kids who tell me like oh god, she just doesn't sleep.
49:20
She has nightmares and it's like you're trying to figure it out.
49:23
And I mean you're you're a father, so it's interesting to hear how you may have felt about that.
49:27
I'm sure a lot of us listening right now are thinking god, I definitely had nightmares as a kid.
49:33
When you're having that as a kid it can be so unnerving.
49:34
It can be so difficult even more than as an adult because you really feel powerless.
49:39
What have been some have there been any therapies or remedies that have helped?
49:44
But then you go on to say that nightmares are needed. So walk me through that. All right.
49:48
So So when I was thinking about this book, I was rolling around LA going to different spots and sort of just bouncing around people, you know, regular people at Dodger Stadium.
49:57
And often I got the question like, all right, you're going to talk about dreams and dreaming uh you going to have a new take on it.
50:05
But clearly nightmares can't be good for you, right?
50:07
There's no use for nightmares.
50:08
And I thought I got to take this one head-on in chapter two.
50:09
And so when I look at that I would ask people to think of nightmares based on age.
50:13
And we do that in the hospital in in medicine and surgery and science where they're sort of age-related, pediatric and adult is what I would say.
50:21
We've talked about adults, flashbacks, nightmares if they arrive, pay attention to them.
50:26
They could be a warning flare for some mental health issues.
50:28
You get them more in depression.
50:30
You know, we've left that.
50:31
How to explain nightmares in kids is an exploration. It's a conversation. I think it's fresh.
50:36
And I looked at a bunch of pieces that um uh that helped me sort of come up with an idea, uh a story if you will.
50:43
So if you look at uh the first thing about nightmares that struck me is um you have to say, "Hey Johnny, that was only a nightmare."
50:55
It's only with nightmares that we tell our kids "That's only a nightmare."
51:00
So as a conversation, does that mean Johnny was blurring dreaming brain thoughts and waking brain thoughts until that moment?
51:10
So that's that's a power I don't I'm not saying I have the answer.
51:11
I'm just I'm leaving that with your audience. That's one. Nightmares do that.
51:14
By definition, nightmares wake you up and they sear your memory. Okay.
51:21
Um just like our kids learn to walk and talk, our mind is being cultivated.
51:23
So they have these families that signed all the kids up to be woken up and talk about their dreams for like 20 years in a row.
51:30
They're called longitudinal.
51:33
Kids when they start talking their dreams are like a table. Uh you know, a sweater.
51:38
Then they get more imaginative.
51:40
And what happens is 5 6 7 nightmares arrive. What else is arriving?
51:47
They're developing visual-spatial skills, and they're also developing this thing called theory of mind.
51:52
People can look up these terms.
51:53
That children at some point develop the ability to look at somebody and say, "That smile, I don't think they mean well." Mind reading.
52:05
Reading the other person's intention, right?
52:07
That arrives, theory of mind, at the same time as nightmares.
52:10
So, my biggest way to conceptualize that is nightmares arrive in children to help them develop a sense of self versus other.
52:19
Help them Not a sense of identity, but that my thoughts and my experiences are mine, my waking life and and dream life are separate, and that I need to think of myself as different from my uncles and aunts and other people around me.
52:33
And I think I think that's the function of nightmares in children.
52:39
You may have had them a lot, but they arrive, and then very few of them lead to nightmare disorder.
52:44
Like, it doesn't ruin their the next day.
52:45
So, it's almost sort of like whereas in adults, nightmare disorder means the residue is lingering with you.
52:51
So, when you look at the patterns, children learn to walk and talk.
52:55
Nightmares arrive around 4, 5, 6, and most of them go away.
52:58
Erotic dreams around like 11, 12, 13, and persist in some way.
53:02
Adolescence arrives around 15, 16.
53:04
But, these are cognitive changes.
53:08
The The brain looks about the same.
53:08
It's not like that a new lobe pops up.
53:10
These are cognitive changes that are happening.
53:13
So, I think nightmares cultivate the mind in children. They arrive and fade.
53:17
Things that happen that universally in science aren't accidental.
53:21
And it's the It's the dream we've always had that all of us have had as a nightmare. Mhm.
53:26
Yeah, that's super fascinating to me. Super fascinating. And it's amazing. Huh? It's an exploration.
53:33
Yeah, and and it's it is such a It's so interesting how we're so addicted to certainty and conclusiveness. Yeah. it's kind of stifling.
53:43
Yeah, it's very stifling.
53:45
There's a rigidity to it, right?
53:46
Do this, don't do this, this will save you, this won't save you. It's like, no.
53:49
But the dreaming process leaves it open like, we're just beginning to understand, it's personal, keep digging, keep exploring, fail better.
53:58
I think that's what they all show us.
54:00
What Why I feel like what the conversation we're having exposes a weakness that we have across so many areas of our life, which is that we're uncomfortable with uncertainty. Yeah.
54:10
And we constantly feel discomfort when we can't control.
54:16
And I think dreams are like the ultimate version of that.
54:21
Dreams are like, hey, just a reminder you need uncertainty.
54:25
Let me dig into that a little bit.
54:25
I have some ideas about that.
54:26
Like, when we fall asleep and dream, the executive networks dampen. Let me reverse a bit.
54:35
Most of the day is something we call task on, it's outward.
54:39
And the brain, the executive network, reason, logic is paying attention.
54:40
Of course, food scarcity, right?
54:42
Woolly mammoths, it makes sense those who are best at paying attention outward, navigating the world, and using as little amount of calories and brain energy.
54:53
That seems like that would be a natural adaptation.
54:54
Well, what I would tell people is when we're not task on, the brain doesn't rev down like your like your computer like goes and then you have to hit the keyboard to pop it up.
55:05
No, it creates a mental life of its own.
55:07
All right, that's the imagination network.
55:09
So, during the day, we're mostly executive network outward, but if there's nothing to do like with mind wandering or things are safe, we turn back into our own head.
55:18
Dreaming is the example of that, but just suffused with like uncertainty.
55:26
And so, the question becomes the day is so focused on thinking, calculating, adrenaline is up, adrenaline finds the signal in the noise.
55:36
Um they they've done studies where they change that.
55:40
And then the dreaming brain is kind of the opposite. Adrenaline comes down.
55:44
You're looking for looser patterns, divergent thinking, designing a car, not fixing an engine.
55:51
It to me to me, the uncertainty that the dreaming brain goes through, that's our genius built in.
55:58
We don't We actually don't want to become too rigid in our habits.
56:03
It might be okay today going on the freeway or going on the tube as we mentioned, but that's not the that's not the process your brain needs to be in to be the most adaptive for heartache, for falling in love, for a kid getting sick, for the uncertainty with the environment will give us.
56:18
And the uncertainty we almost want to engage in love affairs and adventures.
56:22
I think that's the balance. Get things done. Try not to be too rigid.
56:28
Try to be open-minded and appreciate that your dreaming brain's going to take you there whether you want it or not.
56:35
That's the That's the love story of uncertainty and creativity.
56:36
Yeah, and it's I'm going to flip-flop because we talked about uncertainty and creativity, but I want to go into lucid dreaming.
56:44
And this idea of wanting some control in the uncertainty.
56:50
Um but I before we get there, I wanted to go back to sleep exit cuz I don't think we we talked about sleep entry, but we didn't finish sleep exit.
56:55
And that works because sleep exit uh that dampened executive network that dampened adrenaline that looks for the signal in noise, it seems to come back on.
57:07
And if an alarm goes off, we know it comes back on.
57:11
Like you could be dreaming and sleeping, you smell smoke, the executive network is the boss.
57:14
It it will pop back on and dominate.
57:16
And so if you do grab your phone in the morning and check emails too quickly or jump on Instagram like your brain will go to that forward task on feature.
57:27
And the the residue or the lingering feelings of your dream life will necessarily be put in the backseat.
57:35
And so, if you do want to remember your dreams more as you wake up, if you have the luxury of a bed and time and not an alarm, that's a critical window sleep exit to sort of hold on to your dream thoughts and your dream experiences.
57:47
Um it's an imperfect process, but I can tell you people who have tried, they get better at it.
57:53
And again, it's free, it's accessible, it's from your own brain.
57:56
I think it's one of those habits that I've incorporated in my life for the last 5 10 5 10 years.
58:02
I get So, what exactly Yeah, what exactly So, what So, what I do is if I have the luxury, because I do now, I I didn't for a long time.
58:06
I mean I mean the phone calls and pages are going off in the middle of the night.
58:11
And now it's more like if I wake up in the morning, I try to linger. And I try not to move.
58:16
And there's different types of yoga.
58:18
There people have been talking about a lot of stuff like this for centuries and millennia.
58:23
And I'm just adding some scientific pieces that support it, but that I'm I'm trying to not have my executive network kick in.
58:29
I'll keep my eyes closed.
58:29
I'll run through some thoughts. Oh, that's interesting. Hold on.
58:32
How would I should I do that?
58:33
Like I I I have my sleep exit uh thinking or moments, if you will.
58:40
And then I'll I'll reach over. I'll go to my notes app.
58:42
It's right on the home screen.
58:43
And I'll write a few things down.
58:46
When I have ideas, I mean I'd say a great majority have come from them.
58:50
They're almost all bad ideas, but that is the idea generator.
58:54
If I've had a good idea, it's been during that time.
58:55
It's rarely it's rarely like at 2:00 on a triple espresso, right?
59:00
That's important, because we have to get things done.
59:02
But the dreaming process, sleep entries we talked about, and sleep exit, I think are interesting portals where they're sort of blurry liminal states that we have a different type of thinking without it being just like wildly psychedelic.
59:14
You know, it's measured, but it's a it's a fresh perspective.
59:17
It's a different take on the things that are important in your life at that moment.
59:21
Yeah, I mean even the language of sleep entry and sleep exit is so powerful.
59:25
Well, I got to you know, but this called hypnagogic and hypnopompic.
59:29
So, the first thing I'm out there is like stop using these words that suck, right?
59:32
They're like confuse people.
59:35
I'm so glad you didn't use them, yeah.
59:35
I mean like but even hearing you say I've I've I've never heard the word sleep entry and sleep exit before.
59:40
And I personally really like that language because I think we don't think about it like that.
59:46
It's so funny how we we enter buildings, we leave buildings, we enter spaces, we leave spaces, and sleep is kind of like that.
59:54
And we are talking about evening routines and morning routines, but this is almost a bit more intimate to both sides of that.
1:00:02
It's the essential routine.
1:00:04
Now, just sleep entry and sleep exit, what I love about it is that I can put stickers on your scalp, our scalps, and record the electricity and be like, "Look, the waves change.
1:00:16
You're you are measurably, not just by report, like, 'Hey, I'm feeling different.' I get that. I trust that.
1:00:22
That's individual, but the brain waves during sleep entry and sleep exit have uh a pattern.
1:00:31
They overlap in a way that never happens while you're awake or while you're dreaming. Mhm. All right?
1:00:38
So, like that's that's what I want people to walk away with.
1:00:40
Like, it's not just his thing.
1:00:41
He's looking at the fact that he can measure that this is a different space right now.
1:00:47
Now, that doesn't mean it's powerful or not.
1:00:48
That's for you for you to figure out, but we can measure sleep entry and sleep exit, and it looks different on our 24-hour cycle of brain waves.
1:00:53
And how long does it last?
1:00:55
Well, it's different for different people, and people seem to cultivate it, but Salvador Dalí has written about it, said, you know, anywhere from 2 to 12 minutes.
1:01:02
That's how long you have Yeah, but it's it's personal, but it's real.
1:01:07
That's for everybody to figure out for themselves, you know.
1:01:09
But I like the 2 to 12 minutes.
1:01:11
It gives us a gauge as to how long do you not let your executive brain turn on in the morning.
1:01:18
And because there's science, there's tech companies coming up with a little uh you know, your iPhone or Apple Watch is tracking your stages of sleep and when people are in that sleep entry, it'll buzz them to wake up. Like Dolly tried.
1:01:30
And they'll and that that's their way of write down what you're thinking now as sort of the tech approach to creativity. It's interesting, right?
1:01:38
How does I mean talking about the tech approach again another tangent cuz this is so fascinating.
1:01:41
I'm like completely obliterated any form of structure but it's it's great.
1:01:47
Where do you see the cross-section of AI and dreams?
1:01:49
Like where can it be useful?
1:01:52
Where will it be helpful with this? Where will it not?
1:01:55
Will it help us ask better questions?
1:01:57
Is it going to help us take better notes?
1:02:00
Is it going to help us I don't know.
1:02:02
I'm not a computer scientist but I'll tell you two things.
1:02:05
They're making programs that add noise because sometimes the patterns and algorithms of computers become so rigid like our daily thinking that they can't handle the insertion of new data and that sort of mirrors what's going on.
1:02:17
Like that's it's called over fitted.
1:02:17
The the computer process and algorithm design is too tight, too efficient.
1:02:22
And that learning from dreaming they have they find that the computer system is more adaptive when they add in noise.
1:02:32
Where artificial intelligence fits in, I'm not sure but tech is all over it.
1:02:37
They're tracking the data from smartphones and certain people you volunteering they'll play certain songs and they'll have people watch commercials and see if they dream about it more and then buy that product more. Like that space is here. Somebody's listening.
1:02:49
Like that's a massive space and I just think I would remind people that we're not completely shut off when we dream.
1:02:55
We wake up to alarms and smoke and that we should be careful about in that vulnerable precious uh your remarkable and unique state that somebody's not just taking marketing advantage of it.
1:03:07
And I think that's where AI will extract data, figure out what's the right buzz, the right sound and just riff on this a little bit like 100 years ago they were like people would sleep and they put their hand in like a bucket of water to see if they had more dreams about water.
1:03:20
In the modern version they're going to be taking your data and trying to fine-tune like the song, the scent, and the picture to put, you know, to throw at you to try to get you to buy stuff. So, god.
1:03:31
I'm a bit like dystopian about that because I don't want, you know, I'm I'm private, especially in my dream life, yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
1:03:37
No, it's I mean, I feel like some of my favorite movies have been about dreams. You mentioned Inception.
1:03:42
Even, I mean, this isn't about dreams, but still in that in that space of um Vanilla Sky. Yeah.
1:03:46
With um Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, that movie, if you've not seen it, it's probably one of my favorites and just how that memory bank or some sort of like subconscious bank is created and held and it's fascinating thinking about that.
1:04:01
There's a few more things, Raoul, that I want to go over with you from the book, which I think are so interesting for people.
1:04:07
I want to talk to you about, before we get into lucid dreaming, I want to talk to you a bit about how dreams can predict the future.
1:04:14
And I think a lot of people worry that their dreams, their thoughts can create reality.
1:04:20
Subconsciously, somewhere we feel that.
1:04:23
Like, I know people who have illnesses or like, "Oh, I manifested this.
1:04:27
Like, I made this happen."
1:04:27
Or like, "I have a disease and oh my god, I saw this coming."
1:04:31
Or or, you know, that kind of feeling. Warning dreams. Yeah, warning dreams.
1:04:35
And that almost feels a bit worrying as well because often when you have that warning, you know, constantly replaying and thinking about it while you're awake and while you're asleep.
1:04:45
Can dreams predict the future, especially when it comes to health?
1:04:49
In one specific way, dreams can absolutely predict the future of your health, and we'll get into that. That's Parkinson's.
1:04:57
But in general, for cancer, for other diseases, it's hard to tease out whether my patients had the diagnosis and then sort of reverse thought, like, "I think I had a dream about that." I'm not judging them.
1:05:10
I'm just totally open-minded, but I can't I can't grip the data on that.
1:05:13
Um but if you do have a dream about disease, statistically, you're not more likely to have that disease.
1:05:21
They've been looking at these surveys.
1:05:23
So, it might just reveal a certain anxiety you're having. Again, symbolic.
1:05:27
You might be struggling with something and then have a disease-based dream.
1:05:33
So, as long as we remember that most of the time they're symbolic and not literal, I think that's important.
1:05:40
Um there are uh plenty of reports and surveys where breast cancer patients have said like they had a dream I felt a lump and these sort of things. I respect that.
1:05:48
I respect their whole journey.
1:05:50
So, I want to put that out there.
1:05:52
The one specific way that dreams can predict the future, I need to unpack this one for a little bit because this was mind-blowing when I when I learned about it.
1:06:00
There's something called REM behavior disorder, which I'm relabeling dream enactment behavior.
1:06:06
Uh yeah, my my world you. Thank you so much.
1:06:09
My world the words are are they confuse, you know?
1:06:10
Um dream enactment behavior.
1:06:15
Uh middle-aged men 50s acting out their dream, usually protecting their bed partner.
1:06:23
Um they come in, the bed partner is maybe has an injury.
1:06:27
Those men 94% of the time and that's essentially in medicine it's universal.
1:06:32
15 years later will develop Parkinson's. You think, you know?
1:06:38
So, that is the one example and it's if it's the only example for every neuroscientist out there, every scientist out there, hear me with this, that the first warning flare of the brain's deterioration with Parkinson's is a change in dreams 15 years ago.
1:06:57
I'll just leave it at that.
1:06:57
For all for all the rigorous people out there saying, "Hey, they're talking about stuff like I'm questioning whether what you know, the science can really show this."
1:07:05
Look up REM behavior disorder, cap all caps REM behavior disorder, which I call it dream enactment behavior.
1:07:10
It's in Scientific American.
1:07:12
This isn't like one paper I'm digging up.
1:07:14
Like this is thing This is stuff that's coming out.
1:07:18
REM behavior disorder predicts Parkinson's 15 years later.
1:07:23
And what I would say to the researchers out there is is that an opportunity for us to start with medicine earlier?
1:07:27
I mean, it just says so much.
1:07:28
But outside of that one and and all you need is one unicorn for unicorns to be real.
1:07:33
I haven't found any evidence that dreams predict the future.
1:07:37
I mean, they definitely don't give you lottery numbers and stuff like that.
1:07:39
But he had a more grounded level, uh they don't they don't actually predict what's going to happen to you.
1:07:46
Um but what happens to you maybe because of what the dream is symbolically mentioning.
1:07:51
You're going through a difficult time and you lose your job and you have a dream about losing your job.
1:07:56
So, I can see where those connections would form.
1:07:57
I just I just don't have any.
1:07:59
So, I'll leave it as a maybe.
1:07:59
It's so interesting how again it goes back to this idea of when you get a diagnosis or something happens, you then go back to finding that point.
1:08:09
Like it's almost like you've been dating someone and you knew they were wrong and then when they break up with you, you're like, "I knew it."
1:08:17
You go You replay it all.
1:08:19
Yeah, yeah, you replay it like and then you now you see all the red flags.
1:08:20
And and again, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's that feeling of I remember and I know.
1:08:27
And but we're not always good at trusting our gut in that moment.
1:08:32
You know what I'm saying?
1:08:32
Like there's there's not a feeling of it's almost like again, and I'm not discounting anyone's experience, but I find even I do it where you're living your life and then something happens and you go, "I knew it. I knew it."
1:08:44
There was a part of you that sensed it.
1:08:45
That's what I'll call that hunch and instinct. Yeah.
1:08:49
And I think we we connect, if I may, Yeah, please.
1:08:52
in the moment as we navigate uncertainty and because we're not just reflexive creatures, right?
1:08:57
There's this thing called counterfactual thinking like I can run out I if this happens then that.
1:09:04
I can play scenarios out and you know what does that? The imagination network.
1:09:07
The same thing that's liberating dreaming.
1:09:09
We create a mental workspace. What if this happens? What if this happens?
1:09:12
What if this doesn't happen as we navigate the uncertainty.
1:09:14
So it's not just, you know, pull back from a hot frying pan or, you know, pull back from a scorching rock if you're a lizard, right?
1:09:21
That's Those are reflexes.
1:09:21
We have the ability to choose.
1:09:25
And I think when you look at what you're saying about hunch and instinct and how we kind of knew something and we should have maybe paid more attention to it.
1:09:34
I I think that for me that's in the rearview.
1:09:36
When you're in the moment and things are imperfect as they often are, I believe that that you are trying to create the outcome out of that imperfect situation and when it doesn't arise or it doesn't arrive for you, so we do look back and say, "Hey, um you know, maybe we should have done things differently."
1:09:54
That is the cost of the freedom of choice that we have right now what to do, whether to grab this glass or not.
1:10:02
And just like heartache is the cost of exposing yourself to falling in love, you know, and I'm familiar with that.
1:10:08
So I I think I think people should look at that as like that's that's what makes life exciting, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
1:10:15
Have you seen any connection between alcohol and dreams?
1:10:17
Well, it's a big question.
1:10:19
So this is a notable thing that I left out of the book.
1:10:21
I I have patients waking up from anesthesia.
1:10:23
I'm floating above disassociative states, like psychedelic experiences.
1:10:29
Ambient dreams, fentanyl dreams.
1:10:29
Alcohol suppresses dreams.
1:10:32
People smoke weed, marijuana users in the morning, they don't remember their dreams.
1:10:35
So I couldn't find an it definitely affects dreaming.
1:10:38
To me that says two things.
1:10:41
Dreams are coming from the brain.
1:10:42
You take drugs and your dreams change. They're biological.
1:10:47
And the second thing is I couldn't find a way to say antidepressants make this change your dreams, you know, coke and meth makes this change. And alcohol as well.
1:10:55
And alcohol if I just couldn't find something to wrap it around. Yeah.
1:10:59
And I tried cuz I I was like, that's going to be one of the chapters.
1:11:02
And I just I I didn't find a clear link except for one.
1:11:07
Galantamine is this drug we give patients with dementia.
1:11:10
It works on acetylcholine.
1:11:12
It's one of the less famous neurotransmitters. We have a lot. They do a lot.
1:11:15
It's not dopamine does this.
1:11:17
It's not that linear as we're seeing now and liberating people now is uh galantamine.
1:11:22
And so, those people they take it and they're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm I'm becoming aware I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming." That's lucid dreaming. You double that dose.
1:11:33
They have more lucid dreaming.
1:11:35
In the world of science, that dose-dependent escalation is as close you get to, you know, cause and effect.
1:11:41
So, uh drugs definitely affect the brain.
1:11:45
Uh I just couldn't put them into neat categories cuz people on antidepressants had this type of dream.
1:11:48
People on the coke the next day they had a different type of dream. So, that is a mixed bag.
1:11:54
Uh and alcohol's part of that.
1:11:54
It's, you know, it's a chemical.
1:11:57
Do you think we'll ever get closer to understanding the links more deeply as the memory banks grow dream banks grow? I hope so. I hope so.
1:12:02
And I think that's an interesting question. Yeah.
1:12:06
The the things that I'm looking at are what were available to me.
1:12:08
I everywhere from Aristotle a few thousand years ago to stuff happening now to questionnaires from 20 years ago.
1:12:14
It's of course necessarily it's imperfect.
1:12:16
But I think as people are more honest and liberated to to to fill the dream banks in with this stuff.
1:12:25
Somebody after me is going to take that say, "Ooh, I think alcohol does this and antidepressants do this."
1:12:33
I think it's I think it's quite possible, but just as I like just to let everybody know, I'm working with what's out there and trying to connect the dots between the gaps of like from, you know, philosophy to brain science to YouTube, you know, ambient dreams.
1:12:46
Like I'm really trying to bring it together Yeah.
1:12:49
from every corner that I could, you know, look at. Yeah.
1:12:52
How much do we dream in events in reality versus completely fantasy-based events?
1:12:59
Like, how much of our dreams are replaying?
1:13:03
Like you were saying that the veterans, for example, they dream about the war.
1:13:07
That's like a real event that happened in their life there.
1:13:09
So, that's a flashback, yeah. Yeah, it's a flashback.
1:13:12
Yeah, so But when they dream about it when they're getting divorced, that's a symbolic dream Yeah. representing something.
1:13:19
What's going to bring down of dreams of flashbacks versus fantasy?
1:13:20
Uh I think PTSD flashbacks are clearly replay of of a bad experience in your dreamscape.
1:13:29
The imaginative component of dreams, when you look at these surveys, um it's a complete mixed bag.
1:13:37
But what I will tell you is that I'm trying to just add the information here to your question, which is a good one, but how much of our dream life is a replay versus just completely cooked up by the imagination network? I get that. That's a good question.
1:13:55
Uh what I would say is um in flashbacks, it's a replay.
1:14:00
Um if your if your dream is falling, that's not a replay but indicative of something.
1:14:07
And then there's most stuff is in between.
1:14:09
It's highly visual, highly creative, jumping from social situations to visual situations.
1:14:16
Uh you know, you're on the top of a building, you're in an awkward situation, you're fighting with something.
1:14:19
There are these jumps, a little bit movie-like, but it's not a hallucination.
1:14:25
Uh this this is the best I I cuz I wanted to be able to answer this question like 2 years ago when I was thinking of this.
1:14:29
And this is what the gem that I found.
1:14:31
When you hallucinate, just bear with me, it's a purple elephant in this room.
1:14:38
The the the landscape is reality.
1:14:43
The element is inserted in it.
1:14:43
In dreaming, the whole thing is imagined. Mhm.
1:14:48
And so, I would say the entire process of dreaming leans heavily imaginative. Got it.
1:14:54
That's the best answer I can give.
1:14:56
Yeah, no, that's good answer.
1:14:56
Yeah, no, it's it's interesting to me because I Yeah, I always wonder like I'm like, are we always do we ever dream in a space we've been in and seen in and even then I think all of it.
1:15:08
I mean, that's So, you have memory Yeah. of places you've been.
1:15:13
And then you can imagine.
1:15:13
And dreaming has access to both of that.
1:15:15
And if I may, the dreaming memory like you go up you get up to go to the bathroom and sometimes you can slip back into a dream. So, it's not random. Mhm.
1:15:25
And so, I always wonder is there like access to memory our dreaming mind can have that our waking mind does not have access to. Mhm.
1:15:35
Like people with uh this is fascinating.
1:15:38
Like this little bit heavier on the science part, like people who have memory issues, like they've had a trauma and they can't remember uh if they played Tetris or a video game, they'll see pictures of it in their dreams, but can't tell you about it when you ask them in during the day, they'll say, "No, I never played a Tetris game, but I had one in my dream."
1:15:57
And they've they're basically playing Tetris their Tetris is being played in front of them.
1:16:00
So, there's something going on where the dreaming mind has a memory system, I think.
1:16:05
I don't have evidence for this, but there are little dots like that, like slipping back into a dream, getting up to go to the bathroom, people with amnesia being able to feed their dreams.
1:16:15
Uh I can't identify like on a map or a you know, a dissection, but uh there's something unique going on with the dreaming memory and dreaming mind.
1:16:24
And that's why it's so inspiring for me, like, you know, I you know, I use drills and take off pieces of skull and I dissect with them.
1:16:33
I'm like, I'm not that guy, right? Most people would think.
1:16:35
I think that's why it's powerful, like brain surgeons talking about the dreaming mind. Yeah.
1:16:41
And but that's what it's done for me, my man.
1:16:42
It's like 51 years in 10,000 patients, operating like 10 countries.
1:16:50
Um sons, you know, wild love affair, heartbreak, all of it, intense emotions, relationship with my partner for 30 years, like all of it.
1:17:01
Um and you start to think like I think I'm getting a sense.
1:17:05
And then you then putting this book together, it's it's almost like a rebirth.
1:17:08
It's It's too much of a statement, but like "Oh, wait a second.
1:17:11
There's an a dreaming mind memory system. Wait a second.
1:17:13
Parkinson's is the first flare is uh a change in dreaming pattern."
1:17:16
So, just when I thought like, you know, I think I think I'm figuring this out, you know.
1:17:22
Um I'm excited to have uh have the lens with which I approach the world reset.
1:17:29
And that's what dreaming has done for me. Mhm.
1:17:31
Let's talk about lucid dreaming.
1:17:33
We've been talking about We've been kind of like peppering it in the whole time.
1:17:36
First of all, let's just define and a lot of the questions I ask are very um simplified.
1:17:42
And the reason for that is because I think a lot of these terms, ideas are out there, and most people don't even know.
1:17:47
And I think as you're simplifying language from a very uh scientific point of view, my goal is to try and simplify topics that we all hear about, and you might even hear about in conversation, and you're sitting there and going, "I don't even know what that means.
1:17:58
I don't know if anyone knows what that means, but we're all pretending to know."
1:18:01
So, it's like, "What is lucid dreaming? How common is it?
1:18:05
And then how do we do it?"
1:18:05
So, let's go through those three phases.
1:18:07
Lucid dreaming, here's the way I would explain it to you.
1:18:10
First, a little bit of a a story about it.
1:18:12
When I was constructing this book, I said, "Lucid dreaming, oh no, I don't want to cover this.
1:18:16
There can't be any science for it."
1:18:17
Two out of nine chapters are on lucid dreaming.
1:18:21
And so again, that's a it's refreshing for me.
1:18:23
And the most rigorous science on dreaming is about lucid dreaming.
1:18:27
So, we talked earlier about the waking brain and the dreaming brain.
1:18:32
Now we know that there's a sleep entry and there's a sleep exit.
1:18:37
In the middle of dreaming, in the middle of the night, some people become aware, "Hey, I'm actually dreaming."
1:18:47
And they become aware of the dream.
1:18:49
And somebody might say, "Well, why is that unusual?"
1:18:50
Well, most dreams are in the rearview.
1:18:52
You wake up and you say, "Oh, wow, that was a dream." Mhm.
1:18:55
Because but like I had a visual I had a vibrant one last night.
1:18:58
But and I was and only when I woke up I was like, "Wait, is it okay? That was only a dream."
1:19:03
But when the dream was happening, I was fully inhabiting the dream.
1:19:08
I was The dream was happening in my mind, right?
1:19:10
And at the at the neuronal electrochemical level.
1:19:12
So, sleep entry, sleep exit, lucid dreaming is the return of awareness allowing people to know that they're actually in a dream while dreaming. Okay?
1:19:25
Not in the rearview like I had this morning.
1:19:27
And so, that's a big statement.
1:19:30
And what I would say is there's proof for it.
1:19:34
Um lucid dreaming can be proven by this experiment that they did and have been doing.
1:19:41
That's the thing about studies and experiments for your listeners.
1:19:42
If you If somebody breaks into something new and it's real, you'll see an explosion of data in the scientific literature for that.
1:19:49
And in the '70s, somebody said, "Wait a second.
1:19:51
You You're a lucid dreamer.
1:19:53
You're telling me you you can become aware um while you're in a dream, while the dream is happening?"
1:20:01
And so, they did a couple of things.
1:20:03
They trained the person that rapid eye movement, which is like skittish eye movements when we sleep and dream.
1:20:08
They said, "If you're in a lucid dream and consciousness has returned, can you can can you communicate with me like with your eyeballs through like a Morse code?"
1:20:18
And so, people should look this up.
1:20:20
They left, right, left, right.
1:20:22
They trained these like eye pattern movements.
1:20:24
At the same time, they put the electrodes on the surface of scalp cuz a guy like me would be like, "He's just woke up, right?"
1:20:30
Like well, I need to know more than that.
1:20:31
And they prove by the electricity that the person is truly asleep.
1:20:36
So, you can't fake being asleep. No.
1:20:39
Across a glass, this person at a certain time in the middle of the night proving they're asleep starts to communicate with their eyeballs.
1:20:48
And it still shows you're asleep.
1:20:50
Communicating with the outside world when you're asleep. That's powerful. That's lucid dreaming. Am I a lucid dreamer? No. Have I had one or two? Yes.
1:20:59
Did people working on this book start to? Yes. Can it be induced? Yes.
1:21:04
And so, lucid dreaming is powerful because again, it's a liminal state, right? It's a bit of awareness.
1:21:12
It's a bit a bit of waking consciousness that has bubbled up during dreaming consciousness.
1:21:18
And so, nothing is rigid.
1:21:18
Sleep entry You don't go from wake to sleep in a second. It's not a hard line.
1:21:22
So, there are all these overlapping blurry states and lucid dreaming is that.
1:21:26
Two more points about that.
1:21:29
When you put those patients not patients, participants into brain scanners that executive network I've been talking about logic and stuff is dampened.
1:21:38
The They show more blood flow to that area.
1:21:40
Not as much as when you're awake.
1:21:43
But the blood flow to the frontal cortex that does reason and logic and awareness is halfway. Wow.
1:21:49
So, this You know, exactly, right?
1:21:51
And so, for everybody's been a lucid dreamer and telling people at work and people are shaking you off like you're out of your head, tell them no.
1:21:56
There's uh there's the left or right eye movement proof.
1:22:01
There's brain scan proof.
1:22:03
Galantamine, that drug that makes lucid dreamers have more or have people start to lucid dream.
1:22:08
There's a lot of scientific evidence for that.
1:22:10
And the last thing is, so can we learn to lucid dream?
1:22:15
And the the lucid dream I had was a trippy one.
1:22:19
I was in the pandemic and I was teaching the boys to sail.
1:22:21
We got this boat that I just like we had to had to get them outdoors.
1:22:24
You can't have three dogs and puppies in the house and in a pandemic and I thought this is a luxury I have where by the water here in California.
1:22:32
It was like I'm turning the helm hard and but I'm going horizontal on like on a giant like river pouring off in a waterfall and it was just like I'm trying so hard just to stand still.
1:22:43
And you know, I I just remember the whole thing like this my right arm and this was during the construction of this book and I thought to myself this interesting is very visual. I know I'm in a dream.
1:22:56
I mean those are unique experiences for me.
1:22:58
Again, as a brain surgeon they usually would not even explore these areas.
1:23:02
But when I see the brain scan showing you're halfway between sleep and wake when I see that drugs bring in lucid dreaming, I love pulling those two worlds together for people, you know.
1:23:11
So, I'm fascinating now with fascinated now with lucid dreaming and I think people who about a third of people do it.
1:23:17
Like when you 30 to 40% report it uh sometimes more, sometimes less.
1:23:22
Athletes tend to have it more or gamers tend to have it more.
1:23:25
Visual spatial creative people tend to have more lucid dreams.
1:23:29
And there are some techniques that are out there.
1:23:31
I was going to ask you if someone's a beginner Yeah.
1:23:33
and they want to try it after watching this they're going to get the book and they're like, all right, I want to play with it.
1:23:37
What are the first three things someone should do?
1:23:39
First thing they should do is look up MILD lucid dreaming mild technique.
1:23:44
So, there are a lot of techniques written about since antiquity.
1:23:47
Uh people have cultivated spirituality with that. It's a massive topic. use it a lot. Yeah.
1:23:53
So, mild technique and what it is is waking up a bit earlier than you should you plan to or should and then trying to hold on to consciousness and wake waking life as you drift into sort of back into sleep.
1:24:03
The technique is described in the book and you can look it up online.
1:24:07
But I want people to know why I I mentioned that technique after four or five is because there is a study when they took a bunch of people and they said, "Okay, we're going to teach you the left right left right Morse code.
1:24:20
You practice this technique.
1:24:20
Then we're going to get you in the sleep lab. It's not my experiment.
1:24:24
It's not my investigation.
1:24:26
We're going to get you in the sleep lab. Okay?
1:24:28
Now, prove to us with your eyeball movements that you're actually lucid dreaming.
1:24:32
Everything before that was a survey like, "Yeah, I did it and I'm lucid dreaming more."
1:24:36
I believe people, but you know, I like that extra bit of proof.
1:24:39
So, the mild technique is proven with the left-right-left-right Morse code technique that clearly shows you are asleep based on your brain brain electricity and you are using eye patterns.
1:24:51
So much so, this is a banger.
1:24:54
They started doing a little bit of math.
1:24:56
2 + 2 and they'd have code.
1:24:56
And somebody says to me, I think I was in Paris and I said, "Wait a second, you said uh the dreaming brain doesn't do math."
1:25:02
I said, "Yeah, but I also showed you the brain scans that show a bit of awareness and has come back as does the bit of ability to do math.
1:25:11
So, I love seeing those pieces coming consistently. That's brilliant.
1:25:15
Robert, from all your research you've done, you know, tons of research, tons of reading, like you got studies, I feel one of the biggest things that I'm taking away from this is often the questions we're asking about our dreams are the wrong questions.
1:25:29
We're asking like, "What does this mean?
1:25:32
Is this, you know, is this real?
1:25:34
Like, you know, what what should I do with this?"
1:25:36
What would you say are the best questions we should ask when we've woken up after dreaming?
1:25:42
What should we be looking for?
1:25:44
Point us in the right direction because I feel maybe we're wasting time and energy and effort in a different direction.
1:25:50
So, I would say when I I'll tell you my approach.
1:25:52
I mean, again, this that's a massive topic you've you've just um asked of me is one, there are dreams that clearly reflect your waking anxiety, showing up late, alarm go the alarm doesn't go off, um showing up naked at a podium cuz you're worried about public speaking.
1:26:11
So, some don't require uh you to spend too much time on them.
1:26:18
Number two, they're universal dreams, nightmares, and erotic dreams.
1:26:19
We talked about that a little bit.
1:26:21
Number three, there dreams are just static, you know.
1:26:25
Let's not hold dreaming thought and emotions to what we wouldn't waking thought.
1:26:29
There's a lot of stuff we do in the day we don't even hold on to, right?
1:26:32
Similarly, um, the fourth are genre dreams, pregnancy dreams, massive lifetime events are happening, massive lifetime events are happening in your dreaming. That's consistent.
1:26:41
The ones that I I would say to people uh, are to focus on are the ones that are hyper hyper emotional that you and they linger into the next day.
1:26:50
Uh, you can try to cultivate it with the morning technique we talked about a slow rise, not not switching to email and Instagram too quickly, but the hyper emotional dream is one to reflect upon. Here's why.
1:27:06
The emotional systems of your brain called limbic structures and the brain has the reptilian brain inside our throat sort of back there. That's instinct.
1:27:15
It makes you take a breath when you're under water.
1:27:16
Above it developed the emotional brain much like what my dog has, you know, they have intuition. Uh, they have instinct.
1:27:25
Um, that's called the the limbic system and people can look this up and there's there's circuits in there like the Papez circuit and it's a fascinating it's a fascinating part of the the brain and then on top of it is a giant frontal cortex.
1:27:39
The frontal cortex has um, is integrated with all those.
1:27:42
They're all they're all intertwined. There is no dopamine.
1:27:45
There's a reward pathway that that jumps from the reptilian to the emotional to but to get things done our advantage and the thing that blossomed our foreheads forward was logic and reason, the executive and the CEO.
1:27:56
So, I believe that limbic system, those emotional systems are uh, dampened during the day for productivity, a conventional productivity, not creativity.
1:28:07
And what's happening with your dreams is the roles are reversed and the emotional systems can achieve a top speed that your waking life can't.
1:28:16
So, if you have emotions, thoughts, and experiences from a hyper-emotional, hyper-liberated brain, that's the one to reflect on within your life.
1:28:25
And I've given a few specific examples.
1:28:28
And the process of reflecting what it means, it's individual to you.
1:28:30
If you are having nightmares and you and you don't have them and you think your day Wait, my day is fine.
1:28:39
I'm having a lot of nightmares when I don't.
1:28:41
Let that be a a warning sign to reflect more upon yourself.
1:28:45
If you're struggling with a relationship and you have dreams of falling or hyper-emotional dreams of being chased, uh you know, that's your relationship symbolically finding itself into your dreams.
1:29:02
If you are at the end of life and you're having a lot of dreams about reconciliation, those are That's the dreaming process coming to your rescue.
1:29:14
At the end of life, dreams serve a different function.
1:29:17
Uh I think they they bring us solace.
1:29:21
And there's evidence coming out now that even when our heart has stopped, the last thing a brain does is have one last one massive dream in the last minute or two, potentially experiencing uh the universal feature of near death experiences.
1:29:34
So, know that a hyper-emotional dream comes from a hyper-emotional state that's individual to your brain and that no one can give you no one has access to.
1:29:45
And maybe it's your responsibility to turn over that feeling and those thoughts and then just to pause for a minute and take all the information coming at you, take all the stuff you've gone through, and actually step aside for a little bit and say, "Hey, what was that solar flare from my mind?"
1:30:02
And if it's useful to you, great.
1:30:02
If the process helps you remember those more, great.
1:30:07
But if you just have that 5-10 minutes during your morning where you just remember that you were not resting the night before, that there was something wild and vibrant going on, and you got a glimpse of it.
1:30:19
What it means is up to you, but definitely don't neglect it. Well said. Dr.
1:30:23
Rahul Jandial, the book is called This Is Why You Dream.
1:30:28
If you don't have your copy already, make sure you grab it.
1:30:30
We dove into some of the themes, some of the topics.
1:30:35
There's so much more inside this book that I believe you're going to love and appreciate so that you can dream better, dream bigger, and dream more beautifully as well, which is what I wish for each and every one of you.
1:30:46
Rahul, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to share that is on your heart and mind intuitively that you believe is important for our community?
1:30:53
I think there's too much judgment going on in the ways that people approach life.
1:31:00
And some people think they've got it all figured out.
1:31:02
And some people on the other end saying, I've got nothing figured out.
1:31:05
And I got to tell your listeners, I've I've I've been in that entire range.
1:31:08
And I would say a couple of things.
1:31:10
I would say um I I think the dreaming brain and mind is a genius built in that gives us resilience.
1:31:18
And and resilience, I want to leave people with a brand new definition of it, a psychological definition that there's systemic resilience and processive resilience.
1:31:30
Systemic resilience is uh is is what you bring to the fight.
1:31:35
And processive resilience is is what the fight brings out in you.
1:31:39
So, wherever you're at, you're equipped with your dreaming brain as your ally.
1:31:45
And I think to me, that gives me a source of strength, that there's this process cultivating me, protecting me, preparing me for the next day. That's not one-sided.
1:31:54
That's like That's Rahul speaking emotionally, right?
1:31:56
On the other side, when you sit here and you say, "This brain surgeon is trying to rock this stuff about the brain and mind and all that."
1:32:05
I'll leave you with something I did not know in neuroscience, right?
1:32:07
I got a lab, I got a PhD in neuroscience, I'm a brain surgeon.
1:32:12
You start to think you're like the expert at it.
1:32:14
But, there are things in exploring dreams and dreaming that I was surprised like, "How did I not know that?"
1:32:22
Because it would have changed all the ways I would have acted um through my life.
1:32:26
I would have been more open, more exploratory, more willing to accept other people's ex- experiences because it doesn't all have to make sense, even to the uber expert.
1:32:38
So, I leave people with something to search online called paradoxical kinesis.
1:32:42
p a r a d o x i c a l kinesis.
1:32:46
It's called you can't explain why you move that way.
1:32:47
That's my That's my street translation for that medical term.
1:32:51
But, what it is is those same patients that have dream enactment behavior, that care act out their dreams, and later on their Parkinson's develops, and their brains wither.
1:32:59
The strangest thing is when the Parkinson's sets in and their voices are stifled, and their movements are rigid, when they act out their dreams, their voices are big, and their movements are fluid. Mhm.
1:33:14
The dreaming mind somehow can access the body in a better way, in a more fluid way, in a more in tune way than the waking mind can.
1:33:26
And that that's what I like to leave people with.
1:33:29
Like, I'm excited about this.
1:33:31
I hope you guys are, too.
1:33:33
So, Rahul, you talk about how naps lasting 60 to 90 minutes can boost learning and creative problem-solving by 40%.
1:33:40
Uh why is this, and when's the best time to take a nap?
1:33:43
The The napping thing is big these days, and people are finding it's not work harder, work longer, and all that, but try to work with the different states of mind and brain that you have.
1:33:50
And napping, if you get to 60 or 90 minutes, people have done surveys and asked people to nap with puzzles and they find entering the dream state or the sleeping state, which again, as we've talked about is imaginative, is divergent thinking, that they solve problems better.
1:34:08
They just have more solutions to riddles and the big point there for people is there's a utility to napping.
1:34:15
You're not lazy because you nap.
1:34:15
And if you can do it in a way that doesn't disrupt your sleep later on in the day, I think that's another, you know, this in the world of hacks, I think that's the hack that we've got all got built in.
1:34:26
Can you dream in that 60 to 90 minutes? Yeah.
1:34:28
Have And have those dreams shown to be any different?
1:34:30
Uh I d- I can't answer that.
1:34:32
There isn't data on have those shown dreams shown to be any different, but I would say uh one condition is narcolepsy where people uh fall asleep suddenly and there's information coming out from that.
1:34:41
They suddenly fall asleep and then they wake up and they enter a dream state, but that's a whole space that's opening up, the utility of naps.
1:34:48
And it doesn't have to be every day.
1:34:50
It doesn't have to be rigid.
1:34:52
Uh and if you have a big event or big project coming up, I think personally what I've tried is just shutting your eyes in a quiet space and allowing that mental workspace, uh allowing yourself not to be task on and drift inwards in your thoughts, whether you actually fall technically asleep or not, to me that's been advantageous. Yes, absolutely. I agree with that.
1:35:13
I know many athletes who do that as well before a big game or before a big performance, you're not necessarily falling asleep, but I like it you're in off mode. Uh definitely.
1:35:23
And also last question I wanted to ask you was the the question Elena mentioned.
1:35:27
So, a lot of people when they're in sleep entry, they feel like they're falling. Why does that exist?
1:35:33
Why does Why do people have that experience?
1:35:36
I I I don't know if I have an answer for that and I've seen the reports, but I couldn't tie any science to that.
1:35:40
But sleep entry, falling asleep, it is a time where activation of the movement centers is pronounced and falling is actually a a movement.
1:35:51
It's not uh you think oh running is a movement, falling something that happens to you.
1:35:55
No, but the activation of the brain when people fall uh is has to do with the motor strip as well, motor sensory.
1:36:01
So, during that transition there may be a link there.
1:36:05
Yeah, it's even interesting language like falling asleep.
1:36:06
Like I guess you're falling onto your bed, but the idea of falling is is just Yeah, I like entering.
1:36:15
Yeah, I find language really fascinating.
1:36:16
And when I look at like falling to sleep, I'm like that doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah.
1:36:19
Beyond falling onto your bed, which doesn't necessarily create a restful, peaceful feeling.
1:36:27
Take that back 2,000 years and we memorize it by heart.
1:36:29
That's when we thought the heart was a center.
1:36:31
So, absolutely language shapes uh the direction of our mind.
1:36:36
I mean, the power of words and people finding handwriting is it activates more part of the brains than typing.
1:36:42
And so, definitely the uh communication and storytelling and building meaning there's something there.
1:36:50
I'll explore that hopefully in the years ahead.
1:36:53
Yeah, I think sleep entry and exit is brilliant language though.
1:36:54
I that that has really stayed with me and it's making me think even more intentionally and insightfully around those intimate moments just before waking up, especially those two to 12 minutes that you said before you go to bed and after you wake up because evening and morning routines make sense, but there's a even more uh special time there that could be managed.
1:37:15
Yeah, that that morning time for me, sleep exit is definitely something I put to use.
1:37:18
A lot of the ideas in this book.
1:37:20
I I'd read something, I'd be flipping through a bunch of papers.
1:37:24
I'm like, what does this mean? What does this mean?
1:37:25
And then it would be in the morning I oh I maybe that, maybe that. Yeah.
1:37:29
Not a guarantee, but definitely a space to explore. Yeah, amazing.
1:37:31
Rahul, so we end every episode of On Purpose with a fast five, final five.
1:37:36
Uh these are questions that have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.
1:37:42
And these are your final five.
1:37:42
So, the first question is, what is the best dreaming advice you've ever heard or received?
1:37:49
I try to remember them more. Okay, second question.
1:37:51
What is the worst dreaming advice you've ever heard or received? Dreams are meaningless.
1:37:56
Question number three, a dream you wish you'd have more often.
1:38:00
Falling in love the first time.
1:38:04
Uh question number four, a dream that you wish people would have more often. Reconciliation dreams. Dreams of forgiveness. Dreams of letting go.
1:38:14
And are those ones that we can train ourselves to have?
1:38:16
I don't know, but those are the ones that some people report toward the end of life and I just wonder if we had that more in the middle of our life, we'd be you know, we would have uh we would have less regrets and we'd be less un you know, encumbered by the fuss of the day.
1:38:32
Why do you Why Is there any study to show why people are having it later on in life? No. Wow.
1:38:36
That's yeah, and I can tell you that from my own experience with cancer patients. Yeah.
1:38:42
They're called genre dreams, end-of-life dreams, and again, our last act might be a massive dream and it tends to be positive, not always for near-death experiences.
1:38:50
To me, I call that uh a dream coming to our rescue.
1:38:55
Yeah, could you imagine you're so right.
1:38:57
If you could have that earlier on, like All that beef, all that fuss, you know. It's a great answer.
1:39:01
You know, I just I wish I could have let it go earlier. Yeah.
1:39:05
Fifth and final question.
1:39:05
We ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show.
1:39:09
If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
1:39:13
Before you speak or act, do your best to imagine yourself in that person's shoes. Great answer. Dr.
1:39:19
Rahul Jandial, the book is called This Is Why You Dream.
1:39:24
Thank you so much for joining us today.
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If you don't already, make sure you follow Dr.
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Rahul Jandial on Instagram, across social media, grab a copy of the book.
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We'll put the link in the comments and the caption section.
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Uh and I'm so grateful for your time and energy today. I've learned so much.
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You've completely transformed my way of thinking about dreams.
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Honestly, through your book and this interview, I think I knew nothing about dreams before we met.
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I had really poor ideas and maybe some limited beliefs.
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And speaking to you today has just opened up a whole new area of growth for me that I don't even think I was thinking about.
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So, I love the idea that I'm walking away with some simple yet clear tools to actually start implementing from tonight and tomorrow.
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So, I'm really excited about this dream journey.
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And I hope everyone who's listening and watching, when you read the book, I hope you're going to go on a dream journey with me, too.
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And I'd love to see you tag me and Dr.
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Rahul in some of the experiments, some of the tests that you're carrying out in your own life. Thank you so much. Pleasure.
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Thank you so much for listening to this conversation.
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If you enjoyed it, you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort is the key to growth and the strategies for unlocking your hidden potential.
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If you know you want to be more and achieve more this year, go check it out right now.
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You set a goal today, you achieve it in 6 months, and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief.
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There's no sense of meaning and purpose.
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You sort of expected it, and you would have been disappointed if it didn't happen.