Understanding and Practicing Lucid Dreaming

Hey, it's friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robins podcast Do you ever wonder about your dreams You know, you ask yourself What does that dream mean What does that nightmare mean Could I control what I'm dreaming about? Are they random? Like does this mean anything? Could I stop this nightmare if I don't like it What's actually happening in my brain while I'm dreaming Why do some people remember every single detail of their dreams? This is my husband Well, some of us don't remember anything And what if you keep having the same dream over and over and over again? As you can probably tell, I am so fascinated by this topic. And I'm thrilled that for the very first time, you and are going to dive deep into the science of dreaming, nightmares, what your dreams mean, what they're trying to tell you. and more importantly, how to harness your dreams to unlock the full power of your mind and the potential of your life. I'm so excited for you to meet our expert today. He is one of the most highly regarded cightited and distinguished doctors in the entire world doctor Ahul, John Dial is a world renowned cancer surgeon, neuroscientist, and pioneering neurosurgeon who is here to teach you and me All of the fascinating things that your brain is doing When you're dreaming Today you're going to learn how to tap into the power of your dream state to create deeper connection Solve problems, unlock more creativity and clarity, and even create deeper meaning in your life See your dreams can help you solve problems. They can give you clues about your health and help you make predictions about your future. And if you're thinking Mel I don't dream your role According to Dr. John Del. We all dream and what you're about to learn about the science of dreams will change how you think about your life, both the one you're living while you're awake and the one you're living while you're dreaming And you will never look at what's possible. the same way again If your group chat is thrown around, We should getetaway, consider Scottsdale, Arizona. It has everything for everyone in your family and your friend group, like luxury resort rates, starting at just one hundred nine dollars a night. And you can choose whatever you want, Epic resorts with water parks or quiet pools where the only plan is leave me alone. While I sit by the pool and I read my book and I tan my body And then you can layer in all kinds of stuff that makes vacation feel like vacation, suunrise yoga, stargazing, summer specials at area spas. 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It's one hundred percent free of dyes and fragrance allergens and made with eight carefully chosen ingredients that fight stains while staying gentle on skin So if clean laundry and healthy skin matter to you, this is what you've been looking for. for an effective, skin friendly, clean, wash with all free clear It's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited for our conversation today. I'm thrilled that you're here. It's such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're a new listener, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast familyily. I'm so glad that you're here I cannot wait for you to meet today's guest, the extraordinary. Dr. Rahul John Diall He's here to share the science of dreaming and how to unlock the full power of your mind Dr. Rahul John Dal is a world renowned cancer surgeon, neurosurgeon, and neuroscientist He has won award after award after award and is one of the most cited and distinguished doctors and surgeons alive today He is the medical director of neurosurgical oncology and skkull Aed surgery at City of Hope Medical Center in Los Angeles, which is one of the top cancer hospitals in the world, where Dr. John Diall operates on brain cancer and spinal tumors in adults and children with stage four cancer He also directs his own research lab, the John Dall Laboratory at the City of Hope Cancer Center, which focuses on developing cutting edge neuroscience and cancer treatments He also serves as a professor within the Division of Neurosurgery at City of Hope, where he teaches doctors from around the world the most innovative cancer surgery techniques and brain tumor research He received his medical degree from the University of Southern California, his PhD in neuroscience from the University of California San Diego, and completed a cancer surgery specialization at the University of California, San Francisco He is the author of ten bestselling books and over a hundred academic articles on surgery, neuroscience and cancer biology, including his most recent New York Times bestestselling book, This is why you dream doror John Diall knows the brain inside and out and one area of the brain that he is fascinated by is dreaming and the science of why you dream and what your dreams mean and how to use them to build deeper connections and more meaning in your life Please help me welcome the remarkable Dr. Rahul John Diall to the Mel Robbins podcast I'm excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Oh, well, thank you for getting on a plane. Thank you for carving out the time. I have never talked about the topic of the Science of Dreams on this podcast I have so many questions and I cannot wait to dig in. And here's where I want to start How could my life be different based on everything you're about to teach us that we need to know about dreaming If we apply all this to our lives, what's going to change? Well, when you have the insight that we spend a third of our lives dreaming you'll be excited to learn that there are simple steps where you can influence your dreams, remember your dreams cultivate the direction of or dreams to live a life that is not possible simply with the waking brain A third of our life is spent dreaming. Dreams can happen at any partart of sleep and even when you fall asleep and when you're waking up So now we are thinking that a third of our life has spent dreaming. That sleep and dream phase of our day and of our whole lifespan is something that we should cherish, that we can access, that we can influence And it's their own personal therapist, if you will, in some ways. So that's the biggest goal that I have for today. Dreaming is not an accidental byproduct It's something essential for the human mind. It's your nightly reset. Okay, you've already delivered because I had never thought about I thought about the fact that you spent a third of your life sleeping, right? But I've always thought about it as a reset or rest. The idea that we could crack open a third of our lives and really understand what our brain is doing and what it's trying to tell us That's pretty cool. Yeah. and it is rest, but it's not inactivity. Your brain is on fire when you sleep. Y body's resting I'll explain to you how we have those measurements. But when I saw that, when I was thinking about dreaming and I thought about Wait a second That's not a quiet time in our skulls. We go to bed, we think, o, the computer screen went down. Yeah. Then we wake up, we hit the keyboard. and now we're awake. No, no, no, it's engaged, blood is coursing, electricity is firing. So That means we got to figure out what's going on. It's got to be essential. I would love to hear you talk about how does Understanding what you're doing in a third of your life, your dream life. How does it help you take control of your awake life When you realize your dreaming brain is working with your imagination, your life experiences, your memories that Any glimpse you have of that portal to your life portal to what you're living, but from a different perspective from the dreaming brain perspective, which is much more imaginative, much more sexual, much more emotional And that's digesting, processing and delivering the same read out on the experiences you had during the waking day, where your brain is a little bit different And so you have two windows to your own experiences and When you catch a little flare of a dream in the morning notot all dreams, but some dreams they invite a process of reflection to where hey, that's an interesting perspective onn my life that a therapist can't have. because it's in my head So to me, it's sort of like the ultimate wellness hack. It's free And it's something that I think as we have this conversation, there are ways There are simple ways that have been done by like Salvador Dali or other like people for a long time, Aristotle that we can introduce into our life when we fall asleep and when we wake up. How has leaning in to the third of your life, which is your dreaming life changed your life Um. It's made me more creative It's made me I think more emotionally balanced. It's given me little windows in which when I wake up, I take a moment to pause And those five, ten minutes in the morning, if you stay in bed, if you don't grab the phone That window is an interesting idea generator for me. I've done it for decades Other people have written about it. Now we've got the measurement that shows when you're waking up and when you're falling asleep. Those ten minutes, you've have the electrical fingerprints of being awake and asleep the guys who have done creative things in art often talk about this. So I'm trying to pull in what Dolly was writing about and then you know what Neuroscientists are studying in big cities I cannot wait to dive into this. I can already tell that those first zero to ten minutes of my day are going to be completely different after talking to you. and learning from you. Now, one thing I just want to address up front because we asked our global audience about dreams and twenty six percent said either, well, I don't dream or I don't remember my dreams And if you're somebody who doesn't remember your dreams or doesn't think you dream I'd love to have you speak directly to that person and tell them what is possible for them based on what your buts teach us. Yeah, I mean, if you don't remember your dreams This episode is especially for you That's how I feel because The practical and simple answer is when the Ludon publishing housees working on this book A lot of them came in when they were editing saying, I'm dreaming a lot more or remembering my dreams a lot more. So one Dreaming and remembering dreams can be cultivated You may not remember your dreams now, but you remember nightmares when you were a kid. And I can tell you after having taken care of fifteen thousand patients that at the end of life, dreams will return for you. So Right now, you may not have Dream recall, but it can be cultivated. And it's a It's there for you. It's just not the window in your life journey to where it's a prominent feature, but I think it can be. I was talking to her friend this weekend and she adamantly said I don't dream. And I said, I don't think that's true. Is it true that people don't dream If you have people, so again, let me try to explain the science. Yeah peopleople who remember the dreams and people who don't remember the dreams If you put those electrical stickers and record the electricity, it's firing on both of them that suggests that the dreaming process is happening. It's just a matter of recall That nightly dreaming process happens for all humans all the time. It's so important. It makes us sleep, it makes us pososes us to threat and then safely when our bodies are paralyzed You know, we wild out. We do things we couldn't imagine. We do things we wouldn't dare. Like what Well, I mean, all the thing we fly, we fall, we run from monsters. We get into awkward social situations That's not stuff we would choose to do during the day, but it seems to be liberated at night. and so that might suggest a little bit about why we dream. What is your opinion on why we actually dream? Like what do you think the purpose of it is? Neurons that you don't use be will wither because they're so metabolically demanding. I believe and that some of the exotic scans are showing is that emotion Creativity, sexuality. Um Imagination these regions that we don't fully use during the day It's like high intensity training. They they're liberated, rehearsed Warm when we dream, so they're accessible for us during the day when we face our challenges becausecause that's those are the parts of the brain that are ramping up. There's no on or off, they're ramping up. And during the day, they ramp down and the executive network of these regions and our the CEO of our brain has to put it all together to get on the tube, to get on the subway, to get the kids to school. But at night, those neurons that we don't use during the day those concepts we don't use during the day. If we don't rehearse them, we don't keep them activated in some way warmed up, they may not be accessible for us later in our life as individuals or even as species How? Do you know when a dream does mean something versus when your mind is just doing something. there are five sort of categories of brains There's the obvious dream You have anxiety about giving a talk, you show up you're naked at the days or whatever. That's just your day day anxiety rolling right into your dream anxiety Then there are two types of what they call genre dreams. End of life Um, so you're at the you're at the end of life tend to be of reconciliation, not of doom And then pregnancy dreams work in these surveys and questionnaires pregnant women report certain patterns of dreams, about names, about rolling over in bed and these sort of things. And then there's like dreams that are like, you know, just random thoughts. They're not gonna they don't need to be deciphered or even reflected upon. because they they're not attached U to anything deeply emotional or deeply visual. than the last one that I think is the dream to reflect upon And what's that one? And that's the one that has a strong emotional imprint in a strong central image And so if If you have the opportunity to wake up a little slower or you've had a dream with a strong emotional imprint try to hold on to what that emotion is And if it's got a strong visual image, That's the one that I think is the portal to how you're doing, how you're reflecting upon life, how you're processing things Can you give me an example or a couple examples of what that might look like? For example, there were reports of Vietnam veterans When they're going through a divorce, they would have their war dreams return And so it's metaphorical and they would be emotional and visual U I was in a difficult relationship. and the u interaction was always in this like like an elevator falling. It's like a normal conversation, but they're just The emotion is just that the butterflies, you know, it seems like it's casual And then as that relationship improved, there wasn't that that dropping crashing elevator sort of feeling. So whether that gave me an answer. I don't think it was about getting answer. It's about reflecting looking backward and engaging the dream thoughts that you've had, that is a portal to your brain that only dreaming can provide because It's a lens that's emotional and visual and imaginative to me It's an insight to myself and then I have to try to put it together with what's happening in real life and what's happening in my dream life What are the phases of sleep dreams happen in can you like teach us about that? I have some blocks that your set up. So the first one when you fall sleep, sleep entries and one. So sleep entries and what, how long does that last? Well, it's variable time that's most fixed is this thing we're going to get to called, you know, rapid eye movement. Okay. but it's Ler in the beginning then it goes to N two, which is deeper into sleed. Okay. These are then it goes to N three. And the thought was The dreams only happen occasionally in these deeper sleep phases. Okay And that most of the dreaming happens in REM sleep. And REM. Rapid eye movement is when your eyes are wiging out behind your eyelids It's not that the eyes are doing anything It's just that when you're in that brain mode That's what how your eyes behave And this This was thought to be where you have the wildest dreams in RM. in REM. and REM increases as you go deeper into the night. So the thought is Dreaming is most vivid closest to when you're waking up.. But that's not what we're seeing now. We're seeing that dreams when you wake people up, can happen when you're falling asleep through the entire night And when you're waking up I think the big answer here is Dreams can happen anyt timee when you're asleep Even during sleep entry Eering sleep exit I love the blocks and what I love about the blocks is that Yes shows us the different phases of sleeping but it also kind of visually shows us dreams are happening from the very beginning all the way through. That is the current understanding and I believe it It's super helpful to visualize it So Will you describe for the person that's listening or watching, how do you study dreams How do you know that people have this electrical activity and that these parts of the brains are awake and working in all the phases of sleep. A lot of ways. Yeah. So one One way to study dreams is to wake people up, so in sleep labs And some families have their children participate over decades. No kidding. Yeah. so you get So you get these longitudinal studies where When they're kids they are woken up and then when they're teenagers and then when they're adults. And so you can see how dreams happen throughout their life, that's one way. The other is there raandom times while they're measuring electricity, also woken up and they're asked to write down their dreams. And then now more recently, people are falling asleep in these exxotic scanners that there's no radiation so they can participate. they can offer to be in there. And we're able to now measure sort of a heat map in the different brain regions differentnt continents, if you will Um that are that are divated dampened or accentuated. The brain never goes on or off. If it goes off, it's a stroke, you have brain injury. So it's always a modulation by slightly more, slightly less And so between the heat maps and the electrical currents and the deceades of waking people up, plus the several hundred years of reports. peopleeople talking about dreams. that's in the literature all the way back to Aristotle talk about Lucid dreaming. I went about all of those things to put this together What is the difference between the brain that you're using when you're awake and your brain when you're sleeping and dreaming. Okay. So if if you took the brain and you flattened it thoughtought of the loobes as continents. Okay U when you're awake, the executive network, the CEO think of it as one continent is making the whole globe work. sort of a hub and spoke model All the flight paths, all the airports, that sort of thing When you're dreaming that executive network, let's is slightly dampened in other continents. accentuated, a little warmer, a little bit more active the things that are more active when you're dreaming, on these heat maps, on these exotic scanners are the imagination network and the Limbic system. Imagination network is not is a collection of structures that rise up When you're loosely connecting the dots, when you're not looking for the most obvious, it's called creative ideation Crereative ideation and more emotion than limbic structures This is well studied that those are a little warmer. The heat map goes up when you're dreaming. and sleep versus when you're awake. Now, that makes sense, right? Because we just talked about the electrical activity being the same So if the CEO is dampened, and dreaming U you know, then what else is lifted, Right to make the electrical activity in your brain the same when you're awake versus dreaming. So it's the imagination network and the limbic system, which is the emotional structures of the brain, the deeper structures, hypothalamus, the Maggdala, all those things you hear about. Working in concert, not one structure up one structure down I want to read to you from your best selling book. This is why You dream And this is from the introduction. Today, the word dream means many things ambition, an ideal, a fantasy, and the vivid narratives generated during sleep Neuroscience is showing that the boundaries between sleep and waking are not so clean after all Dreams can help you solve a problem, learn a musical instrument, a language, or a dance move Practice a sport, give you clues about your health and make predictions the future. Dreams can be spiritually enriching. Forgotten dreams can still shape your mind and influence your day. You can learn to remember dreams, prime their content and even control them. during something called Lucid dreaming But most importantly, Dreams can offer the greatest gift that of self knowledge. By interpreting your dreams, you can make sense of your experience and explore your emotional life in new and profound ways Talk to me about the self awareness. Wh Why does it give you more self awareness? Well, as we discussed in the beginning, when I say self awareness, I think it gives you a new lens on what's going on in your life for example ical example Some people feel like they're living well, doing well, coping well And then they have a they have nightmares pop up. The nightmares are plexing to them, but they're sort of the first warning signal, sort of a headache, if you will, that maybe they aren't doing well and it's a reminder to reflect that Are you sure that you're living your best life possible? So in a wellness way, The flare of a nightmare can remind you that something is not going well with your mental health beyond the link with suicide and other things. So that's a practical example where nightmare disorder people who seem to have it all. is a clue that things really aren't at peace inside them So that's one practice And it happens before you're actually conscious of it. So this is like exly bubbling up from the subconscious. The awareness or the way that your dreaming brain has processed U what is going on in your life? It gives you a little bit of an insight that with your executive network and your CEO getting everything done that maybe you haven't taken the time to really unpack or look at. So that's one practical example that nightmares in people that seem to be doing fine. is a reminder that maybe you're not. and it could be sort of a vital sign just like pain is where headaches are in people who seem to be doing well. How can dreams help you solve problems So these are surveys. We talk about measurements. Okay. So now there are a lot of people who participate like they have dark games athletes have like they play, you know, they play different sports and they rehearse and their lucid dreams or they'll take naps and if they recall their dream. So they have a whole series of people that are looking for performance that feel that if you remember if not if you dream about throwing dards, But if you dream at all and recall those dreams, that helps them with the performance. So there's a whole series of these are surveys. Now I can't prove that this actually happens. You have to take their word for it. But They They will Learn a sport or language and T to dream, try to lose a dream, and there's some correlation that they are better at it Bigger level when you dream about throwing a dart or running The neurons for running are firing. Seriously Yeah, but that's what generates the electricity, right? So if I'm running and there's a motor strip here and it's sending down currents to my legs When you're dreaming about running or being you're being chased. Those same motor neuron movement neurons are firing, letting us have that electrical the brain EKG. It's just the signal is not getting past your spinal cord into your legs And so maybe that is true visualization and reheversarsal So that's the bigger concept that fascinates me. onn the practical level, there's a lot of people doing surveys and questionnaires of dreaming and skill acquisition. W Dr. John Dio, how can Dreams help us predict the future, especially around your health There is an example we'll get into.s it's a little bit nuanced and that has to do with When men in their fifties develop Parkinson's disease and the brain withers ninety something percent, which in medical terms is almost one hundred is fifteen years before their dreaming pattern changes Really? Yeah. And so everybody can look this up. It's called REM be Behavior disisorder. You can look it up on scientific Americans. So in that one way, REM behavior disorder when the brain withers Earliest warning sign was a change in dreaming fifteen years prior, where they act out their dreams So that's one example The other is that when in Alzheimer's in Parkinson's and when the brain decays and that sort of thing Um People's dreams change, they start to talk more about animals And it's not their pets, it's beasts and things like that These are reports And that almost mirrors when you ask children when they're four or five, six, they'll mention animals, but it's not really phyto or their puppy or their And so in some ways, it almost feels like the brain is developing And at the end of life, when it decays, it returns to it sort of immature, I mean, biologically immature features. So the dreaming pattern changes as we get these neurodegenerative changes. That's number two and then And then number three is that some of my patients Um you know, they You can't prove that it's maybe they're looking backwards, but they say if they have breast, I take care of breast cancer patients when the cancer spreads to the brain They've mentioned that I've had a dream about my body. I had a dream about my breast. I had a dream about something phhysically wrong with me And I don't see too many Having that dream and coming in and getting checked out Right? It's not forward. But when they come in and part of their journeys of having how how did you get diagnosed? How did it happen for you? You know, in their story They will they're called warning dreams. They will mention But you know, what's interesting is that I had this feeling in the past. I had this dream in the past. So I can't prove that The dream could have given them an early window and early detection. So those warning dreams, those are the three way three buckets, I would say, is to think about dreams in hell Dr. John Dall, how can dreams help you process trauma or traumatic experiences An idea is that a Dream is your nocturnal therapist. It helps you digest difficult things But we have nightmares, we have PTSD and flashbacks. So I mean, I just want to say is I'm not saying no. I would just say let your dreaming brain have as wide of a range of U thoughts and experiences are we what our waking brain. There's no perfect thought, there's no healthy thought or bad thought. I mean, there're, you know, where we have a lot of things going on when we're awake. We have a lot of things going on when we're dreaming. So When you wake people up in the fifth, sixth, seventh hour, they tend to have a little bit more positive emotional skewing and regulation So is that what dreams are doing Maybe the same time Dreams with flashbacks and PTSD can keep your trauma alive So there's no simple answer for that Um PTSD can bring back nightmares and then It's just fascinating and part one of the treatments of nightmares is to rescript the story with a journal before you go to bed. about how powerful that is The power of suggestion is so powerful. this is I'm a nurse. I mean, I use knives and drills and chisels. I'm a physical, practical person. that the power of suggestion The greatest example is that a nightmare, nightmare disorder, the treatment, if people can look it up, imagery rehearsal therapy, IRT. What does that mean? It means before you go to bed, you write a happier, a better, more kind ending to the nightmare that's torturing you. The recurrent nightmare that's torturing you is to journal the night before And then in your nightmares the ending tends up not being so macabre and dangerous and difficult. Why do you think that it works? Our greatest evolutionary adaptation is that we're storytellers, the tuft of neurons that are the newest not the reptilian brain behind our throat or the limbic structures, the emotional brain, which are essential. You can't have thought without emotion. but I think the newest part of our brain is this area that if we injure it in surgery, not an oops moment but like the risk of the surgery built in or a tumor' there or an injury' there. Yeah. People have a hard time creating a narrative about their life and they have a hard time finding meaning because they can't sort of frame it the right way I think imagery rehearsal therapy works on nightmares because when people are going through a difficult time They have to really tell themselves a different story about their own life. That's my opinion. And I think there's some pieces that are suggestive of that Dror. Johny All I I have so many more questions, but I have to hit the pause button so we can give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words. And I want to give you a chance to share this episode with all of your friends and family because we all dream and we wonder about our dreams and how cool that we can tap into our dream life to make our awake life even better and don't go anywhere. There is so much more we're gonna to dig into when we return a little later in the show. Dr. John Diell is gonna walk you through the four steps that you can take to learn how to lse a dream, which is gonna be super cool. Stay with me. We'll be right back Again and again, there's this common thread. Women are busy. There's never enough time in a day. We're doing it all Enter AG one, the daily health drink that makes your morning routinine simple in just one step You're tired of feeling like you're running on empty. 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The Defender one ten balances off road capability with on road comfort and the Defender one thirty, room for eight and gear to match for the journeys that demand more. Explore the full Defender lineup at Land Rover USA Welcome back. It's your friend Mal Robins. Today you and I are learning about the science of dreaming and how to unlock the power of your mind with the extraordinary doctor John Diall So Dr. Johnyall, let's just jump right back in I'd love to have you talk about Peace that dreams are random or not. So are your dreams random or are they on purpose Dreams are not completely random because you can go to the bathroom and wake up and You can slip back in your dream. You can have recurrent nightmares. You can electrically stimulate the surface of a rain and have an old nightmare pop up in the operating room But more just just like when I was talking to my sons, I was like, Almost everybody had nightmares a couple of thousand years ago. Almost everybody had erotic dreams a couple of thousand years ago two thirds of people are falling or flying. aboutb one third have teeth falling out Not right now But before TV's, before the horse and buggy, like before fire our ancestors. so there's a simimilar pattern of dreaming that's built in despite how much our world has changed.. That's the simplest way for me to say That design is built in. And so Dreams are happening to us but we're also feeding the content of the dreams. That's not unlike our waking brain. We're navigating life outward. We have our imagination and we have what's happening outside of us. When you fall asleep It's the memories you stored and the imagination you have. Plus some ancestral patterns of dreaming. that we're inheriting, much like you could inherit mental health issues where somebody's better at math 're inherited because there's no other way surveys from Europe would still be They're still talking about falling and dreaming about two thirds of the people like hundreds of years ago as we are now with electric cars There are some rules and boundaries to dream, no matter dreams no matter how wild it feels for us individually. Dr. John Dia, what are the rules and boundaries Well, The one that I can tell you for sure is we rarely do math. Like if you go back four, five, six. Wait do math? Math. Like math Now somebody's gonna write in and I'm not saying one hundred percent, but calculation is not really done. So all the scientists that had creative ideas, are visual like the snake eating its tail or the chemistry ch Just stay with me. this is very important. Calculation and math is very rare in dreams and part of the brain that is dampened when we dream the executive network. is the exact area that's done for raw processing power and calculation That was the thing that made me go. Even if that's the only thing I can say the neuroscience can explain why we why most people, not everybody Wh? Why in the Dream repeports math is very, very, very rarely is very rarely done. and that fits the heat map where the executive network, it's a specific area called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. But more importantly, if you have a nail gun injury in that area, people struggle with mass And that that gets cooler in sleeping and dreaming and that fits why very few people over thousands and thousands of dream reports don't really talk about math. So even if it's that one example, it's the beginning of connecting science and dreaming and leaving people more interested in it not less. Well, it makes a lot of sense because you gave us a fairly simple framework. that I can certainly grasp, I'm sure as you're listening, you can grasp that there's a difference between the waking brain where the executive network is really firing more versus the imagination network and the limbic system, which overrides creativity, your sexual life, emotions, And you've already taught us that you're just as active in your brain when you're awake as when you're asleep and dreaming. make that work.erfect. And I'm sure it makes perfect sense to you that Wow, Well, first of all, I didn't realize that my brain was as active Yeah. When I'm sleeping as it is when I'm awake. To really understand that your mind is not randomly grabbing things. It's sorting through experiences that are sexual, emotional, creative And that one detail about math, and it not being reported in most people's dreams through the history of studying this really like if you're paying attention proves that the The executive functing of your brain is like, okay, we're a little dialed down right now. What are the most common dreams that people have? Everybody has had a hot nightmare It's a universal dream That's so why do we all it's a universal dream? since recorded history Um You have consistently falling and flying beinged in dream reports sixty, fifty, seventy, two thirds of people say, yeah, I've had dreams about falling. Yeah, I've had dreams about flying peopleople who have never fallen And and before we had airplanes Like why somebody three hundred years ago? I'm dream about flying I don't know why? I don't. But the point is It's a consistent feature when the same dreams are being experienced despite massive changes in our world To me, it suggests that it's something driven by the brain that We don't need to create that dream dreaming process is something that is part autopilot, partly under our control. So nightmares and erotic dreams are essentially universal. commommon dreams are falling flying and teeth falling out. So those are the simpler sort of categories of dreams. Let's talk about Each one of those specifically. Dr. John Dll, why do people dream about teeth falling out. What do you think that means U there's only been one paper like there you scour pub med, you know, and there's only been one paper trying to figure out what that means Historically, that could be a good omen or bad omen Hi the study from Israel just suggested that Um, that's linked to teeth grinding.' a completely boring analysis of it. you know, but That's that's what's out there. I don't So some of these things I have to say, I don't know and I'm not sure anybody can know. So I just want to be forthright about. I don't know why people have, you know There's no way to know And the people who've looked at it, it correlates a little bit more with teeth grinders Interesting. Why do you think people dream about their teeth falling out. I don't know. What's more interesting to me is that Why were people dreaming about that, you know, like one hundred, two hundred years ago and still now? bad mental hygiene, good dental hygiene, consistent pattern of of of dream reports What does dreaming about being chased or foalling mean So there are some theories, some ideas around this that mayaybe being chased and falling was sort of a threat reheversal somebody a while backack said, if we're good at running from a woolly mammoth or Yeah. in our dreams or if we are we realize falling is a scary thing, maybe we're less likely to approach the edge of the cliff. I like the ideas, there's no way to necessarily Um Prove that But also again, before flight, people are ancestors with torches likely we were're dreaming of uh falling and being chased because as soon as you start getting documented dream reports, it's a consistent feature of the last five hundred thousand years. What about five hundred comma thousand, not five hundred thousand. Wow. What does it mean to dream of a loved one who's passed away Yeahes. this is an interesting one. I think it goes back to processing trauma. I My dad passed away seven years ago and then recently I had one of my adult sons do well with a goal he had without getting into too many specifics mean that's his life story and journey, but I had this, you know, I had this sort of like pops comes back during times of like momentous occasions, maybe where you should have been there in the beginning when because it was it was an unexpected passing. And so in the beginning, you know, the dreams were filled with a pit in my stomach. And so I think Grieving as a bigger theme of Loss. the power of attachment, the pain of losing that attachment. I think there I think when loved ones return in our dreams. probably a pattern that mirrors how you're coping in real life. Well, that makes sense to me because if you're the kind of person that also is like, I'm not going to allow myself to feel this. I got to get through the day And I'm not going there. I'm not going there and that's the executive awake brain. the CEO. Yeah to keep things going things going. So I'm not going to break down right now But then dream brain. You got your dreaming brain and the imagination network comes online. emotional str The emotional structure. It makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah.our brain is working out all the stuff that maybe the awake brain has been suppressing all day. Yeah. and you see that as a pattern. in my cancer patients, you see that as a pattern in my own individual life. You see that as a pattern, the grieving and dream reports about lost I loved ones And then it can go from like fear to welcome experience and m you know, at its biggest, you know because I don't want to just be onlyci like science based about this, but you know, if the neurons when you're running and your dreams are firing the same way as when you're running in real life You know, maybe maybe the Maybe the most romantic thing or the most sweet thing to think is like when you you know, connect with your loved ones who died Maybe that is a real experience for as close as you can get to it Why do people have erotic dreams about people that they're not in relationships or they're even attracted to. I The repellent boss. Yeah. I know. I know. So Some quick things about erotic Dreams. Yes Universal. If you change it from sex to erotic, the surveys show it's like ninety plus Wait, meaning people are more likely to report a neurotic dream than a sex dream. Yeah. Well, it sounds sexier. To say erotic. Yeah. erotic. Uh Across cultures And then there's a high rate of infidelity percent in these surveys show that we're all we're all kind of cheaters. in our erotic dreams. And then they tend to arrive This is the fascinating part, you know, when you have those families that have their children longitudinal studies and talk about their dream reports all the way through, they tend to arrive even before, you know, ty and before people have had the sexual act, erotic dreams will arrive. You know if cheating is common in erotic dreams, what does that mean for somebody who's in a happy relationship? I think it means nothing. You know I've been asked that question quite a bit, I mean, if The simplest I mean, the way I think about it is if you actually thinking about cheating and wanting to cheat and you C cheating in your erotic dreams, that means, you know, it's just a direct link between your daily desires and your dream desires If you're in a bad relationship and you're cheating in your dreams, that think that That one might be something to unpack But if you're in a healthy relationship, infidelity is just a part of the design And dreaming. Yeah at least from the reports. Yes. That's what's that's what's That's what's happening. I don't think it means anything at all. Do reoccurring dreams hold more significance? Not sure, but they speak to dreams having their own memory system of sorts. that dreams are not random if you're gonna have it again. Now, recurring dreams tend to be nightmares Um That's different than flashbacks in PTSD. Now how do you define a nightmare? A good one. So Nightmare iss not a bad dream by definition, the globally, It's terrifying It's and it's got to wake you up. It's got to snap you out of it So when people talk about dream recall, nightmares have one hundred percent dream recall. You mentioned earlier that nightmares begin in children around age five. What else can you tell us about nightmares? Like why do we have them I think we have to look at Nightmares in two ways the pediatric nightmares, nightmares in children are universal. They don't lead to nightmare disorder And they are they arrive around four fifty, six. No matter how gentle a childhood. That's it That's a cognitive maturation that's built in They don't really get nightmare disorders They don't wake up the next day say o I can't cope with what happened last night because of my nightmares adult, it's very different. The occasional nightmare insignificant the return of nightmares or the what we call progressive, new onset and progressive. Out of the blue and worse every few weeks. That's linked to suicide, depression, all those things. but also It's linked to people who later on develop mental health issues And so again, the return of nightmares when you feel like you're coping well It may be your signal, your warning signal, a take a deeper look or a different look It's not that you're not trying hard to get it right during the day. different look at what's going on in your life if you have that aren't precipipated by trauma, nightmares return as a feature in your adult life Thank you for sharing that And I want to thank you for spending time listening or watching this right now because I know that everything that Dr. John Diall is sharing with you and me has the ability to change your life. So thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing this with the people in your mind that keep popping up and don't go anywhere. 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Visit summerinscottsdale dot com and start planning your trip Welcome back It your friend Malel Robins T todayay you and I have the honor of getting to spend time learning from and being inspired by the extraordinary work of doror John Dial And we're learning all about the science of dreaming and how to unlock the power of your mind. I love this so much. I've already I've already thought of ten people I cannot wait to share this with. But Dr. John Dyall, I really want to talk about This term that you have been using called Dream Reall and being able to remember your dreams because if we can remember them that it seems like that's the portal, if you will to deeper self awareness, to really understanding more from your dream life that informs your awake life. Can you train yourself to remember your dreams Dream recall can be improved by some basic steps One is Oh slowing down the sudden waking up. Okay. So that takes a lot of luxury, It takes some bed, it takes not setting alarm. takes not having your doll or your kids jump on your bed. but What you're trying to do is not abruptly have the executive network come back online. Okay becausecause it will They'll fire up a drone and'll pop up muchuch like an alarm or if there's a fire, you willll pop out of your sleep and dreams for an alarm and the smell of smoke If you have a slower five to ten minute arousal, if you try to lay flat and and think as you're waking up rather than physically move. someome yoga techniques have been talking about that for centuries. you want to you want to cultivate your habits and techniques and rituals around sleep entry. and sleep exit. So let's talk about sleep entry. What are the specific habits that you recommend We do. for sleep entry to help buildu the skill of dream recall One is the power of suggestion where you say to yourself, I will remember, I will dream and I will remember my dreams. It's almost like a mantra. Okay. I will dream and I will remember my dreams. Number two is to sort of influence the content of your dream by what you're looking at the last five, ten minutes. Don't get me wrong. I fall asleep with my laptop on with Netflix Wait Don't saying that right now. We don't want to hear that. We want want to We want to hear how it best possible Well it'ss ritual. I've watched terror like a scary movie and then I have a nightmare. Yeah. Wonder why. Now I know.. Well, and it's not always exact. I don't want people to think that it's linear, but that window is a time to influence the content of your dream as well as the recall F to ten minutes before you fall asleep, you can influence what you're about to dream about You can influence what you're about to dream about. No way. So Salvador Dlli, Yes, wrote a book on magical craftsmanship and he used those fifteen, ten, fifteen minutes It was later used in inception, right? when they fall backwards in the chair, all those concepts come from this sleep entry window. Well, that's a really interesting thing to stop and think about. Because you're right all day long, when you're using your awake brain and the executive network is the one that is predominantly active You're attacking your life, your relationships Anything you're trying to create, whether it's songwriting or a book you're working on or a presentation at work or your resume or the hell am I gonna do with my life White knnuckling a little bit. Yeah, white knuckling it It's a very compelling invitation to take five minutes every night while you're sitting in bed and say I want to dream about this relationship. I want to dream about My next chapter I want my dreaming brain to weigh in on these things that I've been tackling during the day. and maybe if there's a flare and I can remember it, it'll give me an insight to the problem. So it's that leveling up that's free and available to all of us.' why think's beautiful I've never thought about it that way. Yeah, it's your world. It's your memory, it's your imagination It's and you're just giving a different look at. it's like it's a it's a different lens. It's black and white and coloreor at the same problem. But but I just, you know, really want to stay here for a second because I'm having a big insight that I always thought about trying to remember my dreams after they happen as a way to I don't know, like kind of understand what's happening versus Starting with the entry point of sleep and using third of your life, your dreaming brain to you think through things to help you look at things differently to use it proactively as you enter sleep versus trying to excavate and find something at the end of sleep. I mean, both are probably very interesting, but it never occurred to me that we could give it an assignment I can't wait to try this. I'm really excited to try this.. And I would say be patient with it. And then on the other end on sleep exit All my notes, you know Like on my phone I' like, I got a lot I got I got a lot I'm the King of bad ideas and I have a few good ones They're all when I wake up. Let's talk about sleep exit because we've talked about how to set yourself up for the sleep entry and to take advantage of that state And sleep exit, you said ideally is the five to ten to fifteenteen minutes, where you're in between awake and asleep and you're transitioning and exiting the imagination network and the executive network's about to come back on Um What do what do we want to do? So we don't set an alarm Or you set an alarm, but you lay there for ten or fifteen minutes. like, I'm going to do this on a weekend because I don't w want to set an alarm So what do I do as I'm waking up? What do we do in the sleep exit? The way You're trying to turn the dial from dreaming to awake. rather than be startled. So when you You don't you enter sleep for safety reasons, we can We can't snap out of sleep because, you know, there's a fire or there's an earthquake, you'll wake up. it's obviously protective And you want you want to make that. You enter sleed you tried it. You try to exit sleep similarly You try to unwind, you're starting to come, you're starting to wake up. but you don't reach for anything. You physically don't move You try to hold on to your thoughts you try to think about the emotions and the images And then after having a few minutes, five, seven minutes of that then you reach over, this is my ritual, Then I reach over and I grabbed for the phone and then I just choted down some ome thoughts. They might be about a relationship, they might be about surgery. they might be about a creative idea and then you get up And that's Those are the two habits or rituals U that I do daily whenever whenever I did it this morning when I flew up here. Now, did you remember what you dreamt about or you were just you were just kind of because because I can imagine a very kind of linear, just black just tell me what to do. I'm not remembering my dreams. So if I don't like remember that I was riding an elephant or my dead mother in law was there, like, am I failing at this? L or are you what are you doing if you don't have any visual recall? Excellent point. I'm just writing down my thoughts and emotions in that window It's not put in a problem And I'm waiting for the output Y It's that my thinking is different in that hybrid state in the morning. And that time when I'm Both. partially asleep and dreaming and partially awake I'm using that window and differently about everything, about anything. Old problems, new problems new ideas. So it's a window of creative ideation Both when you sleep entry and sleep exit, sometimes for directly for a problem. Other times just for thinking through everything And that's those are the times I tend to have my freshest ideas. I need to have a note my bag because the one thing that I am gonna disagree with Dr. John Dial on is the phone. pututting it in the phone. onlynly because I do not have the discipline to not then lost in it I have had the experience and as you're listening or watching, I bet you have had a similar experience We're either on the sleep entry or on a sleep exit, you have a thought about something And you say to yourself, I need to remember that. Exactly. before the sand slips away between your fingertips, right? That's exactly. It's usually like an amazing idea or something that I wanted to remember to say in an interview tomorrow or that I needed to And it always seems so important And to your point, It's like sand slipping through your fingers because I'm looucid enough to know I just had a thought, but it's slipping away and I'm lucid enough to say to myself, I better write that down, but then I'm like And I don't write it down and I typically don't remember it. And on the other end, you're what was that? that was that up? I must I'm up. Yes. And so I'm trying to extend those windows. Yeah and capture those I capture that thinking it's the thinking that's happening around that time is a unique perspective on the same problems just through different lenses, different brain mouges. And what I love about how you've unpacked this is before this conversation I would have thought about remembering dreams or dream recall as being able to replay almost like a trailer in your mind about what happened. because you know, when you have a crazy dream or a nightmare that you wake up from, you're so startled by it that you're like, oh my God, I had this dream last night and you give the play by play of some of the details, What you actually are talking about is more subtle. Like let's lower the bar when we first start doing this because dream recall is really more staying in that state as you're exiting sleep and the imagination network is going a little down and the executive functionings can just see what emotions or even words might flow into the current. ideas. Okayactly right. Got it. It's not. I wouldn't have done this. That's find analysis. Yeah. it's an important clarification. It's not like It's not like a nightmare where you have you want a crisp replay of a That's what I would have been looking for. Yeah. It's more of a dream state that lingers. And the recall is an emotion that you might have felt falling elevator Um an image and certain thinking around that. And as you wake up allow what you're gonna to work on during the day to enter and you might have a new insight into what you need to do at work or a problem you're tackling during the day. What exactly is Lucid dreaming, Dr. John Dal? When I was building this book, I was like, no, this is what is this? You know, there's going to be no science it ended up being the most rigorously understood Dream type is lucid dreaming. I gave it two chapters in the book out of nine. Lucid simply stated, Lucid dreaming is waking up Wow inside a dream. Now that sounds just just stay with me for a second. Okay Dreams are usually in the rear view You wake up slowly or fast you go, o, that was only a dream. Yes Lucid dreaming, a third of people report it is you're dreaming And then you wake up. and you have a bit of awareness that hey, I'm actually still dreaming Um flying, falling Usually the memorory is,, I had a dream about falling. Lucid dreaming is coming to within a dream state. and I know this sounds Are you continuing to dream or Yes and you continue to be asleep Pven sleep, not just pretend sleep You are asleep based on electrical measurements that brain EKG, there's a signal we can prove you're asleep and not faking it continuing to dream and sleep But you're coming to within that within that state And they proved it by thirty years ago by communicating brain EKG says, You're as sleep. And your eyes have You can still control your eyes. the rapid eye movement comes back into your control and they've developed a morse code where they communicate with eye movements to sleep researchers. You write about this on page one hundred twenty eight and this is why You Dream T lucid dream is to enter a paradox it seems more mystical than real, a dual consciousness that straddles the vivid ideological dreamscape and the insight that you, the dreamer are both the creator and an actor inside this imagined dream world. In some cases, lucid dreamers are able to take lucid dreaming a step further and control the action within the dream, a type of real Dream navigation doctor John Dell, let's discuss the exact steps for how you can lose a dream Okay, there are a lot of techniques that are reported out there. I like this one because it was verified with the brain electricity. People use this technique Then they went roved that they got better at Lucid dreaming. So the first step is to set An alarm So this is different than sleep exit to set an alarm at about five or six hours. And that goes back to a light touch in the phases of sleep That's when you're sort of in your last REM phase when you have the best recall, when you have the most. most likely to have vivid dreams. Okay, just so I'm tracking. You're saying you set an alarm for five to six hours after you fall asleep. So if you've gone bed at ten, or setting the alarm for three or four AM. Okayad plus five, five and a half. Okay, great. Got it. Now when the So you're intentionally waking yourself up I touch earlier than you want to. Yes. So you're still a little groggy. Okay. You're still a little sleepy. Okay. You have the luxury of being alone and privacy again, a weekend or something where it's intentional that you're trying to do this. And then and then you wake up. Okay