#1 Neuroscientist: Why You Dream & What Your Dreams Are Trying to Tell You

Do you ever wonder about your dreams? 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? 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.

We spend a third of our lives dreaming.

Wait, a third of our life is spent dreaming?

Dreaming is not an accidental byproduct. It's something essential for the human mind.

Dr. Rahul Jandial is a world-renowned cancer surgeon, neuroscientist, and pioneering neurosurgeon who is here to teach you and me about all of the fascinating things that your brain is doing when you're dreaming.

That nightly dreaming process happens for all humans all the time. We do things we couldn't imagine. We fly, we fall, we run from monsters, we get into awkward social situations. You can influence what you're about to dream about.

No way. What are the most common dreams that people have?

Everybody has had a nightmare. It's a universal dream. In a wellness way, a flare of a nightmare can remind you that something is not going well with your mental health.

Now, how do you define a nightmare?

Nightmare's not a bad dream. By definition, it's terrifying and it's gotta wake you up.

What exactly is lucid dreaming?

Waking up while inside a dream. So the first step is to set an alarm at about 5 or 6 hours.

So you're intentionally waking yourself up.

A touch earlier than you want to, and then you—

Dr. John Dyal, welcome 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, uh, you'll be excited to learn that there are simple steps where you can influence your dreams, remember your dreams, and cultivate the direction or dreams to live a life that is, uh, not possible simply with the waking brain.

Wait, a third of our life is spent dreaming?

Dreams can happen at any part of sleep, and even when you fall asleep and when, when you're waking up. So now we are thinking that a third of our life is spent dreaming.

Wow.

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 the— I thought about the fact that you spend 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, and it is rest, but it's not inactivity. Your brain is on fire when you sleep. Your body's resting. And 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. Every— we go to bed, we think, ah, the computer screen went down.

Yeah.

Then we wake up, we hit the keyboard, and now we're awake. No, no, no. It's, 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 is a portal to your life. It's a 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 digestive— digesting, processing, and delivering the same, uh, readout 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, not all dreams, but some dreams, I think they invite a process of reflection, uh, to where, hey, that's an interesting perspective on 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, uh, as we have this conversation, there are ways There are simple ways that have been done by like Salvador Dalí 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, uh, I think more emotionally balanced. Uh, it's given me little windows in which when I wake up, I take a moment to pause. And those 5, 10 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 10 minutes, you have the electrical fingerprints of being awake and asleep. Um, the guys who have done creative things in art, often talk about this.

Yeah.

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 0 to 10 minutes of my day are going to be completely different after talking to you, um, and learning from you. Now, one thing I just want to address up front, because we asked our global audience about dreams, and 26% of people 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 you're about to teach us.

Yeah, I mean, if you don't remember your dreams, uh, this episode is especially for you. That's how I feel, because the practical and simple answer is when the London publishing house was 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. Two, 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 15,000 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 a friend this weekend, and she, 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?

Well, if you have people— so again, let me try to explain the science.

Yeah.

People 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. So that suggests that the dreaming process is happening. It's just a matter of recall. But that, that nightly dreaming process happens for all humans all the time. It's so important. It makes us sleep. It makes us— exposes us to threat. And then it 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 things we fly, we fall, we run from monsters. We get into awkward social situations. Like 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 will be, will wither. Because they're so metabolically demanding. I believe, and what 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're, they're liberated, rehearsed, kept warm when we dream so they're accessible for us during the day when we face our challenges. Because that's the part, 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, uh, do you know when a dream does mean something versus when your mind is just doing something?

There are 5 sort of categories of dreams. There's the obvious dream. You have anxiety about giving a talk, you show up, you're naked at the DACE or whatever. That's just your day, day anxiety rolling right into your, 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, and they tend to be of reconciliation, not of doom. And then pregnancy dreams— 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, uh, deciphered or even reflected upon because they, they're not attached, uh, to anything deeply emotional or deeply visual. Then 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 and 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, 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.

Huh.

And so it's, it's metaphorical, um, and they would be emotional and visual. Um, I was in a difficult relationship and the, uh, 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, um, and then as, as that relationship improved, there wasn't that, that dropping, uh, that crashing elevator sort of feeling. So And whether that gave me an answer, I don't, I don't think it was about getting an answer. It's about reflecting, looking backward, and engaging the dream thoughts that you have had. That is a portal to your brain, uh, that only dreaming can provide because it's a lens that's emotional and visual, uh, and imaginative. So 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 that dreams happen in? Can you like teach us about that?

I have some blocks here that your team set up. So the first one, when you fall asleep, sleep entry is N1.

So sleep entry is N1. How long does that last?

Well, it's variable. Uh, the, the time that's most fixed is this thing we're going to get to called, you know, rapid eye movement.

Okay.

But it's longer in the beginning, then it goes to N2, which is deeper into sleep.

Okay.

These are— then it goes to N3. And the thought was that 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 wiggling 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 how your eyes behave. And this was thought to be where you have the wildest dreams.

In REM.

In REM. And REM increases as you go deeper into the night. So the thought is that dreaming is most vivid closest to when you're waking up.

Okay.

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. So I think the big answer here is dreams can happen at any time when you're asleep, even during sleep entry and during sleep exit.

I love the blocks, and what I love about the blocks is that it, yes, shows us the different phases of sleeping, But it also kind of visually shows us that 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. Um, so will you describe for the person, uh, 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 had their children, uh, participate over decades.

No kidding.

Yeah. So you get, so you get these longitudinal studies where when they're kids they are, 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 they're at random times while they're measuring the electricity also woken up, and they're asked to write down their dreams. And then now more recently, people are falling asleep in these exotic scanners that are— 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, different continents if you will, um, that are, that are not activated but, uh, 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 decades of waking people up, plus the several hundred years of reports of people talking about dreams that's in the literature, all the way back to Aristotle talking about lucid dreaming. So I, 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 you, if you took the brain and you flattened it and thought of the lobes as continents.

Okay.

Uh, when you're awake, the executive network, the CEO— think of it as one continent— is making the whole globe work. It's 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 is slightly dampened, and other continents are 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. So creative ideation and more emotion in limbic structures And this is well studied that those are a little warmer.

Hmm.

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, uh, in dreaming, um, 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, amygdala, 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 about 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 Like, why, 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. So for example, practical example, some people feel like they're living well, doing well, coping well, and then they have a— they have nightmares pop up. And the nightmares are perplexing 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, a flare of a nightmare can, uh, 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 the— where nightmare disorder in people who seem to have it all is a clue that things really aren't at peace inside them. So that's one practical example, and it happens before you're actually conscious of it. So this is exactly bubbling up the subconscious, the awareness, or the way that your dreaming brain has processed, um, 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 or headaches are in people who seem to be doing well.

How can dreams help you solve problems?

So these are surveys. We talked 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, uh, in 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 remem— if not, if you dream about throwing darts, but if you dream at all and recall those dreams, uh, that, 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 a language and try to dream, try to lucid dream, and there's some correlation that they are better at it. At a bigger level, when you dream about throwing a dart or running, mm-hmm, 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 EKG, 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 rehearsal. So that's the, that's the bigger concept that fascinates me. On the practical level, there's a lot of people doing surveys of and questionnaires of dreaming and skill acquisition.

Wow. Uh, Dr. John Deal, how can dreams help us predict the future, especially around your health?

There is an example we'll get into. It's, it's a little bit nuanced, and that has to do with when men in their 50s develop Parkinson's disease and the brain withers. 90-something percent, which in medical terms is almost 100, is 15 years before their dreaming pattern changes.

Really?

Yeah. And so everybody can look this up. It's called REM behavior disorder. You can look it up on Scientific American. So in that one way, REM behavior disorder, when the brain withers, its earliest warning sign was a change in dreaming 15 years prior where they act out their dreams. So that's, that's one example. The other is that when in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and when, when the brain decays and that sort of thing, Uh, 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 4, 5, 6, they'll mention animals, but it's not really Fido or their puppy or their— and so in some ways it almost feels like the brain is developing And when at the end of life, when it decays, it returns to its sort of immature— I mean, biologically immature features. So the dreaming pattern changes as we get these neurodegenerative changes. That's number 2. And then, and then number 3 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 mentioned that I had a dream about my body, I had a dream about my breast, I had a dream about something physically 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 did you get diagnosed? How did it happen for you? You know, that in their story they will— they're called warning dreams. They will mention, 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, an early detection. So those warning dreams, that's— those are the three ways, three buckets I would say, is to think about dreams and health. Wow.

Dr. Jandial, how can dreams help you process trauma? Or traumatic experiences.

An idea is that a dream is your nocturnal therapist. It, uh, it helps you digest difficult things. But we have nightmares, we have PTSD and flashbacks. So I mean, I just want to say, I'm not saying no. I would just say let your dreaming brain have as wide of a range of, uh, thoughts and experiences that we would our waking brain. There's no perfect thought, there's no healthy thought or bad thought. I mean, there, 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 So when you wake people up in the 5th, 6th, 7th hour, they tend to have a little bit more positive emotional skewing and regulation. So is that what dreams are doing? Maybe. At the same time, dreams with flashbacks and PTSD can keep your trauma alive. So it's— there's no simple answer for that. Um, and PTSD can bring back nightmares. And then it's just as fascinating. And part— one of the treatments of nightmares is to rescript the story with a journal before you go to bed. Think about how powerful that is. The power of suggestion is so powerful. This is— I'm a neurosurgeon. 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, 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, a 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, uh, 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 the— I think the newest part of our brain is this area that if we injure it in surgery, not an oops moment, but like a risk of the, the surgery built in, or a tumor's there, or an injury's 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. So 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.

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The 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 the brain and have, uh, an old nightmare pop up in the operating room. But, 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. About two-thirds of people are falling or flying. About one-third have teeth falling out. Not right now, but before TVs, before the horse and buggy, like before fire, our ancestors. So there's a similar pattern of dreaming that's built in despite how much our world has changed.

Huh.

That's the simplest way for me to say that 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, we're outward, and we're— we have our imagination and we have what's happening outside of us. When you fall asleep, It's the memories you've stored and the imagination you have, plus some ancestral patterns of dreaming that we're inheriting. Much like you could inherit mental health issues, or somebody's better at math, we're inheriting. Because there's no other way that 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 how wild it feels for us individually.

Dr. Jandia, 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 4, 5, 6—

wait, do math?

Math. Like, math. Now, somebody's going to write in, and I'm not saying 100%, 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 chart. So now just stay with me, this is very important. Calculation and math is very rare in dreams, and the, the 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. And 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, why, why in the dream reports math is very, very, very rarely— is, is very rarely done. And that fits the heat map where the executive network— it's a specific area called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. But more importantly, if you have a nail gun injury in that area, people struggle with math. And that, that gets cooler in sleeping and dreaming. And that fits why very few people over thousands and thousands of dream reports uh, 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, 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.

Yeah, that's perfect.

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 functioning 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 nightmare. It's a universal dream. That's so— why do we all— it's a universal dream since recorded history, um, that, you know, you have consistently falling and flying being in dream reports. 60, 50, 70, two-thirds of people say, yeah, I've had dreams about falling. Yeah, I've had dreams about flying. People who have never fallen, and people— and before we had airplanes. Like, why is somebody 300 years ago dreaming about flying?

I don't know why.

I don't know. But the point is, it's a consistent feature when the same dreams are, are being experienced despite massive changes in our world. To me, it suggests that it's something driven by the brain. It's that we don't need to create that dream. The, the dreaming process is something that is part autopilot, partly under our control. So nightmares and erotic dreams are essentially universal. Common dreams are falling, flying, and teeth falling out. So those are the simp— the simpler sort of categories of, of dreams.

Let's talk about each one of those specifically. Dr. John D'Alia, why do people dream about your teeth falling out. What do you think that means?

Um, there's only been one paper, like, there you scour PubMed, 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.

Okay.

The, the study from Israel just suggested that, um, that it's linked to teeth grinding. It's completely boring analysis of it, you know, but that's, that's what's out there. I, I don't— I've— 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, few, like 100, 200 years ago and still now? Bad dental hygiene, good dental hygiene, consistent pattern of, uh, of, of, of dream reports.

And what does dreaming about being chased or falling mean?

So there are some theories, some ideas around this, that maybe being chased and falling was sort of a threat rehearsal. So somebody a while back said, if we're good at running from a woolly mammoth, or, you know, uh, in our dreams, or if we're 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, we people, our ancestors with torches, likely were 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 500,000 years. And what about 500,000? Not 500,000.

Wow. What does it mean to dream of a loved one who's passed away?

Well, um, yeah, this is a— this is an interesting one. I think it goes back to processing trauma. My, my dad passed away 7 years ago, and then recently I had one of my adult sons do well with a goal he had. And without getting into the too many specifics, I mean, that's his life story and, and journey. But I had this, you know, I had this sort of like my pops comes back during times of like momentous occasions, maybe where he should have been there in the beginning when, uh, because it was a, it was an unexpected passing. And so in the beginning, yeah, you know, the dreams were filled with a pit in my stomach. And so I, I think grieving as a bigger theme of loss, uh, the power of attachment, the pain of losing that attachment. I think there— I, I think, uh, when loved ones return in our dreams, there's 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 gonna allow myself to feel this, I gotta get through the day, and I'm not going there, I'm not going there. And that's the executive awake brain.

The CEO. Yes, to keep things—

you gotta keep things going, so I'm not going to break down right now.

But then the dreaming brain—

you've got your dreaming brain, and the imagination network comes online, the emotional structure. It makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah, that your brain is working out all the stuff that maybe the awake brain has been suppressing all day.

Yeah. I, I, and you see that as a pattern in my cancer patients. You see that as a pattern in, in my own individual life. You see that as a pattern, the grieving and dream reports about lost and loved ones. And then it can go from like fear to a welcome experience. And, you know, at its biggest, you know, because I don't want to just be only science, like science-based about this, but You know, if the neurons when you're running in 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 like sweet thing to think is like when you, you know, connect with, uh, your loved ones who've died. Maybe that is a real experience or as close as you can get to it.

Why do people have erotic dreams about like people that they're not in relationships with or even attracted to?

I know. The Repellent Boss.

Yeah.

Oh my God, I know, I know. Um, so some quick things about erotic dreams. Yes, universal. If you change it from sex to erotic, the, the surveys show it's like 90 plus.

Wait, meaning people are more likely to report an erotic dream than a sex dream? Yeah, well, it sounds sexier to say erotic.

Yeah, erotica. Um, across cultures. And then there's a high rate of infidelity, 80% in these surveys show that we're all, we're all kind of cheaters in our erotic dreams. And then they tend to arrive— now this is the fascinating part, you know, when you, 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, puberty 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. But I mean, if the simplest— I mean, the way I think about is if you're actually thinking about cheating and wanting to cheat and you're cheating in your erotic dreams, that means, you know, it's just a a direct link between your daily desires and your, and your dream desires. If you're in a bad relationship and you're cheating in your dreams, that thing, that, that one might be something to unpack. But if you're in a healthy relationship, infidelity is just a part of the design, um, of 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 recurring dreams hold more significance?

Not sure, but they speak to dreams having their own memory system of sorts, um, that that dreams are not random if you can have it again. Now, recurring dreams tend to be nightmares, um, and that's different than flashbacks and PTSD.

Now, how do you define a nightmare?

Oh, a good one. So nightmare is not a bad dream. Yeah, 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 100% dream recall.

I, you mentioned earlier that nightmares begin in children around age 5. 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 night— pediatric nightmares. Nightmares in children are universal. They don't lead to nightmare disorder, and they are— they arrive around 4, 5, 6. No matter how gentle the childhood. That's a, that's a cognitive maturation that's built in. But they don't really get nightmare disorders. They don't wake up the next day and say, oh, I can't cope with what happened last night because of my nightmares. In adults, it's very different. The occasional nightmare, insignificant. But 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 a— that's linked, uh, 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. Take 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. Take a different look at what's going on in your life if you have— that aren't precipitated by trauma— nightmares return as a feature in your adult life.

Your home should reflect who you are, not who you used to be or what you think it's supposed to look like. Just you now. And Ashley has pieces that fit whatever your style is. In fact, I was scrolling Ashley earlier. And I was immediately drawn to the pieces in the Serene Bay outdoor collection. Now, my personal style is cozy and functional, and the pieces in this collection feel elevated but still livable. And what I love most about Ashley is that every piece, it doesn't just look great, they're built for real life with features like stain-resistant fabrics that are easy to clean and even machine washable cushion covers. Plus, Ashley offers white glove delivery, so everything's brought right into your home and set up where you want it, making the entire process easy from start to finish. Visit your local Ashley store or head to ashley.com to find your style. I really want to talk about this term that you have been using called dream recall, mm-hmm, and being able to remember your dreams. Because if we can remember them, then 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, uh, slowing down the sudden waking up. Okay, so that takes a lot of luxury. It takes a bed, it takes not setting alarm, takes not having your, your dog 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.

Because it will, it'll fire up adrenaline, it'll pop up much like an alarm, or if there's a fire, you will pop out of your sleep and dreams for an alarm and the smell of smoke. So if you have a slower 5 to 10 minute arousal, if you try to lay flat and, and think as you're waking up rather than physically move— some yoga techniques have been talking about that for centuries. So 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 build this skill of dream recall?

Okay, one is the power of suggestion, where you say to yourself I will remember. I will, 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 2 is to sort of influence the content of your dream by what you're looking at the last 5, 10 minutes. Don't get me wrong, I fall asleep with my laptop on with Netflix.

I mean, wait, don't be saying that right now. We don't want to hear that. We want, we want to hear that you have the best possible— well, it's true. I've, I've watched terror, like a scary movie, and then I have a nightmare. Wonder why. Now I know.

Well, and it's, it's not always exact. I, I don't want people to think that it's, it's linear, but that window is a time to influence the content of your dream as well as the recall.

So that 5 to 10 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 Dalí—

yes—

wrote a book on magical craftsmanship, and he used those 15, 10, 15 minutes Uh, it was later used in Inception, right? The— 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, like, 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 going to do with my life.

White knuckling a little bit.

Yeah, white knuckling it. It's a very compelling invitation to take 5 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, and I want my dreaming brain to weigh in on these things that are—

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. That's why I think it's beautiful.

I, I've never thought about it that way.

Yeah, it's, it's your world, it's your memory, it's your imagination. It's— and you're just giving a different look at it. So it's, it's like, it's a, it's a different lens. It's black and white and color 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 a third of your life, your dreaming brain, to help 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.

Um, 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 have 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, but they're all when I wake up.

Like, 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, you know, 5 to 10 to 15 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 you— what do we want to do? So we don't set an alarm, or you set an alarm but you lay there for 10 or 15 minutes. Like, I'm going to do this on a weekend because I don't want to set an alarm. So what do I do as I'm waking up? And what, what do we do in the sleep exit?

So the way you're trying to turn the dial from dreaming to awake, uh, rather than be startled, so Uh, when you, you know, you enter sleep, but for safety reasons, we can, we can't snap out of sleep because, you know, uh, there's a fire or there's an earthquake, you'll wake up. Yeah, it's, it's obviously protective. And you want, you want to make that— you enter sleep and you try to, you try to exit sleep similarly. You try to unwind. You're starting to come up, 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, 5, 7 minutes of that, then you reach over— this is my ritual— then I reach over and I grab for the phone, and then I just jot down some, some thoughts. Uh, 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, uh, that I do daily whenever I— 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 I can imagine a very kind of linear, just black and white, 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? Like, or are you— what are you doing if you don't have any visual recall.

Excellent point. I'm, I'm just writing down my thoughts and emotions in that window. It's not I put in a problem and I'm waiting for the output. It's, it's that my thinking is different in that hybrid state in the morning. And I— that, that time when I'm both partially asleep and dreaming and partially awake, I'm using that window and to think differently about everything, about anything. Old problems, new problems, new ideas. So that 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 notepad by my bed. 'Cause the one, the one thing that I, uh, am gonna disagree with Dr. John D.L. on is the phone, putting it in the phone. Only because I do not have the discipline to not then get lost in it. But I have had the experience, and as you're listening or watching, I bet you have had a similar experience where 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?

Yes. And it's usually like an amazing idea or or something that I wanted to remember to say in an interview tomorrow, or that I needed to— to— and it always seems so important. And to your point, it's like sand slipping through your fingers, because I'm lucid 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?

Yes.

And so I'm trying to extend those windows and capture those— I capture that thinking. It's the, it's the thinking that's happening around that time is, is a, is a unique perspective on the same problems, just through different lenses, different brain modes.

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, 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 functioning and just see what emotions or even words might—

correct—

flow into the current ideas.

Exactly right.

Got it.

It's not a—

I wouldn't have done this, right?

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 it.

Yes, 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, as you wake up, allow what you're gonna 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 Deal?

When I was, uh, building this book, I was like, no, this, this is what is this? You know, this— there's going to be no science. And ended up being the most rigorously understood, uh, dream type is lucid dreaming. I gave it 2 chapters in the book out of 9. Uh, lucid— simply stated, lucid dreaming is, um, waking up while 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, oh, 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 memory is, oh, 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'll continue to be asleep. Proven sleep, not just pretend sleep. You are asleep based on electrical measurements, that, that brain EKG. There's a signal we can prove you're asleep and not faking it. So you're continuing to dream and sleep, but you're coming to within that, within that state. Uh, and they proved it by, uh 30 years ago by communicating. The brain EKG says you're asleep, 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 128 in This Is Why You Dream: To lucid dream is to enter a paradox that 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. Dr. John Dill, let's discuss the exact steps for how you can lucid 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 and proved 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, um, at about 5 or 6 hours. And that goes back to a light touch on 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 5 to 6 hours after you fall asleep. So if you've gone to bed at 10, we're setting the alarm for 3 or 4 AM?

Okay, plus 5, 5 and a half.

Okay, great, got it.

Now, when the—

so you're intentionally waking yourself up a 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 you— and then you wake up.

Okay.

And again, that— the way we were talking about it is you don't try to fully wake up. You let yourself lay there, you let yourself be groggy. And at this point, you can either reminisce about what you were dreaming about and look for these things called dream signs. Usually they're clocks and fingers. And maybe that goes back to why Dali was making those, uh, paintings. But you look for dream signs.

What do you mean, clocks and fingers? What am I looking for?

When you wake— when you're lucid dreaming, clocks and hands tend not to be precise. They tend not to be accurate. An extra finger, the numbers are off. And this is consistently— these are questionnaires and surveys that people say this across cultures and across, uh, and across decades. Okay, so if you don't see the dream sign, that's fine. You say to yourself, I will fall back asleep and I will wake up while I'm dreaming. And again, the power of suggestion is used at that time. And then what you're trying to do is— that's the report part. You report what you've written down potentially in your mind. You can open up a journal and write a little bit about dreaming, but again, you are trying to not wake up completely. You wake up a little earlier than you want to. You don't wake up completely. Then you introduce the power of suggestion where I want to fall asleep and I want to wake up while I'm sleeping. And that's the, that's the process that you do over and over again.

Okay.

And when people did this, the amount of students— this was a study, um, they were able to go into sleep labs and demonstrate with this eye movements and brain signatures that they were able to lucid dream. So it wasn't a lucid dream, it wasn't just they said they were, they had to go in and prove they could.

Huh.

And then the process repeats itself day after day, night after night, uh, if you have that luxury, or on occasion. But that's the well-established technique to learn to lucid dream. A third of people do it on their own, but if you want to cultivate the skill or the ability, those are the steps.

So let me just repeat this back. So if you want to try to train yourself to lucid dream, you are going to set the alarm for 5, 5 and a half hours after you fall asleep. So if you're going to bed at 9 o'clock, you're setting it for like 2 and 2 o'clock in the morning. 10 o'clock, you're setting for 3 o'clock in the morning. That is going to interrupt your sleep when the alarm goes off, where you will be in kind of the later stages of REM sleep, right? You're groggy, you're awake once the alarm goes off. And Dr. John D'El wants you to just kind of stay in that groggy state, notice what you notice. But then we're going to use the power of suggestion to say, I'm going to fall back asleep, but I'm going to be awake in my dream.

I'm going to be awake in my dream.

And then as you're in it, you might notice the clock is weird, or you have extra fingers, or there's other signs that you are actually awake. Or you might kind of remember or see things vividly, and you're the kind of person that doesn't actually recall your dreams. Now, what are the benefits to something like this? Like, like, for people that, that, that, that teach themselves how to lucid dream or report lucid dreaming, is there any, like, thing that you get out of this other than just it's pretty cool and you feel more creative?

And that's a good question, you know. So athletes will rehearse their visual spatial to begin with. They have higher percentage of lucid dreaming already, and then they use this for rehearsal. Those, those surveys are coming out. Yeah, I won't call them study, but those surveys are coming out. People report, you know, a feeling of well-being, that it's a positive experience for them, and that having some control of their life in that dream state has a general improvement in their well-being. Those are the reports that are out there.

I love it. And it's free.

Yeah. And that's important to me.

Yeah.

It's important to me that it's accessible and it's private and it's personal and it's universal.

Beautiful. So, Dr. John Deal, could you speak directly to the person who's listening or watching right now? And if you had to distill down everything that you've taught us today, I mean, this absolutely fascinating. I'm so grateful that you came. What's the number one thing that you hope the person who's with us right now remembers about what you've just taught us?

That dreams and dreaming, um, are a gift, uh, from your mind to you. A gift in which you can understand yourself, you can sharpen yourself. And it's something that can be cultivated, and I think you should consider embracing it.

Well, I'm definitely doing this after sitting down and learning more. I'm so glad you broke it all down to specifically what to do. Dr. John D'Al, what are your parting words?

In the safety of sleep, we can dare, um, in ways we wouldn't while we're awake, and we can and explore, uh, in ways that are simply impossible with the waking brain. So, uh, it is the ultimate reset, uh, to let your— let the corners and recesses of your mind have their— have their time in the day, if you will, while we sleep and dream.

Well, Dr. John D'Alia, you said that dreams are the ultimate gift, but I personally think this has been an enormous gift because it allows us to access all of this incredible research. And I'm so excited about the fact that this is free, private, personal, and universal. And so thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to be here and to teach us how to open the door to this whole other aspect of our life. It's incredible. Thank you, thank you, and thank you, thank you for taking the time to listen and to learn about something that that could 1,000% make your life better. I mean, you now have an opportunity to use a third of your life to tap into your dreaming brain, to use the tools that Dr. John D'Al shared with you today to understand yourself better, to be more creative, to connect with people more deeply. I just absolutely love this. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing this with people in your life. And in case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you as your friend that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life. The fact that you spend time investing in yourself with world-renowned experts like Dr. John Dial, who is here with us today, that in my mind is proof that you in fact will make your life better. Alrighty, I'll see you in the next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play. And thank you for watching all the way to the end. Wasn't Dr. John D. Hall extraordinary? Of course he was. And so are you for spending time watching something on YouTube that's helping you improve your life instead of escaping your life. Thank you also for sharing this with people in your life, because I know they're gonna see this as an incredible gift and resource that you're giving to them. And finally, if that subscribe button is lit up, would you please hit subscribe? It's one way that you can can say to me and the team here at the Mel Robbins Podcast and to Dr. John DL, thank you. Thank you for showing up here on YouTube with these extraordinary episodes and world-renowned experts for free. Thank you for doing such hard work to help me improve my life. I really appreciate it. Thank you for doing that. All right, I know you want to watch another video, and you're going to love this one, and I will welcome you in the moment you hit play.