Dr. Rahul Jandial: What Your Nightmares Are Trying to Tell You & How to Know Which Dreams You Need to Pay Attention to

25:20So that's one thing that people can do to cultivate. In that same area, some people feel and report, questionnaires and surveys, not measurements, that what you think about at that time will be more likely to populate your dream life, whether you remember or not, and may lead to the aha moment the next day. Let me give you a specific example. I'm a cancer surgeon. Cancer eats up blood vessels and tissue in different ways. On challenging cases, I'll flip the images through as the last thing I go to bed thinking about. And somebody asked me this in London. They said, well, did you dream of surgery?

25:53I said, no, I've never dreamt of surgery, but I have a lot of dreams of scuba diving, navigating mazes, going through forests. And so what I concluded is my opinion is that it's a three-dimensional space. And I know I'm working on a three-dimensional creative project and that my dream life is somehow rehearsing that, practicing that, providing me with that maneuver in a complex surgery. And I say, man, that was, where did that come from? Sometimes I think it wasn't like in this scenario six, I will come up with solution four. No, like things arise during our waking life. And I think that dreaming brain builds that.

26:32So sleep entry for waking up intentionally and writing down your thoughts and journaling at that moment, journaling in general about what you want to dream about. For me, looking at pictures about a surgery, those are specific things as you fall asleep that somebody can try. Wow, that's fascinating. Because I think journaling has taken off so much in culture. And I'm trying to bring some science to it. I think the act of journaling straight after waking up like immediately i know for a fact that if i pick up my phone first thing in the morning which i try to avoid to do but when it does happen i forget my dream immediately yeah and i know i wake up kind of in a dream state and then i completely shut it off have you found links between going to sleep with your phone or without your phone and how that affects our dreams or if you watch a particular show and tv and how does that affect your dream and what you do in the morning?

27:27Does that have any correlation? So that's a great question. The thing you said about waking up, I'll get to that as sleep exit, because there's some interesting science there. But when you're looking at all these surveys, that's why I opened up with like, we need more dream banks. We need people who have a greater exposure to social media to start talking about their dreams. At this point, it doesn't look like they populate. Dreams, for example, let's take a specific example. Erotic dreams tend to be about a narrow group of people in your life, family even when you're younger, repellent bosses and celebrities.

27:57So I'm curious to see, like, right. Like, so now that doesn't mean there's 100 papers on that, but that's the sprinkling of information that I saw. Like, so what becomes familiar to us? Wait, you said bosses? Well, you know, people can have, like, awkward dreams about bosses, right? They have sexual dreams about people they actually are not attracted to. So that's a big category in erotic dreams. Is there any reasoning to that specifically? Because of being erotic dreams about people you're not attracted to? like where does that come from i don't know i think it's now we're getting into opinion yeah i think i think it's a power dynamic play and i think intimacy can be both collaborative and also a power dynamic and some mix of it all right but that's just that's an exploration but erotic dreams since we're there and we'll get back to sleep exit is um they're interesting we all get them they come before we've done the erotic act even if we haven't seen it so it's it's almost like an instruction, if you will, an inheritance of thinking, not just risk taking or mental health, but we inherit those dreams, even to people who'd never go on to have sex, they still have erotic dreams, almost like a playbook that's meant for a mind to activate our brain and bodies for the act to procreate.

29:09That's the big topic. The specific thing is, across cultures, different over generations, the percentages are surprisingly similar, 90 plus. The other surprising thing is is that 80 to 90 % in these reports, infidelity. Cheating is common erotic dreams. Whether you're in a healthy relationship, whether you're lying about in a healthy relationship and coveting somebody else, or whether you're in a bad relationship, it's almost like a semi-built-in thing. And I think that's how I've learned to think about erotic dreams, is that's just desire. It's like a flare of desire. It interestingly tends to be toward a narrow group, but the acts tend to be wild.

29:52There's a few points that you made in the book that fascinated me, seeing as we're on the topic of erotic dreams. I was sharing with the team earlier. So there's three things here, but let's go one by one. So erotic dreams are not fueled by masturbation or pornography. Walk me through that. That's what some reports a decade ago mentioned. Now that might be changing. But what's interesting to me there is it's not what we do during the day that shows up in our erotic dreams. It's actually what we fantasize about secretly during our day that's more likely to show up in our erotic dreams. And scientifically, to me, I think that makes a lot of sense because the dreaming process is the imagination network liberated.

30:36So it makes sense that what you imagine in your dream life is more connected to the fantasy you're having while you're awake. It doesn't matter the sexual act, the sexual person, that what you what brings someone to climax the thoughts they have during that process with their lover, without their level. It's the internal thinking of desire during the day that tends to find itself in erotic dreams. And to me, that's consistent if you think about the dreaming brain as something that has the liberated imagination network. It's an imaginative process, right? Your eyes are closed. That movie you're making for yourself.

31:20So whatever you're thinking about during the day, that's the movie you're making at night. So then going back to what you were saying earlier, if someone's in a happy relationship, but you're saying it's still common for them to cheat in their dreams. That's a separate pattern. Yeah. Yeah. That's a pattern that you've seen. So is that an argument then that that person may be happy in their relationship, but then they're fantasizing? I can't answer that. No, no, no. No, I love the question. That's a deep question. What I would say to you is from there, what people ask is if you have dreams tend to have more bisexuality.

31:49So does that mean you have, you're bisexual, you just haven't figured that out or you're not sharing that with somebody during the day? I can't answer that. But I think as we bring in more reports from dream banks and bring in more cultures, more backgrounds, more genders, and more diverse sort of perspectives on sexuality, we'll get insights into that. But that's a very individual thing. So as a whole, there's a lot of cheating in erotic dreams. As a whole, what shows up in our erotic dreams is what we imagine. and then it leaves it to the person that's why i opened with like you know people have asked me like if you dream of your ex does that mean you really want them i was like well if you're just seriously thinking to still think if you're hung up on him during the day you dream about your ex that means one thing but if you're like no i've really moved on and a lover pops up in your dream i think that's just a solar flare of desire i wouldn't make much of that i think that's the hard part right i think what we don't know is how seriously to take some of the to take a dream or not because i feel like a lot of people exactly like you just said you have a dream about something you're thinking oh god maybe i need that maybe i don't and and and is that a lack of self-awareness is it because the dream is not clear like how do we how have you thought about that as you've reflected on dreaming how do we get better at knowing whether to take a dream seriously or not because i feel like that would help solve so much of our conundrum or dilemmas that's created by dreams yeah it's a big question it's a big question it's a big question i would love to know your thoughts yeah my opinion about it is that uh one dreams should not be neglected okay uh nightmares if they pop up and they arrive out of the blue they shouldn't be neglected i think uh dreams that are flashbacks after ptsd obviously should not be neglected so it's there's some dreams that have a uh an easier rule to follow if you will but then what about those other dreams that you're bringing up, right?

33:43Like, intensely emotional that linger with you during the day. And you're wondering, like, wait a second, is that an insight to myself that I don't even have yet about myself? Should I discuss this with a therapist? Should I discuss this with my lover? And I think the way I've started to reflect on my dreams a bit more is that when they are hyper emotional, it's an invitation to look at your life differently. Right? I feel like I'm doing well. I'm high achieving. I'm doing this. I'm not, you know, you feel like, no, it's fine. I'm dealing with a broken relationship. Like, but if you start having nightmares or if you have emotional dreams that are filled with fright or regret, I'm not saying that that there's never an automatic link, right?

34:30Other than showing up naked at a podium or alarm not going off, But the one that's powerful, haunts you, doesn't make sense. That's an invitation to think about something. And back to our original conversation, to me, that's a life well examined is paying attention to the emotional, powerful dreams that you have that linger with you. The dream is symbolic, to get to your answer in the most specific way. The dream is a metaphor. The dream is symbolism. because from the dreaming brain and you've hyper visual, hyper emotional, it's not going to spell it out for you. It's going to be metaphorical.

35:08It's going to be symbolic. Specific example, Vietnam veterans who had PTSD got better. They start going through divorce. They're not, and they're struggling. They're not dreaming of divorce. They're dreaming of war again. So the experiences you're having, they're an invitation to reflect. The meaning is metaphorical and symbolic, all based on how the dreaming brain is built. And it's personal. It's hard to say a bridge or a light bulb in your life at this moment is going to be the same meaning for me at this moment in my life, or my life 10 years from now, not just former versions of myself. So I'm not here to refute anything, but it's a very personal process.

35:50Your brain made it. It's hyper. It's an emotion to a hyper-emotional state. It could mean nothing. It could mean something. But what I'm I'm here to say is take a look at it. Yeah. It's not just static. No, I think that's, I completely agree with you. I think it's a great point. And I feel like it's really interesting because it then goes back to the idea that humans are meaning makers and that we're storytellers. And if you're looking at a metaphor - I got a lot on that, man. Then you're trying to figure it out. And if you have a negativity bias in your conscious mind, I wonder how much, like, I'll give an example.

36:26I was talking to someone the other day and they were saying that they'd been dreaming about bears. And so I started Googling what that means. And I was going to ask you and I was Googling about it. It was really interesting because in a conscious state, a big bear feels scary and it feels like death and it feels like runaway. And that's how they saw a bear in their dream. But then when you looked at the dream spiritual version, whatever you call it, the interp, sorry. When you look at dream interpretation, the interpretation of that was bears represent strength and they represent courage and they have this symbol in the nago so it's a story right yeah it depends yeah it depends depends on which brain conjured up which image yeah you work in the circus bear means one thing you know you're a hunter bear means one thing you know in culture bear means something else so i like that but just to go back to something that you know i've been i've been moving around and people have asked me stuff.

37:22The question you just asked is something special about are we meaning makers? And now this is going to take me a little time to open up on this, but what's interesting, and again, I don't have all the answers to this conversation, is that in the dreaming brain, even though the logic and reason areas are dampened, specifically the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, it's right behind our sort of horns in the prefrontal cortex that pushed our brains forward. There's another area called the medial prefrontal cortex that's preserved. It stays throbbing. It's actually liberated a little bit. And you know what that one does?

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40:37Dreams often, not always, are stories. They have a narrative component. They're emotional, they're visual, they have a narrative component. Our brains want to make a cohesive story. I know that for a lot of reasons. And the dreaming brain is something that also preserves that. And some have even extended that to like, well, maybe that's why we can, you know, we get movies that have jumps of ideas. People go from one place to the other, like our dreaming, the way we dream prepares us for the way we appreciate art, right? So we can let that go this way. On this side, some of my patients with certain complications and certain tumors and different things, they'll wake up and they won't feel certain parts of their body.

41:21And they'll develop something called neglect, or they'll develop something what is called confabulation. It's a fancy word for lying. When the body signals are disconjugate, they don't make sense, the brain, the mind will make up a story to make it all fit. And some patients have actually tried to throw a leg they don't feel off the bed, and they say, oh, that was a stranger. And so you see things with the injured brain and the healing brain that there's a drive within us. sometimes we'll even lie to ourselves and others to create a consistent or a story that makes sense to ourselves meaning and i think if you look at that at the brain level and you look at that at the dreaming level what i try to tell people my first book is look at that at the life level like our maturation isn't done just with adolescence right the work has to continue to cultivate your brain and your mind and your life so when you get through a struggle and you get through it, that prepares you for the next one.

42:21If you're in a struggle now that's just overwhelming, like something difficult, so hard, don't worry, because you're cultivating that stress for the next one. And I think all of those pieces, not measurements, but my opinion, that we are meaning makers, we are storytellers in the moments of our lives, in our dreaming brain, in our life in general, and the area where stories and emotions are the wildest, with our dreams. And that's why I think why we dream is something bigger than just threat rehearsal. I think it's something powerful when we wake up and that clarity is because our subconscious has had its run.

42:57Are people having, when you look at the data, are people having the same dream again and again and again, or are they having different dreams every night? Well, that's a good question. So there are recurrent dreams. It's a specific example. The only thing I can say with certainty is dreams come from our brain. We do these exotics, brain surgeries where we wake people up to map the surface of their brain. You don't feel, you wouldn't know if I touched your brain, if the situation ever arose, which it won't, but like the brain doesn't feel, the brain feels through its nerves. So we can dissect the brain in somebody while they're talking.

43:29The point there is not to scare anybody, that's a therapeutic process. But when we tickle and map the brain, they'll say, oh, I remember this nightmare from when I was a kid. You can activate a recurrent nightmare in a patient by tickling the surface of the brain. So dreams come from the brain. There are recurrent dreams. That's individual. There are common dreams across people, falling, being chased, teeth falling out. There are universal dreams. So you start to see all these patterns. A recurrent dream is a loop of electricity in that part of your brain that pops up again and again. It must be, because if we take a little faint pen and tickle it and you have that that dream again that's that's built into the the electrical flows of your brain so we have to step back a little bit when you ask those questions because there are so many different dream types and dream experiences i don't want to give a single answer but recurrent dreams are are loops of electricity that happen over and over again we can actually activate that and then universal dreams common dreams and rare dreams is how i conceptualize it what does someone do if they have a recurrent dream that they don't want to have any big question um okay so let's look at that um so now we got the foundation waking brain dreaming brain hyper imaginative hyper emotional um you're cooking up you're creating the events of your dreamscape and i found this to be very powerful that nightmares since we imagined them the treatment for nightmares is something called imagery rehearsal therapy now i'm not a therapist I mean, I take care of a lot of cancer patients.

45:04I'm more than 10 ,000 in my life. So there's a cultivation that I have benefited from them trusting me. So I think I have some sense of understanding of human nature. But therapy, when you try to help somebody through conversation, talk therapy, right? That's great. It seems to be effective. That's out there. What they're finding is imagery rehearsal therapy. It's a new thing where imagine what you want to be. Imagine something you don't want to have. And when I read that, I was like, I don't know if I can sink my teeth in that. Until I started reading about nightmares and learning about nightmares and across all different sciences, that if you practice before you go to bed, going back a bit to your saying that we can actually feed our dreams.

45:49If you practice a new script for the ending of your nightmares, you can re-script your nightmares through something called imagery rehearsal therapy. People can look it up. and not every time, not for everyone, but just the fact that nightmares can be re-scripted is powerful. You think you're out of control, but you can feed your dreams, you can steer your dreams, and lucid dreaming is the prime example of that, and that therapy can guide you to a better conclusion of your dream. I love that as a scientist because it's the imagination network. you've imagined this nightmare and it's powerful to think now you can actually imagine a different kind of ending for this nightmare to me that's all scientifically uh uh consistent and to me that's why i think it's powerful to look at dreaming as more magical more fascinating that it is being driven by certain brain processes right yeah so you don't wake up and say uh that's that's a glitch uh that's static no there's something drove that learn about the engine behind it and then reflect about the the meaning about it yeah for sure i mean i i can relate to that i feel like there have been parts of my life where i've been able to code the emotion and feeling and script that i wake up with by what i put into the code before i go to bed and so at one point in my life when i was trying to wake up early and i didn't enjoy it and my reaction to waking up early in the morning would be, I'm so tired.

47:22I just want to stay in bed. I just, you know, and I wanted to wake up early. I believe that was a worthy pursuit and a habit to invest in. And so I would, before I went to bed, I would say to myself, I am waking up energized, happy and healthy. And so even that re-scripting in the evening, I found I would wake up and I would be saying that to myself when I woke up and there was this direct link between a script that I didn't have it written in the morning I didn't have it there but that repetition would carry over in the morning and I found whenever I used it it worked and whenever I don't use it I can still wake up and feel oh god why am I waking up so early and so I've sensed moments of that or I've had experiences of that and that coding or that imagery rehearsal therapy that you mentioned that would be I would love for our audience to practice it community to try it out and see how it shows up in your life because i think what we don't realize is you're subconsciously rehearsing anyway oh yeah right whatever you do the work is going on you're doing it work with it yeah whatever you're watching reading seeing that is imagery rehearsal it's just not therapy and it's not conscious but we're doing imagery rehearsal throughout the day and before we go to bed and it adds a big question here so So when you say something like that, it ties into positive thinking, wish fulfillment, all these nebulous terms that I think some people really embrace.

48:48Other people poo-poo and they say that can't be true. What I say is something in the middle. That through studying about dreams and dreaming, I've learned about like what's the biology of how what you just described about. I think about something before I go to bed and it helps me wake up and I'm, you know, I'm feeling it more. I'm thinking about it more in the right way. Like that's just out there, right? That feels like there's like a kite flying above our head. What I'm trying to get people to understand is the dreams, if they can be defined, are thoughts, emotions, and activities that are actually happening at the brain level.

49:24That's what's sparking all that electricity. If I'm running in a dream, the motor strip that moves my legs, the neurons there are firing. The signals just aren't getting through. So then what that does is it opens up a whole new world of athletes practicing the shot in their mind, positive reinforcement, going to bed and re-scripting your dreams, right? Journaling, like people are like, okay, so there's brain activity that's leading to this mind that I want to get my mind to lean a certain way. And the brain activity is driving that. And so what's the people say, well, how that happened? I will give you the example of placebo.

50:03And so when you believe a medicine is going to help you, even if I tell you, look, there's nothing active in it. That's just like sugar. That's just something that has no capacity to change by the pill itself, the physiology of your body. But belief is enough to make people feel less pain. And I can give you a scientific explanation about how that happens. Belief, you're armed with neurotransmitters. That electricity that we're measuring, the chemicals that are floating around, think of the brain as like 100 billion microscopic jellyfish. And there's like electric storms and waves of neurotransmitters flying around there.

50:43When you believe the pharmacy of your mind is actually releasing chemicals and things that generates different electricity, that alleviates pain, that prepares your brain and mind for re-scripting the nightmare. that makes positive, gives you the scientific basis possibly for positive reinforcement, positive relationships. Like these are actually not just emotions, but they're working at the level of the brain. That's powerful. Yeah, no, I love that. I love that description. And as you were saying that I was thinking about this, it's all coming back to an intentionality, a programming a like what i'm hearing from you is just this idea of get active get involved be conscious be aware i was thinking about i remember during the pandemic i probably had up until the pandemic i probably hadn't watched tv or played video games for like 10 years like consistently at all and i think the pandemic kind of you know had time and we were indoors and all the rest of And so I started watching TV.

51:51I remember one of the shows I was watching, which I really enjoyed watching was Ozark. And I can, I remember watching Ozark every day for 30 days in a row. And it's not even the scariest show. And while I was watching, I probably didn't feel anything. And somehow I felt that I had to dream every night that my house was being broken into. Like that was an experience that I was having. And I connected the two because as someone who didn't have nightmares as an adult and as someone who didn't watch that much TV, those were the only two changes that I had at least noticed. Or if we get back to that, it's symbolic, maybe it's the stress of the pandemic.

52:27I mean, so it's never going to be pinned down exactly. But you're right, the paying attention to the patterns of your dreams, more than just a dream, unless it's hyper emotional, but the pattern of dreams, I think is an important thing to do. Like, and how does our waking life feed our dream life? What I would tell you is when color television arrived in magazines, the dream reports show a bump in people having colored dreams. Like there were more black and white dreams when TV was black and white. And I was like, wait, but the world is in color. And what I'm saying to you is that's why this topic is so fresh because it doesn't all make sense.

53:06The science gives some insight and the exploration reveals there are so many things we don't understand. The take home is it's not a passive process. It's not something that is coming from the gods or omens. It's your brain giving you thoughts, emotions, dreams, and potentially insights that you can't have access to with your waking brain. And to me, that's a special portal. And how people cultivate that, I think it's up to them. I'm here to let people know that there's a rigorous science behind the brain biology, brain chemistry, brain electricity that drives dreaming. Yeah, I mean, that bump in color television, I can't imagine when we have enough data to look at the social media bump.

53:49Right. Because to me, it's bizarre to feel that exposure to social media, pornography, being on the online world doesn't lead to specific or certain dreams. Especially with the hours that people are putting in. Yeah, exactly. So that would be the next wave. And my hope is that somebody listening to this, you know, as I mentioned, I'm 51. I've got three sons, 18, 19, 22 in college. Like my hope is somebody walks away and says, oh, wait, some of the stuff about dreams can be explained by the brain. Because imagine in 20, 30 years, how much more data we'll have through people with online dream banks and how much more we'll know about neuroscience.

54:28Imagine the connections that somebody sitting here playing different roles than us can make. And so it's more of a, it's an inception. It's I want people to be ignited that dreams can, some parts of dreams can be made sense of. Yeah. I want to dive back into nightmares because as a child, I grew up having a lot of nightmares. I remember one of them very vividly, even till today. I don't dream about it anymore. But I remember waking up in the middle of the night feeling horrified. And you talk about in the book how children have the most nightmares. Like it's common. Children have five times as many nightmares as adults, you say.

55:05Even the gentlest childhood is no protection against nightmares. And I think that's really unnerving for parents when their kids are having nightmares. I have friends who have kids who will tell me like, oh God, she just doesn't sleep. She has nightmares. And it's like, you're trying to figure it out. And I mean, you're a father. So it's interesting to hear how you may have felt about that. I'm sure a lot of us listening right now are thinking, God, I definitely had nightmares as a kid. When you're having that as a kid, it can be so unnerving. It can be so difficult, even more than as an adult, because you really feel powerless.

55:37What have been some, have there been any therapies or remedies that have helped? but then you go on to say that nightmares are needed right so walk me through that all right so so when i was thinking about this book i was rolling around la going to different spots and sort of just bouncing around people you know regular people at dodger stadium and often i got the question like all right you're going to talk about dreams and dreaming uh you need to have a new take on it but clearly nightmares can't be good for you right there's no use for nightmares and i thought i got to take this one head on in chapter two and so when i look at that i would ask people to think of nightmares based on age.

56:11And we do that in the hospital and medicine and surgery and science where they're sort of age related pediatric and adult is what I would say. We've talked about adults flashbacks nightmares if they arrive pay attention to them. They could be a warning flare for some mental health issues. You get them more in depression, you know, we've left that how to explain nightmares and kids is an exploration. It's a conversation. I think it's fresh. And I looked at a bunch of pieces that, that helped me sort of come up with an idea, a story, if you will. So if you look at the first thing about nightmares that struck me is, you have to say, hey, Johnny, that was only a nightmare.

56:51It's only with nightmares that we tell our kids. That's only a nightmare. So as a conversation, does that mean Johnny was blurring, dreaming brain thoughts and waking brain thoughts until that moment so that's that's a power i don't i'm not saying i have the answer i'm just i'm leaving that with your audience that's one nightmares do that by definition nightmares wake you up and they sear your memory okay just like our kids learn to walk and talk our mind is being cultivated so they have these families that signed all the kids up to be woken up and talk about their dreams for like 20 years in a row.

57:27They're called longitudinal. Kids, when they start talking, their dreams are like a table, you know, a sweater. Then they get more imaginative. And what happens is five, six, seven nightmares arrive. What else is arriving? They're developing visuospatial skills. And they're also developing this thing called theory of mind. People can look up these terms that So children at some point develop the ability to look at somebody and say, that smile, I don't think they mean well. mind reading, reading the other person's intention, right? That arrives theory of mind at the same time as nightmares. So my biggest way to conceptualize that is nightmares arrive in children to help them develop a sense of self versus other help them not a sense of identity, but that my thoughts and my experiences are mine, my waking life and dream life are separate.

58:25and that I need to think of myself as different from my uncles and aunts and other people around me. And I think that's the function of nightmares in children. You may have had them a lot, but they arrive, and then very few of them lead to nightmare disorder. Like it doesn't ruin their next day. So it's almost sort of like, whereas in adults, nightmare disorder means the residue is lingering with you. So when you look at the patterns, children learn to walk and talk. nightmares arrive around four, five, six, and most of them go away. Erotic dreams around like 11, 12, 13 and persist in some way.

58:59Adolescence arrives around 15, 16. But these are cognitive changes. The brain looks about the same. It's not like a new lobe pops up. These are cognitive changes that are happening. So I think nightmares cultivate the mind in children. They arrive and fade. Things that happen that universally in science aren't accidental. And it's the dream we've always had that all of us have had as a nightmare yeah that's super fascinating to me super fascinating it's amazing it's an exploration it's an exploration yeah and it's it is such a it's so interesting how we're so addicted to certainty and conclusiveness yeah it's kind of stifling yeah it's very rigidity to it right yeah do this don't do this this will save you this won't say like no but the dreaming process leaves it open like yeah we're just beginning to understand it's personal keep digging keep exploring fail better yeah i think that's what that all shows what why i feel like what the conversation we're having exposes a weakness that we have across so many areas of our life which is that we're uncomfortable with uncertainty yeah and we constantly feel discomfort when we can't control and i think dreams are like the ultimate version of that dreams are like hey just to remind you you need uncertainty yeah yeah let me dig into that a little bit i have some ideas about that like when we fall asleep and dream the executive networks dampen let me reverse a bit most of the day is something we call task on it's outward and the brain the executive network reason logic is paying attention of course food scarcity right woolly mammoths it makes sense those who are best at paying attention outward navigating the world and using as little amount of calories and brain energy, that seems like that would be a natural adaptation.

1:00:51Well, what I would tell people is when we're not tasked on, the brain doesn't rev down like your computer goes, and then you have to hit the keyboard to pop it up. No, it creates a mental life of its own. That's the imagination network. So during the day, we're mostly executive network outward, but if there's nothing to do, like with mind wandering or things are safe, we turn back into our own head. Dreaming is the example of that, but just suffused with like uncertainty. And so the question becomes the day is so focused on thinking, calculating. Adrenaline is up. Adrenaline finds the signal in the noise.

1:01:33They've done studies where they've changed that. And then the dreaming brain is kind of the opposite. Adrenaline comes down. You're looking for looser patterns, divergent thinking, designing a car not fixing an engine it to me to me the uncertainty that the dreaming brain goes through that's our genius built in we don't we actually don't want to become too rigid in our habits it might be okay today uh going on the freeware going on the tube as we mentioned but that's not the that's not the process your brain needs to be in to be the most adaptive for heart ache, for falling in love, for a kid getting sick, for the uncertainty the environment will give us.

1:02:15And the uncertainty we almost want to engage in love affairs and adventures. I think that's the balance. Get things done. Try not to be too rigid. Try to be open minded and appreciate that your dreaming brain is going to take you there whether you want it or not. That's the that's the love story of uncertainty and creativity. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead. Save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster, ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. This is Amy Brown from Feeling Things with Amy and Kat.

1:02:52We've been made to believe that saying yes is a good thing, but I've realized there's a big difference between doing it intentionally and doing it unintentionally. Isopure protein helps you focus on more of what matters, like feeling your best every day with great tasting nutrition that's high protein and also low carb if you need that. IsoPure fits seamlessly into your lifestyle and that's why I've added it to my daily routine. I use IsoPure unflavored protein in recipes like pasta sauce and guacamole during the week with 25 grams of ultra filtered protein and zero carbs plus 20 vitamins and minerals.

1:03:29You can boost nearly any recipe without changing the taste of your favorite foods. I've already restocked four times because I add the IsoPure unflavored to everything. You can try the IsoPure vanilla to blend 25 grams of protein into your smoothies or your oatmeal, or check out IsoPure clear protein water with 15 grams of protein, which supports hydration with electrolytes and a light berry flavor. Enjoy more of what matters today at isopureprotein.com and get 20 % off your order when you use code MINDS20 at checkout. Hey, it's Rich Davis from Covino & Rich. Toyota is moving toward a more sustainable future by giving you the freedom to choose from a full lineup of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, regular gas, and 100 % electric vehicles, including stylish cars like the Camry and Corolla, as well as efficient and spacious SUVs like the RAV4 and Grand Highlander, all backed by Toyota's reputation for reliability.

1:04:25No pressure, just possibilities. Visit buyatoyota.com for a great deal on an efficient Toyota today. Toyota, let's go places. Yeah, and I'm going to flip-flop because we talked about uncertainty and creativity, but I want to go into lucid dreaming and this idea of wanting some control in the uncertainty. But before we get there, I wanted to go back to sleep exit because I don't think we talked about sleep entry, but we didn't finish sleep exit. And that works because sleep exit, that dampened executive network, that dampened adrenaline that looks for the signal and noise, it seems to come back on.

1:05:04And if an alarm goes off, we know it comes back on. You could be dreaming and sleeping. You smell smoke. The executive network is the boss. It will pop back on and dominate. And so if you do grab your phone in the morning and check emails too quickly or jump on Instagram, like your brain will go to that forward task on feature. And the residue or the lingering feelings of your dream life will necessarily be put in the backseat. And so if you do want to remember your dreams more as you wake up, if you have the luxury of a bed and time and not an alarm, that's a critical window, sleep, exit to sort of hold on to your dream thoughts and your dream experiences.

1:05:46It's an imperfect process, but I can tell you people who have tried, they get better at it. And again, it's free. It's accessible. It's from your own brain. I think it's one of those habits that I've incorporated in my life for the last 5, 10, 5, 10 years. So what exactly? So what I do is if I have the luxury, because I do now, I didn't for a long time. I mean, the phone calls and pagers are going off in the middle of the night. And now it's more like if I wake up in the morning, I try to linger and I try not to move. And there's different types of yoga. People have been talking about a lot of stuff like this for centuries and millennia.

1:06:19And I'm just adding some scientific pieces that support it. But I'm trying to not have my executive network kick in. I'll keep my eyes closed. I'll run through some thoughts. Oh, that's interesting. Hold on. How should I do that? Like I have my sleep exit thinking or moments, if you will. And then I'll reach over, I'll go to my notes app. It's right on the home screen. And I'll write a few things down. When I have ideas, I mean, I'd say a great majority have come from them. They're almost all bad ideas. But that is the idea generator. If I've had a good idea, it's been during that time. It's rarely like at 2 o 'clock on a triple espresso, right?

1:06:57That's important because we have to get things done. but the dreaming process sleep entries we talked about and sleep exit i think are interesting portals where there are sort of blurry liminal states that we have a different type of thinking without it being just like wildly psychedelic you know it's measured but it's a it's a fresh perspective it's a different take on the things that are important in your life at that moment yeah i mean even the language of sleep entry and sleep exit is so powerful well i gotta you know but this calls hypnagogic and hypnopompic so the first thing i'm out there is like stop using these words that suck right like those words are terrible yeah i'm so glad you didn't use it yeah i'm like even hearing you say i've i've i've never heard the word sleep entry and sleep exit before yeah and i personally really like that language because i think we don't think about it like that it's so funny how we we enter buildings we leave buildings we enter spaces we leave spaces and sleep is kind of like that and we are talking about evening routines and morning routines but this is almost a bit more intimate to both sides of that it's the essential routine now just sleep entry and sleep exit what i love about it is that i can put stickers on your scalp our scalps and record the electricity and be like look the waves change you're you are measurably not just by report like hey i'm feeling different i get that i trust that that's individual but the brain waves during sleep entry and sleep exit have a pattern they overlap in a way that never happens while you're awake or while you're dreaming right so like that's that's what i want people to walk away with like it's not just his thing he's looking at the fact that he can measure that this is a different space right now yeah yeah no that doesn't mean it's powerful or not that's for you to figure out but we can measure sleep entry and sleep exit and it looks different on a 24-hour cycle of brain waves and how long does it last well it's different for different people and people seem to cultivate it but salvador dali he's written about it said you know anywhere from two to twelve minutes that's how long yeah yeah but it's it's personal but it's real and it's for everybody to figure out for themselves you know but i like the two to twelve minutes it gives us a gauge sure as to how long do you not let your executive brain turn on in the morning and because there's science there's tech companies coming up with a little uh you know your iphone or apple watch is tracking your stages of sleep and when people are in that sleep entry it'll buzz them to wake up like dolly tried and they'll and that that's their way of uh write down what you're thinking now as sort of the tech approach to creativity it's interesting right how does i mean talking about the tech approach again another tangent because it's so fascinating i'm like completely obliterated any form of uh structure but it's it's great where do you see the cross-section of AI and dreams?

1:09:46Like where can it be useful? Where will it be helpful with this? Where will it not? Will it help us ask better questions? Is it going to help us take better notes? Is it going to help us? I don't know. I'm not a computer scientist, but I'll tell you two things. They're making programs that add noise because sometimes the patterns and algorithms of computers become so rigid, like our daily thinking, that they can't handle the insertion of new data. And that sort of mirrors what's going on. Like that's it's called overfitted. The computer process and algorithm design is too tight, too efficient.

1:10:20And that learning from dreaming, they find that the computer system is more adaptive when they add in noise. Where artificial intelligence fits in, I'm not sure, but tech is all over it. They're tracking the data from smartphones and certain people that you're volunteering. They'll play certain songs and you'll have people watch commercials and see if they dream about it more and then buy that product more. Like that space is here. So if somebody's listening, like that's a massive space. And I just think I would remind people that we're not completely shut off when we dream. We wake up to alarms and smoke and that we should be careful about in that vulnerable, precious, remarkable, unique state that somebody's not just taking marketing advantage of it.

1:11:04And I think that's where AI will extract data, figure out what's the right buzz, the right sound. And just to riff on this a little bit, like 100 years ago, they were like, people were asleep and they put their hand in like a bucket of water to see if they had more dreams about water. In the modern version, they're going to be taking your data and trying to fine tune like the song, the scent, and the picture to put, you know, to throw at you to try to get you to buy stuff. So I'm a bit like dystopian about that because I don't want, you know, I'm private, especially in my dream life. Yeah, absolutely.

1:11:35No, it's I mean, I feel like some of my favorite movies have been about dreams. You mentioned Inception, even I mean, this isn't about dreams, but still in that in that space of Vanilla Sky. Yeah, with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, that movie, if you've not seen it, it's probably one of my favorites. And just how that memory bank or some sort of like subconscious bank is created and held. And it's fascinating thinking about that. there's a few more things Raul that I want to go over with you from the book which I think are so interesting for people I want to talk to you about before we get into lucid dreaming I want to talk to you a bit about how dreams can predict the future and I think a lot of people worry that their dreams their thoughts can create reality subconsciously somewhere we feel that like I know people who have illnesses or like oh I manifested this like I made this happen or like I have a disease and oh my god I saw this coming or you know that kind of feeling warning dreams yeah warning dreams and that almost feels a bit worrying as well because often when you have that warning you know constantly replaying and thinking about it while you're awake and while you're asleep can dreams predict the future especially when it comes to health in one specific way dreams can absolutely predict the future of your health and we'll get into that that's Parkinson's but in general for cancer, for other diseases, it's hard to tease out whether my patients had the diagnosis and then sort of reverse thought, like, I think I had a dream about that.

1:13:05I'm not judging them. I'm totally open-minded, but I can't grip the data on that. But if you do have a dream about disease, statistically, you're not more likely to have that disease. They've been looking at these surveys. So it might just reveal a certain anxiety you're having, again, symbolic, you might be struggling with something and then have a disease based dream. So as long as we remember that most of the time, they're symbolic and not literal, I think that's important. There are plenty of reports and surveys, where breast cancer patients have said, like, I had a dream, I felt the lump in these sort of things.

1:13:44I respect that. I respect their whole journey. So I want to put that out there. The one specific way that dreams can predict the future, I need to unpack this one for a little bit because this was mind blowing when I when I learned about it. There's something called REM behavior disorder, which I'm relabeling dream enactment behavior. Yeah, my world. world. Thank you so much. My world, the words are, are they confuse, you know, dream and acme behavior. Middle aged men, 50s, acting out their dream, usually protecting their bed partner. They come in the bed partners, maybe has an injury. Those men, 94 % of the time, and that's essentially in medicine, it's universal.

1:14:3015 years later, will develop Parkinson's. I think, you You know, so that is the one example. And if it's the only example for every neuroscientist out there, every scientist out there, hear me with this, that the first warning flare of the brain's deterioration with Parkinson's is a change in dreams 15 years ago. I'll just leave it at that. For all the rigorous people out there saying, hey, they're talking about stuff like I'm questioning whether, you know, the science can really show this. look up REM behavior disorder, all caps REM behavior disorder, which I call dream enacme behavior. It's in Scientific American.

1:15:08This isn't like one paper I'm digging up. Like this is thing, this is stuff that's coming out. REM behavior disorder predicts Parkinson's 15 years later. And what I would say to the researchers out there is, is that an opportunity for us to start with medicine earlier? I mean, it just says so much, but outside of that one, and all you need is one unicorn for unicorns to be real i haven't found any evidence that dreams predict the future i mean they definitely don't give you lottery numbers and stuff like that but at a more grounded level they don't they don't actually predict what's going to happen to you um but what happens to you maybe because of what the dream is symbolically mentioning you're going through a difficult time and you lose your job and you have a dream about losing your job so i can see where those connections would form i just i just don't have any so i'll leave it as a maybe it's so interesting how again it goes back to this idea of when you get a diagnosis or something happens you then go back to finding that point like it's almost like you've been dating someone and you knew they were wrong and then when they break up with you like i knew it you go and you replay it all yeah yeah you replay and like and then you now you see all the red flags and again there's nothing wrong with it but it's that feeling of i remember and i know and but we're not always good at trusting our gut in that moment you know what i'm saying like there's there's not a feeling of it's almost like again and i'm not discounting anyone's experience but i find even i do it where you're living your life and then something happens and you go i knew it i knew it there was a part of you that sensed it i would call that hunch and instinct yeah and i think we we connect if i may yeah please in the moment as we navigate uncertainty and because we're not just reflexive creatures right there's this thing called counterfactual thinking like i can run out if this happens then that i can play scenarios out and you know what does that the imagination network the same thing that's liberated and dreaming we create a mental workspace what if this happens what if this happens what if this doesn't happen as we navigate the uncertainty so it's not just you know pull back from a hot frying pan or you know pull back from a scorching rock if you're a lizard right those are reflexes we have the ability to choose.

1:17:21And I think when you look at what you're saying about hunch and instinct, and how we kind of knew something, and we should have maybe paid more attention to it. I think that for me, that's in the rear view. When you're in the moment, and things are imperfect, as they often are, I believe that that you are trying to create the outcome out of that imperfect situation. And when it doesn't arise, or it doesn't arrive for you, we do look back and say, hey, you know maybe we should have done things differently that is the cost of the freedom of choice that we have right now what to do whether to grab this glass or not and just like heartache is the cost of exposing yourself to falling in love you know and i'm familiar with that so i i think i think people should look at that as like that's that's what makes life exciting yeah yeah have you seen any connection between alcohol and dreams well it's a big question so this is a notable thing that I left out of the book.

1:18:18I have patients waking up from anesthesia, I'm floating above disassociative states like psychedelic experiences, ambient dreams, fentanyl dreams, alcohol suppresses dreams, people who smoke weed, marijuana users in the morning, they don't remember their dreams. I couldn't find it. It definitely affects dreaming. To me, that says two things. Dreams are coming from the brain. You take drugs and your dreams change. they're biological and the second thing is i couldn't find a way to say antidepressants make this change to your dreams you know coke and meth makes this change and alcohol as well and alcohol if i just couldn't find something to wrap it around yeah and i tried because i was like that's going to be one of the chapters and i just uh i um i didn't find a clear link except for one galantamine is this drug we give patients with dementia it works on acetylcholine it's one of the less famous neurotransmitters.

1:19:10We have a lot. They do a lot. It's not dopamine does this. It's not that linear as we're seeing now and liberating people now is galantamine. And so those people, they take it and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm becoming aware I'm dreaming while I'm dreaming. That's lucid dreaming. You double that dose, they have more lucid dreaming. And in the world of science, that dose dependent escalation is as close as you get to, you know, cause and effect. so uh drugs definitely affect the brain i just couldn't put them into any categories because people are antidepressants had this type of dream people were on did coke the next day they had a different type of dream so that is a mixed bag and alcohol is part of that it's you know it's a chemical do you think we'll ever get closer to understanding the links more deeply as with the memory banks dream banks i hope so i hope so and i think that's an interesting question yeah the the things that i'm looking at are what were available to me everywhere from aristotle a few thousand years ago to stuff happening now to questionnaires from 20 years ago it's of course necessarily it's imperfect but i think as people are more honest and that's the liberated to to to fill the dream banks in with this stuff somebody after me is going to take that and say oh i think alcohol does this and antidepressants do this i think it's i think it's quite possible but just as like just to let everybody know i'm working with what's out there and trying to connect the dots between the gaps of like from you know philosophy to brain science to youtube you know ambient dreams like i'm really trying to bring it together from every corner that i could you know look at yeah how much do we dream in events in reality versus completely fantasy-based events like how much of our dreams are replaying like you were saying that the veterans for example they dream about the war that's like a real event that happened in their life so that's a flashback yeah it's a flashback yeah so but when they dream about it when they're getting divorced that's a symbolic dream yeah representing something what's going to break down of dreams of flashbacks versus fantasy i think ptsd flashbacks are clearly replay of a bad experience in your dreamscape the imaginative component of dreams when you look at these surveys um it's a complete mixed bag but what i will tell you is that i'm trying to just add the information here to your question which is a good one but how much of our dream life is a replay versus just completely cooked up by the imagination network i get that that's a good question and what i would say is um in flashbacks it's a replay um if you're if your dream is falling that's not a replay but indicative of something and then there's most stuff is in between it's highly visual highly creative jumping from social situations to visual situations uh you know you're on the top of a building you're an awkward situation you're finding with something there are these jumps a little bit movie like but it's not a hallucination and this this is the best I because I wanted to be able to answer this question like two years ago and I was thinking of this and this is what the gem that I found when you hallucinate just bear with me it's a purple elephant in this room the the the landscape is reality the element is inserted in it in dreaming the whole thing is imagined and so i would say the entire process of dreaming leans heavily imaginative that's the best answer i can yeah no that's a good answer yeah no it's it's interesting to me because i yeah i always wonder like i'm like are we always do we have a dream in a space we've been in and seen in and even all of it i think all of it i mean that's so you have memory yeah of places you've been and then you can imagine and dreaming has access to both of that and if i may the dreaming memory like you go up you get up to go to the bathroom sometimes you can slip back into a dream so it's not random and so i always wonder is there like access to memory our dreaming mind can have that our waking mind does not have access to like people with uh this is fascinating like this a little bit heavier on the size part like people who have memory issues like they've had a trauma and they can't remember uh if they play tetris or a video game they'll see pictures of it in their dreams but can't tell you about it when you ask them during the day they'll say no i never played a tetris game but i had one in my dream and they've they're basically playing their tetris is being played in front of them so there's something going on where the dreaming mind has a memory system, I think.

1:24:02I don't have evidence for this, but there are little dots like that, like slipping back into a dream, getting up to go to the bathroom, people with amnesia being able to feed their dreams. I can't identify like on a map or a, you know, a dissection, but there's something unique going on with a dreaming memory and dreaming mind. And that's why it's so inspiring for me. Like, you know, I, you know, I use drills and take off pieces of skull and I dissect with I'm like, I'm not that guy, right? Most people would think. I think that's why it's powerful. Like brain surgeons talking about the dreaming mind.

1:24:36Yeah. But that's what it's done for me, my man, is like 51 years in, 10 ,000 patients, operating in like 10 countries, sons, you know, wild love affair, heartbreak, all of it, intense relationship with my partner for 30 years, like all of it. and you start to think like I think I'm getting a sense and then you then putting this book together it's it's almost like a rebirth it's too much of a statement but like oh wait a second there's an a dreaming mind memory system wait a second Parkinson's the first flare is a change in dreaming pattern so just when I thought like you know I think I'm figuring this out you know So I'm excited to have the lens with which I approach the world reset.

1:25:26And that's what dreaming has done for me. Let's talk about lucid dreaming. We've been talking about, we've been kind of like peppering it in the whole time. First of all, let's just define, and a lot of the questions I ask are very simplified. And the reason for that is because I think a lot of these terms, ideas are out there and most people don't even know. and I think as you're simplifying language from a very scientific point of view my goal is to try and simplify topics that we all hear about and you might even hear about in a conversation and you're sitting there going I don't even know what that means I don't know if anyone knows what that means but we're all pretending to know so it's like what is lucid dreaming how common is it and then how do we do it so let's go through those three phases parking shouldn't slow you down ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut book ahead save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block Park smarter, park faster, ParkWiz.

1:26:15Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. This is Amy Brown from Feeling Things with Amy and Kat. We've been made to believe that saying yes is a good thing, but I've realized there's a big difference between doing it intentionally and doing it unintentionally. IsoPure protein helps you focus on more of what matters, like feeling your best every day. With great tasting nutrition that's high protein and also low carb if you need that, IsoPure fits seamlessly into your lifestyle and that's why I've added it to my daily routine. I use IsoPure unflavored protein in recipes like pasta sauce and guacamole during the week.

1:26:53With 25 grams of ultra-filtered protein and zero carbs plus 20 vitamins and minerals, you can boost nearly any recipe without changing the taste of your favorite foods. I've already restocked four times because I add the IsoPure unflavored to everything. You can try the IsoPure Vanilla to blend 25 grams of protein into your smoothies or your oatmeal. Or check out IsoPure Clear Protein Water with 15 grams of protein, which supports hydration with electrolytes and a light berry flavor. Enjoy more of what matters today at isopureprotein.com and get 20 % off your order when you use code MINES20 at checkout.

1:27:31Hey, this is Steve Covino from Covino & Rich. Toyota is moving toward a more sustainable future by giving you the freedom to choose from an incredible lineup of trucks now available in both gas and hybrid models, including the legendary Tacoma and the powerful Tundra, both available with the i-Force Max Hybrid powertrain and backed by Toyota's legendary reputation for reliability. More choices, less compromise. Visit buyatoyota.com for a great deal on an efficient Toyota today. Toyota, let's go places. Lucid dreaming, here's the way I would explain it to you. First, a little bit of a story about it.

1:28:07When I was constructing this book, I said, lucid dreaming. Oh, no, I don't want to cover this. There can't be any science for it. Two out of nine chapters are on lucid dreaming. And so, again, it's refreshing for me. And the most rigorous science on dreaming is about lucid dreaming. So we talked earlier about the waking brain and the dreaming brain. Now we know that there's a sleep entry and there's a sleep exit. in the middle of dreaming in the middle of the night some people become aware hey i'm actually dreaming and they become aware of the dream and somebody might say well why is that unusual well most dreams are in the rear view you wake up and you say oh whoa that was a dream because but like i had a visual i had a vibrant one last night but and i was and only when i woke up i was like wait Okay, that was only a dream.

1:28:58But when the dream was happening, I was fully inhabiting the dream. The dream was happening in my mind, right? At the neuronal electrochemical level. So sleep entry, sleep exit. Lucid dreaming is the return of awareness, allowing people to know that they are actually in a dream while dreaming. Okay, not in the rear view like I had this morning. And so that's a big statement. And what I would say is there's proof for it. Lucid dreaming can be proven by this experiment that they did and have been doing. That's the thing about studies and experiments for your listeners. If somebody breaks into something new and it's real, you'll see an explosion of data in the scientific literature for that.

1:29:45And in the 70s, somebody said, wait a second, you're a lucid dreamer. you're telling me you you can become aware um while you're in a dream while the dream is happening and so they did a couple of things they trained the person that rapid eye movement which is like skittish eye movements when we sleep and dream they said if you're in a lucid dream and consciousness has returned can you can can you communicate with me like with your eyeballs through like a morse code and people should look this up they left right left right they train these like eye pattern movements. At the same time, they put the electrodes on the surface of the scalp because a guy like me will be like, he's just woke up, right?

1:30:26I need to know more than that. And they prove by the electricity that the person is truly asleep. So you can't fake being asleep. Across a glass, this person at a certain time in the middle of the night, proving they're asleep, starts to communicate with their eyeballs. And it still shows you're asleep. Communicating with the outside world when you're asleep. That's powerful. That's lucid dreaming. Am I a lucid dreamer? No. Have I had one or two? Yes. Did people working on this book start to? Yes. Can it be induced? Yes. And so lucid dreaming is powerful because again, it's a liminal state, right?

1:31:04It's a bit of awareness. It's a bit of waking consciousness that has bubbled up during dreaming consciousness. and so nothing is rigid sleep and you don't go from wake to sleep in a second it's not a hard line so there are all these overlapping blurry states and lucid dreaming is that two more points about that when you put those patients or not patients participants into brain scanners that executive network i've been talking about logic and stuff is dampened the they show more blood flow that area not as much as when you're awake but the blood flow to the frontal cortex that does reason and logic and awareness is halfway.

1:31:43So just, you know, exactly. Right. And so if everybody's been a lucid dreamer and telling people to work and people are shaking you off, like you're out of your head, tell them, no, there's, uh, there's the left to right eye movement proof. There's brain scan proof galantamine, that drug that makes lucid dreamers have more or have people start to lucid dream. There's a lot of scientific evidence for that. and the last thing is so can we learn to lucid dream and the lucid dream I had was a trippy one I was in the pandemic and I was teaching the boys to sail we got this boat I just like we had to get them outdoors you can't have three dogs and puppies in the house and in a pandemic I thought this is the luxury I have we're by the water here in California it was like I'm turning the helm hard but I'm going horizontal on like on a giant like river pouring off in a waterfall and it was just like I'm trying so hard just to stand still.

1:32:38And he has, I just remember the whole thing, like this, my right arm. And this was during the construction of this book. And I thought to myself, that's interesting. It's very visual. I know I'm in a dream. I mean, those are unique experiences for me again, as a brain surgeon, they usually would not even explore these areas. But when I see the brain scan showing you're halfway between sleep and wake, when I see that drugs bring in lucid dreaming i love pulling those two worlds together for people you know so i'm fascinating now with fascinated now with lucid dreaming and i think people who about a third of people do it like when you 30 to 40 percent report it uh sometimes more sometimes less athletes tend to have it more gamers tend to have it more visual spatial creative people tend to have more lucid dreams and there are some techniques that are out there i was going to ask you if someone's a beginner yeah and they want to try it after watching this they're going to get the book and they're like all right i want to play with it what are the first three things someone should do first thing they should do is look up mild lucid dreaming mild technique so there are a lot of techniques written about since antiquity uh people have cultivated spirituality with that this is a massive topic faiths use it a lot yeah so mild technique and what it is is waking up a bit earlier than you should you plan to or should and then trying to hold on to consciousness and waking life as you drift into sort of back into sleep.

1:33:59The technique is described in the book, and you can look it up online. But I want people to know why I mentioned that technique after four or five is because there is a study when they took a bunch of people and they said, okay, we're going to teach you the left, right, left, right Morse code. You practice this technique, then we're going to get you in the sleep lab. It's not my experiment, or it's not my investigation. We're going to get you in the sleep lab, okay? Now prove to us with your eyeball movements that you're actually lucid dreaming. Everything before that was a survey like, yeah, I did it and I'm lucid dreaming more.

1:34:32I believe people, but, you know, I like that extra bit of proof. So the mild technique is proven with the left-right, left-right Morse code technique that clearly shows you are asleep based on your brain electricity and you are using eye patterns. So much so, this is a banger, they started doing a little bit of math. two plus two and they'd have code and somebody says to me i think i was in paris and i said wait a second you said uh the dreaming brain doesn't do math i said yeah but i also showed you the brain scans that show a bit of awareness and has come back as does the bit of ability to do math so i love seeing those pieces come in consistently that's brilliant rather from all your research you've done you know tons of research tons of reading looking at studies i feel one of the biggest things that i'm taking away from this is often the questions we're asking about our dreams are the wrong questions we're asking like what does this mean is this you know is this real like you know what should i do with this what would you say are the best questions we should ask when we've woken up after dreaming what should we be looking for point us in the right direction because i feel maybe we're wasting time and energy and effort yeah in a different direction so i would say when i i'll tell you my approach again that's that's a massive topic you've you've just um asked of me is one there are dreams that clearly reflect your waking anxiety showing up late alarm alarm doesn't go off um showing up naked at a podium because you're about public speaking.

1:36:07So some don't require you to spend too much time on them. Number two, there are universal dreams, nightmares and erotic dreams. We've talked about that a little bit. Number three, there are dreams that are just static, you know. Let's not hold dreaming thought and emotions to what we wouldn't waking thought. There's a lot of stuff we do with them today we don't even hold on to, right? Similarly. The fourth are genre dreams, pregnancy dreams. Massive lifetime events are happening. Massive lifetime events are happening in your dreaming. that's consistent. The ones that I would say to people are to focus on are the ones that are hyper, hyper emotional that you and they linger into the next day.

1:36:46You can try to cultivate it with the morning technique. We talked about a slower rise, not not switching to email and Instagram too quickly. But the hyper emotional dream is one to reflect upon. Here's why. the emotional systems of your brain called limbic structures and the brain has the reptilian brain inside our throat sort of back there that's instinct it makes you take a breath when you're underwater above it developed the emotional brain much like what my dog has you know they have intuition uh they have instinct um that's called the limbic system and people can look this up and there's there's circuits in there like the papay circuit and it's a fascinating It's a fascinating part of the brain.

1:37:30And then on top of it is a giant frontal cortex. The frontal cortex is integrated with all those. They're all intertwined. There is no dopamine. There's a reward pathway that jumps from the reptilian to the emotional. But to get things done, our advantage and the thing that blossomed our foreheads forward was logic and reason, the executive and the CEO. So I believe that limbic system, those emotional systems are dampened during the day. for productivity, conventional productivity, not creativity. And what's happening with your dreams is the roles are reversed, and the emotional systems can achieve a top speed that your waking life can't.

1:38:11So if you have emotions, thoughts, and experiences from a hyper-emotional, hyper-liberated brain, that's the one to reflect on within your life. And I've given a few specific examples. and the process of reflecting what it means, it's individual to you. If you are having nightmares and you don't have them and you think your day, wait, my day is fine. I'm having a lot of nightmares when I don't. Let that be a warning sign to reflect more upon yourself. If you're struggling with a relationship and you have dreams of falling or hyper emotional dreams of being chased, you know that's your relationship symbolically finding itself into your dreams if you are at the end of life and you're having a lot of dreams about reconciliation those are that's the dreaming process coming to your rescue at the end of life dreams serve a different function uh i think they they bring a solace.

1:39:15And there's evidence coming out now that even when our heart is stopped, the last thing a brain does is have one massive dream in the last minute or two, potentially experiencing the universal feature of near-death experiences. So know that a hyper emotional dream comes from a hyper emotional state that's individual to your brain and that no one can give you, no one has access to. And maybe it's your responsibility to turn over that feeling and those thoughts and just to pause for a minute and take all the information coming at you, take all the stuff you've gone through and actually step aside for a little bit and say, hey, what was that solar flare from my mind?

1:39:56And if it's useful to you, great. If the process helps you remember those more, great. But if you just have that five, 10 minutes during your morning where you just remember that you were not resting the night before, that there was something wild and vibrant going on, and you got a glimpse of it. What it means is up to you, but definitely don't neglect it. Well said, Dr. Raul Jandiel. The book is called This Is Why You Dream. If you don't have your copy already, make sure you grab it. We dove into some of the themes, some of the topics. There's so much more inside this book that I believe you're going to love and appreciate so that you can dream better, dream bigger and dream more beautifully as well, which is what I wish for each and every one of you.

1:40:40Raul, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to share that is on your heart and mind intuitively that you believe is important for our community? I think there's too much judgment going on in the ways that people approach life. And some people think they've got it all figured out. And some people on the other end saying, I've got nothing figured out. And I got to tell your listeners, I've been in that entire range. And I would say a couple of things. I would say, I think the dreaming brain and mind is a genius built in that gives us resilience. And resilience, I want to leave people with a brand new definition of it, a psychological definition that there's systemic resilience and processive resilience.

1:41:24systemic resilience is uh is is what you bring to the fight and processive resilience is is what the fight brings out in you so wherever you're at you're equipped with your dreaming brain as your ally and i think to me that gives me a source of strength that there's this process cultivating me protecting me preparing me for the next day that's on one side that's like that's rahul speaking emotionally right on the other side when you sit here and you say that's brain surgeons trying to rock this stuff about the brain and mind and all that i'll leave you with something i did not know in neuroscience right i got a lab i got a phd in neuroscience i'm a brain surgeon you start to think you're like the expert at it but there are things in exploring dreams and dreaming that i was surprised like how did i not know that because it would have changed all the ways i would have acted through my life.

1:42:22I would have been more open, more exploratory, more willing to accept other people's experiences, because it doesn't all have to make sense, even to the uber expert. So I leave people with something to search online called paradoxical kinesis, P-A-R-A-D-O-X-I-C-A-L kinesis is called, we can't explain why you move that way. That's my street translation for that medical term. But what it is, is those same patients that have dream enactment behavior, they care, act out their dreams. And later on, their Parkinson's develops and their brains wither. The strangest thing is when the Parkinson's sets in and their voices are stifled and their movements are rigid, when they act out their dreams, their voices are big and their movements are fluid the dreaming mind somehow can access the body in a better way in a more fluid way in a more in tune way than the waking mind can and that that's what i like to leave people with like i'm excited about this i hope you guys are too so raul you talk about how naps lasting 60 to 90 minutes can boost learning and create a problem solving by 40 percent uh why is this and when's the best time to take a nap?

1:43:38The napping thing is big these days and people are finding it's not work harder, work longer and all that, but try to work with the different states of mind and brain that you have. And napping, if you get to 60 or 90 minutes, people have done surveys and asked people to nap with puzzles and they find entering the dream state or the sleeping state, which again, as we've talked about, is imaginative, is divergent thinking, that they solve problems better they have more solutions to riddles and the big point there for people is there's a utility to napping you're not lazy because you nap and if you can do in a way that doesn't disrupt your sleep later on in the day i think that's another you know in the world of hacks i think that's the hack that we've got all got built in can you dream in that 60 to 90 minutes yeah have and have those dreams shown to be any different i can't answer that there isn't data on have those shown dreams shown to be any different but i would say one condition is narcolepsy where people fall asleep suddenly and there's information coming out from that they suddenly fall asleep and then they wake up and they enter a dream state but that's a whole space that's opening up the utility of naps and it doesn't have to be every day it doesn't have to be rigid and if you have a big event or a big project coming up i think personally what i've tried is just shutting your eyes in a quiet space and allowing that mental workspace allowing yourself not to be tasked on and drift inwards in your thoughts, whether you actually fall technically asleep or not, to me, that's been advantageous.

1:45:06Yes, absolutely. I agree with that. And I know many athletes who do that as well before a big game or before a big performance. You're not necessarily falling asleep, but you're in off mode, definitely. And also last question I wanted to ask you was the question that Helena mentioned. So a lot of people, when they're in sleep entry, they feel like they're falling. Why does that exist? Why do people have that experience? I don't know if I have an answer for that. And I've seen the reports, but I couldn't tie any signs to that. But sleep entry, falling asleep, is a time where activation of the movement centers is pronounced.

1:45:44And falling is actually a movement. It's not, you think, well, running is a movement, falling is something that happens to you. No. But the activation of the brain when people fall, it has to do with the motor strip as well, motor sensory. So during that transition, there may be a link there. Yeah. It's even interesting language like falling asleep. Like, I guess you're falling onto a bed, but the idea of falling is just, I don't know. I like entering. Yeah. I find language really fascinating. And when I look at like falling to sleep, I'm like, that doesn't make any sense to me. Yeah. Beyond falling onto a bed, which doesn't necessarily create a restful, peaceful feeling.

1:46:22Take that back 2000 years and we memorize it by heart. And that's when we thought the heart was the center. So absolutely language shapes the direction of our mind. I mean, the power of words and people are finding handwriting activates more part of the brains than typing. And so definitely the communication and storytelling and building meaning, there's something there. I'll explore that hopefully in the years ahead. I think sleep, enter, and exit is brilliant language though. That has really stayed with me and it's making me think even more intentionally and insightfully around those intimate moments just before waking up, especially those two to 12 minutes that you said before you go to bed and after you wake up, because evening and morning routines make sense, but there's an even more special time there that could be managed.

1:47:11Yeah. That morning time for me, sleep exit is definitely something I've put to use. A lot of the ideas in this book, I'd read something, I'd be flipping through a bunch of papers. I'm like, what does this mean? What does this mean? And then it would be in the morning. I don't know. Maybe that, maybe that. Not a guarantee, but definitely a space to explore. Yeah. Amazing. Raul, so we end every episode of On Purpose with a fast five, final five. These are questions that have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum. And these are your final five. So the first question is, what is the best dreaming advice you've ever heard or received?

1:47:44I try to remember them more. Okay. Second question. What is the worst dreaming advice you've ever heard or received? dreams are meaningless question number three a dream you wish you'd have more often falling in love the first time question number four a dream that you wish people would have more often reconciliation dreams dreams of forgiveness dreams of letting go and are those ones that we can train ourselves to have i don't know but those are the ones that some people report toward the end of life and i just wonder if we had that more in the middle of our life we'd be you know we would have uh we would have less regrets and we'd be less on you know encumbered by the fuss of the day why do you why is there any study to show why people are having it later on in life no wow that's yeah and i can tell you that from my own experience with cancer patients yeah they're called genre dreams end of life dreams and again our last act might be a massive dream and it tends to be positive not always for near-death experiences to me i call that uh dreaming coming to our rescue yeah could you imagine you're so right if you could have that earlier on like all that beef all that fuss you know it's a great answer you know i just i wish i could have let it go earlier yeah fifth and final question we ask this to every guest who's ever been on the show if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow what would it be before you speak or act do your best to imagine yourself in that person's shoes great answer dr raul jandial the book is called this is why you dream thank you so much for joining us today if you don't already make sure you follow dr raul jandial on instagram across social media grab a copy of the book we'll put the link in the comments and the caption section and i'm so grateful for your time and energy today i've learned so much you've completely transformed my way of thinking about dreams honestly through your book and this interview I think I knew nothing about dreams before we met.

1:49:44I had really poor ideas and maybe some limited beliefs. And speaking to you today has just opened up a whole new area of growth for me that I don't even think I was thinking about. So I love the idea that I'm walking away with some simple yet clear tools to actually start implementing from tonight and tomorrow. So I'm really excited about this dream journey. And I hope everyone who's listening and watching, when you read the book, I hope you're going to go on a dream journey with me too. and I'd love to see you tag me and Dr. Raul in some of the experiments, some of the tests that you're carrying out in your own life.

1:50:18Thank you so much. Pleasure. Thank you so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it, you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort is the key to growth and the strategies for unlocking your hidden potential. If you know you want to be more and achieve more this year, go check it out right now. You set a goal today. you achieve it in six months and then by the time it happens it's almost a relief there's no sense of meaning and purpose you sort of expected it and you would have been disappointed if it didn't happen this episode of on purpose is brought to you by chase sapphire reserve i believe that travel is one of the greatest gifts that we've ever been given and chase sapphire reserve has been my gateway to the world's most captivating destinations when i use my chase sapphire reserve card i get eight times the points on all the purchases I make through Chase Travel and even access to one-of-a-kind experiences, experiences like music festivals and sporting events.

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