Dreaming on Both Sides of the Brain

Discover the Secret Language of the Night

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

Contents

What Are Dreams?

Most people pay no attention to their dreams because of the prevailing notion that dreams are nothing more than noise in the brain — vestiges of waking experiences that linger in the nervous system. Let me be frank: That assumption is simply false. Yes, there are different patterns of waves in the brain, some of which relate to dreaming and some of which relate to our waking lives. But just because we do not yet know what dreams mean or their precise source does not mean that they are nothing but noise to be dismissed. This is one of the great failings of modern medicine — the assumption that not knowing the explanation for something means that there is no explanation for it.

The Tradition of Dreams

According to the Bible, dreams are prophetic and come from God. In ancient Egypt, priests traveled through different levels of consciousness to access what they referred to as the "magic library" in order to help petitioners interpret particularly vivid dreams. In ancient Greece, dreams were believed to come from Asclepius, the god of medicine. People suffering from imbalance or illness petitioned priests of Asclepius to interpret their dreams in order to heal them.

In modern times, Sigmund Freud opened the door to consideration of the unconscious by suggesting that dreams emerge from the unconscious as expressions of sexual urges and aggression suppressed in waking life. In fact, he referred to dreams as "the royal road to the unconscious." However, to interpret dreams as nothing more than disguises for our aggressive and sexual urges is intensely reductive and limits our humanity to a single dimension. After all, we are so much more than sex, than aggression. As expressions of divine energy, we are dreams, hopes, ideas, spirituality, play, and delight.

It was Carl Jung, extending the work of Freud, who spoke of the collective unconscious — a reservoir of experiences common to all humans — as the source of dreams. In other words, unlike Freud, he believed that dreams accessed something beyond the individual. Jung's insight did not, however, make it any easier for us to actually learn from our dreams. For, even if we are all connected through a collective unconscious, how can I make sense of messages I am accessing from the collective unconscious of someone in, say, rural China? I need to be concerned about my life, my experiences, so that I can change me. If you decide that dreams are only about the collective unconscious, it diminishes your personal relationship with your own unconscious. The truth is that our dreams are all about changing ourselves. Your dream is about you changing you. This is very important to keep in mind.

Today, many people believe that dreams are not prophecies, or repressions, or expressions of the collective unconscious, but are instead mere vestiges of things they have experienced during the day. Again, there is an element of truth to this. If you watch a movie about cowboys just before going to bed, you may fall asleep and dream that you are a cowboy, riding your horse into the sunset. When you wake up, you may dismiss your dream as meaningless, saying: "Well, I just watched a Western flick, and that explains why I had that dream." This may not be the case, however. You may have had a dream set in the context of the movie you watched before bed because embedding a message in that context makes it more likely that you will remember it the next day.

In other words, the unconscious uses events from your daily life as reinforcement. In this case, the message in the dream may be that you are on a journey and feel in charge. The message may have been delivered in a way that reenacts a part of your day, but the symbolic content would have been delivered one way or another, regardless of what you had experienced during the day. To enter the unconscious untethered is very scary. If, however, a movie connects to the unconscious and you dream of it, this provides a connection that makes the meaning easier for you to carry back with you into your conscious waking world.

The dreamer is always dreaming about the dreamer. So your dreams are always about you — your story, your life, and your conscious experiences. That is why they are often connected to what you are experiencing in your waking life — your relationships, hopes, expectations, and fears in the conscious world.

Types of Dreams

There are many types of dreams — big, small, thematic, recurring, even nightmares. The following is a list of the most common dreams you may experience.

* Precognitive dreams, in which you dream something that comes to pass in the future.

* Intuitive dreams, which are less specific than precognitive dreams and involve the sense that something may happen.

* Warning dreams, in which you are cautioned about something that is about to happen.

* Health-related dreams, in which you are presented with information about your own or someone else's health.

* Pat-on-the-back dreams that congratulate you on something you have achieved.

* Pregnancy dreams that may either be predictive of a physical pregnancy, or may indicate symbolically that you are preparing to give birth to new aspects of Self.

* Death dreams, in which you anticipate your own or someone else's death.

* Past-life dreams, in which you explore past lives through regression.

* Nightmares, in which you experience your deepest fears.

* Recurring dreams, which bring you important messages about potentially troubling patterns in your life.

* Guidance dreams, which can help you make decisions or changes in your life.

* Lucid dreams, in which you are conscious that you are in a dream state.

Many people tend to see precognitive dreams as predictive. This is not necessarily so, and is certainly not so in a constraining or limiting sense. Precognitive dreams may tell you about something that, in fact, happens in the future. But they never constrain your conscious life. They never present events or situations that must occur in the future. I generally try not to emphasize precognitive dreams because, frankly, dreams that are truly precognitive are rare. Unfortunately, however, many people begin to think all of their frightening dreams are precognitive and become terrified. So it is not a good idea to assume that your dreams foretell the future, because it is at the level of symbolism, not literal interpretation, that your dreams communicate most clearly and urgently.

Here is an example of a precognitive dream that I experienced myself that illustrates this. In 1980, I was in a car accident and hurt my back. As I was recovering, I dreamed that my father, who was healthy and fully functioning at the time, was in a wheelchair. I became very upset and overwhelmed, sure that the dream predicted he would become paralyzed. Then, in 1982, he had a physical episode similar to a stroke and was unconscious for ten days. When he regained consciousness and began to heal, I asked him why he came back. He responded that he came back so that he could continue to help and support his family and his people. He went on living for another nine years. The last year of his life was very difficult for him. He was confined to a wheelchair — not paralyzed, but very ill.

This was in 1990, so my dream was clearly precognitive in a sense. Yet even in this dream of my father, there was useful symbolic information that went beyond the merely predictive. The wheelchair represented limitation. To me, my father represented complete and unwavering faith. When I had the dream, I was recovering from an accident and was in a lot of pain. So in my dream, my faith was so injured that it had to be confined to a wheelchair. In other words, I was in great pain and discomfort and filled with the fear that I would never recover — that I would have to live out my life in pain. Ultimately, however, that pain led me to holistic healing and care, to discovering the relationship of the body to the self, which was an important revelation for me and helped me to become healthier. Without it, I would not have had the motivation to explore holistic healing.

No matter what type of dream you experience, the important thing to remember is that the dreamer is always dreaming about the dreamer. So your dreams are always about you. They function as a bridge from the conscious world of your own everyday waking life to the world of your own unconscious — and back again. Their messages, therefore, always deliver information about you — information that you can apply in practical ways when you know how to decipher its meaning. In the next chapter, we'll look at how the brain perceives and delivers these messages, and how you can begin to use the information to move forward in your waking life.

To sum up ...

1. Dreams function as a bridge between the conscious and unconscious worlds.

2. The dreamer is always dreaming about the dreamer. So your dreams are always about you.

3. There are many different types of dreams, each with a different symbolic function.

4. Precognitive dreams are never predictive in a limiting sense, although they may present possibilities for future action.

The Physiology of Dreams

Everything in the world can be perceived as a wave, a cycle — everything from the waves of the ocean to the phases of the moon. Sleep and dreams are no different. We fall asleep; we dream; we awaken. All the while, our brains are also experiencing cycles in which our brain waves operate more quickly or more slowly. The phase in which we are active, awake, and speaking is called the ITLßITL phase. In the beta phase, your brain operates at approximately twelve to forty-eight cycles per second. The next phase is called the ITLaITL phase, in which your brain waves operate at a wider and slower amplitude, approximately eight to twelve cycles per second. In this phase, you can perform self-hypnotic suggestion, a variation of which can help with the recollection of dreams — a process we will discuss and practice later.

The transition between the beta and alpha phases is what leads to the sudden sensation of falling that sometimes propels you from a light sleep. The reason you have this sensation and then startle yourself awake is simply that, as you enter the alpha phase — as you go deeper into the unconscious — you experience a disconnect between your brain waves and your body. Sometimes, your body does not keep pace with your mind's relaxation, which leads to the feeling of falling and sudden awakening. Once you give yourself the opportunity to fall asleep again, you likely do so more readily.

Following the alpha phase of brain activity comes the ITL?ITL phase, in which you are fully asleep and your brain waves operate at about two to eight cycles per second. And finally, beyond this phase is the ITLdITL phase, in which you are deeply asleep, your brain waves operating at only about one-half to one cycle per second. As you sleep through the night, your brain passes into and out of these phases: from alpha through theta, then delta, then back up through theta and alpha, and so on. Each dream is a cycle, and you pass through approximately five to eight of these cycles each night as you sleep. Thus, you dream five to eight dreams per night. This is fairly typical for most adults, unless they are taking medication, which may dampen dreams to some extent. We will discuss some of the effects of medications later — both prescription medicines like antidepressants and antianxiety drugs, and substances used for self-medication, like alcohol or marijuana. These can all have an impact, not just on your body, but on your dreams.

Remarkably, those who habitually meditate — monks, for example — can go into the delta phase of brain activity and still remain completely awake. Studies have shown that, although they are completely awake and alert, their brain waves are cycling at a very slow rate. This indicates that they have full and amazing control over both their bodies and their unconscious minds, since they can inhabit the unconscious and still function in the waking world. Meditation is a wonderful tool that works very well to calm the mind and bring peace. In our modern world, however, spending hours on end in daily meditation is not a very practical solution to most of our everyday problems. That is why we need swifter, simpler, deeper, sharper tools for reaching the unconscious.

The reason that we pass through these sleep cycles each night is, in part, to ensure physical restoration. When you experience REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, it enhances learning and memory at the physiological, cellular level. Sleep scientists used to believe that dreams only occurred during REM sleep, but have discovered through research that they do, in fact, occur even in non-REM states. They found in their studies that people awakening from deep-sleep states like theta or delta were having dreams, even though their eyes were not moving back and forth under their eyelids (which is what characterizes REM sleep). They were able to confirm this by monitoring people's brain waves as they slept. NonREM dreaming occurs primarily in the deepest phase of sleep — that is, the delta phase. To emerge from delta sleep, your brain must travel all the way up through the theta phase and into the alpha phase, which is why we tend to remember more of our REM dreams. Dreams experienced in delta sleep are distant and difficult to recall, because this sleep is so very deep.

Sleep and Your Health

An entire science and industry centered on rejuvenation and antiaging is emerging all across the world that centers on the potency of growth hormones. This is important for us to note here, because delta-phase and non-REM dreaming are involved in the synthesis of proteins and the release of these growth hormones. Applied to everyday life, this means that, if you do not allow yourself to sleep long enough and deeply enough, your body will not release as much growth hormone. This is detrimental because growth hormone facilitates both physical and emotional growth, up to and including the cellular level. You release this hormone in abundance during infancy; but when you reach your early twenties, its release begins to diminish. Throughout your life, however, the release of this hormone is promoted by deep sleep. In a normal sleep cycle, you start out in beta and then descend through alpha and theta before reaching the delta phase. But it requires time to reach the deeper phases. If you are not sleeping for long enough periods, you may not reenact the sleep cycles as reliably. Instead of experiencing five to eight cycles per night, you may at best pass through one or two, or you may never reach the delta phase at all. The result is that you will not release sufficient revitalizing growth hormone to maintain your health.

Lack of deep sleep has other detrimental effects on your body as well — for instance, in the area of weight control. When you do not sleep deeply enough, you do not calm your bodily systems enough. Consequently, your adrenals don't get enough rest and continue to release cortisol, which affects your insulin levels. This can lead to chronic insulin spikes, or even problems with insulin release. If insulin is not released properly, your insulin and sugar levels become imbalanced and you start putting on weight, because, when your insulin levels are not balanced, nearly everything you consume is deposited as fat. Excess cortisol sends your brain this message: "I am in stress and need more energy. Therefore, please deposit the food I digest as fat so that I will have extra energy to face this crisis." It's just the way we are wired.

It generally requires six to eight hours of deeper sleep for most of us to maintain our health. If you have convinced yourself that you cannot "waste" six to eight hours each night, just remember that giving yourself sufficient time to reach deeper sleep stages is utterly essential for your physical health, your hormonal health, your looks, your youthfulness, your weight, your brain, your mind, your heart, your pancreas, your liver — yes, I could go on. Do you consider replenishing your body and mind to be a waste of time? Probably not. So try to get six to eight hours of sleep each night.

I acknowledge that, for many people, simply remaining asleep for six to eight hours can be challenging. So how can you find a healthy balance? Begin by making a decision to proceed gradually. Set yourself a goal and then phase into it. For the first week or so, aim each night to get at least five hours of sleep. After you have done this for a week or two, move on and increase your goal to six hours.