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

fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to help you build positive habits, shift yourself talk, reframe your negative thoughts, and generally feel better in your daily life. So many incredible options from the most knowledgeable experts in the world, along with renowned meditation teachers. You can also check out my seven minute daily series to help you

live more mindfully each and every day. Right now, listeners of On Purpose get forty percent off a subscription to Calmpremium at Calm dot com forward slash j that's Calm dot com forward slash jay for forty percent off. Calm your mind, Change life.

This would also mean the absolute world to me and help make better, bigger, brighter content for you and the world. Subscribe right now.

been fascinated about. We're talking to the expert, the person who's thinking about it differently, who's open to the idea of this truly being discovery, all based on curiosity. Doctor Raoul Johndel is a dual trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist at City of Hope in Los Angeles. Doctor John Deale leads the John Deale Lab, which explores the intersection of neurobiology and cancer. As part of his nonprofit that he founded, he teaches and performs pediatric neurosurgery in charity hospitals in

South America and Eastern Europe. Today, we're talking about his newest book out now, This is Why You Dream. Welcome to the show, Roul John Dale Roll, It's great to see you.

It's never happened before. I'm just telling you that. And so you're going to see me reading out questions from real people who've sent them in for you to understand more about dreaming, which I think is probably one of the most undiscovered, untapped, misunderstood, or completely on on thestudy areas of our lives. So let's dive straight into it. And the first question I have for you is does everyone dream?

and there's vibrant electricity while we're sleeping. The electricity our brain generates while we sleep is as hot as the electricity our brains are generating now, so that's the first thing. The second thing is the heart when it's pushing up the blood, the brain is mopping up glucose. It's burning hot metabolically, so inside our skull while we're lying down, even though we don't remember a lot of it, we're

burning hot and we're spark electricity. So people who remember their dreams and people who don't remember their dreams, that brain is still sparking hot and generating a lot of electricity. So I think it's more of memory recall in the morning. At the same time, we all know about a nightmare, so we've all had one dream. The question is why do some people dream more, dream less, or remember their dreams more remember their dreams less. And that's something I

think is related to the variety of human experience. We don't hold our waking thoughts to the same rigid contours, right, so our dreamscape, our dream life is individual between us, and we remember more when we're younger, we remember less as we get older, and then in certain diseases, dreams come to the rescue. And it seems now that at the end of life, like with my cancer patients, dreams return

and they're filled with reconciliation. You would think in their struggle, like you know, there would be dark, but they're actually positive. So those patterns of dreams are there. The brain electricity is firing while we sleep, and that's the sort of foundation from which I try to find meaning.

If I can be so bold, I think sleep is for the brain. It's not for our thigh muscle, it's not for our liver. There are some metabolic changes. I'm not discounting all of it, but the real thing driving us to sleep is our brain. What does our brain do just vibrantly when we sleep, it's dream. So that's like my straight up answer about like that thing that's not happening on accident, right, that's not a glitch that

didn't last through thirty thousand generations accidentally. And so then the question becomes if we have this vibrant one third of our lives that we partially remember sometimes remember sometimes it's an exciting journey, sometimes an erotic journey. Sometimes it's

a nightmare, like what's that all about? You know? And the way I've come to understand it is, first, you know, given respect to people who've tried to come up with some ideas like it's a threat rehearsal if we're running from a wooly mammoth and our dreams were better prepared for during the day, what I would say is maybe, And when I say maybe, you're likely it's not a

respect for you and your listeners. I don't want to be that guy that comes in here says yes no about something as big and magical as dreaming, so threat rehearsal. Maybe some people think it's a nocturnal therapist because towards the morning, when we have more of our vivid dreams, the emotional balance, the valence they call it, tends to be more positive. Maybe I like to think of it as something that sparks creativity because of what happens with

the dreaming brain. The dreaming brain looks for looser dots to connect. It's imaginative by design, logic is dampened down. So I think it's our creativity engine. And then the way I put it all together is with something straight up called use it or lose it that people know about when we talk about the brain, right, they say, hey, use it or lose it. We know if we don't use our biceps, the atrophy, but our day. If you

look at the brain, activation electricity is so narrow. The brain wants to be efficient, right, because it's an energy hog. It's only like four or five pounds, but it uses twenty percent of our blood. So the brain during the day to navigate the world task on outward. Executive network logic wants to be efficient driving down the one to one easily, going on the tube easily, not have to

activate everything to get that done. If we only use those limited parts of our brain during the day and didn't have some way to high intensity train them, those would go derelic we wouldn't use them, and we may lose them. So I think in the biggest way possible is that dreaming process. Dreams and dreaming is high intensity

training for our brain. It keeps those corners engaged, It keeps those neurons firing that might not during the day, and those are available to us the next day for a creative process for the next day, or the next year, or the next generation for an adaptive process. That's my biggest, most romantic way of thinking about about why we dream so hard.

with this or recording with this. And it was like they're like, you wrote this thing about the brain, like you know, smart drugs, Alzheimer's creativity. Then you wrote this thing about the mind, like resilience and trauma and belief and about your own struggles, why don't you put together something about dreams from a scientific perspective that everybody can read.

And I was like, there's going to be so many gaps, and they said, then let us know where the gaps are, say maybe, say likely, and say I wonder, I believe, And that's what I've tried to do in the book.

But to your question about when I started this process, when I looked at not your dream, my dream, but ten thousand dreams, Aristotle was writing about lucid dreaming a couple hundred years ago, they're still writing about being chased or falling, and I was like, wait a second, there are patterns to dream reports, like now they have dream banks. So the first thing I noticed was nightmares and erotic

dreams are essentially universal. And I say essentially because it's ninety plus in this world is considered a hundred, right, because that's just how science works when you look at questionnaires and surveys, So everybody's at a nightmare, erotic dreams are almost all the way up there. And then chasing falling, falling teeth, that seems to be common. And then there was a dream that was very rarely reported doing math. I don't like math, so I was like, that's all

good for me. But but you start when you look at lots of thousands of dreams, like why is that one so low? Now walk with me over here. Then you start looking at brain scans and brain electricity and what happens. What's the difference between the waking brain and the dreaming brain. Right in a twenty four hour cycle, we're about two thirds waking brain and one third dreaming brain. And there are some transition zones that I love, like I call them liminal states or blurry zones that we

can get into. But that when you see that and you say, well, what's the difference I started off with like, they're both burning hot, they're both sparkling electricity, So what's the difference. So when you go from waking brain to dreaming brain, what happens is the need to look outward changes, right, And so the executive network, a collection of structures, not just one thing, dampens logic and math ability damping. They don't turn off. Nothing turns off on the brain, otherwise

you know you'd have a stroke. So it dampens the imagination network and the emotional systems called the limbic structures are liberated. So if we know now that the dreaming brain as a measurement, not my opinion, right, we can talk about opinions, but this is a measurement. If the dreaming brain has dampened logic and reason and math, liberated emotion, hyper visual, it kind of makes sense why we don't see a lot of math, because that part of the brain that does that is to take in a back

seat while we dream. So I said, okay, even if that's the only thing I can say in this book, and some youngster, you know, ten twenty thirty years from now, it takes more data from dream banks that are more inclusive and bringing in more people that patterns of how we dream, you know, and what we dream can be explained by the brain. Thought to me, that was fascinating.

So dreams are not limitless. Yours is mine is when you look at a lot of them, nightmares happen universally, erotic dreams happen essentially universally, and then we find very emotional, visual movement based dreams.

same thing. I was just talking to someone earlier and we were talking about how we seem to be the problem solvers in our families, and then you start realizing, how, wait a minute, we're all trying to solve the same problems. We're dealing with the same emotions, and those patterns are so useful in finding so have they basically looked at dream patterns and then looked at stress patterns and lifestyle patterns? Like is that what you're measuring them against? Or what

are the patterns being measured against? So if out of the ten thousand people, nine thousand people dreamt about their teeth falling out, what then are we measuring in their life to make sense of that dream?

dream patterns that they're looking at. And when I say they, I mean twenty forty years of different studies, I'm trying to stitch it together. Let me give you a specific one. There was one survey questionnaire where women going through divorce when their dreams they were reconciling in their dreams, that things were breaking up and people were moving on. Those as a group tended to recover from divorce better. And so when you just look into you just say, okay,

that's very interesting. Those that were struggling in their dreams were also ones more likely to have depression longer. And so what that does to me is that invites a conversation. So does the dream or the dreaming brain kind of give a clue to how well you're coping with your real waking life. Stress, That by itself is powerful one it knows about it. It ain't some other brain. It's your brain, it's just in this dreaming mode, so it knows about it. Your waking life is feeding your dream life.

I mean, six seven, eight hours, how are you processing, how are you digesting? How are you metabolizing the most difficult thing in your day? And I think that's where I love it, is that it's not distinct and that the dreaming brain can be your shepherd. It can be the thing that helps you process emotional trauma. And for people with PTSD, it can actually actually play back flashbacks. So it's a wild space that leans emotional, leans visual.

Let me give you a second example with my patients end of life cancer patients dreams are expansive, positive, filled with reconciliation. As they're asking for surgery and all that. You would think they're all going to be horrific because it's dark time stress, right, You would think day stress is turned into dreaming stress. But the connection is not clear. And that's where I think there's power in our dream life. I think, in general, when I look at all the surveys,

dreaming is our shepherd at the end of life. I think nightmares and erotic dreams cultivate the young mind much like our minds are cultivating adolescents. Dreams mirror and reflect what's going on during our life. For example, pregnancy dreams women who are pregnant, their dreams are very different rolling over in bed what the babies are gonna be called. So sometimes waking anxiety and dream anxiety clearly linked. I gotta give a talk tomorrow. I got a dream showing

up naked. I gotta I gotta exam alarms. Sometimes they're clear, Sometimes they're your companion. Pregnancy dreams, end of life dreams sometimes are just jumped. Not everything's gonna make sense right, Our waking life doesn't make sense. So I think when you start to look at those categories, the fourth category being universal dreams, nightmares and erotic dreams and children, then the one we're left with that the one that now I spend even more time with, is that hyper emotional,

hyper visual that lingers into the next day. What I would say is, don't let that one go. That's a solar flare from your brain in a unique state that you can't get to during the day. Hyper emotional, hyper liberated. The measurements of emotion in our dreaming brain can reach a top speed. Our waking brain can never reach So for me, when I look at the whole thing, the hyper emotional, hyper visual with a central image is a dream that has broken out from your dream life. That

is about you that a therapist can't get to. I mean, it's your brain conjured it and that's one to reflect on. What I would say is like, not every time, not everyone, but in our search for wellness and healing, that's a free and accessible portal. And when I was working on this book with the UK publishers, there were like seven or eight people who are like, we're dreaming more, We're remembering our dreams more. Some lucid you know, had lucid dreams. So that's the second thing I would say is that

this can be induced and cultivated. You're not a passenger with your dream life and what you remember from your dream life. You can also cultivate that you're not a passenger at that stage either.

healthiest ingredients. It's been our purpose to make healthy choices accessible for all, which is why Juni is now on shelves at Target. So head to our store locator at Drinkjuni dot com and find Juni at a Target near you. Let's talk about that a little. So I was gonna ask you, if you don't remember your dream, if you don't make the subconscious conscious, does that mean that it

doesn't have an effect? And are you encouraging us to take time to actually make the subconscious conscious and reflect on our dreams.

may remember, we may not remember. We show up. It's like the car Jenny, right, we jumped in the car, you got to stap for a bit, you got to the other side. Maybe you remember a tree you sore along the way, or your mom and dad did something when you were a kid, but you don't remember most of it. It doesn't really matter.

the electricity blends. It's like a liminal state. Like I used to be a scuba diver, when when you go from a freshwater river to an ocean, it's not like there's a crisp line, there's a blurry zone. Similarly, when we go from waking to dreaming, there's about a ten

to fifteen minute period called sleep entry. Salvador Dali and some current tech companies in San Francisco, they believe that during that period you kind of sort of have access to that divergent creative ideation of dreaming and that they can extract ideas from there. So much so Thomas Edison with the light bulb, would like would fall asleep in a chair and when he'd fall asleep and he'd start himself awake, he'd write down what he was thinking. That

that was a scene and inception. Right. So I'm just up bringing the science in, But that's there. Christopher Nolan's talking about that. Salvador Dolly wrote a book about that. You know, his stuff is real, like the and so what that period is the first entry into dream life that you can still hold on to. And what we're finding is that people have more interesting ideas, they have more divergent thinking and creative ideas at that window. Is that But to be clear your trouble at work, you

got to create a project. Is that going to guarantee it? No, But it's a habit of respecting that transition liminal zone as a portal to a state your brain is not in when you're awake or not in when you're dreaming. Right, So that's one thing that people can do to cultivate

in that same area. Some people peel 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 some blood vessels and tissues in different ways on challenging cases. I'll flip the images through. That's the last thing I go

to bed thinking about. And somebody asked me this in London. They said, well, your dream of surgery. I said, no, I've never dreamt. I've never dreamt a 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, manah, 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. So 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.

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. Does that have any correlation?

populate dreams. 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. So I'm curious to see like right, like So, now that doesn't mean there's one hundred papers on that, but those are the spring, that's the sprinkling of information that

I saw, Like, so what becomes familiar to the bosses. Well, you know people can have like awkward dreams about bosses, is right, they have sexual dreams about people they actually are not attracted to. That's a big category in erotic dreams.

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 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 pro create. That's the big topic. The specific thing is across cultures, different over generations,

the percentages are surprisingly similar ninety plus. The other surprising thing is that eighty to ninety percent 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 covening somebody else, or whether you're in a bad relationship. It's almost like 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.

the fantasy you're having while you're awake. It doesn't matter the sexual act the sexual person. That 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, So whatever you're thinking about during the day, you know that's the movie you're making at night.

on sexuality, we'll get insights into that. But that's a very individual thing. So as a 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 open 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 thinking if you're hung up on them during the day, you're dream about your ex, that means one thing. But if you're like, no, I've really moved on and the lover pops up in your dream, I think that's just a solar flare of desire. I wouldn't make much of that.

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 a conundrum or dilemmas that's created by dreams.

easier rule to follow if you will. But then what about those other dreams that you're bringing up right, like intensely emotional to 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. 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. 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 other than showing up naked at a podium or I'm 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. It'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 at this moment in life, or my life ten years from now, not just former versions of myself. So I'm not here to refute anything, but it's a very personal process. Your 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

here to say is take a look at it. Yeah, it's not just static.

I wonder how much like I'll give an example. I 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 gonna 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 run away. And that's how they saw a bear in their dream.

But then when you look at the dream, spiritual version, whatever you call it, the interpret Sorry, when you look at dream interpretation, the interpretation of that was bears represent strength and they represent courage, and they have the symbol and the now goo. So it's it depends.

a little time to open up on this. But but what's what's interesting, and again I don't have all the answer this conversation, is that in the dreaming brain, even though the logic and reason areas are dampened, specifically the dorsal ladder 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 cortext that's preserved. It stays throbbing, it's actually liberated a little bit. And

you know what that one does. It does something we only figured out when we accidentally injure it or somebody has a stroke in that area. It stitches the story of our life together. Right, And so what's happening this

is this is this is cool. What's happening is your emotions and your vision centers and your movement centers are just firing up stuff linked directly and directly to the stuff you feted during the day, the stuff your life feted, right, your life, your memory plus the imagination and then the media prefrontal cortex is they're putting a story to it. Dreams, 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 say 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 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 and they'll develop something called neglect, or they'll develop something what it's 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 will 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 adolescens. R 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. If you're in a struggle. Now,

that's just overwhelming, like something difficult, so hard. Don't worry because you're cultivating that stress, stress for the next one. And I think all of those pieces not measurements, but my opinion that we are meeting 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 where 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 are some consciousness had its run?

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. There are 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 dream again, that's that's built into 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 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.

I'm more than ten thousand in my life, So there's there's a cultivation that I have benefited from 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. If you practice a new script for the ending of your nightmares, you can rescript your nightmares through something called imagery rehearsal therapy.

People can look it up and not every time, not for everyone, but just the fact that nightmares can be rescripted is powerful. That you think you're out of control, but you can feed your dreams, you can steer your dreams, and lucid dreaming as the prime example of that, and that therapy can guide you to a better conclusion in 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 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, so you don't wake up and say, ah, that's a glitch that's static. No,

there's something drove that. Learn about the engine behind it, and then reflect about the meaning about it.

to wake up early. I believed 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 rescripting 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.

I would love for our audience to practice a 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.

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 flight and 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.

That's what's sparkling all that electricity. If I'm running in a dream, the motor strip that moves my legs, the neurons they 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 rescripting 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 activities driving that. And so the people say, well, how that happened. I would give you the example of placebo and So when you believe a medicine is going to help you, even if I tell you, look, that's there's nothing active in it. That's just like sugar. 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 one hundred billion microscopic jellyfish, and is there's like electric storms and waves of neurotransmitters

flying around in there. When you believe, the pharmacy of your mind is actually releasing chemicals and things that generates different electricity, that alleviates pain, that prepares your brain and mind for rescripting the nightmare, that makes positive, gives you the scientific basis possibly for positive reinforcement. Positive relationships like these are actually not just emotions, but they're working at the level of the brain. That's powerful.

And I think the pandemic kind of you know, had had time and we were indoors and all the rest of it. And so I started watching TV. I 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 thirty 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 dreamed every night that my house was being broken into like that that was an experience that I was having and I connected to because it's someone who didn't have nightmares as an adult and as someone who didn't watch that much TV. Those are the only two changes that I'd at least not is.

What I would tell you is when color television arrived, the magazines the dream reports show a bump in people having color color dreams, like there were more black and white dreams when TV was black 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. The science gives some insight, and the exploration reveals there's so many things we don't understand. The take home is it's not a 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.

dreams can be explained by the brain. Because imagine in twenty thirty years how much more data will have through people with online dream banks, and how much more will know about neuroscience. Imagine the connections that somebody's sitting here playing different roles than us can make. And so it's more of a it's an inception. I want people to be ignited that dreams can some parts of dreams can be made sense of.

really unnerving for parents when their kids having nightmares. I have friends who have kids who 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. What have been some Have there been any therapies or remedies that have helped, But then you go on to say that nightmares are needed. So walk me through there.

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, and 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 y paid attention to them, they could be a warning flair 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 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. It'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 a power. I'm not saying I have the answer. I'm just I'm leaving that with your audience. There's one nightmares do that. By definition, nightmares wake you up and they see 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 twenty years in a row. They'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 ' sixt' 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 children at some point developed 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, and 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

and 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 there the next day. So it's almost sort of like whereas an adults, nightmare disorder means the residue is lingering with you. So when you look at the patterns children learn to work, we'll walk and talk. Nightmares arrive around four or five, six, and most of them go away. Erotic dreams around like eleven, twelve, thirteen,

and persist in some way. Adolescences arise around fifteen sixteen. But these are cognitive changes. The brain looks about the same. It's not like a new low pops up. These are cognitive changes that are happening. So I think nightmares cultivate them mind, mind and children. They arrive and fade things that happen that universally and science aren't accidental. And it's the it's the dream we've always had that all of us have had as a nightmare.

paying attention. Of course, food scarcity, right, Willie mammitz. 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. Well, what I would tell people is when we're not tasked on, the brain doesn't rev down like your computer like goes and then you have to hit

the keyboard to pop it up. No, it creates a mental life of its own, right, that's the imagination network. So during the day we're mostly executive network outward. But if there's nothing to do 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. They've done studies where they change 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. 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 going on the freeware, going on the tube, as we mentioned, but that's not the process your brain needs to be in to be the most adaptive for heartache, for falling in love, for a kid, getting sick, for the uncertainty the environment will give us, and 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 gonna take you there, whether you want it or not. That's the love story of uncertainty and creativity.

And so if you do grab your phone in the morning, I 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 windows sleep exit to sort of hold onto your dream

thoughts and your dream experiences. It'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 my life for the last five ten five ten years.

I'll keep my eyes closed. I'll run through some thoughts. So that's interesting, hold none that Whishould I do that? Like I have my sleep exit thinking or moments if you will, and then I'll reach over and I'll go to my notes app. It's write 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. It's rarely, like at two o'clock on a triple espresso. Right. That'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 fresh perspective. It's a different take on the things that are important in your life at that moment.

while you're dreaming. All right, So that's why I want people to walk away 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 twenty four cycle of brain waves. And how long does it lost was different for different people, and people seem to cultivate it.

But Salvador Dali's written about it said, you know, anywhere from two to twelve minutes.

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 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, a unique state that somebody's not

just taking marketing advantage of it. And 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 one hundred years ago, they were like, people are sleep and they put their hand in like a bucket of water, 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.

There's a few more things roll 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 dream 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.

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 patents are said like I had a dream, I felt the lump in these sort of things, I 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 and act. My behavior. Uh yeah, my world, my world. The words are they confuse, you know, dream and act my behavior. Middle aged men fifties acting out their dream, usually protecting their bed partner. They come in the bed partners maybe has an injury. Those men ninety four percent of the time. And that's essentially in medicine, it's universal. Fifteen years later will develop Parkinson's. I think

you know. So that is the one example, and it's if it's the only example for every neuroscientists 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 fifteen 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 cap all caps RAM behavior disorder, which I call dream and acting behavior. It's in scientific American. This isn't like one paper I'm digging up, like this is thing. This is stuff that that's coming out. REM behavior disorder predicts Parkinson's fifteen years later. And what I would say to the researchers out there, 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 actually predict what's going to happen to you, but what happens to you maybe because of what the dream is symbolically mentioning you're going through a difficult time, or

you lose your job. You have a dream about losing your job, So I can see where those connections would form. I just don't have any, so I'll leave it as a maybe.

There was a part of you that sensed it.

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. And I think when you look at what you're saying about hunch and instinct and how we kind of nuse 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 you are trying to create the outcome out of that imperfect situation, and when it doesn't arise or it doesn't arrive for you, so we do look back and say, hey, 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 think I think people should look at that as like, that's that's what makes life exciting.

dreams change. They're biological. And the second thing is I couldn't find a way to say antidepressants make this change your dreams. You know, coke and meth makes this change. And alcohol and alcohol if I just couldn't find something to wrap it aroun. Yeah, And I tried because I was like, that's going to be one of the chapters, and I just I didn't find a clear link except for one. Galantamine is this drug we give patients with dementia. It works on a seat of colin. It's one of

the less famous neurotransferers. We 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 the world of science that dose dependent escalation is as close as you get to you know,

cause and effect. So drugs definitely affect the brain. I just couldn't put them into Knie categories because people are anti depressants at this type of dream. People are on to cope 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.

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.

If your dream is falling, that's not a replay, but indicative something. And then there's most stuff is in between. It's highly visual, highly creative, jumping from social situations to visual situations. 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 is the best I because I wanted to be able to answer this question like two years ago when I was thinking of this, and this is with a gem that I found. When you hallucinate, just bear with me. It's a purple elephant in this room. 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 to answer I can.

so it's not random. And so I always wonder, is there's like access to memory our dreaming mind can have that are waking mind does not have access to Like people with 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 if

they played Tetris or a video game. They'll see pictures of it in their dreams but can't tell you about it when you ask them during the day, I said, no, I never played a Tetris game, but I had one in my dream. And they're basically playing Tetris is being played in front of them, So there's something going on where the dreaming mind has a memory system. I think I don't have evidence for this, but there are little dots like that, like slipping back into a dream, getting

up to go to the bathroom. People with amnesia being able to feed their dreams. Can't identify like on a map or 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 him. 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,

and but that's what it's done for me. My man is like fifty one years in ten thousand patients operate in like ten countries, suns, you know, wild love, affair, heartbreak, all of it, intense emotions, relationship with my partner for thirty 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. There's too much of a statement, but like, oh wait a second, there's 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, I'm excited to have the lens with which I approached the world reset. And that's what dreaming has done for me.

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 around 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?

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 at a vibrant one last night, but I was and only when I woke up I was like, Okay, that was only a dream. But when the dream was happening, I was fully inhabiting the dream. That was the dream was happening in my mind right and 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. And in the seventies somebody said, wait a second, you're a lucid dreamer. You're telling me you can become aware 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 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 eye pattern movements. At the same time, they put the electrodes on the surf of the scalp because a guy like me will be like, he's just woke up, right, Well, I 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?

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, not patients, participants into brain scanners. That executive network I've been talking about logic and stuff is dampened. They show more blood flow that area, not as much as when you're awake, but the blood flow to the frontal cortext that does reason and logic and

awareness is halfway. So you know exactly right. And so if everybody's been a lucid dreamer and telling people of work and people are shaking you off like you're out of your head, tell them no, there's there's the left right eye movement proof. There's brain scan proof. Galantamine, that drug that makes lucid dreamers have more or have people start to lose ad dream There's a lot of scientific evidence for that. And the last thing is, so can we learn to lucid dream? And that dream I had

was a trippy one. I was in the pandemic and I was teaching the boys to say, we got this boat, I just like we had. I had to get them outdoors. You can't have three dogs and puppies in the house and in a pandemic. And I thought, this is 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 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, and you know, 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 bringing loose to dreaming, I love pulling those two worlds together for people, you know. So

I'm fascinating now with fascinating now with lucid dreaming. And I think people who about a third of people do it, like when you, thirty to forty percent report it sometimes more sometimes less athletes tend to have it, more gamers tend to have more visuospatial creative people tend to have more lucid dreams. And there are some techniques that are out there.

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 locid dreaming more. I 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 have code, and somebody says to me, I think I was in Paris, and I said, wait a second. You said the dreaming brain doesn't do bath. 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.

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 in a different direction.

dreams 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 our genre dreams, pregnancy dreams. Massive lifetime events are happening, Massive lifetime events are happening, and you're dreaming. That's consistent the ones that I would say to people are to focus on are the ones that are hyper hyper emotional and

they linger into the next day. You can try to cultivate it with the morning technique. We talked about a slower rise, 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. 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, they have instinct. That's called the limbic system. And people can look this up and there's there's circuits in there like the Pepe circuit, and it's a fascinating it's a fascinating part of the brain. And then on top of it is a giant frontal cortex. The frontal cortex has 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 to but to get things done, our advantage and the thing that blossomed our foreheads forward was logic and reason, the executive and the CEO. So I believe that limbic system, those emotional systems are dampened during the day for productivity, a 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 you're waking life can't. So if you have emotions, thoughts, and experiences from a hyper emotional, hyper liberate 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's 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. The end of life dreams serve a

different fundunction. I think they bring a solace And there's evidence coming out now that even when our heart is stopped, the last thing a brain does is haves 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 in those thoughts and it 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? And if it's useful to you, great, If the process helps you remember those more, great, But if you just have that five to ten minutes during your morning where you just remember that you were not resting the night before, 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.

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.

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. Systemic resilience is is what you bring to the fight, and processive resilience 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 not one side. That's that's rule speaking emotionally. Right on the other side, when you sit here and you say that's brain surgeon is 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, a PhD in neuroscience or 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. I 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 r A d o xicl canisis.

It's called I 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 and act and behavior the care act out their dreams and later on their Parkinson's develops and their brains with her. The strangest thing is when the parkinson 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.

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 app and if you can do it in a way that doesn't disrupt your sleep later on in the day, I think that's another you know, in the world of hacks, I think that's the hack that we've all got built in.

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 work space, allowing yourself not to be tasked on and drift inwards in your thoughts. Whether you actually fall technically sleep or not, to me, that's been advantageous.

completely transformed my way of thinking about dreams. Honestly through your book in this interview, I think I knew nothing about dreams before we met. I 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. Love to see you tag me and doctor roll in some of the experiments, some of the tests that you're carrying out in your own life. Thank 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.