#1 Neuroscientist: How to Unlock the Power of Your Mind Using The Science of Dreaming

Today’s episode will change how you think about your dreams and your entire life. Do you ever wake up from a dream and wonder: What did that mean? Or maybe you’ve had a nightmare and asked yourself: Why did I dream that? Could I stop it? Is my brain trying to tell me something? Maybe you keep having the same dream over and over again. Or maybe you’re the person who says, “I don’t dream.” According to today’s expert, you’re wrong. We all dream. And once you understand what your brain is doing while you’re dreaming, you’ll never think about sleep, your mind, or what’s possible in the same way again. Today, for the very first time on the show, Mel is diving deep into the science of dreaming, nightmares, what your dreams mean, what they’re trying to tell you, and more importantly, how to harness your dreams to unlock the full power of your mind. You’re meeting Dr. Rahul Jandial, MD, PhD - one of the most highly regarded, cited, and distinguished doctors in the world. He is a world-renowned pioneering neurosurgeon, cancer surgeon, and neuroscientist, who is here to teach you what your brain is doing when you dream. You’ll also learn how to tap into the power of your dreams to create deeper connections, solve problems, unlock more creativity, and better understand yourself. In this episode, Dr. Jandial will show you that dreaming is not random. It is not meaningless. And it is not something to ignore. In this episode, you’ll learn: - What your dreams are really trying to tell you - How to know which dreams are worth paying attention to - What recurring dreams and nightmares may reveal about your emotional life - Why nightmares can be an early warning sign that something deeper needs your attention - How dreams can help you solve problems, process stress, and unlock creativity - The simple way to train yourself to remember your dreams - How to use the first 10 minutes after waking up to access fresh ideas and insight - What lucid dreaming is and the exact steps to try it This conversation will change how you think about your life - both the one you’re living while you’re awake and the one you’re living while you’re dreaming. And once you hear it, you will never look at what’s possible the same way again. For more resources related to today’s episode, click here for the podcast episode page: https://www.melrobbins.com/episode/episode-409/ Follow The Mel Robbins Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themelrobbinspodcast I’m just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is NOT intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I’ll see you in the next episode. In this episode: 0:00 Introduction 6:40 Why You Forget Your Dreams After Waking Up 8:59 Why We Dream: The Science of Dreams 13:05 The 4 Stages of Sleep Explained 23:05 Can Dreams Reveal Health Problems? 29:32 Are Dreams Random or Is Your Brain Trying to Tell You Something? 33:07 The Most Common Dreams and What They Really Mean 41:26 What Recurring Nightmares May Be Telling You 44:47 How to Train Yourself to Remember Your Dreams 53:57 Lucid Dreaming: How to Control Your Dreams While Sleeping — Follow Mel: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melrobbins/ TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@melrobbins Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melrobbins LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melrobbins Website: http://melrobbins.com​ — Sign up for Mel’s newsletter: https://melrob.co/sign-up-newsletter A note from Mel to you, twice a week, sharing simple, practical ways to build the life you want. — Subscribe to Mel’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/melrobbins​?sub_confirmation=1 — Listen to The Mel Robbins Podcast 🎧 New episodes drop every Monday & Thursday! https://melrob.co/spotify https://melrob.co/applepodcasts https://melrob.co/amazonmusic — Looking for Mel’s books on Amazon? Find them here: The Let Them Theory: https://amzn.to/3IQ21Oe The Let Them Theory Audiobook: https://amzn.to/413SObp The High 5 Habit: https://amzn.to/3fMvfPQ The 5 Second Rule: https://amzn.to/4l54fah

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 0:09Mel Robbins?

  Do you ever wonder about your dreams? You know, you ask yourself, what does that dream mean? What does that nightmare mean? Could I control what I'm dreaming about? Are they random? Like, does this mean anything? Could I stop this nightmare if I don't like it? What's actually happening in my brain while I'm dreaming? Why do some people remember every single detail of their dreams? This is my husband. While some of us don't remember anything? And what if you keep having the same dream over and over and over again? As you can probably tell, I am so fascinated by this topic. And I'm thrilled that for the very first time, you and I are going to dive deep into the science of dreaming, nightmares, what your dreams mean, what they're trying to tell

• 0:53Mel Robbins?

  you, and more importantly, how to harness your dreams to unlock the full power of your mind and the potential of your life. I'm so excited for you to meet our expert today. He is one of the most highly regarded, cited, and distinguished doctors in the entire world. Dr. Rahul Jandial is a world-renowned cancer surgeon, neuroscientist, and pioneering neurosurgeon who is here to teach you and me about all of the fascinating things that your brain is doing when you're dreaming. Today, you're going to learn how to tap into the power of your dream state to create deeper connection, solve problems, unlock more creativity and clarity, and even create deeper meaning in your life. See, your dreams can help you solve problems.

• 1:38Mel Robbins?

  They can give you clues about your health and help you make predictions about your future. And if you're thinking, Mel, I don't dream, you're wrong. According to Dr. Jandial, we all dream. And what you're about to learn about the science of dreams will change how you think about your life, both the one you're living while you're awake and the one you're living while you're dreaming. And you will never look at what's possible the same way again.

• 2:20Mel Robbins?

  Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. I am so excited for our conversation today. I'm thrilled that you're here. It's such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. And if you're a new listener, I just want to take a moment and personally welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I'm so glad that you're here. I cannot wait for you to meet today's guest, the extraordinary Dr. Rahul John Dial. He's here to share the science of dreaming and how to unlock the full power of your mind. Dr. Rahul John Dial is a world-renowned cancer surgeon, neurosurgeon, and neuroscientist.

• 3:01Mel Robbins?

  He has won award after award after award and is one of the most cited and distinguished doctors and surgeons alive today. He is the medical director of Neurosurgical Oncology and Skull Day Surgery at City of Hope Medical Center in Los Angeles, which is one of the top cancer hospitals in the world, where Dr. John Dial operates on brain cancer and spinal tumors in adults and children with stage four cancer. He also directs his own research lab, the John Dial Laboratory, at the City of Hope Cancer Center, which focuses on developing cutting-edge neuroscience and cancer treatments. He also serves as a professor within the Division of Neurosurgery at City of Hope,

• 3:44Mel Robbins?

  where he teaches doctors from around the world the most innovative cancer surgery techniques and brain tumor research. He received his medical degree from the University of Southern California, his PhD in neuroscience from the University of California, San Diego, and completed a cancer surgery specialization at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the author of 10 bestselling books and over 100 academic articles on surgery, neuroscience, and cancer biology, including his most recent New York Times bestselling book, This Is Why You Dream. Dr. John Dial knows the brain inside and out, and one area of the brain that he is fascinated by is dreaming and the science of why you dream and what your dreams mean

• 4:28Mel Robbins?

  and how to use them to build deeper connections and more meaning in your life. Please help me welcome the remarkable Dr. Rahul John Dial to the Mel Robbins Podcast.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  I'm excited to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

• 4:41Mel Robbins?

  Oh, well, thank you for getting on a plane. Thank you for carving out the time. I have never talked about the topic of the science of dreams on this podcast. I have so many questions, and I cannot wait to dig in. And here's where I want to start. How could my life be different? Based on everything you're about to teach us that we need to know about dreaming, if we apply all this to our lives, what's going to change?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Well, when you have the insight that we spend a third of our lives dreaming, you'll be excited to learn that there are simple steps where you can influence your dreams, remember your dreams, and cultivate the direction of dreams to live a life that is not possible simply with the waking brain.

• 5:26Mel Robbins?

  Wait, a third of our life is spent dreaming?

• 5:29Speaker 01

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

• 5:40Mel Robbins?

  Wow.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  That sleep and dream phase of our day and of our whole lifespan is something that we should cherish, that we can access, that we can influence. And it's our own personal therapist, if you will, in some ways. So that's the biggest goal that I have for today. Dreaming is not an accidental byproduct. It's something essential for the human mind. It's your nightly reset.

• 6:04Mel Robbins?

  Okay, you've already delivered. Because I had never thought about the, I thought about the fact that you spend a third of your life sleeping, right? But I've always thought about it as a reset or rest. The idea that we could crack open a third of our lives and really understand what our brain is doing and what it's trying to tell us, that's pretty cool.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and it is rest, but it's not inactivity. Your brain is on fire when you sleep. Your body's resting. And I'll explain to you how we have those measurements. But when I saw that, when I was thinking about dreaming, and I thought about, wait a second, that's not a quiet time in our skulls. Every, we go to bed, we think, ah, the computer screen went down.

• 6:50Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Then we wake up, we hit the keyboard, and now we're awake. No, no, no, it's, it's engaged, blood is coursing, electricity is firing. So that means we got to figure out what's going on. It's got to be essential.

• 7:02Mel Robbins?

  I would love to hear you talk about how does Understanding what you're doing in a third of your life, your dream life, how does it help you take control of your awake life?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  When you realize your dreaming brain is working with your imagination, your life experiences, your memories, that any glimpse you have of that is a portal to your life. It's a portal to what you're living, but from a different perspective, from the dreaming brain perspective, which is much more imaginative, much more sexual, much more emotional. And that's digesting, processing and delivering the same readout on the experiences you had during the waking day, where your brain is a little bit different. And so you have two windows to your own experiences. And when you catch a little flair of a dream in the morning, not all dreams, but some dreams,

• 7:58Speaker 01

  I think they invite a process of reflection to where, hey, that's an interesting perspective on my life that a therapist can't have because it's in my head. So to me, it's sort of like the ultimate wellness hack. It's free and it's something that I think, as we have this conversation, there are ways, there are simple ways that have been done by Salvador Dali or other people for a long time, Aristotle, that we can introduce into our life when we fall asleep and when we wake up.

• 8:28Mel Robbins?

  How has leaning in to the third of your life, which is your dreaming life, changed your life?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  It's made me more creative. It's made me, I think, more emotionally balanced. It's given me little windows in which, when I wake up, I take a moment to pause. And those five, 10 minutes in the morning, if you stay in bed, if you don't grab the phone, that window is an interesting idea generator for me. I've done it for decades. Other people have written about it. Now we've got the measurement that shows when you're waking up and when you're falling asleep. Those 10 minutes, you have the electrical fingerprints of being awake and asleep. The guys who have done creative things in art often talk about this. So I'm trying to pull in what Dali was writing about and then, you know, what neuroscientists are studying in big cities.

• 9:20Mel Robbins?

  I cannot wait to dive into this. I can already tell that those first zero to 10 minutes of my day are going to be completely different after talking to you and learning from you. Now, one thing I just want to address upfront, because we asked our global audience about dreams and 26% said either, well, I don't dream, or I don't remember my dreams. And if you're somebody who doesn't remember your dreams, or doesn't think you dream, I'd love to have you speak directly to that person and tell them what is possible for them based on what you're about to teach us.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if you don't remember your dreams, this episode is especially for you. That's how I feel because the practical and simple answer is when the London Publishing House was working on this book, a lot of them came in when they were editing saying, I'm dreaming a lot more, or remembering my dreams a lot more. So, one, dreaming and remembering dreams can be cultivated. Two, you may not remember your dreams now, but you remember nightmares when you were a kid. And I can tell you after having taken care of 15,000 patients, that at the end of life, dreams will return for you. So, right now, you may not have dream recall, but it can be cultivated and it's there for

• 10:40Speaker 01

  you, it's just not the window in your life journey to where it's a prominent feature, but I think it can be.

• 10:46Mel Robbins?

  I was talking to a friend this weekend and she adamantly said, I don't dream. And I said, I don't think that's true. Is it true that people don't dream?

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Well, if you have people, so again, I'm going to try to explain the science.

• 10:58Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  People who remember their dreams and people who don't remember their dreams, if you put those electrical stickers and record the electricity, it's firing on both of them. So, that suggests that the dreaming process is happening, it's just a matter of recall. But that nightly dreaming process happens for all humans, all the time. It's so important, it makes us sleep, it makes us, it exposes us to threat, and then it safely, when our bodies are paralyzed, you know, we wild out, we do things we couldn't imagine, we do things we wouldn't dare.

• 11:34Mel Robbins?

  Like what?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, all the things, we fly, we fall, we run from monsters, we get into awkward social situations, like that's not stuff we would choose to do during the day, but it seems to Be liberated at night and so that might suggest a little bit about why we dream.

• 11:49Mel Robbins?

  What is your opinion on why we actually dream? Like, what do you think the purpose of it is?

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Neurons that you don't use will be, will wither. Because they're so metabolically demanding. I believe, and what some of the exotic scans are showing, is that emotion, creativity, sexuality, um, imagination, these regions that we don't fully use during the day, it's like high intensity training. They're, they're liberated, rehearsed, kept warm when we dream. So they're accessible for us during the day when we face our challenges. Because that's the, those are the parts of the brain that are ramping up. There's no on or off, they're ramping up. And during the day, they ramp down and the executive network of these regions and our,

• 12:38Speaker 01

  the CEO of our brain has to put it all together to get on the tube, to get on the subway, to get the kids to school. But at night, those neurons that we don't use during the day, those concepts we don't use during the day, if we don't rehearse them, we don't keep them activated in some way, warmed up, they may not be accessible for us later in our life as individuals or even as species.

• 13:01Mel Robbins?

  How, uh, do you know when a dream does mean something versus when your mind is just doing something?

• 13:10Speaker 01

  There are five sort of categories of dreams. There's the obvious dream. You have anxiety about giving a talk, you show up, you're naked at the dais or whatever. That's just your day, day anxiety rolling right into your, your dream anxiety. Then there are two types of what they call genre dreams. End of life.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  So you're at the, you're at the end of life and they tend to be of reconciliation, not of doom. And then pregnancy dreams were, in these surveys and questionnaires, pregnant women report certain patterns of dreams about names, about rolling over in bed and these sort of things. And then there's like dreams that are like, you know, just random thoughts. They're not gonna, they don't need to be deciphered or even reflected upon. Because they they're not attached to anything deeply emotional or deeply visual. Then the last one that I think is the dream to reflect upon.

• 14:12Mel Robbins?

  And what's that one?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  And that's the one that has a strong emotional imprint and a strong central image. And so if if you have the opportunity to wake up a little slower, or you've had a dream with a strong emotional imprint, try to hold on to what that emotion is. And if if it's got a strong visual image, that's the one that I think is the portal to how you're doing, how you're reflecting upon life, how you're processing things.

• 14:41Mel Robbins?

  Can you give me an example? Or a couple of examples of what that might look like?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  For example, there were reports of Vietnam veterans. When they're going through a divorce, they would have their war dreams returned. And so it's it's metaphorical. And they would be emotional and visual. I was in a difficult relationship and the interaction was always in this like like an elevator falling. It's like a normal conversation, but they're just and the emotion is just that the butterflies, you know, it seems like it's casual. And then as as that relationship improved, that there wasn't that that dropping that crashing elevator sort of feeling so. And whether that gave me an answer, I don't I don't think it was about getting an answer, it's about

• 15:30Speaker 01

  reflecting, looking backward and engaging the dream thoughts that you've had. That is a portal to your brain that only dreaming can provide because it's a lens that's emotional and visual and imaginative. So to me, it's an insight to myself, and then I have to try to put it together with what's happening in real life and what's happening in my dream life.

• 15:56Mel Robbins?

  What are the phases of sleep? That dreams happen and can you like teach us about that?

• 16:03Speaker 01

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

• 16:09Mel Robbins?

  So sleep entries and what, how long does that last?

• 16:11Speaker 01

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

• 16:19Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 16:19Speaker 01

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

• 16:25Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  These are, then it goes to N3. And the thought was that dreams only happen occasionally in these deeper sleep phases.

• 16:35Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And that most of the dreaming happens in REM sleep. And REM, rapid eye movement is when, when your eyes are wigging out behind your eyelids. It's not that the eyes are doing anything. It's just that when you're in that brain mode, that's what, how your eyes behave. And this, this was thought to be where you have the wildest dreams.

• 16:55Mel Robbins?

  In REM?

• 16:57Speaker 01

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

• 17:06Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  But that's not what we're seeing now. We're seeing that dreams, when you wake people up, can happen when you're falling asleep through the entire night and when you're waking up. So I think the big answer here is dreams can happen at any time when you're asleep, even during sleep entry and during sleep exit.

• 17:29Mel Robbins?

  I love the blocks and what I love about the blocks is that it, yes, shows us the different phases of sleeping, but it also kind of visually shows us that dreams are happening from the very beginning, all the way through.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  That is the current understanding and I believe it.

• 17:49Mel Robbins?

  It's super helpful to visualize it. Um, so.

• 17:55Mel Robbins?

  Will you describe for the person that's listening or watching, how do you study dreams? How do you know that people have this electrical activity and that these parts of the brains are awake and working in all the phases of sleep?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  A lot of ways.

• 18:13Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  So one, one way to study dreams is to wake people up. So in sleep labs, and some families have had their children participate over decades.

• 18:23Mel Robbins?

  No kidding?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you get, so you get these longitudinal studies where when they're kids, they are woken up. And then when they're teenagers, and then when they're adults. And so you can see how dreams happen throughout their life. That's one way. The other is they're at random times, while they're measuring electricity, also woken up, and they're asked to write down their dreams. And then now, more recently, people are falling asleep in these exotic scanners that are, there's no radiation, so they can participate, they can offer to be in there. And we're able to now measure sort of a heat map in the different brain regions, different continents, if you will, that are, that are not activated,

• 19:09Speaker 01

  but dampened or accentuated.

• 19:12Mel Robbins?

  Hmm.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  The, the brain never goes on or off. If it, if it goes off, it's a stroke, you have brain injury. So it's always a modulation by slightly more, slightly less. And so between the heat maps and the electrical currents and the decades of waking people up, plus the several hundred years of reports of people talking about dreams that's in the literature, all the way back to Aristotle talking about lucid dreaming. So I, I went about all of those things to put this together.

• 19:39Mel Robbins?

  What is the difference between the brain that you're using when you're awake and your brain when you're sleeping and dreaming?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so if you, if you took the brain and you flattened it and thought of the lobes as continents.

• 19:55Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Uh, when you're awake, the executive network, the CEO, think of it as one continent is making the whole globe work, sort of a hub and spoke model, all the flight paths, all the airports, that sort of thing. When you're dreaming, that executive network is slightly dampened and other continents are accentuated, a little warmer, a little bit more active. The things that are more active when you're dreaming on these heat maps, on these exotic scanners, are the imagination network and the limbic system. Imagination network is not, is a collection of structures that rise up when you're loosely connecting the dots, when you're not looking for the most obvious.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  It's called creative ideation. So creative ideation and more emotion and limbic structures, and this is well studied, that those are a little warmer. The heat map goes up when you're dreaming and sleep versus when you're awake. Now, that makes sense, right? Because we just talked about the electrical activity being the same. So if the CEO is dampened in dreaming, um, you know, then what else is lifted?

• 21:09Mel Robbins?

  Right, to make the electrical activity in your brain the same when you're awake versus dreaming. So it's the imagination network and the limbic system.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Which is the emotional structures of the brain, the deeper structures, hypothalamus, amygdala, all those things you hear about, working in concert, not one structure up, one structure down.

• 21:26Mel Robbins?

  I want to read to you from your bestselling book, This Is Why You Dream. And this is from the introduction. "Today, the word dream means many things: ambition, an ideal, a fantasy, and the vivid narratives generated during sleep. Neuroscience is showing that the boundaries between sleep and waking are not so clean after all. Dreams can help you solve a problem, learn a musical instrument, a language, or a dance move, practice a sport, give you clues about your health, and make predictions about the future. Dreams can be spiritually enriching. Forgotten dreams can still shape your mind and influence your day."

• 22:08Mel Robbins?

  You can learn to remember dreams, prime their content, and even control them during something called lucid dreaming. But most importantly, dreams can offer the greatest gift, that of self-knowledge. By interpreting your dreams, you can make sense of your experience and explore your emotional life in new and profound ways. Talk to me about the self-awareness. Like, why, why does it give you more self-awareness?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Well, as we discussed in the beginning, when I say self-awareness, I think it gives you a new lens on what's going on in your life. So, for example, a practical example, some people feel like they're living well, doing well, coping well, and then they have, they have nightmares pop up. And the nightmares are perplexing to them, but they're sort of the first warning signal, sort of a headache, if you will, that maybe they aren't doing well. And it's a reminder to reflect that are you sure that you're living your best life possible? So, in a wellness way, a flare of a nightmare can remind you that something is not going well with your mental health, beyond the link with suicide and other things.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  So that's a practical example where nightmare disorder in people who seem to have it all is a clue that things really aren't at peace inside them. So that's one practical example.

• 23:34Mel Robbins?

  And it happens before you're actually conscious of it. So this is like bubbling up from the subconscious.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  The awareness or the way that your dreaming brain has processed what is going on in your life. It gives you a little bit of an insight that with your executive network and your CEO getting everything done, that maybe you haven't taken the time to really unpack or look at. So that's one practical example, that nightmares in people that seem to be doing fine is a reminder that maybe you're not. And it could be sort of a vital sign, just like pain is or headaches are in people who seem to be doing well.

• 24:13Mel Robbins?

  How can dreams help you solve problems?

• 24:16Speaker 01

  So, these are surveys. We talk about measurements.

• 24:18Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  So now, there are a lot of people who participate, like, they have dart games. Athletes have, like, they play, you know, they play different sports and they rehearse in their lucid dreams, or they'll take naps and if they recall their dreams. So they have a whole series of people that are looking for performance that feel that if you not if you dream about throwing darts, but if you dream at all and recall those dreams, that that helps them with the performance. So there's a whole series of, these are surveys. Now, I can't prove that this actually happens. You have to take their word for it.

• 24:56Speaker 01

  But they, they will learn a sport or a language and try to dream, try to lucid dream, and there's some correlation that they are better at it. At a bigger level, when you dream about throwing a dart or running, the neurons for running are firing.

• 25:18Mel Robbins?

  Seriously?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's what generates the electricity, right? So if I'm running and there's a motor strip here and it's sending down currents to my legs, when you're dreaming about running or you're being chased, those same motor neural movement neurons are firing, letting us have that electrical, the brain EKG. It's just the signal's not getting past your spinal cord into your legs. And so, maybe that is true visualization and rehearsal. So that's the, that's the bigger concept that fascinates me. On the practical level, there's a lot of people doing surveys of and questionnaires of dreaming and skill acquisition.

• 25:55Mel Robbins?

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

• 26:04Speaker 01

  There is an example we'll get into. It's, it's a little bit nuanced and that has to do with when men in their 50s develop Parkinson's disease and the brain withers.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Ninety something percent, which in medical terms is almost a hundred, is fifteen years before their dreaming pattern changes.

• 26:25Mel Robbins?

  Really?

• 26:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so everybody can look this up. It's called REM behavior disorder. You can look it up on Scientific American. So in that one way, REM behavior disorder, when the brain withers, its earliest warning sign was a change in dreaming fifteen years prior, where they act out their dreams. So that's that's one example. The other is that when in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and when when the brain decays and that sort of thing, people's dreams change. They start to talk more about animals. And it's not their pets. It's beasts and things like that. These are reports. And that almost mirrors when you ask children when they're four, five, six, they'll mention animals,

• 27:09Speaker 01

  but it's not really Fido or their puppy or their. And so in some ways, it almost feels like the brain is developing. And at the end of life, when it decays, it returns to its sort of immature, I mean, biologically immature features. So the dreaming pattern changes as we get these neurodegenerative changes. That's number two. And then and then number three is that some of my patients,

• 27:35Speaker 01

  you know, they, you can't prove that it's maybe they're looking backwards, but they say if they have breast, I take care of breast cancer patients when the cancer spreads to the brain. They mentioned that I've had a dream about my body. I had a dream about my breast. I had a dream about something physically wrong with me. And I don't see too many having that dream and coming in and getting checked out. Right, it's not forward. But when they come in and part of their journeys of having, how did you get diagnosed? How did it happen for you? You know, that in their story, they will, they're called warning dreams. They will mention, you know, what's interesting is that I had this feeling in the past. I had this dream in the past.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  So I can't prove that the dream could have given them an early window and early detection. So those warning dreams, that's those are the three way, three buckets, I would say, is to think about dreams and health.

• 28:32Mel Robbins?

  Wow. Dr. John Deale, how can dreams help you process trauma? Or traumatic experiences.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  An idea is that a dream is your nocturnal therapist. It uh, it helps you digest difficult things. But we have nightmares, we have PTSD and flashbacks. So, I mean, I just wanna say is, I'm not saying no. I would just say let your dreaming brain have as wide of a range of

• 28:57Speaker 01

  thoughts and experiences as we would our waking brain. There's no perfect thought, there's no healthy thought or bad thought. I mean, there, you know, we have a lot of things going on when we're awake. We have a lot of things going on when we're dreaming. So when you wake people up in the fifth, sixth, seventh hour, they tend to have a little bit more positive emotional skewing and regulation. So is that what dreams are doing? Maybe. At the same time, dreams with flashbacks and PTSD can keep your trauma alive. So if, there's no simple answer for that.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  And PTSD can bring back nightmares. And then it's just as fascinating. And part, one of the treatments of nightmares is to re-script the story with a journal before you go to bed. Think about how powerful that is. The power of suggestion is so powerful. This is, I'm a nurse, I mean, I use knives and drills and chisels. I'm a physical, practical person. That the power of suggestion, the greatest example is that a nightmare, nightmare disorder, the, the treatment, if people can look it up, imagery rehearsal therapy, IRT.

• 30:05Mel Robbins?

  What does that mean?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  It means before you go to bed, you write a happier, a better, a more kind ending to the nightmare that's torturing you. The recurrent nightmare that's torturing you is to journal the night before. And then in your nightmares, uh, the ending tends of not being so macabre and dangerous and difficult.

• 30:25Mel Robbins?

  Why do you think that it works?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Our greatest evolutionary adaptation is that we're storytellers. The tuft of neurons that are the newest, not the reptilian brain behind our throat or the limbic structures, the emotional brain, which are essential. You can't have thought without emotion. But the, I think the newest part of our brain is this area that if we injure it in surgery, not an oops moment, but like the risk of the, the surgery built in or a tumor's there or an injury's there.

• 30:50Mel Robbins?

  Yep.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  People have a hard time creating a, a narrative about their life. And they have a hard time finding meaning because they can't sort of frame it the right way. So I think imagery rehearsal therapy works on nightmares because when people are going through a difficult time, they have to really tell themselves a different story about their own life. That's my opinion. And I think there's some pieces that are suggestive of that.

• 31:17Mel Robbins?

  Dr. John Deere, I have so many more questions, but I have to hit the pause button so we can give our amazing sponsors a chance to share a few words. And I want to give you a chance to share this episode with all of your friends and family because we all dream and we wonder about our dreams and how cool that we can tap into our dream life to make our awake life even better. And don't go anywhere. There is so much more we're going to dig into. When we return a little later in the show, Dr. John Deere is going to walk you through the four steps that you can take to learn how to lucid dream, which is going to be super cool. Stay with me. We'll be right back.

• 32:08Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today you and I are learning about the science of dreaming and how to unlock the power of your mind with the extraordinary Dr. John Deere. So Dr. John Deere, let's just jump right back in. I'd love to have you talk about the piece that dreams are random or not. So are your dreams random or are they on purpose?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  The dreams are not completely random because you can go to the bathroom and wake up and you can slip back in your dream. You can have recurrent nightmares. You can electrically stimulate the surface of the brain and have an old nightmare pop up in the operating room. But but more just just like when I was talking to my sons, I was like, almost everybody had nightmares a couple of thousand years ago. Almost everybody had erotic dreams a couple of thousand years ago. About two thirds of people are falling or flying. About one third have teeth falling out. Not right now, but before TVs, before the horse and buggy, like before fire, our ancestors.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  So there's a similar pattern of dreaming that's built in despite how much our world has changed. That's the simplest way for me to say that that design is built in. Um, and so dreams are happening to us, but we're also feeding the content of the dreams. That's not unlike our waking brain. We're navigating life. We're outward and we're, we have our imagination and we have what's happening outside of us. When you fall asleep, it's the memories you've stored and the imagination you have, plus some ancestral patterns of dreaming that we're inheriting, much like you could inherit mental health issues where somebody's better at math.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  We're inheriting, because there's no other way that surveys from Europe would still be, they're still talking about falling and dreaming about two thirds of the people, like hundreds of years ago, as we are now with electric cars. There are some rules and boundaries to dream, no matter dreams, no matter how wild it feels for us individually.

• 34:20Mel Robbins?

  Dr. John D. What are the rules and boundaries?

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Well, the one that I can tell you for sure is we rarely do math. Like if you go back four, five, six.

• 34:30Mel Robbins?

  Wait, do math?

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Math, like math. Now, somebody's going to write in and I, I'm not saying a hundred percent, but calculation is not really done. So all the scientists that had creative ideas are visual, like the snake eating its tail or the chemistry chart. So now just stay with me. This is very important. calculation and math is very rare in dreams. And the, the, the part of the brain that is dampened when we dream, the executive network is the exact area that's done for raw processing power and calculation. And that was the thing that made me go, even if that's the only thing I can say, that neuroscience can explain why we, why most people, not everybody.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Why, why in the dream reports math is very, very, very rarely is very rarely done. And that fits the heat map where the executive network, it's a specific area called the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex. But more importantly, if you have a nail gun injury in that area, people struggle with math and that, that gets cooler in sleeping and dreaming. And that fits why very few people over thousands and thousands of dream reports uh, don't really talk about math. So even if it's that one example, it's the beginning of connecting science and dreaming and leaving people more, more interested in it, not less.

• 35:51Mel Robbins?

  Well, it makes a lot of sense because you gave us a fairly simple framework that I can certainly grasp. I'm sure as you're listening, you can grasp that there's a difference between the waking brain where the executive network is really firing more versus the imagination network and the limbic system, which overrides creativity, your sexual life, emotions. And you've already taught us that you're just as active in your brain when you're awake as when you're asleep and dreaming. Yeah. And I'm sure it makes perfect sense to you that,

• 36:31Mel Robbins?

  wow, well, first of all, I didn't realize that my brain was as active when I'm sleeping as it is when I'm awake. To really understand that your mind is not randomly grabbing things. It's sorting through experiences that are sexual, emotional, creative. And that one detail about math and it not being reported in most people's dreams through the history of studying this. Really, like if you're paying attention proves that the, the executive functioning of your brain is like, okay, we're a little dialed down right now. What are the most common dreams that people have?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Everybody's had a nightmare. It's a universal dream. That's so why do we all, it's a universal dream since recorded history. You have consistently falling and flying being in dream reports. Sixty, fifty, seventy, two thirds of people say, yeah, I've had dreams about falling. Yeah, I've had dreams about flying. People who have never fallen.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  And people, and before we had airplanes. Why, why is somebody 300 years ago dreaming about flying?

• 37:43Mel Robbins?

  I don't know, why?

• 37:44Speaker 01

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

• 38:19Mel Robbins?

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

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Um, there's only been one paper, like there you scour PubMed, you know? And there's only been one paper trying to figure out what that means. Historically, that could be a good omen or bad omen.

• 38:39Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  The, the study from Israel just suggested that, um, that it's linked to teeth grinding. It's completely boring analysis of it. You know, but that's, that's what's out there. And I, I, so some of these things I have to say, I don't know. And I'm not sure anybody can know. So I just want to be forthright about, I don't know why people have, you know? There's no way to know. And the people who've looked at it, it correlates a little bit more with teeth grinders.

• 39:08Mel Robbins?

  Interesting. Why do you think people dream about their teeth falling out?

• 39:12Speaker 01

  I, I don't know. What's more interesting to me is that why were people dreaming about that? You know, a few, like 100, 200 years ago and still now? Bad dental hygiene, good dental hygiene, consistent pattern of, of, of, of, of dream reports.

• 39:27Mel Robbins?

  Huh. And what does dreaming about being chased or falling mean?

• 39:33Speaker 01

  So there are some theories, some ideas around this that maybe being chased and falling was sort of a threat rehearsal. So somebody a while back said, if we're good at running from a woolly mammoth or. You know, in our dreams, or if we're, we realize falling is a scary thing, maybe we're less likely to approach the edge of the cliff. I like the ideas. There's no way to necessarily prove that. But also, again, before flight, we, people, our ancestors with torches, likely were dreaming of falling and being chased. Because soon as you start getting documented dream reports, it's a consistent feature of the last 500,000 years.

• 40:15Mel Robbins?

  And what about?

• 40:17Speaker 01

  500 comma thousand, not 500,000.

• 40:19Mel Robbins?

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

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a, this is an interesting one. I think it goes back to processing trauma. My, my dad passed away seven years ago. And then recently I had one of my adult sons do well with a goal he had. And without getting into the too many specifics. I mean, that's his life story and, and journey. But I had this, you know, I had this sort of like, my pops comes back during times of like momentous occasions, maybe where he should have been there in the beginning. When, uh, cause it was a, it was an unexpected passing. And so in the beginning, you know, the dreams were filled with a pit in my stomach. And so I, I think grieving is a bigger theme of loss. Uh, the power of attachment, the pain of losing that attachment.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  I think there, I, I think, uh, when loved ones return in our dreams, there's probably a pattern that mirrors how you're coping in real life.

• 41:18Mel Robbins?

  Well, that makes sense to me because if you're the kind of person that also is like, I'm not going to allow myself to feel this. I gotta get through the day and I'm not going there. I'm not going there. And that's the executive awake brain.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  The CEO.

• 41:32Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Has to keep things under wraps.

• 41:33Mel Robbins?

  Things going, so I'm not going to break down right now. But when.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  The dreaming brain.

• 41:37Mel Robbins?

  You've got your dreaming brain and the imagination network comes online.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  The emotional structure.

• 41:42Mel Robbins?

  And the emotional structure. It makes sense to me.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:46Mel Robbins?

  That your brain is working out all the stuff that maybe the awake brain has been suppressing all day.

• 41:51Speaker 01

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

• 42:36Mel Robbins?

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

• 42:43Speaker 01

  I am the repellent boss.

• 42:46Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, oh my god.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  I know, I know. So some quick things about erotic dreams.

• 42:53Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Universal, if you change it from sex to erotic, the, the surveys show it's like 90 plus.

• 43:00Mel Robbins?

  Wait, meaning people are more likely to report an erotic dream than a sex dream?

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:05Mel Robbins?

  Well, it sounds sexier to say erotic.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, erotica. Across cultures. And then there's a high rate of infidelity. 80% in these surveys show that we're all, we're all kind of cheaters in our erotic dreams. And then they tend to arrive. This is the fascinating part, you know, when you, when you have those families that had their children longitudinal studies and talk about their dream reports all the way through, they tend to arrive even before, you know, puberty and before people have had the sexual act, erotic dreams will arrive.

• 43:41Mel Robbins?

  You know, cheating is common in erotic dreams. What does that mean for somebody who's in a happy relationship?

• 43:47Speaker 01

  I think it means nothing. You know, I've been asked that question quite a bit, but I mean, if the simplest, I mean, the way I think about it is. If you're actually thinking about cheating and wanting to cheat and you're cheating in your erotic dreams, that means, you know, it's just a direct link between your daily desires and your and your dream desires. If you're in a bad relationship and you're cheating in your dreams, that that that one might be something to unpack. But if you're in a healthy relationship, infidelity is just a part of the design.

• 44:20Mel Robbins?

  Of dreaming.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, at least from the reports.

• 44:23Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  That's what's that's what's that's what's happening. I don't think it means anything at all.

• 44:28Mel Robbins?

  Do reoccurring dreams hold more significance?

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Not sure, but they speak to dreams having their own memory system of sorts. That that dreams are not random if you can have it again. Now, recurring dreams tend to be nightmares.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  And that's different than flashbacks and PTSD.

• 44:46Mel Robbins?

  Now, how do you define a nightmare?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Oh, a good one. So nightmare is not a bad dream. By definition, the globally, it's terrifying. It's gonna gotta wake you up. It's gotta snap you out of it. So when people talk about dream recall, nightmares have 100% dream recall.

• 45:04Mel Robbins?

  I you mentioned earlier that nightmares begin in children around age five. What else can you tell us about nightmares? Like, why do we have them?

• 45:16Speaker 01

  I think we have to look at nightmares in two ways. The night pediatric nightmares, nightmares in children are universal. They don't lead to nightmare disorder and they are they arrive around four, five, six, no matter how gentle the childhood. That's a that's a cognitive maturation that's built in. But they don't really get nightmare disorders. They don't wake up the next day and say, oh, I can't cope with what happened like last night because of my nightmares. In adults, it's very different. The occasional nightmare insignificant. But the return of nightmares or the what we call progressive, new onset and progressive.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Out of the blue and worse every few weeks. That's linked to suicide, depression, all those things. But also, it's linked to people who later on develop mental health issues. And so, again, the return of nightmares, when you feel like you're coping well, it may be your signal, your warning signal. Take a deeper look or a different look. It's not that you're not trying hard to get it right during the day. Take a different look at what's going on in your life. If you have, that aren't precipitated by trauma, nightmares return as a feature in your adult life.

• 46:36Mel Robbins?

  Thank you for sharing that. And I want to thank you for spending time listening or watching this right now, because I know that everything that Dr. John Deall is sharing with you and me has the ability to change your life. So, thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing this with the people in your mind that keep popping up. And don't go anywhere. We have so much more to dig into after this short break, so stay with me.

• 47:13Mel Robbins?

  Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today, you and I have the honor of getting to spend time learning from and being inspired by the extraordinary work of Dr. John Deall. And we're learning all about the science of dreaming and how to unlock the power of your mind. I love this so much. I've already thought of 10 people I cannot wait to share this with. But Dr. John Deall, I really want to talk about this term that you have been using called dream recall. And being able to remember your dreams. Because if we can remember them, then it seems like that's the portal, if you will, to deeper self-awareness, to really understanding more from your dream life

• 47:57Mel Robbins?

  that informs your awake life. Can you train yourself to remember your dreams?

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Dream recall can be improved by some basic steps. One is slowing.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  Down the sudden waking up.

• 48:14Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  So that takes a lot of luxury. It takes a bed. It takes not setting alarm. Takes not having your, your, your, your dog or your kids jump on your bed. But what you're trying to do is not abruptly have the executive network come back online.

• 48:28Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Because it will. It'll fire up adrenaline. It'll pop up. Much like an alarm or if there's a fire, you, you will pop out of your sleep and dreams for an alarm and the smell of smoke. So if you have a slower five to 10 minute arousal, if you try to lay flat and, and think as you're waking up rather than physically move, some yoga techniques have been talking about that for centuries. So you want to, you want to cultivate your habits and techniques and rituals around sleep entry and sleep exit.

• 49:00Mel Robbins?

  So let's talk about sleep entry. What are the specific habits that you recommend? We do for sleep entry to help build the skill of dream recall.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Okay. Uh, one is the power of suggestion.

• 49:19Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Where you say to yourself, I will remember, I will, I will dream and I will remember my dreams. It's almost like a mantra.

• 49:27Mel Robbins?

  Okay. I will dream and I will remember my dreams.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Number two is to sort of influence the content of your dream by what you're looking at the last five, 10 minutes. Don't get me wrong. I fall asleep with my laptop on with Netflix. I mean.

• 49:39Mel Robbins?

  Wait, don't be saying that right now. We don't want to hear that. We want, we want to hear that you have the best possible. Well, it's true. I've, I've watched terror, like a scary movie and then I have a nightmare.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:50Mel Robbins?

  Wonder why? Now I know.

• 49:52Speaker 01

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

• 50:01Mel Robbins?

  So that five to 10 minutes before you fall asleep, you can influence what you're about to dream about?

• 50:06Speaker 01

  You can influence what you're about to dream about.

• 50:10Mel Robbins?

  No way.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  So Salvador Dali.

• 50:12Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Wrote a book on magical craftsmanship and he used those 15, 10, 15 minutes. Uh, it was later used in inception, right? The, when they fall backwards in the chair. All those concepts come from this sleep entry window.

• 50:24Mel Robbins?

  Well, that's a really interesting thing to stop and think about, like, cause you're right. All day long, when you're using your awake brain and the executive network is the one that is predominantly active, you're attacking your life, your relationships.

• 50:39Mel Robbins?

  Anything you're trying to create, whether it's songwriting, or a book you're working on, or a presentation at work, or your resume, or the hell am I gonna do with my life?

• 50:47Speaker 01

  White knuckling a little bit.

• 50:48Mel Robbins?

  Yeah, white knuckling it. It's a very compelling invitation to take five minutes every night while you're sitting in bed and say, "I wanna dream about this relationship. I wanna dream about my next chapter."

• 51:05Speaker 01

  I want my dreaming brain to weigh in on these things that I've been tackling during the day, and maybe if there's a flare and I can remember it, it'll give me an insight to the problem. So it's that leveling up that's free and available to all of us. That's why I think it's beautiful.

• 51:23Mel Robbins?

  I've never thought about it that way.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's your world, it's your memory, it's your imagination, and you're just giving a different look at it. It's like, it's a different lens, it's black and white and colored at the same problem.

• 51:35Mel Robbins?

  But I just, you know, really wanna stay here for a second because I'm having a big insight that I always thought about trying to remember my dreams after they happen as a way to, I don't know, like, kinda understand what's happening, versus starting with the entry point of sleep and using a third of your life, your dreaming brain, to help you think through things, to help you look at things differently, to use it proactively

• 52:16Mel Robbins?

  as you enter sleep versus trying to excavate and find something at the end of sleep. I mean, both are probably very interesting, but it never occurred to me that we could give it an assignment. I can't wait to try this. I'm really excited to try this.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  And I would say be patient with it. And then on the other end, on sleep exit... All my notes, you know, like on my phone, I have like, I got a lot, I got, I got a lot. I'm the king of bad ideas and I have a few good ones, but they're all when I wake up.

• 52:44Mel Robbins?

  So let's talk about sleep exit because we've talked about how to set yourself up for the sleep entry and to take advantage of that state. And sleep exit, you said ideally is the, you know, five to 10 to 15 minutes where you're in between awake and asleep and you're transitioning and exiting the imagination network and the executive network's about to come back on.

• 53:13Mel Robbins?

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

• 53:29Speaker 01

  So the way you're trying to turn the dial from dreaming to awake rather than be startled. So when you, you don't, you enter sleep, but for safety reasons, we can, we can't snap out of sleep because, you know, there's a fire or there's an earthquake. You'll wake up. It's, it's obviously protective and you want, you want to make that. You enter sleep and you try to, you try to exit sleep similarly. You try to unwind, you're starting to come up, you're starting to wake up, but you don't reach for anything. You physically don't move. You try to hold on to your thoughts. You try to think about the emotions and the images.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  And then after having a few minutes, five, seven minutes of that, then you reach over. This is my ritual. Then I reach over and I grab for the phone and then I, I just jot down some, some thoughts. They might be about a relationship. They might be about surgery. They might be about a creative idea. And then you get up and that's, those are the two habits or rituals.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  That I do daily, whenever I, whenever I did it this morning when I flew up here.

• 54:40Mel Robbins?

  Now, did you remember what you dreamt about, or you were just?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:44Mel Robbins?

  You were just, because I can imagine a very kind of linear, just black, just tell me what to do. I'm not remembering my dreams. So if I don't like, remember that I was riding an elephant, or my dead mother-in-law was there, like, am I failing at this? Like, or you, what are you doing if you don't have any visual recall?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Excellent point. I'm, I'm just writing down my thoughts and emotions in that window. It's not, I put in a problem and I'm waiting for the output. It's, it's that my thinking is different in that hybrid state in the morning. And I, that, that time when I'm both partially asleep and dreaming and partially awake, I'm using that window and to think differently about everything, about anything. Old problems, new problems, new ideas. So that, it's a window of creative ideation, both when you sleep entry and sleep exit. Sometimes for, directly for a problem, other times just for thinking through everything.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  And that's, those are the times that I tend to have my freshest ideas.

• 55:52Mel Robbins?

  I need to have a notepad by my bed, because the one, the one thing that I am gonna disagree with Dr. John DeLan is

• 55:59Speaker 01

  The phone.

• 56:00Mel Robbins?

  Putting in the phone, only because I do not have the discipline to not then get lost in it. But I have had the experience, and as you're listening or watching, I bet you have had a similar experience. Where either on the sleep entry, or on a sleep exit, you have a thought about something. And you say to yourself, I need to remember that.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. Before the sand slips away between your fingertips, right?

• 56:26Mel Robbins?

  Yes, and it's usually like an amazing idea, or, or something that I wanted to remember to say in an interview tomorrow, or that I needed to, to, and it always seems so important. And to your point,

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 56:40Mel Robbins?

  It's like sand slipping through your fingers, because I'm lucid enough to know. I just had a thought, but it's slipping away and I'm lucid enough to say to myself, I better write that down, but then I'm like, and I don't write it down and I typically don't remember it.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  And on the other end, you're, what was that, that was that up?

• 56:59Mel Robbins?

  Now I'm up, yes. And so I-

• 57:02Speaker 01

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

• 57:16Mel Robbins?

  And what I love about how you've unpacked this is before this conversation, I would have thought about remembering dreams or dream recall as being able to replay almost like a trailer in your mind about what happened. Cause you know, when you have a crazy dream or a nightmare that you wake up from, you're so startled by it that you're like, oh my God, I had this dream last night. And you give the play by play of some of the details. What you're actually are talking about is more subtle. Like let's lower the bar when we first start doing this, because dream recall is really more staying in that state as you're exiting sleep and the imagination network is going a little down

• 57:59Mel Robbins?

  and the executive function is, and just see what emotions or even words might-

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 58:05Mel Robbins?

  -flow into the current.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  Ideas. Exactly right.

• 58:08Mel Robbins?

  Okay, got it. I wouldn't have done this, right, if I didn't ask this?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an important clarification. It's not like, it's not like a nightmare where you're having, you want a crisp replay of a recent dream.

• 58:18Mel Robbins?

  Yes, that's what I would have been looking for.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's more of a dream state that lingers. And the recall is an emotion that you might have felt falling elevator. An image and certain thinking around that. And as you, as you wake up, allow what you're gonna work on during the day to enter and you might have a new insight into what you need to do at work or a problem you're tackling during the day.

• 58:43Mel Robbins?

  What exactly is lucid dreaming, Dr. John Dion?

• 58:47Speaker 01

  When I was building this book, I was like, no, this, this is, what is this? You know, this, there's gonna be no science. It ended up being the most rigorously understood, uh, dream type is lucid dreaming. I gave it two chapters in the book out of nine. Lucid, simply stated, lucid dreaming is, um-

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Waking up while inside a dream. Now, that sounds, just stay with me for a second.

• 59:14Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Dreams are usually in the rear view. You wake up slowly or fast, you go, oh, that was only a dream.

• 59:21Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 59:22Speaker 01

  Lucid dreaming, a third of people report it, is you're dreaming and then you wake up and you have a bit of awareness that, hey, I'm actually still dreaming. Flying, falling. Usually the memory is, oh, I had a dream about falling. Lucid dreaming is coming to within a dream state. And I know this sounds-

• 59:46Mel Robbins?

  Are you continuing to dream?

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Yes. And you're continuing to be asleep, proven sleep, not just pretend sleep. You are asleep based on electrical measurements. That brain EKG, there's a signal we can prove you're asleep and not faking it. So you're continuing to dream and sleep, but you're coming to within that state. And they proved it by, 30 years ago, by communicating. The brain EKG says, you're asleep. And your eyes have, you can still control your eyes. The rapid eye movement comes back into your control. And they've developed a Morse code where they communicate with eye movements to sleep researchers.

• 1:00:30Mel Robbins?

  You write about this on page 128 in This Is Why You Dream. "To lucid dream is to enter a paradox, it seems, more mystical than real. A dual consciousness that straddles the vivid ideological dreamscape and the insight that you, the dreamer, are both the creator and an actor inside this imagined dream world. In some cases, lucid dreamers are able to take lucid dreaming a step further and control the action within the dream, a type of real dream navigation." Dr. John Dale, let's discuss the exact steps for how you can lucid dream.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Okay, there are a lot of techniques that are reported out there. I like this one because it was verified with the brain electricity. People use this technique- Then they went and proved that they got better at lucid dreaming. So the first step is to set an alarm. So this is different than sleep exit. To set an alarm um at about five or six hours. And that goes back to a light touch on the phases of sleep. That's when you're sort of in your last REM phase. When you have the best recall, when you have the most, most likely to have vivid dreams.

• 1:01:49Mel Robbins?

  Okay, just so I'm tracking. You're saying you set an alarm for five to six hours after you fall asleep. So if you've gone to bed at 10, we're setting the alarm for three or four AM?

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, just add plus five, five and a half.

• 1:02:01Mel Robbins?

  Okay, great, got it.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Now, when the

• 1:02:03Mel Robbins?

  So you're intentionally waking yourself up?

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  A touch earlier than you want to.

• 1:02:07Mel Robbins?

  Yes.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  You're still a little groggy.

• 1:02:08Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 1:02:08Speaker 01

  You're still a little sleepy.

• 1:02:10Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  You have the luxury of being alone and privacy. Again, a weekend or something where it's intentional that you're trying to do this. And then you, and then you wake up.

• 1:02:18Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

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

• 1:02:46Mel Robbins?

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

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  That when you wake, when you're lucid dreaming, clocks and hands tend not to be precise. They tend not to be accurate. An extra finger, the numbers are off. And this is consistently, these are questionnaires and surveys that people say this across cultures and across uh and across decades.

• 1:03:09Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  So if you don't see the dream sign, that's fine. You say to yourself, I will fall back asleep and I will wake up while I'm dreaming. And again, the power of suggestion is used at that time. And then what you're trying to do is that's the report part. You report what you've written down potentially in your mind. You can open up a journal and write a little bit about dreaming. But again, you are trying to Not wake up completely. You wake up a little earlier than you want to. You don't wake up completely. Now you introduce the power of suggestion where I want to fall asleep and I want to wake up while I'm sleeping. And that's the, that's the process that you do over and over again.

• 1:03:50Mel Robbins?

  Okay.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

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

• 1:04:10Mel Robbins?

  Huh.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

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

• 1:04:28Mel Robbins?

  So let me just repeat this back. So if you wanna try to train yourself to lucid dream, you are going to set the alarm for five, five and a half hours after you fall asleep. So if you're going to bed at nine o'clock, you're setting it for like two and two o'clock in the morning, 10 o'clock. You're setting it for three o'clock in the morning. That is going to interrupt your sleep when the alarm goes off, where you will be in kind of the later stages of REM sleep.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  You're groggy.

• 1:04:59Mel Robbins?

  You're groggy. You're awake once the alarm goes off and Dr. John Dial wants you to just kind of stay in that groggy state. Notice what you notice, but then we're going to use the power of suggestion to say, I'm going to fall back asleep, but I'm going to be awake in my dream.

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  I'm going to be awake in my dream.

• 1:05:17Mel Robbins?

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

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  That's a good question, you know? So, athletes will rehearse their visual spatial to begin with. They have higher percentage of lucid dreaming already. And then they use this for rehearsal. Those, those surveys are coming out.

• 1:06:01Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  I won't call them studies, but those surveys are coming out. People report, you know, a feeling of well-being, that it's a positive experience for them. And that having some control of their life in that dream state has a general improvement in their well-being. Those are the reports that are out there.

• 1:06:17Mel Robbins?

  I love it. And it's free.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's important to me.

• 1:06:22Mel Robbins?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

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

• 1:06:29Mel Robbins?

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

• 1:06:54Speaker 01

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

• 1:07:13Mel Robbins?

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

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

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

• 1:07:51Mel Robbins?

  Well, Dr. John Dehal, you said that dreams are the ultimate gift, but I personally think this has been an enormous gift because it allows us to access all of this incredible research. And I'm so excited about the fact that this is free, private, personal, and universal. And so, thank you, thank you, thank you for taking the time to be here and to teach us how to open the door to this whole other aspect of our life. It's incredible. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you. Thank you for taking the time to listen and to learn about something that could 1,000% make your life better. I mean, you now have an opportunity

• 1:08:35Mel Robbins?

  to use a third of your life to tap into your dreaming brain, to use the tools that Dr. John Dehal shared with you today to understand yourself better, to be more creative, to connect with people more deeply. I just absolutely love this. Thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing this with people in your life. And in case no one else tells you today, I wanted to be sure to tell you, as your friend, that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. The fact that you spend time investing in yourself with world-renowned experts like Dr. John Dehal, who is here with us today, that in my mind is proof that you in fact will make your life better. Alrighty,

• 1:09:19Mel Robbins?

  I'll see you in the next episode. I'll welcome you in the moment you hit play.

• 1:09:26Mel Robbins?

  I am so excited that you're here. We've never done a show on this. Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited. Yeah. She did my makeup for the Golden Globes and I'd never looked better.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:36Mel Robbins?

  Do you think you could come to Boston and teach us how to do this? I'll chew it right off in about five seconds. This one actually will hopefully last you a little bit. Okay.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Now, we are truly LA right here now, Mel.

• 1:09:49Mel Robbins?

  She's chewing it off. Wow. Yeah, right? Okay. Jesus, this never happens. This is amazing. New era, new dawn. Okay. So good. All right, ready? Okay. Okay, good. All right, excellent. All right, let's take a quick break. Yeah, 10 minutes. I just need to eat something really quick.

• 1:10:08Mel Robbins?

  Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  Sirius XM Podcasts.