Not too sure about going to bed early. I think it depends from person to person and their circadian rhythm.

I work best when the entire world is sleeping.

(I’ve tried multiple times to change my sleeping cycle – especially after reading Ben Franklin’s quote: “Early to bed and early to rise makes you health wealthy and wise.” But I’ve always found it very hard to do my best work whenever I get up very early.)

I actually have this theory… people who were born during day time – work best during day time. And people who were born during night time – work best as night owls. (I’ve actually taken a poll with 12-13 friends and the theory has been held true by their answers. But a dozen people is nowhere near statistical significance…)

—

On further thought – I agree with you – that repressing dreams is a bad idea. After all, scientist Keule had a breakthrough and came up with the structure of benzene in his dreams. (And legend also has it that Lincoln dreamt of being assassinated 10 days before his actual assassination.)

But I still think that bad dreams are essential too. They play a role in sharpening your instincts.

What you say about your teacher’s abilities to control his dreams is very cool though. That may indeed be the ideal situation.

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No, wait, that never happened. But it could have. Good thing we have no idea where you live. We actually haven’t freaked out once yet, and now I know we can thank your well-wishing for that.

@Ankesh – Agreed 100% on not using alarm clocks and also on using dreams as a practice state. Best way to wake up without the alarm is to go to bed early! I never use alarms. I mean, just the name is enough to give someone a heart attack, tfu tfu tfu.

Not so much in agreement about asking not to remember. Dreams have a ton of useful information and repressing it can just exacerbate the thing that’s trying to get cleared.

One thing that helps is to ask yourself before bed to help you feel safe and supported while working through your stuff. And of course to do relaxation exercises beforehand and stuff like that.

@Pam – love love love the Martha Beck technique. Thanks for adding that!

@Rudy, Carole, and non-dancing-geek James – Awesome. So glad you were here to join in my weekly ritual. Sonia is so cool. Pam is so cool Naomi is so cool. And always the people who pop by from their blogs are just full of coolness too.

@Everyone – While we’re on the topic of dreams (Ankesh, you will love this), my teacher (Ukrainian yoga master) says it’s possible to get to a point where you can exert complete control over your dream state.

In fact, he went through about a ten year period where he returned each night to the exact same dream state, where he would pick up in his dream where he’d left off the night before — and in fact was leading two parallel lives, one by day and one by night. How cool/crazy is that?!

LOL,

Like Reality? I hope that by that you don’t mean that Naomi and Havi were really running around my neighborhood freaking out Tuesday night and I missed it. DARN! LOL!

I know that I had anxiety because I REALLY wanted to be taking that class. And had I known about it two weeks earlier I would have made different choices. But…things work out the way they do for a reason and I am having faith that it is what it is for a reason and I am keeping my eyes wide open. I’m sure it will all be revealed in time. Also, In my heart as I was drifting off to sleep I was wishing them well and hoping for their success and I think it just connected me to them in a dream. I don’t really think it had a deap meaning. Just a dream of well wishing.

Wendi, that dream sounds suspiciously like reality. ;)

I have been known to have whompers — all kinds of performance anxiety stuff, from the “I’m trying to present and yelling and no one is paying attention” to the “I’m on stage and realize I am in a thong.”
http://tinyurl.com/6rlc7o

I have started to use a really cool dream analysis technique I learned from Martha Beck:

1) grab a notebook and pen
2) take each relevant piece of your dream, and “animate” the person or object. So in Wendi’s comment above, she could choose the dream character Naomi. Or she could choose the duck.
3) talk in 1st person about the person or object. So she could say “I am Naomi and I am —–” Or “I am the duck and I am —” Go nuts and let the thoughts flow. It is really bizarre what comes out when you just let each piece of the dream speak for itself.

This can often tell you a lot about the meaning of the dream, beyond literal meaning of the characters.

Enjoy!

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Somewhere in the night I dreamt that my husband said I had a phone call from Naomi and I was like WHAT???

So We are talking for awhile and I realize she is outside my window and I run outside and you are both there and I say “How did you get in my neighborhood?” And She says “We are always right around the corner” and you are holding your duck and You both looked very nervous and Naomi started swearing and I told her she would be great and not to worry and she put her head on my shoulder and I said “You both are superstars and don’t forget it” and the duck started quacking very loud in agreement and everyone laughed and Naomi said “We have to go” and started running away and said “Hurry up, catch up as soon as you can.”

It was really strange. When I woke up I felt like telling her but then I didn’t. So all day instead I just kept thinking good thoughts for your class and hoped it was a huge success. But then you had a dream so now I’m telling you. I am glad its working out great!

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Bad = domain registrar I’m trying to move away from messed up some more renewals.

Good = delivered one project this week. Client ecstatic. Two proposals presented, clients excited to proceed. PBWiki interviewed me to feature our company as a case study! Started skipping rope again in the morning – feeling good about things.

No seriously. Recent research shows that we dream to help build our instincts and muscle memory.

1.
80-90% of all our dreams are bad. Thats why we have a built in mechanism of not remembering our dreams – which works most of the time. It would scar us bad if we remembered them all.

2.
In a research done, rats who didn’t dream at all (they were woken up as soon as they entered REM stage of sleep) fared very poorly in finding food in a maze. When left in an open ground, they didn’t even try running and finding dark corners (their natural instincts to survive – because open air leaves them open to aerial attacks.)

In short, no dreaming = sucking at survival.

3.
So why do we dream? We dream because dreams provide us with a safe environment to train ourselves without killing or hurting ourselves.

Just like pilots learn how to fly first in simulation rooms and not in actual airplanes, dreams teach us how to become better at what we do, without actually facing the hardships while awake.

Thats why, bad dreams are essential!

4.
So don’t run away from bad dreams. Just tell yourself before going to sleep to not let you remember any of your dreams. And then don’t wake up suddenly (no alarm clocks set after 5 hours of sleeping time). It works most of the time.

(I should maybe write a post on dreams…)

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