Beginner's guide to access the Power of Dreams

Have you ever wondered what happens when we fall asleep? What is your relationship with dreams? Do you look forward to slowing down or do you prefer to accept sleeping as a “necessary delay”? How do you feel about your dreams? Do you remember them or do you give them no importance at all?

Sometimes when I discuss dreaming with others – which I really enjoy doing – some people will object and tell me that they can’t have an opinion about dreams, because they seldom or ever have any. The truth is we all have dreams while we sleep, it’s just whether or not we can recall them afterwards. Most of us have on average three to five dreams every night!

I remember the first time I “woke up” in my dream (a nightmare, to be precise) and realized I was dreaming. As a 4-years-old the next thing I did was forcing my eyes to open; this woke me up from my nightmare and removed the horror I experienced. Even though I was shaken by the dream, I also felt excited about the new trick that nightmare helped me to discover. From that moment I changed my perspective on dreams and started to view dreams as a different reality where physical laws don’t apply. A reality that I could play with and learn from if I keep enough awareness of it.

I personally believe that sleeping and dreaming is a shift of our consciousness from this physical reality into a non-physical space. Whenever we are able to tune in and focus on dreams they open the door to so much more than the realms of fantasy… My dreams take me back to myself, the real me behind the physical me called Jana. Throughout human history dreaming has been an important part of both individual as well as collective life. All major traditions treated dreams with respect and some went as far as making it a key focus area of their culture (e.g. the Tibetan yogas of Dream and Sleep). I will write about some advanced techniques such as lucid dreaming in a future post. For today, I would like to share some dreaming habits I developed over years and they proved to be beneficial to increase my awareness:

• Before I go to sleep I set an intention to have a good rest, to remember dreams which might be important and to wake up refreshed in the morning.
• In case I had a strong dream or felt strong emotions (positive or negative) I write down what I dreamt about, the environment in the dream and the key emotions I felt during dreaming. It proves to be most effective to record the bottomline of the dream the first thing when I wake up. If I can’t remember I can at least notice how I felt and whether I recall any emotions from the dream.
• Whenever I don’t like the way my dream ended and I have time to stay in bed I search for a better feeling alternative of that dream. I can also use my imagination to play the preferred scenario in my head so that it includes an emotion I prefer. How does it work? Lets say you just had a dream about being lost in a foreign city. You’ve woken up with a feeling of confusion and discomfort. Stay with it for a moment and imagine being back in the city. This time you have a map or get advice from a person you ask. Now imagine taking the right direction and feeling sure and calm. After you’ve changed the emotion, you may get up and start your day.

I understand that some of you may object, because often there is no time to stay in bed to recap a particular dream, correct? If that’s the case try to imagine a fast-forward motion of the new (preferred) scenario. This simple technique helps to get rid of any negative emotions left by a dream. By now, we all accept that everybody has dreams and most understand there is some value in them. Our body obviously benefits from sleep itself, as it can regain balance and recharge energy for the next day. Our mind benefits from relaxing and sorting out our experiences and connecting them to our previous memories. But what real value can be found in dreaming?

Let me list a few specific areas where dreams might help:

– realign our energies from the previous day
– see potential future scenarios
– answers to some of our questions
– search for new solutions to problems
– find new ways to achieve our goals
– inspire us with brand new ideas
– get even better at what we do when awake
– test ideas and experiement riskfree
– design a new lifestyle
– see potential disconnects from our needs
– identify how to prevent things we don’t prefer

So where can one begin with all of this?I would start by relaxing before going to sleep and by setting the intention to take rest and wake up refreshed. Try to observe what is going on in your dreams in order to be more conscious of any particular theme, pattern or repeating emotion. You can experiment with replacing a bad dream with a better feeling image. What if you can’t remember anything from your dreams? You can still set the intention and work with your focus while awake. When I wake up I like to express gratitude to life for having another day; for being happy, healthy, wealthy and wise. I can set my focus for the day by saying something like:

Today I will look for reasons to feel good. This day will be full of wisdom, joy, fun, inspiration, insight, connection, beauty, love… (you name it)

When I take the time and set my focus on things I prefer I find it much easier to notice them as the day goes by. Staying present during day-life gradually increases our access to dreams during the night-life...

I wish you all happy dreaming and I would love to hear about your experience! Drop me a note or post a comment sharing what works for you or how you are using the power hidden behind your dreams!