Unlock Your Potential: The Transformative Power of Lucid Dreaming

Ep 83. Unlocking the Power of Dreams: Enhancing Skills and Self-Understanding

Dreams play a crucial role in our lives, often seen as a way to solve problems and consolidate memories. However, there's much more beneath the surface of our understanding of dreams. They not only help us navigate challenges but can also significantly enhance our physical skills and deepen our self-awareness.

Lucid dreaming, in particular, is a valuable skill that can transform the quality of your life. By learning to control your dreams, you can embark on exciting adventures that promote personal growth and self-discovery. This practice allows you to explore your subconscious and develop a richer understanding of who you are beyond your waking self. Dream well and walk well. 

Transcript

armando (00:27.598)
Welcome back folks to episode 83 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project Podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in Health Psychology, licensed professional counselor and an adjunct professor at a local community college. And kind of like I promised in the last podcast in episode 82, we're going to be talking about dreams today and dreams.

can be interpreted a number of different ways. One can be such as an ideal. I have this idea such that I have a dream about it or even a goal or maybe a lofty accomplishment that I want for myself. But when we discuss dreams, there's also another interpretation. That's the primary one that has to do with sleep, with hypnos.

So whenever we are in that hypnagogic state entering into sleep or the hypnopompic state exiting sleep, we have this thing called dreams that we experience and that we remember sometimes. Sometimes we very quickly forget what goes on in our dream state, but it's a state of mind that is not so different from the waking mind, it seems. And those distinct ideas that what is called waking consciousness and dream consciousness

It's not quite so distinct according to the dream labs. used to be that we were very subjective in our descriptions because we're still trying to find out some answers, but it turns out that the lines are rather blurred.

So once again, for today's topic, we're going to be looking at dreams as they occur in our dream state at night. And also some of the background having to do with why we dream and where we dream from and really what purpose they serve. But more importantly, we'll have this applied to self-regulatory skill. When we get into some of the methods that we use to encourage lucid dreaming, for instance, now we're looking into the realm of self-regulation in the sense that we're actually creating and prompting

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change in our dream to benefit us in our waking state that can make palpable changes in our lives from beliefs to skill development and relationship improvement this sort of thing and also find out some other things that dreams do for us so let us move along the lines of well what is a dream and what happens when we dream at night for instance we'll start there and well

One of the things that occurs at night is that our executive function shuts off. That part of us that names, labels, and organizes, and basically goes about running our day-to-day world activities as we go through it once we.

wake up and our feet hit the floor, so to speak, and we start moving through our day, whether it be brushing your teeth, taking your constitutional and bathing and all this good stuff and breakfast and running out the door to go to work, or maybe even lazily getting up out of bed on a Saturday morning and maybe scrolling through your phone, whatever it is that we do gets filtered through our executive function, our prefrontal cortical structures right behind the forehead and slightly between our temples. And this is where we make our decisions and

Weigh and meditate on things such as maybe I'd like to do this project in the future or I did that yesterday and maybe if I do that right now, it's not going to be so good. We start whirling through all of our reasoning and rationale and this is what we do through our day and it helps guide what behaviors we do, whether it be go get some coffee or maybe I think I'm going to be a workaholic and work another day this week. Whatever decisions we come from based on what we weigh, based on our experiences,

memories this sort of thing and what our goals are. Now, dreaming.

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is something that occurs once our executive function shuts off. That means that our rationale, our reason, and our sense of orderliness goes to sleep or gets set on the shelf for a time. So when we dream, often we hear that dreams can be fantastical, amazing, they can be scary, they can be frightening, even nightmarish in some cases. And whenever we hear the realm and depth of experiences that people have or read about them, or even if we

Recollect our own and realize wow I can fly in my dreams Well, that means gravity doesn't affect you in your dreams and that's nice But yet there is such a thing as gravity to keep you in your bed for the most part and you don't fly off into the atmosphere At least you're not waking up sticking to the ceiling. So that's kind of cool, but in your dreams You're not bound by such things the physics of our normal day-to-day do not affect us also our ability to Recollect things and people places that we've been are very

easily accessible in our dreams and sometimes we may go back to those that may seem a little distorted because often our sense of orderliness that's involved on recalling things in our waking state tends to shape what it is that we're remembering and thinking about. So the rules and guidelines that we would usually go by, we're more of a left brain linear rational thinker and a little uptight in social situations. We may be less so or maybe not even the equivalence of what we act like

in the day because we have those fetters basically not holding us down. We're unbound. But also the symbolic nature of what it is that our brain speaks to us in.

The language of the body comes up and there are things that may seem absolutely odd and just totally non sequitur. And that's okay. That's dream state, right? No rules or not many of anything. And there are certainly guidelines, but it has to do with what it is that maybe you're working out that you experienced that maybe your body may be trying to get the message to you, but you don't have the verbiage or the word bridge, so to speak, to make sense of it, to be able to process it in a verbal way with someone else or even yourself for that matter, to be able to write it down.

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But if you can write down dreams, this is one thing that I did many years ago, have a dream log. I don't do it too often anymore, but that is one way to get the content of it, the dream. So that way you can work it out. And once you hit on kind of working out and you don't have to work hard at it, but just kind of get a feel for it, you'll know when it clicks. And usually those types of dreams, if they're recurrent, tend to go away. Once you hit on

the head of that nail so to speak presented by your subconscious self which is your body. Once again the body has its own language and it speaks its own language to you in your sleep by virtue of what? Symbols, visions.

also dreams that seem like they're inordinately not you, but yet it's getting your attention with the best of the best it has. And think about this, the storehouse of your memories, everything you've ever experienced as a whole is available to it for it to get your attention, especially if you're neglecting certain things about yourself or things that are healthy for you, for instance, that aren't being done enough, or maybe if it's feeling ill, but yet you're not paying attention or ignoring.

it will get your attention and dreams sometimes the exaggeration what we would call the hyperbolic to the extreme that will be in your dreams so understanding that the body's sometimes has to get your attention will do what it needs to do to do that and the dreams are one way it does

Now getting away from that for just a moment. what else do dreams offer us whenever our executive function is down? Well, it allows us a field, the field of dreams, so to speak, not unlike the movie, but

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we're looking at a field of expression that otherwise if we aren't able to do certain things in our day to day life, we may be able to express them there. And we're talking about musical capacity, creativity, maybe figuring out a problem and problem solving. These are some of the things that dreams do pro proffer. Now some really famous examples, Hans Kekuli, believe his name is Hans Kekuli that developed the

understanding of the benzene ring dreamt of the Ouroboros, or the snake eating its tail, and that's whenever he was able to figure out the molecular structure of benzene. And I believe this was in the 1920s, if I'm not mistaken. I could be a little wrong on the dates, but the idea is still rather interesting because it was a dream state that brought him to this earth-shattering realization. Also,

Maya Angelou is known to have sought counsel within her dreams and to get wisdom from that. And those are cultural things that at times at the feet of our loved ones in our family, our aunts, aunties and grandparents, sometimes they will teach us if we just listen. And that's something that I would be remiss in my duties if I did not mention that even in my background.

My parents both encouraged us to talk about our dreams. They had their own beliefs about dreams. And that is one thing that I'm very appreciative of. And they were also very respectful of too. But one thing that a little bit of a superstition, I love my mom. She's wonderful, but it is something that we spoke with great reverence.

of whenever we would speak of our dreams it was always before breakfast and that one should always especially if there were negatives or fears speak them or share them before one had sucked or eaten but more specifically had a breakfast so you would do that maybe sipping on coffee for instance before you're actually ingesting solid food so that was kind of an interesting turn once i look at cross-cultural traditions but that is one that she had

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something my dad kind of believed as well. But beyond that, what our dreams offer are problems.

that are solved. We also have a stage in which we can create and be creative and musicians that were surveyed about their dreams. did not dream about learning new skills, but rather going into the full on unfettered jam session to where they could just enjoy and flow playing music spontaneously.

which is a rather deep expression of some very limbic or emotional feelings that are tied to the structures in our brain that make up our limbic region having to do with fear.

the amygdala and the hippocampus interpretation of signal, that sort of thing, and determine whether or not these are friend foe or even constructive ideas, but things to think about once again. So what else do we get from dreams in particular? Well, one is healing. Whenever we are emotionally laden, often the things that might hurt us have to do with not being able to get away from things and maybe feeling like we can't change or have a hopeless state about things because

it's impossible. I don't have the answers. And the sense of hopelessness and helplessness, we can work through it.

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And what dreams offers relative to this is what's called threat rehearsal. And threat rehearsal is something where we go through things and we're basically going through hypotheticals and we're determining whether or not this option might be a good one. Whenever we get bullied, sometimes we may think when this kid pushes me like this against the locker, I'm going to do this instead. It can be a self-defensive thing. It could be also one wherever one feels like there is no way out and creatively finding ways to not conform to what our prior thoughts were.

or what the paradigm is such that it looks like there isn't a way out. So being able to look at things from an outside lens, so to speak. Now one thing about that in particular, and it kind of flies in the face of what I'm saying, is that whenever we dream, they tend to be an immersion wherever I'm experiencing this. It's not dissociated. It's happening to me. So it is a very me, in quotes, oriented dream, a very I oriented dream. So it is you, it is your dream self, the aspect of your waking self that

is still you, that is experiencing this not too different from whenever you're actually doing something during the day. Not that you're not actually doing something at night that can be argued, but the point is that it's an immersive experience wherever you're practicing. And if we look at things as practice and repetition, this goes back to the learning theory. So it said, if we're unconsciously incompetent, we're not aware and have no skill. But when we become aware of something, and this is like the hero's journey within, where we realize our incompetence.

but we are conscious of it and aware of it now and that's the first step on the journey. If you're unconscious and incompetent, you're not on the journey, you're actually outside waiting and doing whatever it is you call your life, but you're not engaging with whatever it is would be either a problem-solving process or growth process for that matter or skill-building process that would encourage you to become better.

more skilled or different over time where the evolution has not been triggered, so to speak. So if we're thinking about this and dreams, what they provide, they're an opportunity to support what it is that we do during the day. If we're learning a new skill, for instance, and me, since I have a background in martial arts, skill driven is one of the things that I am now always trying to maintain skills, especially those perishable skills, physical skills that if you don't do them,

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you lose them. may remember how you do it or the feelings of, but if you don't have the matching skill to match what's going on with the why and the how to, we start losing it. And sometimes a great deal of learning that is very valuable can be lost. Certain physical traditions are like this for self-defense in particular, highly perishable, but also things that you really have to test to make sure they continue to work. So this being the case, so why are dreams so useful? It's like dream school.

So not only do you go to school during the day, can dream at night and go to school at night. And I'm using the term school in quotes because some people get bugged out about that.

And whenever they get out of school, I'm done with school. could never do school anymore, especially in I'm, I have a PhD and I went to school for a long time. And over a course of a lifetime, I got the education that I wanted so I could be a better earner and supportive of my family. And I still know that I'm not tired of learning and not so much that I like the school structure per se. Um, but rather the learning, the lifetime learning never finished idea.

I'm always a white belt. That means I'm always learning. When I've learned martial art skills and learned other martial systems, I don't just doom and dabble. I go into it from months to years sometimes. And I can continue to go back to those I've gained skill. don't claim rank on purpose because then that means I've kind of crystallized my ideas within this way of doing things. When I know that these are ways of doing things, but they're not the penultimate end.

to a means that that is a martial methodology, for instance, and I like to see, not new for the sake of new things that work rather, and when you get to a certain point, you realize that there's a lot of commonality in the greats within certain systems, because we come to certain conclusions about efficiency and effectiveness, and those two are the main binders. And then relative to that, whether or not you can teach and replicate said skill in other people versus it being a specific

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unique talent to an individual. Not unlike this, dreaming can support gaining skill and learning new things. And you can suggest to yourself, auto suggesting, yes this is self hypnotic talk that we're talking about, but auto suggest these are things that we tell ourselves you do not need a license to suggest to yourself to dream or to think about certain things.

People get a little bugged out within the licensure community. you tell people to self hypnotize. Well, we're always in a state of hypnotic trance of sorts or trance induction and moving in and out of that. And that's nothing new without getting bugged out about the term. Whenever we tell ourselves that I'm going to dream about this, or I'm going to write it down before I go to sleep, because this is my goal. want to dream about these things. I want a solution for certain things. You're auto suggesting. So you're practicing hypnosis without a license.

that's okay. It's allowed. I'm making a joke. But beyond that, the reason I'm making a point of this, a very fine point, no less, is because we can actually work things out in our dream state that give us more learning, more knowing, especially if you know that you're already going to be working stuff out through your day. You can do double time on certain things and gain skills quicker. And I will tell you, and this is my own personal anecdotal testimony, but

I was reading a certain person's book and I remember thinking about dreaming and that it's a totally different life that we're living within our lives that's parallel to our waking life. And I thought, well, what can I do with this as productive? That's my day-to-day mind. And what can I get out of it? That'll help me when I'm awake.

Cause I know that I remember dreams and I don't remember all of them, but when I do, it's usually pretty fantastic and cool. Sometimes it's not, but whenever it is, I kind of enjoy knowing that I have dream content and that might be a childish thing within me. But at the same time, I say that, but science has proven that much that is dream and dream state is study worthy. There's a lot there.

armando (18:20.107)
So I'm comfortable within my childlike wonder about dreams and where you can get from them. But I gave myself the suggestion sincerely and I even prayed about it saying, Hey, if I'm to be here just once and this is my time, what can I do to maximize my time and get the most benefit from my life when I'm awake and when I'm asleep? And first thing that came to mind was dream school. So what I did is tell myself, you know what, when I'm

sleeping when I'm dreaming, I want to learn stuff. I want to do things that are new. I want to bring skills to myself that I can use during the day. I want to work things out that'll help me become a better person at night and also during the day. And this is something that I know now that the quality of my dreams always has a university or school environment. I want to say always, that's kind of an absolute, but largely that sometimes it's not always there, but there's always something being learned, something practiced, something new.

adventure, there's wonder, but there's some direction that says, Hey, I want to take an experience out of this that is useful versus it just being some willy-nilly thing that I don't understand. And yes, I do get those that come that are not instructive in the sense of learning something new, but they are fun sometimes. And it seems odd, but there's always something to be learned from it. But on top of that, there are those that whenever it's stuff I need to work out within myself, that they come up too. I don't block that. I want to make sure that I gain as much

So that can be as much as it can be whenever I am in my waking state and that has worked out rather well. And this is once again, my personal anecdotal experience, not encouraging you nor discouraging you. I'm just sharing some information that may be useful to you and it falls into your auto suggestion plot. I am evil that way, I guess, and I'll take responsibility for that, but hopefully it'll be a good experience for you. Now here's the next part. So what other things do we get from dreams and the dream state? Well, during

that time when we are dreaming. Dreams do not always correlate with REM state, the rapid eye movement state, but there are indicators that we dream throughout our

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sleep patterns that don't necessarily once again correlate with REM state. But yet whenever we go in, we may start dreaming immediately when we're coming out, both the hypnagogic and the hypnopompic states, we may be in states of dreaming. So that indicates that we're not necessarily once again in rapid eye movement. But during that time, not only is our executive function shut off, but rather there are two neurotransmitters that actually kind of block off our motor cortical capacity to send signal to our body so that we're not physically acting out.

our dreams, especially when have a particularly active dream where we're doing things, running, jumping, climbing, this sort of stuff. And the two neurotransmitters that are released are glycine and GABA.

Both of those basically keep the body still and they are actually useful in keeping you safe during your dream states. Now you can probably think about exceptions to that. There are people that do have some nambulistic or sleep walking, sleep waking states that are odd and they might kick and punch and this sort of stuff during their dreams. And these are people that may have some disruptions, not only in sleep pattern, but the matter in which

which they sleep as a result of it could be nutrition, could be exhaustion, numbers of things that can deplete our, our minerals in our body and our neurotransmitters as well. Levels of stress, but yeah, there, there are exceptions of course, but generally speaking, by and large, most everyone is affected in this sense that we are set into that dream for a sleep paralysis thing and sleep paralysis in quotes is a very scary term for some. there are a couple of things that actually help with that. One of which is something that I teach quietly.

because most folks aren't aware of it. But when we have sleep paralysis, once again, we have our body being stopped by the GABA and the glycine. But what doesn't stop, which is really kind of odd because we do have ocular muscles, is the muscles to our eyes, that saccade left and right, our eyes go back and forth during rapid eye movement state. Not unlike when we're tracking with our eyes open, the saccadic rhythm of the eyes left and right kind of indicate that we're seeing in our dreams

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in a sense, so it's a very visual experience, perceptual experience I'll say more correctly because we have hearing of course and things of that nature. And what I'd like to tell you is that if you ever in that state where you feel like you can't move,

And this is merely a suggestion that you can try. No medical claims made here, but my experience personally and teaching other people, for a number of years has borne quite a bit of anecdotal evidence for me to be able to say with confidence that this works really well. if you ever are laying flat on your back and you have this occurring, one of the best things you can do, especially if you're consciously aware that you're in that dream paralysis state.

before you get terrified, what you want to do is not fix your eyes forward, but rather...

if your eyes are open left and right, literally start moving your eyes left and right as far as they can go. The body's natural internal balancing system, the proprioceptive qualities, we start moving based on how we track, not unlike whenever you drive and you, if you're going at high speed, you may tend to turn the wheel in the direction of where you're looking. So it's best to stay in a relaxed peripheral vision state versus a highly focused foveal state because you will turn in the direction that you're looking.

Like when you were little and you're riding a bike learning how to ride a bike and you start turning and wreck it into people and things not meaning to and yet because your head is turning not knowing your hands will turn in the direction that your eyes are going So if you're turning your eyes left and right I know that your head muscles will be your head muscles your neck muscles more correctly will be paralyzed Temporarily or immobilized more correctly that sounds less scary The eyes will start creating that movement from the

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center line, the core central balance area that runs down the center of your body will start to rock left and right and then you'll be able to start activating the musculature that will right you or move you left or right or roll over and it will get you out of that. And that is one of the useful methods that I have found to be highly effective. So whenever we're in that state, we get immobilized versus paralyzed. Once again, it's a little less scary temporarily and it's just that.

temporary but that that method is helpful in getting you out of that so what are some other things that we gain from dreams well beyond healing during that time our body does heal itself during the time we are dreaming our body still continues to metabolize we also realize that we become much more able

to depth of emotions and things that maybe we're not allowed or maybe socially feel constrained such that we're not allowed to experience the depth of an emotion or feeling or things like this. Now, one thing that was noted during sleep is that our brain usually when it is metabolizing allows our emotions to vary.

such that it metabolizes the three to 4 % more than usual beyond baseline. But if you have a particularly intense experience, like a nightmare or a really exciting dream that you're really getting into our metabolization level can be increased by volition by our brain's intent.

by up to 15%. That means it will start burning between four and five times more blood sugar to be able to do whatever its processes are because of the intensity of the emotion that you're experiencing. And that's something that we can't do during the day. Now there are exceptions. There are some people that do struggle with mood disorders such that they have huge intense,

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episodes of emotion and mood and this isn't what we're talking about, but often what is involved in those sorts of episodes is that there's a visual process involved wherever thoughts bring on, whether it be fear, depression, anxiety, or anger, and there's a compelling nature to that. So there may be a study worth looking at right there having to do with how the visualization and compelling nature and believability of a certain visual flash may be that is very

Similar to how we dream such that the intensity of the emotion is increased incredibly because there's that belief quality that has to do not with threat rehearsal, but actually threat Protection so there's a jump in belief to actual practice of said threat response So something to think about there

Now, how is this useful to us in gaining new skills? Well, we can suggest to ourselves what it is that we'd like to do during our dream states at night to help support what it is that maybe we're learning during the day. And if your skills are important, you may be obsessing a little bit and want to go over a certain dream skill, a physical skill rather, such as skateboarding or skiing or jumping or kicking or, doing a tumble. If you're doing ballet, anything along those lines that require physical skill and coordination, if we can visualize it and see it in our mind, we

can dream about it and therefore we can double time on the skill development and moving from the conscious incompetence to the conscious competence and eventually and maybe even a little more smoothly and more quickly to the unconscious competence such that we start reaching towards a degree of physical mastery in a shorter period of time. So I'm definitely encouraging you go give this a shot and it's something that you already have within you so you don't need a prescription for it. But I certainly would encourage you to work with it and see what it is that comes up with it. I'd love to hear

what it is that you may gain from dream skill, encourage lucid dreaming. There are quite a few good resources there on how to encourage lucid dreaming. It is being studied by the science community, not that we need their validation first, but it is seeing something there that is valid. So it's not a waste of your time or I wouldn't encourage you to do it. Certainly. I appreciate your time on this Sunday morning. really enjoyed talking to you. This was a really absolutely fun topic to research and, and talk more about and an opportunity for me to share some of my

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experience to encourage you to gain more experience in those areas and hey maybe we'll see you in dream school I'd love to see who it is that you are there and I'd love to hear from you and if you have any questions or any feedback please send it to the email running man get skills project at gmail I'd love to hear from you once again take care dream well walk well