Tag: recording dreams | In your dreams …

iProgram, iDream, iRecall

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Need a little help recalling your dreams? An app can help you with that. Want to dream the perfect dream? There’s an app designed for that too.

One key to good dream recall is to wake gently, keep your eyes closed, and allow dream fragments time to come together before your alarm clock – the one that means get out of bed now or you’ll be late – jolts you fully awake. You can help the process by asking yourself simple questions such as What happened before this? What happened after this? How did I get here? You can also help the process by setting two alarms, one gentle one to signal dream recall time, and your usual one, set about twenty minutes later, to get you out of bed.

DreamGlobally app. For you if you’re audio inclined and don’t mind sleeping with your iDevice.

Joe Halajian’s DreamGlobally app allows you to set a wake prompt that is just audible enough to glide you into dream recall. You can choose from a number of prompts, including questions designed to help you remember your dreams, and you can choose how long you’d like to drift in this stage before the app sounds your get out of bed now call. You can also choose sleep prompts – verbal suggestions about remembering your dreams – that play as you fall asleep.

The DreamGlobally app enables you to record your dreams by speaking them into your device before moving or opening your eyes. All good stuff, and this may be for you if you’re audio inclined and don’t mind sleeping with your iDevice. It may also be for you if you’re interested in global dreaming patterns and connecting with others via your dreams, as you can send tags about your dream content to the DreamGlobally dream database.

iLoved my zen alarm clock, an analogue clock with a maple wood finish and a little gong that gently struck a tubular bell once, twenty minutes before get out of bed now or you’ll be late time. That first single strike was followed by another 3.48 seconds later, then one 2.21 seconds after that, and so on in a Golden Ratio Progression (a mathematical formula related to the Fibonacci sequence, and believed to be inherently aesthetic), until it chimed every five seconds to get you up and out of bed. It was perfect for entering dream drift recall, and I found it a peaceful way to wake up each morning. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so perfect for Michael, who found it irritating, Golden Ratio or no Golden Ratio. Michael found the chimes either woke him wide awake too early or morphed their way into his dreams.

DreamON app. An experiment in influencing dreams.

Which brings me to Richard Wiseman’s Dream:ON app, launched a few days ago as a mass participation project to create your perfect dream by having your iDevice play soundscapes designed to influence your dreams at key points during your sleep cycle. 100,000 people downloaded the free app on the first night following the media campaign, and if the blog comments are anything to go by, there was a lot of general disappointment. The Dream:ON team say it will take time for dreamers to get used to the app, and to expect results after three or four nights.

Like DreamGlobally, Dream:ON offers both a gradual waking system and a social dreaming component. You can tag friends who appear in your dreams and send short descriptions of your dreams to their Dream Bank. Unlike DreamGlobally, Dream:ON may be trying to be too smart (e.g. its REM monitoring system) and missing out on interesting results a simpler system might produce.

External and physiological stimuli do enter our dreams (barking dogs, zen chimes, heat, indigestion), so theoretically the Dream:ON soundscapes will, in some cases, influence dreams, but how?

My research shows that our dreams process the last 24-48 hours of our conscious and unconscious experiences, and that can include stimuli we are experiencing at the time of dreaming. That processing, though, can change the zen chimes into Tinkerbell, a barking dog into a strange tooting train, or indigestion into a stomach-strangling cobra. The point is, the dreaming mind interprets the stimulus – or soundscape – according to a mix of past experiences and the dream drama leading up to the intrusion. It rarely interprets the stimulus logically. A soundscape of tweeting birds may be designed to induce an uplifting perfect dream, but the dreamer may end up dreaming about their Twitter account anxieties. Such is the nature of dreaming and its tendency to word play and lateral ‘thinking’!

I once did an experiment where I asked participants to dream about a blue star.

I once did an experiment where I asked participants to dream about a blue star. I gave instructions (a mix of dream incubation techniques and suggestion) designed to maximise the possibility of a blue star appearing in a dream. Of those who were successful, the blue star in their dreams tended to represent (when the dreams were analysed) each dreamer’s beliefs and feelings about performing, succeeding, being tested, or whatever each dreamer was processing about taking part in the experiment. Those who didn’t remember seeing a blue star in their dream tended to report dreams of searching, trying, or feeling tested.

My interest is in individual dreams, how they reflect the dreamer’s waking life, the insights the dreamer can gain about their unconscious mindset, and the dream alchemy exercises the dreamer can do to change and align their mindset with their personal choices for their future.

The perfect dream, to me, is the one that bestows helpful insight when it is analysed, the one that gifts the opportunity to understand your waking life experiences by understanding your mindset, and that offers the raw material you can use to create the kind of deep change that results in more personally rewarding life experience. Whether that dream is happy or nightmarish is not the issue. If you want to influence and control your dreams for fun, go ahead, but make it a rare adventure. Leave room for your natural dreams and their potential to help you fulfil and enjoy the rewarding waking life outcomes of your choice.

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Recording dreams in middle of the night

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Here’s an easy way to record your dreams in the middle of the night, in the dark.

Barbara, who hosted a dream group with me by Skype last week, shared this tip during the session when we were talking about how much more insight you can get into the meaning of a dream when you tell it aloud. We tend to use different words when we talk about a dream compared to when we write it down. The spoken version is raw, energised emotionally, and closer to the dream experience. When we tell a dream aloud, our unconscious mind tends to leap in and spill some helpful beans in the way we express ourselves too.

I invited Barbara to contribute her tip for today’s blog. Here it is:

How to record a dream in the dark of night: a tip.

“Because I have a lot of dreams, I sometimes don’t have the energy to turn on the light and write them all down throughout the night, so recently, I decided to record them and transcribe them in the morning when I am less grumpy and more alert. A friend of mine set up my phone (an ordinary Nokia) with the microphone icon as the 1st option, so all I have to do in the middle of the night is:

1. unlock phone

2. click microphone icon and

3. click record.

I have found that it’s much quicker, easier and less disruptive to my sleeping patterns (and I don’t need to turn on the light). Also, talking the dream whilst still drowsy makes the relaying of the information much more accurate and closer to the original dream.” – Barbara.

Thanks Barbara!

Try this tonight and post your comments on how you go.

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Dream interpretation: Let it flow – slippery secrets revealed

Posted on July 14, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Slips of the tongue (Freudian slips) and typos reveal clues about a dream’s meaning.

Sometimes it pays not to think too hard when writing about your dream in your journal, recording it in audio, or recounting it to a partner or friend. Let loose a little with your handwriting or typing, speed it up and don’t worry about spelling mistakes, grammar, or typos. When telling someone about your dream, don’t think about tidying it into a story, or adding humour. Instead, let it tumble out without edit. Why?

When you’re not focussing on ordering your thoughts, your dream flows more naturally and you’ll find yourself remembering parts of the dream you had forgotten. More important though, is that when you let go and let flow, you’ll find slips of the tongue (Freudian slips) and typos reveal clues about its meaning.

You might look back on your notes and see you wrote ‘heal’ instead of ‘heel’, for example.

Dreams tell their stories in the language of the unconscious, so when you are talking or writing about a dream, or describing its symbols, the language of your unconscious is already on your fingertips or lips.

You might look back on your notes and see you wrote ‘heal’ instead of ‘heel’, for example.

Talking about dreams provides the best of slippery conditions for birthing a telling Freudian slip, making interpretation easier.

Look at these examples.

1. “He drenches my thirst.”
Rather than being satisfied (quenched), this person feels she is drowning in her lover’s attentions.

2. “She’s past her use me date.”
He meant ‘past her use-by date’, but his slip reveals he felt used by her.

3. “I have to deal with huge clouds of people in my job.”
The issue wasn’t about crowds of people. It was about their negativity that clouded his day.

So write or talk about your dream at speed to create a slippery surface for your fingertips or tongue. Then write down any typos or Freudian slips and ask what your unconscious mind was really saying about your dream.

[Extract from 101 Dream Interpretation Tips, Jane Teresa Anderson]

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Free dream e-journal

Posted on June 15, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Record, search & interpret your dreams using our free Dream Sight Diary Database

Imagine being able to instantly search all your dreams to find all those featuring a certain symbol, person, theme, or word. You could call up all your car dreams, for example, or all your dreams featuring water, animals, an ex lover, a place, or anything you wish.

Imagine being able to do a basic interpretation on any dream by being led through key questions and typing in your responses.

You can do all this and much, much more, when you download the free computer program, Dream Sight Diary Database, that Belinda Hodge conceived, developed and produced for us, based on my methods of dream interpretation and alchemy. (Note, April 2013: After 13 years of use, we retired this program. Times have changed. One day we’ll turn it into an app.)

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