“I had the craziest dream last night!” We’ve all been there; a friend whips out this line, prefacing an hour-long rant about her shopping trip with Sienna Miller on Pluto before it was demoted from planethood. Although her fantasy has no basis in our own reality, we smile and nod and say, “No, really?” simply to allow our friend the satisfaction of reliving this magical experience.
I found myself in this situation the other day, as a girlfriend related her nocturnal adventures with Russell Crowe. In between smiles and nods, though, I felt more than just the usual boredom; I felt the painful absence of my dream life. I remember well that sated feeling of awakening after a pleasant dream, how it colored the rest of my day in rosy reverie. Of course, I also remember the quickened pulses and cold sweats of nightmare, but it had been years since I had felt either. As my girlfriend described in minute detail her ride with Russell across the Australian outback, I thought more about my dream life—why I’d lost it, why it was important, and how I could get it back.
Science tells us the mechanics of dreaming, how our minds and bodies progress through deep sleep into ninety minute REM cycles of activity. Though we are asleep, our brains, senses, and sexual organs come alive in REM. According to Patricia Garfield, PhD, a dream specialist, the images that appear to us in dreams are stimulated by the internal and external physical sensations we experience throughout the day. Dreams, therefore, awaken us to these sensations that we may have not fully appreciated during our active lives and allow us to process them within the safety of sleep.
What I was missing from my dream life was a richer active life. Without exercising my pleasure senses at night, they felt dull throughout the day. I craved even the most terrifying nightmare as an outlet for daily anxiety and to eclipse those quotidian qualms with the worst that my imagination could produce.
As a woman, dreams are particularly important to me. Greenfield emphasizes how many more life changes women go through than men, and how dreams are necessary to cope with the physical and emotional aspects of these changes. Through the three M’s—menarche, motherhood, and menopause—women are constantly facing new sensations that cannot be contained within a purely waking life.
One major life change for a woman is her sexual awakening. Greenfield also addresses the sexual nature of women’s dreams. During a sexy dream, women experience true physical arousal; our genitals become engorged, and we may experience orgasm. Furthermore, a healthy sexual dream life can actually improve our waking sex lives. We hone our physical senses so that they are more in tune during the real deal, and we can use the fantasies we cultivate in dreams during actual sex play. Freud didn’t just have his pants on too tight; it’s true that dreams can be an agent of sexual desire.
We may not be able to get down to it with that gorgeous cashier at the A&P, but we can live out our fantasy at night and no one else will be the wiser. It is this privacy of dreams that I miss most. Although the science goes far in explaining the mechanics of dreaming, it mostly neglects the creative and spiritual sanctuary that is dream life. In dreams, we feel we reach a higher level of consciousness. If you believe in a higher being, connection to that being may be part of this elevation. The Bible portrays dreams as communications with God, and many indigenous cultures attribute some spiritual or ghostly element to dreams, especially in predicting the future. Whatever we believe, dreams allow us room to explore. Dream life is a part of waking life that is ours alone. Whatever thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations we undergo in dreams are absolutely impenetrable to anyone else unless we choose to divulge them. Dreams provide the safety for our imaginations to run wild; our minds can escape their daily repressions. We can face our fears in dreams, knowing that we can wake up at any time. Without my dream life, I felt I had no private life, nothing to set me apart from the crowd.
So I set out on a mission to regain what I had lost. Since, according to my research, we enter REM cycles only after a period of deep sleep, I focused on my state of mind before going to bed. To rid myself of restless anxiety, I began yoga meditation and deep breathing. Before turning in for the night, I took a shower or bath to wash off the debris of the day and inhaled calming scents like lavender, chamomile, and sage. I set aside bedtime as a time for rituals, all of which guided me toward that restful pathway to REM sleep. Most importantly, I placed a pen and journal on my bedside table so that I could immediately record whatever dreams I remembered upon awakening. The information I read about dreams indicated that I was indeed, like everyone else, having several dreams each night. I simply wasn’t being mindful of my dream life and drawing those images to my waking consciousness. Sure enough, only a few nights after I implemented my pre-bedtime changes, I had the craziest dream. I won’t bore you with the details; I’m just glad to have my life back.
Tips for a fuller dream life:
- Better sleeping is better dreaming so anything you can do to relax yourself before going to bed will help. Avoid alcohol and caffeine before retiring, make sure your bedroom is comfortable and quiet, and try a hot bath or shower at night to soothe your body into sleep. Aromatherapy and yoga meditation are also very helpful.
- Try to allow your body to awake on its own, without an alarm clock. Being jolted awake jerks our memories away from recalling our dreams.
- Keep a dream journal at your bedside and write down any recollections you have immediately upon wakening, describing physical and emotional sensations in as much detail as you can. This will stimulate your memory and make it easier to retain dreams in the future. It will also provide you with a record of your dreams so you can analyze them. But remember, you don’t have to show this journal to anyone! Hide it in a bedside drawer or under your mattress if you are worried a husband or partner will read it. Your dream life is your private life.
Sweet dreams, ladies!