You know that old comeback, “In your dreams”? Gaining access to the elusive world of dreams is an area rich for exploration.
The participants in a recent dream experiment conducted by Coors — yes, the beer brand — were treated to pleasant dreams thanks to dream incubation, a tactic known for influencing dreams. Coors' experiment was an attempt to integrate branding into actual dreams, all of which was filmed as a commercial.
For the experiment, participants in a sleep lab were shown simulations of snow-covered mountains and sparkling streams running through lush fields. Cans of Coors appeared amongst the idyllic vistas in the videos, which the participants watched before dozing off. The researchers woke each participant during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep — which is when dreams occur — to ask about their in-process dreams. The groggy participants reported the same imagery from the simulations, including waterfalls, mountains, skiing, and the beer. Success!
The fact that product placement could infiltrate our sleeping hours might sound like a dystopian nightmare to some, but this gimmick also sheds light on how science, psychology, and technology have all become increasingly involved in influencing how we dream and what we dream about.
It also points to something more exciting: We are all, on some level, capable of controlling what we dream about. In fact, if you learn how to lucid dream, you could create new opportunities not just for taking in scenic vistas, but also for intervention and self-work.
What is dream control?
In the search for more pleasant or productive dreams, it helps to have control. But before you can gain control, you need to be aware of your dreams. This sleep-wake state of awareness is known as lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming is both knowing you are dreaming and being able to control your dreams while asleep. About 55% of people have experienced at least one lucid dream, and around 23% of the population experiences regular lucid dreaming.
A 2018 study in Scientific Reports revealed that frequent lucid dreaming engages the frontopolar cortex and temporoparietal association areas, which are usually inactive during sleep. These areas in the back of your brain help process self-reflection, emotions, and thought processes. In other words, people who have control over their dreams seem to be better at real-world problem solving, too.
How interpreting good and bad dreams helps with stress and anxiety
After two years in which the challenges and fears surrounding COVID-19 inspired a collective experience of increasingly bizarre and stressful dreams, regaining control of our dream sequences could be a way of seeking relief. Since our brains’ sleepy adventures in dreamland are actually a way of processing the stressors of our day, the topics within dreams offer a way to make life feel less scary or overwhelming.
Sleep psychologist, Sleep.com sleep advisor, and researcher Jade Wu, Ph.D., says to think of the function of dreams as a “KonMari” approach to our mental inventory, referring to the KonMari method of tidying your home, made famous by Marie Kondo. The method teaches people to sort and downsize their belongings based on their meaningfulness or ability to spark joy. When we enter the REM stage of sleep, our brains go through the details of our day, our memories, and our emotions, and decide which experiences are meaningful.
This subconscious activity facilitates our emotional regulation, which helps us process and influence our emotional state through natural or learned thinking or behavior. For example, if you feel anxious about an important presentation, you might emotionally regulate yourself by reminding yourself that you’re adequately prepared.
However, if you don’t have time to address your anxiety, you may get that dream we’re all familiar with: naked on the stage of a high school you attended two decades ago, in front of everyone. Waking up from that dream might help you to acknowledge the anxiety you’re feeling in real life, and that acknowledgement could motivate you to better prepare.
“We don’t just keep the things that spark joy,” says Wu. “We keep memory and emotions that are important for our survival.”
A beginner’s guide to lucid dreaming with easy tips
The pursuit of influenced dreams has origins dating back 2,500 years. The ancient Greeks slept in dream incubation temples to ask for divine guidance and healing through their dreams. Praying to Asclepius, the god of medicine, they invited divine messages into their sleep to help solve problems in their conscious lives.
Dr. Deirdre Leigh Barrett, the author of “Committee of Sleep" and “Pandemic Dreams,” who served as an expert consultant for the Coors commercial, says Western psychology borrows from the Greeks’ dream incubation with attempts to influence dreams through self-suggestion at bedtime.
In the Coors commercial, the self-suggestion was an outside source (in this case, the branded videos). But dream incubation is something anyone can try, simply by thinking about what they want to dream of before they go to sleep. Perhaps you want to dream about a person or place you miss; looking at photographs of these people or places and imagining how you’d interact with them may help plant the dream seed.
Dream incubation can also help to solve problems, as it did in ancient Greece. As pleasant as it is to dream of a visit somewhere tropical, Barrett likes dream control for challenges. “I recommend [dream incubation] for when you’re stuck on a problem when you’re awake and you’re not getting anywhere,” says Barrett. “Often it can be useful to give it to your dreaming mind.”
In order to give your dreaming mind the best opportunity to conjure people or solve problems, it’s important not to compromise dream-rich REM sleep. Over the course of the night, your sleep cycles increase in REM, meaning that most of your REM sleep happens in the second half of your sleeping hours. In order not to compromise on that, it’s helpful to allow yourself to wake up naturally. Rather than setting an alarm, try to get to sleep earlier so that you can awaken at the end of a sleep cycle, which is also at the conclusion of dreams.
How to use dream incubation to control nightmares
Dream coaching can solve problems. It can also be a way of helping dismantle nightmares — especially if nightmares are leading to anxiety during the day or to a lack of sleep at night.
Imagery rehearsal therapy is a method of dream incubation in which one imagines how they want their dreams to play out differently, or what they wish to invite into their dreams, before going to sleep.
Wu recommends rehearsing the nightmare in your head but changing the element that is causing you distress. Research suggests practicing imagery rehearsal therapy in 10- to 20-minute sessions while awake. It can also be helpful to write the nightmare down, recalling as much detail from the dream as possible.
“Really try to put yourself back into the feeling of that dream,” advises Wu. “Then choose one element to change. Maybe you give yourself a magic wand that allows you to do whatever you want — abracadabra, and the monster that’s been chasing you turns to dust.”
Though it’s trickier to prepare in advance of one-off nightmares, these, too, can be addressed with imagery rehearsal therapy. Focus on the emotions nightmares conjure — for example, shame, fear, or embarrassment — or on recognizable situations, and ask yourself what you might need to feel better. If your dreams are about shame or embarrassment, think about ways to escape or neutralize them, like becoming invisible or flying away from the situation.
“We think of nightmares as things that happen to us,” says Wu. But just like stories, ideas, and the signals we send to our fingers to hit certain keys on a keyboard, our nightmares are learned reactions our brains have to specific events or feelings. “We can learn behaviors, and we can unlearn behaviors, too.”
The future of dream control: lucid dreaming technology
Wired Magazine reported a boom in lucid dream hacking during the pandemic, as more people sought to escape the mundanity of lockdown by flying to faraway places or imagined utopias. Some have turned to dream technology, like the Remee Lucid Dream Mask, which uses red flashing lights during REM sleep to trigger lucid dreaming. These gadgets are not foolproof, though, as prolonged use of technology to trigger sleep habits could potentially damage sleep quality and mental health, according to experts in the Wired report.
At MIT, a team of researchers developed Dormio, a glove that catches users in the hypnagogia stage of sleep, which happens just as we’re drifting off and still partially lucid. The Dormio app then speaks to users to influence their dreams in the first stage of sleep.
Whether we have access to these cool gadgets or not, we can all find comfort in the fact that our dreams, positive and negative, are adaptable. “This is your dream, and you can do whatever you want in it,” says Wu.
