How to Dream More
4 ways to drive yourself to madness.
If your creativity has taken a nose-dive, look to your dreams for inspiration.
While we tend to dream every night, we only remember the memorable ones. To provoke, entice and ultimately frighten yourself silly with your own subconscious, I offer up a few personal tips for your continually appreciated perusal.
1. Listen to Audiobooks
Put down the real books. Get on the Sci-Fi / Horror (if you can handle horror, which at night I usually cannot.) Any genre that challenges your imagination while you drift off will play out in your subconscious when you reach REM. HP Lovecraft is just the right amount of ridiculous for me.
2. Eat cheese and lettuce
Nan was right, eat cheese for dreams and lettuce for pleasant ones. A handful of both is a sure-fire way to get into the dream-zone for me, but try different quantities depending on your results to find your own cheese-lettuce ratio.
3. Go to bed earlier than usual
If you hit the sack around midnight and your schedule allows, aim to sleep at 9:30–10pm for one night. Providing you can fall asleep at this hour, you’re likely to wake up in the early hours with some creative ideas and a whole bucket of dribble on your pillow.
4. Set a mid-sleep alarm
This is not healthy. Let’s deal with that immediately. BUT, if you really want to trigger emotionally-charged, memorable dreams, this might be a winner. How many of us wake up in the middle of the night — only to go back to sleep and descend into a dream so dark, so maddening, that we wake up in a cold sweat and fear for our lives for the next 24 hours?…
Just me? Hmm.
Well, it’s worth a shot anyway.
I’m not advising the use of any of these methods through scientific analysis, these are mere observations from my own life and that of my friends. But do let me know if you have any success.
Sidenote:
I am particularly interested in sleeping and dreams. Here are links to other useless / helpful research projects I have written about:
