Speaker 1: Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.
Speaker 2: Hey, how you doing. Come on in.
Speaker 3: This is time for Destiny and I'm your host, Cliff Dunning.
Speaker 3: We're talking about tools for transformation. People ask me, you know, Cliff,
Speaker 3: why did you start destiny? What's destiny all about? Well,
Speaker 3: if you really pay attention, and I know most of
Speaker 3: you do, what we're doing here is providing evidence of enhancements.
Speaker 3: You know, I use the term biohacking, which is more
Speaker 3: of a present term for enhancing your brain, your body,
Speaker 3: your spirit through vitamin's, minerals, foods, in some cases drugs.
Speaker 3: And I mentioned that I am on OZIMPI and you
Speaker 3: know I want to feel better. I want to live
Speaker 3: long and healthy and vibrant, and so tools for transformation
Speaker 3: on the physical level are very much into my my perspective.
Speaker 3: The other side of things is what our ancestors use
Speaker 3: tools for transformation. They were, you know, developing meditation. And
Speaker 3: you know I've spoken about this before. When you meditate,
Speaker 3: whoever figured out the keys to meditation was an alchemist.
Speaker 3: When you meditate, you synchronize your left and right brain,
Speaker 3: your hemispheres, your left and right hemispheres, and when you
Speaker 3: do that, you sink that. You sink your brain so
Speaker 3: it's functioning more harmonious, harmoniously, but also you heal your brain,
Speaker 3: and people don't. We don't have enough people that are meditating.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's like I don't have time to
Speaker 3: sit and close my eyes. I can't sit still. My
Speaker 3: mother's never been able to meditate, and I've tried to
Speaker 3: get her to get into some classes because it would
Speaker 3: help her, but she can't sit still, and some people
Speaker 3: just can't close their eyes. Well, that's one aspect of
Speaker 3: tools for transformation. The others are yoga, they're tai chi,
Speaker 3: their body movement, they're getting massage.
Speaker 2: They're eating well.
Speaker 3: They are looking for nutritional substances that are radically changing metabolism,
Speaker 3: because as we age, your body begins to deteriorate. Yourselves
Speaker 3: are not producing is frequently and you're kind of breaking down.
Speaker 3: So we want to live into our eighties, into our nineties,
Speaker 3: into one hundred, being one hundred. My goal is to
Speaker 3: live to be one hundred and four. Now I don't
Speaker 3: know if that's possible enough. My grandparents grandfather lived to
Speaker 3: be ninety three, my mother's currently ninety four. Maybe maybe
Speaker 3: my mother's pretty in pretty good shape. My grandfather he
Speaker 3: was pretty good shape until the last six eight months
Speaker 3: of his life. So maybe I'm wired for this and
Speaker 3: maybe with the tweaking it'll help, but not just longevity
Speaker 3: for me. I think the other thing which is critical
Speaker 3: is lucidity. Being consciously aware as long as you can,
Speaker 3: being productive, you know.
Speaker 2: Being aware, being.
Speaker 3: Impactful, having influence on your younger people, being a spokesperson,
Speaker 3: being a guide as we get older. Not everybody's cut
Speaker 3: out for that, but we all have opinions, we all
Speaker 3: have points of view, and when we get older, people
Speaker 3: look to you or look to us, and when we
Speaker 3: get into older ages too, to be a voice, to
Speaker 3: give a perspective that is unique to that individual. So
Speaker 3: tools for transformation. And what we're doing today is we're
Speaker 3: talking about sleep, talking about dreaming, but we're also talking
Speaker 3: about sleep. We have a returning guest who is presenting
Speaker 3: data on the importance of getting not only a good
Speaker 3: night's sleep, preparing to sleep very deeply and not having
Speaker 3: restless sleep. A lot of us have problems with sleep.
Speaker 3: We have sleep deprivation because we can't get six or
Speaker 3: seven hours of sleep. We're sleeping three or four hours,
Speaker 3: and that's just not enough, just not enough. And I
Speaker 3: discovered a long time ago that if I don't get
Speaker 3: at least six and a half seven hours of sleep,
Speaker 3: I'm no good because I'm always thinking, moving, active, body, mind, spirit,
Speaker 3: and the sleep time for me is sacred time.
Speaker 2: So I don't have Currently, I don't have a problem
Speaker 2: getting to sleep.
Speaker 3: But some people are worrying about their job, their relationships.
Speaker 3: They're paying the bills, they could have physical health problems,
Speaker 3: their hips are not feeling great, they have pain, they
Speaker 3: can't get to sleep without drugs. But getting a good
Speaker 3: night's sleep is really, really critical. And one of the
Speaker 3: topics in today's program is how to get good night's sleep,
Speaker 3: how to get into that ram rapid eye movement level
Speaker 3: of sleep where you're dreaming, because dreaming, although is an
Speaker 3: alternative form of awareness and consciousness, also produces very, very
Speaker 3: beneficial effects. And we'll also talk about today. We're talking
Speaker 3: about lucid dreaming, where you begin to influence your dreams.
Speaker 3: You set a dream path and what they call incubate
Speaker 3: a dream. You develop a thought, you intend for a
Speaker 3: good dream to happen. You set the stage, you close
Speaker 3: your eyes, you go to sleep and at some point
Speaker 3: you're so deep that you begin to process and you
Speaker 3: are if you can do it. I'm still working on it.
Speaker 3: You focus on these lucid dreams years and years ago,
Speaker 3: I shouldn't be that long ago. Twenty five years ago,
Speaker 3: I was the program director for Halife Expo here in
Speaker 3: San Francisco. We had Stephan or Stephen Leberge on the
Speaker 3: program who at that time was a professor at Stanford University,
Speaker 3: and he had coined a book called Lucid Dreaming. Actually
Speaker 3: the book was exploring the world of lucid dreaming. And
Speaker 3: when he by the way, his talks were excellent, is
Speaker 3: like twenty twenty, twenty five, two thousand and five, two
Speaker 3: thousand and six, and he was exploring lucid dreaming around
Speaker 3: the world, How other people cultivate lucid dreaming, the techniques
Speaker 3: for discerning lucid dreaming, the techniques for intending to have
Speaker 3: lucid dreamings. Because lucid dreams are so vivid, it's like
Speaker 3: you're in a reality and then you know you're dreaming.
Speaker 3: And that's the other topic that we will present today
Speaker 3: is is cultivating, incubating, and creating these powerful lucid dreams
Speaker 3: for healing, for manifesting, for prophecy, prognostication, you know, developing
Speaker 3: a sense of what's to come. And some of the
Speaker 3: better lucid dreamers that I've discovered can run a scenario.
Speaker 3: They can set up a kind of a halo deck
Speaker 3: hologram dick if you've watched Star Trek, where you go in,
Speaker 3: you create the setting, and then you experiment with the outcome.
Speaker 3: Is this the way I want it to happen? Are
Speaker 3: these the people I want to interact with? Okay, I
Speaker 3: want to try it this way. Oh I don't like that. Okay,
Speaker 3: we'll go back, We'll try it again.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I mean, can you imagine having active dreams like that
Speaker 3: where you run a scenario on something you want or
Speaker 3: a relationship you want. How how am I going to
Speaker 3: interact with this person we're going to meet? What's going
Speaker 3: to be next? I want this to happen. I want
Speaker 3: that to happen, and you run it, and if you
Speaker 3: have enough access, you have other influences, then you get
Speaker 3: a full spectrum example of a lucid dream and the
Speaker 3: experiment is a success, and then when you actually run
Speaker 3: it in the real world, it replicates. Now that's pretty advanced.
Speaker 3: We're not going to get in that that today, but
Speaker 3: it's something to consider. So today's program is all about dreams.
Speaker 3: My guest is doctor Claire Johnson. We had her a
Speaker 3: couple of years ago. She had a book at that
Speaker 3: time called The Art of Lucid Dreaming. Today's book is
Speaker 3: called Elexir of Sleep and it's a great one. Practical
Speaker 3: solutions for a good night's rest. And listen closely those
Speaker 3: of you who have trouble sleeping, because not sleeping at
Speaker 3: night just adds to the weight of being conscious during
Speaker 3: the day. So it's very, very important that we get
Speaker 3: a good night's sleep. So again the program is Alexa
Speaker 3: of Sleep, and my guest is Claire Johnson. Hey, spring
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Speaker 2: We all have to sleep. It's important that we get
Speaker 2: good sleep.
Speaker 3: I have friends and family that have trouble sleeping because
Speaker 3: their minds are busy, or they have had consumed some
Speaker 3: food or a beverage that kind of keeps them awake.
Speaker 3: But our focus today is on the importance of sleep
Speaker 3: and what happens when we sleep. My guest, my returning guest,
Speaker 3: is Clara Johnson. We had her a couple of years
Speaker 3: ago talking about the art of lucid dreaming. This is
Speaker 3: a brand new book that she's releasing called Alexor of Sleep,
Speaker 3: Practical Solutions for a Good Night's Rest, and I had
Speaker 3: a good opportunity to take a look at it, and
Speaker 3: she has some highlights in here and some of the
Speaker 3: important keys to why a good sleep, a good night's
Speaker 3: rest is very very important. So Claire, welcome back to Destiny.
Speaker 3: Great to have you.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 1: Cliff, it's lovely to be back. Great to speak to
Speaker 1: you again.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know I was fascinated in the introduction of
Speaker 3: your book. You talk about your childhood and the actual
Speaker 3: fact that you began lucid dreaming at a very young age.
Speaker 3: Talk about how you discovered that you were lucid dreaming,
Speaker 3: but not only that, you know, what were the keys
Speaker 3: to getting a good sleep and what you discovered as
Speaker 3: a child, which you took into your adulthood, and this
Speaker 3: unique work on sleep that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I mean for me, it was very very
Speaker 1: early on in life that I realized there were two
Speaker 1: distinct worlds. One was the world of sleep and dreams,
Speaker 1: and the other was the waking world. But my parents,
Speaker 1: like most parents in those days, only paid attention to
Speaker 1: one of those worlds. They only paid attention to the
Speaker 1: waking world. But my dreams would not let me forget
Speaker 1: about the other world. So I would have many nightmares
Speaker 1: when I was a little kid, and in one nightmare
Speaker 1: when I was three, I dreamed that I was drowning
Speaker 1: in a swimming pool. And at that moment, I had
Speaker 1: my first ever flash of lucidity, which is when you
Speaker 1: recognize that you're dreaming while you're actually in the dream state.
Speaker 1: So I realized, wow, I have a choice. I can
Speaker 1: stay in this nightmare and drown in this pool, or
Speaker 1: I can wake myself up. And so I rolled over
Speaker 1: and over and over in this swimming pool to get
Speaker 1: out of the dream, and I ended up rolling right
Speaker 1: out of bed and landing on the floor with a bump.
Speaker 1: And that's when my mother came running up, and she
Speaker 1: told me that was just a dream that wasn't real.
Speaker 1: And so for me, it was like a very very
Speaker 1: strange thing to hear because I knew how real that
Speaker 1: dream had been. The colors were there, that the color
Speaker 1: of the water was turquoise. I had felt that water
Speaker 1: going into my lungs. I had felt the panic and
Speaker 1: it was also vivid, and said to be told that
Speaker 1: that world or that experience was not real was just
Speaker 1: so bizarre for me. I started to realize, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: my parents won't talk about this other world with me,
Speaker 1: but this other world is not leaving me alone. It's
Speaker 1: going to keep pulling and pulling at me, so I
Speaker 1: need to find out more about it. And so as
Speaker 1: I grew up, I continue to have very interesting sleep experiences,
Speaker 1: you know, like sleepwalking and also lucid nightmares, which is
Speaker 1: when you know that you're dreaming, but you can't necessarily
Speaker 1: wake yourself up from the dream or control the dream
Speaker 1: in any way. You're just kind of the victim of
Speaker 1: whatever's happening in that nightmare. And that was really terrifying.
Speaker 1: You know, as a child, you're pretty powerless anyway, because
Speaker 1: your whole life is under the control of all these adults,
Speaker 1: and then to have that going on in your dreams
Speaker 1: as well. You know, it's a pretty big thing for me.
Speaker 1: But I managed to figure out that dreams reacted to
Speaker 1: my state of mind. I understood that if I calmed
Speaker 1: down my fear, no matter how scary the dream was,
Speaker 1: when I calmed down, the dream calmed down, it became
Speaker 1: more friendly. The monsters would stop being so scary and
Speaker 1: start wanting to be my friends. Or I wouldn't die
Speaker 1: when I fell off the edge of the cliff. I
Speaker 1: would just float down and land in a lovely meadow
Speaker 1: of flowers. You know that sort of thing. So I
Speaker 1: started to grasp the all important nature, the thought responsive
Speaker 1: nature of dreams, and I was then able to guide
Speaker 1: my lucid dreams. I mean this took a long time, Cliff.
Speaker 1: You know, this wasn't from one day to the next.
Speaker 3: You use the term intention, and this is something that
Speaker 3: everyone talks about now intention. But when you were a child,
Speaker 3: obviously that's many years ago. To kind of consciously be
Speaker 3: aware of your dreams or in ten is fairly advanced.
Speaker 3: I can see why you became a dream expert.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think though that a lot more
Speaker 1: children than we may think have these kind of intentional
Speaker 1: dream experiences, and that they do learn to guide their dreams.
Speaker 1: Because what I found when I started speaking about lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming at international conferences, and you know, you get the
Speaker 1: audience questions at the end, people would put their hands
Speaker 1: up and say, wow. I never knew until I heard
Speaker 1: this presentation that there was a name for the kind
Speaker 1: of dreaming I did as a child, and that it's
Speaker 1: called lucid dreaming. But I remember those dreams and how
Speaker 1: I love for them, and how I enjoyed guiding them
Speaker 1: and deciding to fly. So for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: you know, at least in those days, I mean this
Speaker 1: was pre internet times, we just we didn't really, we
Speaker 1: had to figure it out for ourselves. I mean, the
Speaker 1: whole of the world has changed so much now with
Speaker 1: the Internet and all of the information that's there at
Speaker 1: the touch of a a phone screen for young people
Speaker 1: who are growing up and want to check out what
Speaker 1: experience am I having? We never had that. I only
Speaker 1: found my first ever book that I discovered on lucid
Speaker 1: dreaming was by Patricia Garfield. It was called Creative Dreaming.
Speaker 1: I didn't find that until I was like, I think
Speaker 1: I was nineteen or twenty or something, So that's really late, right, We.
Speaker 3: Should let people know that you were one of the
Speaker 3: only people that has a PhD or a doctorate in
Speaker 3: lucid dreaming. And I don't know, you don't describe what
Speaker 3: school you went to, but how did you get that
Speaker 3: your professors to agree to that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it wasn't that easy. Well, this was at the
Speaker 1: University of Leeds and I started it or when did
Speaker 1: I start? I think I started it in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three. So basically I sent them a portfolio of
Speaker 1: work that I'd done about lucid dreaming and also my
Speaker 1: creative writing that I was working on, because this pH
Speaker 1: d was a practice based PhD where I did research
Speaker 1: into lucid dreaming as a creative tool, and so I
Speaker 1: interviewed people who were artists and writers, and I also
Speaker 1: wrote a lucid dream inspired novel called Breathing in Color
Speaker 1: as part of the PhD. So part of the PhD
Speaker 1: was me doing experiments in my lucid dreams to meet
Speaker 1: my novel characters or to try and get inspiration for
Speaker 1: the plot or yeah, sort of get unusual imagery from
Speaker 1: my lucid dreams and weave it into the novel. So
Speaker 1: just sort of showing how this can be done, how
Speaker 1: lucid dreams can inspire us so deeply on the creative
Speaker 1: level that we that we can actually bring an original
Speaker 1: work of art or an original novel out into the world.
Speaker 1: And then you know, alongside all that was all the
Speaker 1: more academic formal research. So it's kind of almost like
Speaker 1: doing two PhDs because I had the research part and
Speaker 1: then I also had the creative writing part. But in yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of resistance around lucid dreaming in
Speaker 1: those days because there was still this idea that many
Speaker 1: Freudians believed. So many psychotherapists and psychiatrists believed that dreams
Speaker 1: were the domain of the unconscious mind and that it
Speaker 1: was actually not possible to bring conscious awareness and logical
Speaker 1: thought into the dream state. They actually did not believe
Speaker 1: that it was possible. So when I was presenting my
Speaker 1: research at conferences, I would get people in the audience
Speaker 1: getting really quite furious because it was going against their
Speaker 1: worldview and everything that they'd learned in their own university degrees.
Speaker 1: So they would be saying, how can you say this,
Speaker 1: How can you say that you're doing your PhD research
Speaker 1: while you sleep. This is absolutely preposterous and I would
Speaker 1: say no, but this has been scientifically proved. It was
Speaker 1: first scientifically proved back in nineteen seventy five by Dr
Speaker 1: Keith Hearn at the University of Hull in the UK,
Speaker 1: and in fact we're coming up to the fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 1: of that on the twelfth of April in this year.
Speaker 1: So I had to explain all this to these people
Speaker 1: at the conferences. Here's the proof, this is the experiment,
Speaker 1: this is how it happened. A lucid dreamer was wired
Speaker 1: up to toeg and how to make these eye signals
Speaker 1: when they became lucid so that it could be visible.
Speaker 1: And this is how it is all proved. So I
Speaker 1: had to go through all of this explaining and then
Speaker 1: they'd be like, oh, maybe this is possible, and I'd
Speaker 1: say to them, it's possible. You can go and have
Speaker 1: a lucid dream tonight. All it is is a thought away.
Speaker 1: Lucid dreaming is a thought away. All you have to
Speaker 1: do is think during a dream, Oh, i'm dreaming right now,
Speaker 1: I'm a sleeper dreaming. That's all lucidity is. It's just
Speaker 1: a thought, an awareness, that's all it is. So it's
Speaker 1: not hard. Anyone can do it. It's also learnable or relearnable,
Speaker 1: because many of us had this naturally when we were
Speaker 1: kids growing up, So there's no big mystique around it.
Speaker 1: It's just something that naturally occurs in consciousness.
Speaker 3: Let's work on the foundation. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 3: about sleep itself, which is the title of Elixir of Sleep,
Speaker 3: and we'll catch up with Lucid Jimmian in a second.
Speaker 3: Why is good sleep so vital to our health?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we cannot survive without sleep, So it's always
Speaker 1: been part of the evolutionary picture for humans, right, we
Speaker 1: have to do this, we have to recharge. I sometimes think,
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be interesting as an alien coming to this
Speaker 1: planet and observing human behavior and seeing how we constantly
Speaker 1: have to lie down and recharge our batteries. We must
Speaker 1: seem like kind of weak battery operated toys that kind
Speaker 1: of run out of steam and then have to have
Speaker 1: to plug themselves into the source. Because that's what sleep is.
Speaker 1: It's this, it's this incredibly important source, a vital source
Speaker 1: for us. If we don't sleep, we immediately just after
Speaker 1: one bad night of sleep. We've all experienced this, you know,
Speaker 1: when we've been traveling, for example, and you just can't
Speaker 1: sleep and you have to stay awake all night. The
Speaker 1: next day you feel terrible. You can't think straight, you
Speaker 1: can't get a simple sentence out of your mouth, you
Speaker 1: can't drive properly. It's very, very dangerous to drive when
Speaker 1: you're sleep deprived. It's like being drunk when you're driving
Speaker 1: a car. And so all of our cognitive abilities decrease
Speaker 1: incredibly rapidly if we don't get a good night's sleep.
Speaker 1: So just on that level of human survival, it's absolutely
Speaker 1: essential to get a good night's sleep. And there and
Speaker 1: we need to consider the fact that sleep is a
Speaker 1: healing elixia. It actually, you know, recharges our entire body.
Speaker 1: There are these killer cancer cells you know, that are
Speaker 1: produced when we sleep in the deeper stages of sleep
Speaker 1: that will stop us from getting cancer or help us
Speaker 1: to heal if cancer appears in our body. Our immune
Speaker 1: system is fortified while we sleep, our hormones are balanced.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there's also the dreaming, which we've already spoken
Speaker 1: about a bit, but dreams also have that incredibly important
Speaker 1: function of acting as sort of nighttime therapy. They take
Speaker 1: our concerns, our problems, and they turn them into stories.
Speaker 1: They give us solutions, they show us possible futures, and
Speaker 1: they're also an incredibly creative source and they help us
Speaker 1: with memory Consolidation's interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you have the five main benefits of sleep,
Speaker 3: and I was really interested.
Speaker 2: I'd like to go through those.
Speaker 3: We've just covered number one, which is boosts the ability
Speaker 3: to heal, and you're talking about hormone development and other healing.
Speaker 3: I guess you could call it metabolism gets put in
Speaker 3: the motion when you're quiet and or relaxed. But you
Speaker 3: also talk number two, which is support mental health and
Speaker 3: this is something that and this is in the form
Speaker 3: of dreams. Talk about how that.
Speaker 2: Is a mental health elix or.
Speaker 1: Yes, so well, basically, I mean we all have problems
Speaker 1: and issues, we all have relationship difficulties things like that.
Speaker 1: So let's say we come home, we've had a really
Speaker 1: bad day, we've had an argument with a co worker
Speaker 1: or our boss, and we get home and then we
Speaker 1: have a terrible blow up argument with our spouse. We
Speaker 1: go to sleep feeling absolutely exhausted, fed up with life,
Speaker 1: and then the dreams will come. The dreams will come
Speaker 1: and help us to rejuvenate, help us to recover from that.
Speaker 1: They may at first run through a scenario with our
Speaker 1: with our spouse, or with our boss. They may come
Speaker 1: in the form of nightmares at first, perhaps earlier on
Speaker 1: in that night we have a bad dream, but what
Speaker 1: dreams do. All dreams come to help and heal us.
Speaker 1: So even the worst nightmare is simply flagging up the
Speaker 1: fact that we have an issue that we need to
Speaker 1: work on. And what often happens in the course of
Speaker 1: a night of sleep that if we've had all these
Speaker 1: horrible daytime experiences we process them with there's a big
Speaker 1: level of emotional processing that goes on while we sleep.
Speaker 1: So having those nightmares is actually helping us to understand
Speaker 1: what happened and sort of settle down and calm down
Speaker 1: on the level of those disputes that we've had. And
Speaker 1: as the night of sleep goes on, very often our
Speaker 1: dreams will then transform and they'll start showing us, oh,
Speaker 1: something really lovely. They'll give us gifts, beautiful dreams. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is what happens to me. If I've had a
Speaker 1: stressful day, I tend to have gorgeous dreams that take
Speaker 1: me into somewhere beautiful light. For example, I go on
Speaker 1: a boat trip, or I'm in the jungle and there's
Speaker 1: a gorgeous animal and I engage with this animal. Something
Speaker 1: lovely like that happens, like the dream pepping me up.
Speaker 1: Or people often record dreams of light, so dreams where
Speaker 1: perhaps the scenery floats away and then we end up
Speaker 1: in a state of light, immersed in a beautiful healing light.
Speaker 1: And these kinds of dreams as well, they help us
Speaker 1: to heal on so many levels. They give us resilience
Speaker 1: and when we bring lucidity into our night of sleep. If,
Speaker 1: for example, we had a bad dream about the argument
Speaker 1: with the boss or the coworker or the spouse, and
Speaker 1: we know that we're dreaming, then we can directly ask
Speaker 1: for healing in that particular dream scenario, asked to change
Speaker 1: something or replay the scenario in different ways so that
Speaker 1: we have a different reaction. Yeah, yeah, we can change things.
Speaker 1: And when we change them on the level of our
Speaker 1: dreams and our unconscious that has a lasting effect on
Speaker 1: our waking life as well.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about number three, which I'd like to learn
Speaker 3: more about, which is you call it a sleep is
Speaker 3: critical for learning.
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: I mean, is it because you're relaxed and your brain's
Speaker 3: kind of being healed or talk about that as fascinating, Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the brain state during sleep or during all
Speaker 1: of the stages of sleep. It's just so fascinating to
Speaker 1: realize all of these different states of consciousness that we
Speaker 1: traverse during a night of sleep. And studies have shown that,
Speaker 1: for example, when we sleep before we learn something, like
Speaker 1: have a nap, and then we get up and we
Speaker 1: learn something, and then we go back to sleep again,
Speaker 1: then we really we consolidate everything that we've learned. We
Speaker 1: learn it far more thoroughly than if we just learn
Speaker 1: it and then go about our day without having that
Speaker 1: other sleep. So sleep is kind of like this way
Speaker 1: of really laying down skills and memories and getting them
Speaker 1: into our head so that they become second nature to us.
Speaker 1: There have been studies done on mazes as well. So
Speaker 1: for example, I think it was one hundred people that
Speaker 1: were given a maze to try out on a computer game,
Speaker 1: so they had to try and find their way through
Speaker 1: the maze, and then half of them were allowed to
Speaker 1: take a ninety minute nap and then they all had
Speaker 1: another ago at the maze, and the nappers were much
Speaker 1: better at navigating the may the Maze. But even more astonishingly,
Speaker 1: the nappers who had dreamed about navigating the maze, they
Speaker 1: were ten times better at navigating it than the people
Speaker 1: who hadn't had a sleep at all.
Speaker 3: We're going to take a short commercial break to allow
Speaker 3: our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly
Speaker 3: with my guests today, Claire Johnson speaking on her new
Speaker 3: book on sleep called Elixir of Sleep. We'll be right back, yea, hun, Brad,
Speaker 3: though I guess it is doctor Claire Johnson who has
Speaker 3: written a new book on sleep called Elixir of Sleep.
Speaker 3: This is a book that just came out on the
Speaker 3: benefits of good sleep and how to cultivate the best
Speaker 3: sleep possible. Hey, you know, I want to ask you
Speaker 3: real quickly, Claire, why are naps so great? I mean,
Speaker 3: I have certain days where I have to take it,
Speaker 3: like a nap at three pm for maybe an hour.
Speaker 2: But why are naps little boosters?
Speaker 1: Favorite freshers on every level? And I mean, NAP's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite things, Cliff, I mean it's one of
Speaker 1: the most you know, that's where you'll find me if
Speaker 1: you don't know where I am, I'll be on the
Speaker 1: sofa having a nap. But the way I nap is
Speaker 1: also more like a yoga nidra type of nap. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've heard of yoga nidra. It's when
Speaker 1: you lie down, you close your eyes, relax very deeply,
Speaker 1: so that your body falls asleep, but your mind rests
Speaker 1: in awareness. So it's like it's like a lucid nap.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's so refreshing. It's amazing. You can
Speaker 1: follow the hypnogogic imagery and sensations, so the pre sleep
Speaker 1: bizarre images that pop up, and all the buzzing noises
Speaker 1: or the falling noises. You just observe all of that
Speaker 1: and you float, you rest in awareness. It's deeply refreshing.
Speaker 1: When I come out of these yoga nidra naps, I'm
Speaker 1: on fire with energy. I mean, that's how I managed
Speaker 1: to get so much done. All the books and the
Speaker 1: video courses and the Lucid Dream retreats and the conference presentations,
Speaker 1: you know, everything I do. It's like so much work,
Speaker 1: and people say, how do you do it? And how
Speaker 1: do you manage to stay so joyful and energized. And
Speaker 1: that is my secret. It's the nap. It's the yoga
Speaker 1: nitra nap.
Speaker 2: Is that nap in the book?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So you lay down but you don't sleep. Your mind
Speaker 3: is clear, but your body goes asleep. I mean that's
Speaker 3: like a deep meditation.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, oh, yeah, exactly. Well, Yoga
Speaker 1: nidra comes from the Tantric tradition, so it's been around
Speaker 1: for like thousands of years. I think it's probably been
Speaker 1: around since humans first came into existence. Because it's such
Speaker 1: a natural state of consciousness, you would have definitely experienced
Speaker 1: it before, Cliff in my view, you know, like when
Speaker 1: you just like you don't go into bed for your nap,
Speaker 1: that you lie on the sofa and perhaps you you know,
Speaker 1: the sun's shining through the windows, so you're not in
Speaker 1: a deep deep state. That you float in this bliss
Speaker 1: and you're just you feel so good. And that's the
Speaker 1: kind of yoga nittra type state the boys used to
Speaker 1: falling asleep. It can fall it, you know, it falls
Speaker 1: asleep every night. So you just basically kind of let
Speaker 1: your body relax and relax and relax until you can't
Speaker 1: really feel it anymore. And that is a golden moment.
Speaker 1: That's the moment when you can really start drifting and
Speaker 1: moving forward through all of this imagery or just experiencing
Speaker 1: whatever there is to experience. So your mind's alert, but
Speaker 1: it's deeply relaxed as well. There's nothing hyper about it.
Speaker 1: It's just like floating, you know, half.
Speaker 3: An hour or an hour that you do every bai.
Speaker 1: I mean for most people it's shorter. You can do
Speaker 1: it for a whole hour. I mean, I have a
Speaker 1: lot of guided meditations on my website that help people
Speaker 1: to stay in that state for an hour or so.
Speaker 1: But when I do it, I do it for about
Speaker 1: twenty five minutes, thirty minutes something like that. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: extremely beneficial. And like, yeah, you wake up from that
Speaker 1: nap and you feel just amazing. It's so refreshing for
Speaker 1: the brain.
Speaker 2: Amazing. I had to look that up.
Speaker 3: Let's get into the next benefit, which is and I'm
Speaker 3: really curious about this one, you say, and this is
Speaker 3: number four. The benefits of sleep boosts gut health. Now,
Speaker 3: why is this a critical factor in our health?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, the gut is often referred to
Speaker 1: these days as the second brain, because it's so crucial
Speaker 1: to our health, and it's so intuitive, you know, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, we will talk about you've got to follow
Speaker 1: your gut and all of this, but it's very very
Speaker 1: intelligent in fact, the guts and it's doing all sorts
Speaker 1: of work for us without us even realizing it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's detoxing, and during sleep, all of our body goes
Speaker 1: through this detoxification. The liver, for example, does a detox
Speaker 1: during deep sleep. Gut health is very important for our
Speaker 1: organism because it helps us to absorb vitamins, nutrients, it
Speaker 1: helps us to eliminate toxins. So it's really wonderful to
Speaker 1: know that without us really having to do anything apart
Speaker 1: from prioritize our night of sleep, all of this wonderful
Speaker 1: work is taking place in our bodies. And you'll know,
Speaker 1: if you know anyone who's got any kind of gut
Speaker 1: health issue, which I think we probably all do, they
Speaker 1: have less energy. I mean, you feel way more energized
Speaker 1: when your gut is in good shape and everything's working
Speaker 1: properly in that area of your body, because it's very
Speaker 1: very exhausting and it drains your energy. If your gut
Speaker 1: is working hard to try and eliminate things, but not
Speaker 1: managing it. So it's very important to carve out space
Speaker 1: in our lives for sleep. It really is like magic
Speaker 1: to create this space in our lives to heal and
Speaker 1: rejuvenate and recover. And you know that's all just all
Speaker 1: the physical stuff. We haven't even got into the spiritual
Speaker 1: stuff yet that comes with sleep.
Speaker 3: Well, let's complete the benefits by saying the last item
Speaker 3: is portal to the sacred? What does that mean? Is
Speaker 3: that kind of the spiritual side?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, that's the spiritual side of sleep. Sleep. Sleep is incredible.
Speaker 1: It can teach us about oneness and death and enlightenment,
Speaker 1: and it can take us into incredibly spiritual states of consciousness,
Speaker 1: such as deep lucid dreaming, which is my term for
Speaker 1: the kinds of dreams, the kind of lucid dreams where
Speaker 1: you're not just running around having loads of fun or
Speaker 1: having sex with movie stars or whatever, that you actually
Speaker 1: start to explore the nature of the dream world, the
Speaker 1: nature of the dream reality, and you end up going
Speaker 1: very deep into some incredible places. One of those places
Speaker 1: I've kind of touched on a little bit already is
Speaker 1: what I call the lucid light which is when you
Speaker 1: find yourself floating in oneness in this incredible light, which
Speaker 1: I mean and I've experienced it many thousands of times,
Speaker 1: and for me, I believe that this light is the
Speaker 1: source light, that's the light from which we all emerged
Speaker 1: at birth and that we all return to when we die.
Speaker 1: That it's always there, It's always always there. It's there
Speaker 1: right now. But we're in our waking state of consciousness
Speaker 1: and we're all bright and alert because we're having this conversation.
Speaker 1: So it's harder to access the lucid light and have
Speaker 1: this immersive oneness experience in the waking state, but in
Speaker 1: sleep states it's way easier. We've already touched on yoga
Speaker 1: nidra naps where you float in radiance. Well, that's the
Speaker 1: lucid light. That's like this return to the source. That's
Speaker 1: where you come out of that experience feeling so incredibly amazing.
Speaker 1: And we can ask to have that kind of experience
Speaker 1: of the light in deep lucid dreams and we can
Speaker 1: find out all sorts of things about the nature of
Speaker 1: the universe and how consciousness works, and we can explore
Speaker 1: out of body experiences or the lucid void when you
Speaker 1: find yourself floating in black light. Because I need to
Speaker 1: say as well, the light doesn't have to be like
Speaker 1: white light or golden light. It can be black light,
Speaker 1: it can be orange light, it can be deep green light,
Speaker 1: purple light, so it can appear as any kind of color.
Speaker 1: But it has that same, oh, that same feeling of
Speaker 1: like homecoming. This is who I really am, this is
Speaker 1: what I really am. And what happens in these experiences
Speaker 1: of lucid light is that after a while of floating
Speaker 1: in the light as a kind of point of conscious awareness,
Speaker 1: we lose our sense of self and we become entirely
Speaker 1: at one with the light, and you have this amazing,
Speaker 1: timeless experience of oneness, which is incredible on every level
Speaker 1: because not only do you feel like you wake up
Speaker 1: feeling amazing and feeling ready to face life, because you
Speaker 1: realize life is kind of like a dream and it's
Speaker 1: not as serious as everybody seems to take it, but
Speaker 1: also because it helps you to understand that we are
Speaker 1: all deeply interconnected, we are all one. So you know,
Speaker 1: like you're over there in the US and you're col Cliff,
Speaker 1: and I'm over here in Europe and I'm call Claire,
Speaker 1: and we kind of view ourselves as very separate entities
Speaker 1: but most of the time, but in fact, we are
Speaker 1: all one. We are all part of this oneness, and
Speaker 1: it's beautiful to be individual and play out our individuality
Speaker 1: in our waking lives. But it's also super important to
Speaker 1: remember our deep interconnection because I mean that really helps
Speaker 1: with empathy. For one thing. I mean, all these wars
Speaker 1: and all the conflict that goes on in the world,
Speaker 1: it's pointless because actually, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we are all one. So these deep lucid dreaming experiences
Speaker 1: and the other spiritual experiences we can have during sleep
Speaker 1: actually remind us of the dance of life and death
Speaker 1: and the fact that we are all one.
Speaker 3: Claire, talk a little bit about leaving the body when
Speaker 3: we sleep and connecting with the soul. I've always wondered,
Speaker 3: and maybe you can address this. When we are out
Speaker 3: of our body, we can connect with other consciousness, we
Speaker 3: can connect with our higher self, but more to the point,
Speaker 3: the soul.
Speaker 2: Talk about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I mean, in my view, we all leave
Speaker 1: our body every single night, right, because we fall asleep
Speaker 1: and we forget about our physical body and we take
Speaker 1: on a dream body, and if we become lucid, we
Speaker 1: change the term and we say now we're in our
Speaker 1: lucid dream body. And if we have an outer body experience,
Speaker 1: we say now we're in our astra. But it's basically
Speaker 1: we're not as tied to the physical body during these experiences. Ah,
Speaker 1: and this gives us so much freedom, it really does freedom,
Speaker 1: as you say, to explore our own higher selves or
Speaker 1: to meet other higher beings, higher entities, and connect with
Speaker 1: our soul, I mean basically our soul. We are always
Speaker 1: in connection with our soul. It doesn't go anywhere, it
Speaker 1: doesn't disappear anywhere. It's always there. It's like this lucid
Speaker 1: light that I've just talked about. It's always there. But
Speaker 1: most of the time, you know, when we're awake, we're
Speaker 1: in a bright, waking state of consciousness. We may feel
Speaker 1: more separated from our soul, or we may feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't have all that soul knowledge that I want
Speaker 1: to connect with them. We start viewing ourselves as separate
Speaker 1: from our soul, which is simply impossible. But it's true
Speaker 1: that it's easier to have these connections, these deep soulful connections,
Speaker 1: or to gain wisdom or advice from our higher self
Speaker 1: or our soul when we enter the states of consciousness
Speaker 1: that are available to us during a night of sleep.
Speaker 3: Why is it so difficult to remember our dreams? Because
Speaker 3: I know I dream, but I just can't remember them.
Speaker 3: You know, it's so funny. I think sometimes for me
Speaker 3: it's maybe I'm being chielded because maybe they're too traumatic
Speaker 3: or they're too scary or something, and I just rather
Speaker 3: not remember them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, maybe that's the reason for you. Then if
Speaker 1: there's a kind of block there because you're thinking, oh, actually,
Speaker 1: I don't really want to know, then those dreams will
Speaker 1: stay away. You know. Dreams are a bit like shy animals,
Speaker 1: So we need to give them a set, like a
Speaker 1: kind of a warm welcome, let's say, and be ready
Speaker 1: to listen to them because they have so much wisdom
Speaker 1: within them. But yeah, a lot of people don't remember
Speaker 1: that dreams because of the lifestyle we have, because of
Speaker 1: the culture that many of us in the West grew
Speaker 1: up in of like dreams are not important. Just wake
Speaker 1: up and get on with your real, your really important work,
Speaker 1: which is your day job. And we just we get
Speaker 1: trammeled into thinking like that The best way to remember
Speaker 1: your dreams is not to use any kind of annoying,
Speaker 1: stressful alarm clock, because they are terrible for dreams. They'll
Speaker 1: make all the dreams disappear in a second. Wait, but awful,
Speaker 1: those beeping ones. They're terrible, So we get rid of
Speaker 1: the beeping alarm clock. What you can do if you
Speaker 1: have to wake up to an alarm clock, then you
Speaker 1: can create a musical alarm clock with your favorite tune
Speaker 1: or tunes, and set your alarm maybe five minutes earlier
Speaker 1: than usual, and just as soon as the music kicks
Speaker 1: in and you start to wake up, don't move, don't
Speaker 1: open your eyes, Just stay there and think what was
Speaker 1: I just doing? Who was I with? What did I
Speaker 1: just see? And something will come back. You know, you'll
Speaker 1: remember someone's face, or you remember an emotion I was
Speaker 1: really angry about something, or you remember, well, for some reason,
Speaker 1: I was standing on a chair. That might be the
Speaker 1: only thing you can remember, but that's okay. You write
Speaker 1: that down, and gradually, as you continue to listen to
Speaker 1: the songs, try and keep the same songs on the
Speaker 1: alarm on the alarm clock, because that sets off this
Speaker 1: automatic response in you. It's like it trains you to
Speaker 1: start thinking about and connecting with your dreams when you
Speaker 1: hear those particular songs, And gradually you'll find that when
Speaker 1: you have that, you know, a dream image like oh
Speaker 1: I was standing on a chair, you'll be able to
Speaker 1: just wait and rest with that dream image, and suddenly
Speaker 1: you'll remember what happened before you stood on the chair.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there was a weird little dinosaur that came
Speaker 1: into my room and I thought I'd better stand on
Speaker 1: my chair. And then you know, and then you're full
Speaker 1: of the dream back before you know what happened before
Speaker 1: the dinosaur came in. And so all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you'll have these streams of dreams that you can write down.
Speaker 1: And it's just so much fun to engage with with
Speaker 1: your dreams, you know, like we spend so much time.
Speaker 1: We spend a third of our life asleep and about
Speaker 1: six years solid of our lives dreaming, and it's just
Speaker 1: why waste that time? You know, Cliff, I'm going to
Speaker 1: send you a challenge now to see if you can
Speaker 1: remember your dreams, make a concerted effort to do so
Speaker 1: for seven nights, Like, just try it, just see how
Speaker 1: it goes, Okay.
Speaker 3: A pad of paper and a pin by the bed.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but that's another thing. Some people hate writings.
Speaker 1: If you hate writing these days, you know, you can
Speaker 1: just use your phone to record your your voice or
Speaker 1: some sort of other. It's even better to have a
Speaker 1: voice activated recorder so you don't have to get up
Speaker 1: and start pressing buttons and open your eyes. You know,
Speaker 1: it's best to be able to just like mumble your
Speaker 1: dreams into this voice activated recording device. But some people
Speaker 1: like to write, and they can write their dreams down.
Speaker 1: Other people say, oh, I can't write my dreams down
Speaker 1: because my bed partner wants to stay asleep longer. That
Speaker 1: you can get pens which have little lights on them
Speaker 1: so you can write them down without waking anyone up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's just good to see what comes out, because
Speaker 1: this is all part of you. I mean, you are
Speaker 1: a whole other person in your dreams, right, You're not
Speaker 1: the regular Cliff Dunning who goes around it it goes
Speaker 1: about his business during the day. You're going to be
Speaker 1: doing all sorts of crazy things in your dreams, and
Speaker 1: perhaps some really truly amazingly beautiful things. But if you
Speaker 1: don't remember them, you're missing out. You know, so I
Speaker 1: think it's lovely just to welcome your dream making me.
Speaker 3: Feel guilty clear seven days challenge. You know, I really
Speaker 3: appreciate that. Let's talk about this Elixir of sleep, this
Speaker 3: new book. You have a number of wonderful benefits for
Speaker 3: people that are problem sleepers. Let's talk about a couple.
Speaker 3: You have what they call a worry journal. Why is
Speaker 3: this important and how does it work?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so well, basically people have done studies into
Speaker 1: this and they've found that if you write down your
Speaker 1: worries or your troubles or your problems before you go
Speaker 1: to bed, it provides you with a way of offloading
Speaker 1: them from your consciousness. So it's just a very beneficial
Speaker 1: practice just to get them out of the way. And
Speaker 1: some people say it's also good to write down your
Speaker 1: to do list for the next day and just get
Speaker 1: that offloaded from your consciousness as well, because otherwise we
Speaker 1: end up going into sleep feeling agitated, ruminating on our worries,
Speaker 1: and it's just that can really set the tone for
Speaker 1: the whole night of sleep. And if we're unlucky, then
Speaker 1: we have a lot of restless dreams, or we wake
Speaker 1: up in the night feeling anxious. So many people reach
Speaker 1: out to me like for private sessions, and the reason
Speaker 1: for it is either nightmares or waking up with this
Speaker 1: nameless feeling of dread in the night, and they don't
Speaker 1: understand why or where it's from. And I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: it's all to do with the worries in people's lives
Speaker 1: and the fact that they are not dealing with them
Speaker 1: while awake, and then when they go to sleep, they're
Speaker 1: so anxious. They have such a high level anxious of
Speaker 1: anxiety that they end up not getting a proper night
Speaker 1: sleep and it's breaking into their sleep. So you have
Speaker 1: to basically go back to to techniques for how to
Speaker 1: calm down and meditate and release these worries before you sleep.
Speaker 1: I created a guided meditation which is on my website
Speaker 1: for free, and one of the things it does, which
Speaker 1: is really beautiful, is you sit down by this stream
Speaker 1: and on the stream there are these leaves going by,
Speaker 1: and you just take a worry and you put it
Speaker 1: on one of these leaves and the stream carries it away.
Speaker 1: And then the next leaf comes along and you take
Speaker 1: one of your troubles or problems and you put it
Speaker 1: on that leaf and it carries it away. So it's
Speaker 1: just like a really beautiful, very gentle visualization to help
Speaker 1: us release those worries. And it really feels so real
Speaker 1: to do this. I don't know if you've ever tried
Speaker 1: doing that as an imaginative exercise, but it's beautiful. You
Speaker 1: just allow this stream to take your worries away, and
Speaker 1: it sends you into a very deeply relaxed state. You
Speaker 1: start to feel very blissed out, and then you enter
Speaker 1: sleep already feeling so much better. But very beneficial for
Speaker 1: people's mental health to do this kind of exercise.
Speaker 2: I love that idea.
Speaker 3: We're going to take another short break to allow our
Speaker 3: sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return with doctor
Speaker 3: Claire Johnson speaking on her new book Elixir of Sleep.
Speaker 2: Will rejoin you shortly.
Speaker 1: Follow machine and kiddos have better luck than I. I
Speaker 1: hope he needs the teddy he deserves.
Speaker 3: I shall have the dream, but never.
Speaker 2: Play, because I can see doing any other ways.
Speaker 1: I know you can see.
Speaker 2: The twinkle in my eyes.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for it desperately.
Speaker 3: Doctor Claire Johnson is my guest today. She has written
Speaker 3: a number of books on sleep and lucid dreaming. Dreaming
Speaker 3: is a very big part of our sleep process, and
Speaker 3: we're talking today on how to get a good night's
Speaker 3: sleep as well as dreaming and cultivating good dreams that
Speaker 3: we can use to enhance our cognition. Let's talk about
Speaker 3: it's number eight practice number eight, which is candlelight bath ritual. Now,
Speaker 3: I know, if I've had a really stressful day, if
Speaker 3: I take a bath, that's going to be a precursor
Speaker 3: to a good sleep. But talk about why a bath
Speaker 3: is really a critical element in getting a good sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, for a start, if you relax in a
Speaker 1: hot tub, I mean, it's just beautiful for your body.
Speaker 1: You float, It's so lovely to leave the weight of
Speaker 1: the physical body behind just you know, and just allow
Speaker 1: yourself to float a little in the water. It's a
Speaker 1: very healing element to be in. And also there's a
Speaker 1: practical function of a hot bath as well, because what
Speaker 1: it actually does is once you're out of the bath,
Speaker 1: your body temperature drops to even cooler than it was
Speaker 1: before you went into the bar, and you need to
Speaker 1: be cool. Your brain needs to be cool for you
Speaker 1: to go to sleep, so it helps you to fall
Speaker 1: asleep more quickly. But one of the things that One
Speaker 1: of the practices in Elixir of Sleep that is a
Speaker 1: very personal practice where I kind of add to this
Speaker 1: bathtub ritual is oming in the bathtub. So when you
Speaker 1: chant omb in the bathtub, I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: ever tried it, Try it next time after a stressful day.
Speaker 1: It's Oh, it's so amazing because you really feel the
Speaker 1: vibration of the omb because it goes all the way
Speaker 1: through the bath water, and the human body is like
Speaker 1: over sixty percent water anyway, So you can basically turn
Speaker 1: your body into this vibrating portal and it's gorgeous. And
Speaker 1: you can add a healing or a relaxing intention to
Speaker 1: your humming or to your oming in the bathtub and
Speaker 1: just allow that to be directed through every cell in
Speaker 1: your body. And it is just absolutely incredible to do this.
Speaker 1: So it's one of the most beautiful practices in the
Speaker 1: book for me. I really love it fantastic. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the key elements in this book that you've incorporated,
Speaker 1: Claire is the Sleep Quiz, which is all of chapter five.
Speaker 1: Why did you design this and talk about the benefits
Speaker 1: of using the sleep quiz? Yeah, So I've had so
Speaker 1: many private sessions with people who ask me about all
Speaker 1: of these different sleep issues that they have, from not
Speaker 1: being able to fall asleep, to having anxiety dreams, or
Speaker 1: to as I said earlier, waking up feeling anxious in
Speaker 1: the night, or having extremely vivid dreams where they feel
Speaker 1: the dreams are too vivid and they're too busy and
Speaker 1: they're not getting proper night's rest. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: so many different different potential issues to interrupt a good
Speaker 1: night's sleep, and a lot of people have multiple issues,
Speaker 1: so it's not just one thing as a combination of factors.
Speaker 1: And I just realized that basically we are all individual
Speaker 1: sleepers and dreamers, and so this quiz is extremely comprehensive.
Speaker 1: It probably takes about twenty minutes twenty five minutes to
Speaker 1: actually go through it and write down all your responses
Speaker 1: because it's deep. But it will get you thinking about
Speaker 1: who you are when you sleep, the kind of dreamer
Speaker 1: that you are, what you need to improve in terms
Speaker 1: of your night of sleep. And then what it does
Speaker 1: is it takes you to the best practices for you
Speaker 1: to fast track you to a wonderful night of sleep.
Speaker 1: So that's why the book has so many practices. Well,
Speaker 1: it has like sixty four practices, I think something like that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that's how the sleep quiz came about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 3: This is a combination of your years of work and
Speaker 3: I really like it. But I want to talk just
Speaker 3: real briefly about some of the dynamics or the portions
Speaker 3: of good sleep. And I want to talk about ramsleep.
Speaker 3: What is ram sleep? And when we're in ramsleep, I
Speaker 3: think this is where we begin the deeper parts or
Speaker 3: what you would call lucid dreaming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so REM sleep is rapid eye movement sleep, and
Speaker 1: this is a stage of sleep where we become our
Speaker 1: brain becomes incredibly active. It becomes thirty percent more active
Speaker 1: than it is in the waking state. So it's a
Speaker 1: very kind of aroused state of sleep. Also physiologically, because
Speaker 1: everybody is genitally aroused during REM sleep. So that's why
Speaker 1: a lot of dreams are erotic, or particularly when people
Speaker 1: become lucid in their dreams, they might instantly go into
Speaker 1: an erotic lucid dream scenario. So the body is like yeah,
Speaker 1: and the respiration is much faster, the heart rate increases,
Speaker 1: The whole body is in this state of like hyper
Speaker 1: arousal and this is when the most vivid dreams occur,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's linked in many ways to lucid dreaming.
Speaker 1: Although lucid dreams can happen at any stage of sleep,
Speaker 1: you know, they've also been noted in the sleep lab
Speaker 1: to happen in stage one sleep, for example, But basically
Speaker 1: they're much more likely to happen during REM sleep because
Speaker 1: these vivid dreams are so weird that we're much more
Speaker 1: likely to notice something very weird and strange has happened
Speaker 1: and then understand that we must be dreaming. So it
Speaker 1: gives us that little kick of consciousness that raised awareness.
Speaker 1: But REM sleep, I mean, it's just an incredible state
Speaker 1: for creativity as well. There was so much rampant creativity
Speaker 1: in the REM dreaming phase. And the thing to know
Speaker 1: about REMS sleep is it happens cyclically, and the beginning
Speaker 1: of the night you only have maybe about ten minutes
Speaker 1: of REM sleep at the end of each ninety minute
Speaker 1: sleep cycle. But as those sleep cycles continue, the REM
Speaker 1: period lengthens, so you end up with a really long
Speaker 1: period of REM sleep in the morning, maybe fifty minutes
Speaker 1: or an hour, and that's an optimal moment for connecting
Speaker 1: with your dreams, becoming lucid in your dreams and having
Speaker 1: better dream recall. So it's just a good moment to
Speaker 1: focus your efforts for lucidity. If you want to have
Speaker 1: lucid dreams, focus them on the morning, lie in hours,
Speaker 1: if you manage to sleep in, or also during nap
Speaker 1: time when for example, we you know, during naptimes we
Speaker 1: often wake up with some really vivid, bright dreams because
Speaker 1: we're catching up on some of the rems sleep we
Speaker 1: may have missed during the night.
Speaker 3: So you can actually get rem sleep when you're doing
Speaker 3: your afternoons, your nap.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I really often if I actually, if I
Speaker 1: don't just do the yoga ninja where I float on
Speaker 1: the edge of the hypnogogic state, if I fall asleep
Speaker 1: during an time, then I always remember dreams. Oh I
Speaker 1: love those. I love those dreams. So yeah, it's another
Speaker 1: precious moment to catch a dream. Okay, Cliff, that's what
Speaker 1: you're going to be doing for the next seven days.
Speaker 1: I'll be checking up on you exactly.
Speaker 3: The book's called Elixir of Sleep. My guest today has
Speaker 3: been Claire Johnson. Claire, let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 3: lucid dreaming. I'd like you to include, just real briefly,
Speaker 3: the art of dream incubation. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so dream incubation is oh sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah go ahead, Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dream incubation just means inviting a dream. And I
Speaker 1: mean this is an age old practice as well. In
Speaker 1: ancient Greece, they used to have these dream incubation temples
Speaker 1: where people would go to to become healed, to invite healing,
Speaker 1: to invite a dream with the gods. But these days
Speaker 1: it's really very simple to incubate a dream. If you
Speaker 1: want to have a particular kind of dream, like a
Speaker 1: problem solving dream or a healing dream, then it's a
Speaker 1: good idea to write your intention down on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper. Write it down really clearly, like not a
Speaker 1: really long sentence, just something very short and simple, like
Speaker 1: heal my knee or which house to move to or
Speaker 1: something like that. You know, whatever the dilemma is in
Speaker 1: your life or which job to take, write it down
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper and put it under your pillow,
Speaker 1: and before you fall asleep, just really imagine yourself having
Speaker 1: the dream that you need that's going to help you
Speaker 1: to answer this question or to bring you healing and
Speaker 1: really imagine how good it feels like, get involved emotionally
Speaker 1: with the idea of having this answer or having the
Speaker 1: healing come to you. And what I often do to
Speaker 1: invite a dream is I shout out in my mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something like, for example, if I want to heal live,
Speaker 1: shout out healing dream, healing dream. I just shout it
Speaker 1: in my mind as if I'm shouting to someone on
Speaker 1: the other side of a forest. And that really really
Speaker 1: works well for me. It's one of the best techniques
Speaker 1: for inviting or incubating a dream. And then, of course
Speaker 1: the next step is to remember your dreams and write
Speaker 1: them down. And it may take a couple of nights
Speaker 1: for the dream that you're looking for to come, but
Speaker 1: you just stay tuned, don't give up, and keep thinking
Speaker 1: about it also during the day, thinking oh, I'll have
Speaker 1: that dream tonight. So yeah, just keep engaged with the process.
Speaker 3: It's so wonderful to hear your enthusiasm for dreaming. I
Speaker 3: I don't think we take our dreams serious enough and
Speaker 3: how important they are in health benefit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's true. It's a wonderful world to explore,
Speaker 1: you know, and we can all do it. Will do
Speaker 1: it every night anyway, so we well, we may as
Speaker 1: well bring our attention to it and expand our life
Speaker 1: experience so we're not wasting all those years sleeping and dreaming,
Speaker 1: but we're actually learning and evolving.
Speaker 3: This book just came out in January, so it's been around.
Speaker 3: You can get it on I think it's on Oh yes, here,
Speaker 3: it's on Amazon and wherever you get your book. So
Speaker 3: it's through Llewellyn Publishing House, which is a good, good publisher.
Speaker 3: Give us your website and how people can learn more
Speaker 3: about you clear.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. Yeah. So my website is deep Lucid
Speaker 1: Dreaming dot com and you can go there for loads
Speaker 1: of information about sleep, dreams, nightmares, out of body experiences,
Speaker 1: the lucid void, the lucid light, telepathy and dreams, unconscious intelligence,
Speaker 1: all of that sort of stuff. And you can also
Speaker 1: click on courses or class I think it's called classes
Speaker 1: there to go to all of my video classes and workshops.
Speaker 1: I also give Lucid Dreaming Ocean Retreat in person. The
Speaker 1: next ones on Hawaii on the Big Island in October.
Speaker 1: I think it starts around October the twenty fifth. All
Speaker 1: that information is on my website. You can also sign
Speaker 1: up there and download some free meditations and oh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's all sorts of stuff. There's all my
Speaker 1: books and everything. I mean, this is like, this is
Speaker 1: my life's work, all of this, all of these topics
Speaker 1: with sleep and dreams and lucid dreams. And what I'm
Speaker 1: going to do as well is launch a podcast next month.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start it with interviews various people. I know,
Speaker 1: it's exciting, you know the cliff. I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: putting it off for so long because and I don't
Speaker 1: know how you do it, because you've been doing it
Speaker 1: for so long. It's amazing, But you've got to be
Speaker 1: consistent about podcasting. I'm trying to. Yeah, So I'm trying
Speaker 1: to build up a load of podcast interviews and also
Speaker 1: kind of like solo podcasts where I talk about different
Speaker 1: aspects of sleep and deep lucid dreaming.
Speaker 2: Clear, you have a wonderful podcast because.
Speaker 3: There's I mean, you know that you know the industry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true, I know everybody. I've probably got some
Speaker 1: great people who I've interviewed for it. It's so lovely
Speaker 1: And that's actually one of the parts. I'm really enjoying
Speaker 1: about preparing all this podcast stuff is chatting to my friends,
Speaker 1: my dream colleagues, all these gorgeous people who explore consciousness.
Speaker 1: So it is really exciting. And I'm going to launch
Speaker 1: it in basically a couple of weeks. Yeah. Oh and
Speaker 1: one more thing as well, Cliff, I'm also doing I'll
Speaker 1: be teaching a twenty one day transformative sleep class in
Speaker 1: May as well with a mystery man whose name I
Speaker 1: can't reveal right now, but so that's going to be
Speaker 1: pretty cool as well. And that's got loads of live
Speaker 1: workshops and daily videos and allsorts, so so much exciting
Speaker 1: stuff in the pipeline and I love it.
Speaker 3: I'm so jealous, Claire. You have so much energy. You're
Speaker 3: making me want to look closer at the this afternoon nap.
Speaker 1: That's oh yeah, Oh I hope you will, Cliff. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Pleasure as always. The book again is Elixir of Sleep.
Speaker 3: It just came out. Always a pleasure to have you
Speaker 3: on the program, Claire, and continued success.
Speaker 1: Oh, thank you so much, Cliff. It's always a delight
Speaker 1: to talk to you. And I'll be in touch about
Speaker 1: those dreams.
Speaker 2: Fantastic, Thank you.
Speaker 3: I want to mention that the sleep quiz in this
Speaker 3: book is worth the price by itself because she gives
Speaker 3: a number of suggestions for getting over problems with sleep.
Speaker 3: And sometimes we might be on medication, we might have
Speaker 3: an an illness that deprives us of sleep, and there's
Speaker 3: techniques for relieving those issues and getting the sleep we need.
Speaker 3: Everybody is different, you know. I do know people that
Speaker 3: are comfortable with four hours of sleep, but they're not
Speaker 3: going to necessarily have great, great dream abilities with four
Speaker 3: hours because you're not going to be able to get
Speaker 3: into the RAM sleep Rapidi movement sleep, which is vital
Speaker 3: for lucid dreaming, and that was part of our discussion today,
Speaker 3: is lucid dreaming. I you know, I've followed different dream
Speaker 3: experts over the years and having a little notepad by
Speaker 3: the side of your bed with a pin, and I
Speaker 3: like her idea of finding a pin that's got a
Speaker 3: light on so you don't have to wake up anybody
Speaker 3: who's next to you or shock yourself into being awake.
Speaker 3: That's the big problem I also believe is that people
Speaker 3: don't want to wake up.
Speaker 2: I want to keep sleeping.
Speaker 3: I don't want to, you know, wake up after my
Speaker 3: dream and it was a profound dream. You probably should
Speaker 3: get a right part of it down because you might
Speaker 3: be getting premonition, you might be getting the answers to questions,
Speaker 3: you might get solutions to problems. You can do a
Speaker 3: lot with dreaming. If you're a person who remembers their dreams,
Speaker 3: it can really be a big benefit. So Elixir of Sleep,
Speaker 3: Claire Johnson. That was fun and the book just came out,
Speaker 3: so check it out. If you're thinking about summertime now,
Speaker 3: perhaps you're thinking about vacation. We have a tour coming
Speaker 3: up in Turkey. It's our second annual Turkey tour. It
Speaker 3: is June twenty second to July second. It is we
Speaker 3: all meet in is Temple. Great tour because the tour
Speaker 3: itinerary includes places like Gopeckley Teppe, which keeps becoming mind boggling.
Speaker 3: They keep finding new stuff there, Carahan Teppe, Underground City
Speaker 3: of darren Kuru, Cappadocia, some of the world's most amazing
Speaker 3: museums Roman Greek and things like that, and the food,
Speaker 3: the beverages getting around. It's just a real real pleasure.
Speaker 3: For more information and all the details go to earthacients
Speaker 3: dot com, Forward slash tours.
Speaker 2: And check it out.
Speaker 3: We got another tour coming up. It's just being formulated
Speaker 3: as we speak. It's our first Daniel Guatemalan Sacred Pyramid Tour.
Speaker 3: It's December first to the twelfth, is what we believe
Speaker 3: it's going to be. We'll have more details on it.
Speaker 3: If you want to be considered for that, send me
Speaker 3: an email. Send it to Earth Ancients the number four
Speaker 3: of the letter you at gmail dot com and we
Speaker 3: will put you on the list. I'm going to be
Speaker 3: talking more about that. It's with doctor Lydia di Leon
Speaker 3: and her husband Arturo, who are in Mexico. This will
Speaker 3: be focused on Guatemala. We've just added another portion, which
Speaker 3: is El Miador, which is the one of the oldest
Speaker 3: and most well designed Mayan cities of the ancient past.
Speaker 3: It includes the largest known pyramids in the Americas, a
Speaker 3: place called Lydonte, so we'll be able to chance check
Speaker 3: that out as well. All the details will be coming
Speaker 3: out soon. If you're interested in joining us, to me
Speaker 3: an email Earth Agents for you at gmail dot com
Speaker 3: and well I'll get back to you. All right, that's
Speaker 3: it for this program. I want to think my guest today,
Speaker 3: Claire Johnson, coming to us from England her new book
Speaker 3: Elixir of Sleep. As always, the team of Gil tour
Speaker 3: Mark Foster and everyone who makes this thing happen. You
Speaker 3: guys rock all right, take care of you well and
Speaker 3: we will talk to you next time.
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