How To Guide Your Dreams
For thousands of years, people have used pre-sleep practices and rituals to guide their dreams toward a chosen topic. Dream incubation is used to solve problems, offer guidance and ignite creative inspiration. What’s new, and what I’m investigating for my book on the science of dreaming, is targeted dream incubation (TDI) that uses stimuli to help guide dreams. Dream scientists Adam Haar, Robert Stickgold, and colleagues developed this contemporary incubation method using sound and touch to connect with a dreamer as they enter sleep onset.
TDI is part of the emerging field of dream engineering that uses technology to shape our dreams. As you fall asleep, shuffling through memories from the day, a pre-recorded message focuses your thoughts on whatever you’ve chosen to dream about. This can be done using the lightweight sleep tracking device Dormio that is fitted with sensors to identify sleep onset. Haar invented Dormio in collaboration with colleagues at MIT and Harvard University. Or there’s a more low-tech, timer-based option that I tested, which lets you record your own voice prompts that are played at the time when most people are in the first stage of sleep. Does it work? Let’s find out.
For my at-home experiment, I decided to try and dream about trees, which is the topic that Haar and colleagues used in their study on TDI. As I lay down, a pre-recorded message of my voice told me to “remember to think of a tree.” I shuffled through images of trees in my yard. This led me to the row of cedars that we transplanted from a family log cabin before it was sold. I thought about memories from our time there. Playing cards by the wood stove. Sleeping on the screened porch on hot summer nights. Then I thought of the time that my husband and I got lost in the woods behind the cabin.
As I focused on the forest of trees, the recording of my voice interrupted my thoughts, reminding me to think of a tree. It felt like my mind was in two different modes at once. I was focused on trees while my mind roamed freely with this idea. It reminded me of a dreamy kind of brainstorming session. Before the experiment, Haar explained that the verbal prompts weren’t intended to wake me up. They wouldn’t let me fall into a deep sleep, either. So I remained aware of my bizarre thoughts as they popped into my head. Like the thick, twisted branches that began to move around me in the forest, lifting me onto the top of the canopy of trees. I swayed along with the trees, which transformed into the whitecapped waves of an ocean. I reached for a fistful of leaves, and water poured between my fingers. I dipped my hand into the black water and something grazed my finger. It was the roots of a tree. The birch tree from my childhood home.
I found myself lying on the grass under the birch where I spent countless hours as a kid, staring up at the leaves waving in the summer breeze. I imagined the tree’s roots underneath me, pumping with blood and life. Then the vein-roots broke through the ground and gave me a strong, comforting hug. More tree roots broke through the earth and lifted my childhood home, placing it in the backyard where I now live. As my mom walked out of the house wearing massive red glasses, a recording of my voice asked, “tell me, what were you thinking about?” I reached for the pad and pen on my bedside table and scribbled all this down.
So it worked. I dreamt of trees. Many kinds of trees from different points in my life, connecting me to places and events from another time. Since my at-home dream experiment, I haven’t looked at a tree the same. If you want to learn more about TDI, read the study by Haar and colleagues https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31361-w.
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