Supercharge Your Dreams With Deep Breathing
We’re all dreamers. Whether it’s within a deep night’s sleep, or throughout the day when our mind wanders, our dreams can be a magical and creative experience of connecting deeper to our inner self, to our subconscious. Sometimes we may awake having no recollection of our dreams, whilst other times they can be vivid and allow us to have more control over them. These types of dreams, where the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming, are known as lucid dreams, and something we can try to induce through the power of our breath.
Studies have shown that most dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of the sleep cycle, when our brain is most active. Usually after we fall asleep, we pass through three stages of non-REM sleep before beginning to dream. But when a person enters lucid dreaming, their brain state is between REM sleep and being awake, which allows them to have a greater awareness that they are dreaming. The dreamer may gain a certain degree of control over the dream’s characters, plot, colours, and setting, and be able to change the story, so to speak. However that is not always the case – sometimes the dreamer is just aware that they are dreaming but they do not control the narrative. Either way, it can be a vivid and enlightening experience that allows us to explore our inner dream world with greater awareness. Lucid dreaming has been recognised as having benefits, such as:
- Reducing symptoms of anxiety
- Enhancing creativity
- Preventing nightmares, or increasing the ability to change the nightmare into a more positive dream
Our breath has the ability to take us deeper within our dreams and even into this state of lucid dreaming. It all comes back to practising your deep breathing techniques, because when you breathe deeply, you’re letting in more oxygen to your body, which brings the body into a state of deep relaxation ready for REM sleep. I dive deeper into deep breathing techniques in my Show Up & Shine program, which has been designed to introduce you to different types of breath.
Our dreams truly can be windows to our soul. They can be small dreams that are connected to current things and everyday tasks that are on our mind, to big dreams that stick with us for a long time. They can reveal our unconscious desires, our memories, our motivations, but also our trauma, worries, and fears. To dive deeper into what your dreams are trying to tell you, and connect you to. This month in the Awakening Group we were lucky enough to have Brad Fennell conduct a Dreaming Masterclass. Brad offers beautiful insight into uncovering the meaning of your dreams and how to understand yourself in these dream-like moments.
Remember, when we relax and enter the breath we can arrive in this magical and profound state of lucid dreaming, which can help reach amazing creativity and clarity for life. So if you are ready to experience this deeper side of dreaming through connecting to your breath, I recommend you get started with my breathwork techniques in my Show Up & Shine program.
