How to: control your dreams

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you've woken up and you're like...

DAMN. 

THAT dream was intense.

That dream must have MEANT something.

Want to know more about them, how to hack them to gain clarity and peace?

Let's go!

So...

This blog post was inspired by one of my former reoccurring nightmares.

Yup. 

I will preface this entire post to say, my dreams are NOT normal, so continue at your own enjoyment.

(Or horror!)

Over the years I've done a bit of an experiment with my dreams. 

They've honestly been weird and intense since I was a child (for my fellow astrology nerds, I have Venus in the 12th house so that must explain something haha). 

I've trained myself to remember my dreams and write them down, so I have them tracked in all the both fantastic and gory detail over the last 4 years of my life. 

I have one very giant note on my phone. 

I'm sure ChatGPT could tell me allll sorts of things about how strange I am should I plug that baby into it! 

When I have a weird dream, I often wake up and voice-to-text it into my notes (because hell if I'm going to start tip tap typing out my dream in a half-groggy state at 2:37am, no thanks!)

This was a dream I had a few years ago, and it's...bizarre. 

Ready for it? 

Here we go.

I kept dreaming I was in a beautiful, old-fashioned hotel.

When I would walk into the hotel, where a young woman would escort me through a quiet, carpeted lobby to an elevator, whose doors would creak open slowly. 

Sometimes I could even see the elevator descend to get me on the ground floor, I'd watch that old fashioned dial move from right to left as it descended. 

I'd follow this woman into the elevator. And higher and higher it would climb, with her standing silently behind me.

(A bit like the ghost of Christmas past, she just STOOD there rather ominously -- saying nothing.)

I'd watch as the floors lit up as I went higher and higher. 

Sometimes the floors were numbers.

Sometimes the floors were strange characters, nothing I'd recognized as a human language. 

One time the floors were different fruits. 

(Right ?!?!?!?! For real. I can't make this up.)

Then, the doors would suddenly open up on a magnificent top floor.

I could see clouds all around me and it felt like I was looking out over heaven. 

And then we changed from dream....

TO NIGHTMARE.

 I would look over and see what floor I was on, and a small SKULL would light up. 

Oh, shiiii....

And -- POOF. The woman behind me would lean forward and firmly push me out of the open elevator doors.

(Rude.)

And I would be weightless, falling quickly from the sky, hurtling towards earth and inky blackness.

Boom. I'd wake up in my bed, panicked, sometimes with a jolt. 

Happy to be alive, but sometimes in a cold sweat or even shaking. 

What did this dream MEAN?!?!?!

This dream came back for months and months.

Always in a slightly different way. 

One time I was stuck on the elevator and it would hurtle me up and down like the Tower of Terror at a rapid pace. 

One time I was trapped in it and was yelling for help for hours. 

Another time I would get in and it would spin in circles and the bottom would drop out like a bad amusement park ride. 

I could not escape this elevator dream no matter how hard I tried. 

I dreaded going to sleep. 

I started trying different teas -- passion flower, lemon balm, melatonin, valerian root.

Nope. They helped me relax and fall asleep, but the dream remained. 

UNTIL. I decided I had enough. 

Real talk: I LOVE sleeping. 

I find it to be the most restorative process and I was waking up super grumpy and tired because of this dream. 

I had to end this cycle.

I plugged into Google: "How to control your dreams". 

 What came back to me was a host of books, one of them by a truly talented author and dream specialist, Charlie Morley. 

He wrote a book on lucid dreaming and teaches in it specific practices to teach yourself how to train your brain to reach the hypnagogic state to change what's going on in your dream.

I dove RIGHT in.

Apparently there are both spiritual and psychological benefits to practicing what is often called "dream yoga" where you train your brain to recognize when you are asleep and when you are dreaming.

Techniques include waking yourself up for 20 minutes in the middle of the night to go back to sleep (which often inspires a lucid dream) or doing affirmations/visualizations before bed to alter your dream state or remember your dreams. 

One technique is to say, "Tonight, I am having a lucid dream" about 25x just as you are drifting off to sleep.

(I would count this out on my fingers as I was fighting back sleep...not easy!!)

Every night is a new opportunity to practice!

I love learning new life hacks and this seemed right up my alley. 

I started the visualizations and affirmations before bed, counting on my fingers as I drifted off to sleep.

I would set my alarm for an hour early so I could wake up and fall back to sleep.

And yet...

I was still on the damn elevator. 

So, I started writing down my dreams -- noting the differences and details as they happened each night.

I learned from Charlie that dreamtime is an "expanded field"-- where you can escape the bounds of ordinary reality with unlimited access to ALL realities.

Past, present and future are all happening simultaneously. 

As he teaches, when you become a "conscious dreamer" you create a NEW reality for yourself.

Dreamtime also will bring to the surface any psychological core issues you have been struggling with.

These core issues are often belief constructs you learn from both society and experience.

Dreams often bring up the OLD belief patterns, where you are getting stuck -- so that you can release them to create a new experience.

He said that dreams often show blocks or fears or what has been hidden from you in waking reality, so that you can integrate this energy to move forward in life. 

Profound growth happens when you "HUG YOUR NIGHTMARES" -- his words, not mine!

So...ok. The nightmare kept happening...so I had to try something different.

I did a writing exercise around this dream. 

What fears was my elevator dream bringing up for me?

Fear of falling, obviously.

But what else?

Fear of rising up, up, up only to fall to my death...

... or rather, a fear of FAILURE. 

Oooo. That hits. 

This dream was showing me I was afraid to change my life, afraid to go "higher" because I was afraid of failing. 

Of achieving my dreams and then having them fall to pieces.

Of someone hurting me. 

Fear of rising rising into new levels of understanding... only for someone to judge me and bring me back into criticism. 

Fear, fear, and more fear. 

Yikes. This has to end. 

I started with affirmations of power before going to sleep...

I am safe.

I am calm.

I am supported.

I am loved.

I AM love. 

This brought me into a space of calm.

Then, I set the intention (25 times on my fingers, counting it off!)

"Tonight I will end my elevator nightmare with a lucid dream." 

I was determined. 

I drifted off to sleep...but. I couldn't see anything. No dreams came.

I repeated this process the next night...nothing.

And the next...nothing.

Maybe I was broken? Maybe I couldn't lucid dream?

The next night, I drank a cup of mugwort tea before drifting off to sleep. 

Mugwort sounds magical, and it is! The tea actually is known to assist in lucid dreams.

I repeated the process again, and this time -- it WORKED.

I found myself back in the (spooky) old-fashioned hotel.

This time, I was face to face with the woman that would lead me into the elevator. 

She looked at me and turned to lead the way to the elevator.

But this time, I knew I had to do something differently.

This was my CHANCE.

At this point, I became lucid and I could CONTROL my actions. 

I took a tentative step towards her, and then another. 

I held out my arms and gathered her into a hug.

I felt her body stiffen at the embrace, and then suddenly...transform.

I looked down, and in my arms was a tiny baby girl, all wrapped up in blankets.

Suddenly the walls of the hotel began to shake, and I knew I had to leave it.

The floor started trembling. A strong vibration was moving UNDER the hotel.

An earthquake was happening!!

I raced through the hotel doors and ran up the stairs of a building nearby, just in time to see the hotel FALL into a massive crack that opened in the earth and a giant vortex of white smoke appeared instead.

I held on to the little baby in my arms and told her that she was safe. 

(I TOLD you my dreams are intense, right?!!?!) 

I woke up at this point, feeling FREE. Feeling massive relief.

I had ended this cycle of fear of failure...by loving and forgiving myself.

That woman I saw?

That was me.

The baby she became?

That was me, too.

All aspects of myself -- I had to forgive myself, to love myself deeply and ACCEPT myself in order to be free.

I had to release this fear that I was going to fail.

And I had to embrace my truth instead. 

That I would be ok, no matter what. 

That I could love and accept myself.

That I could choose my own path.

That I could rescue myself.

After this lucid dream, this nightmare disappeared for good, and I am so, so very grateful. 

I have found new confidence, new hope, and new security in who I am.

I am not afraid of the future, rather, I welcome it with open arms. 

This lucid dreaming process taught me that by analyzing my dreams, and bringing the unconscious into the conscious reality...

I could TRANSFORM parts of myself that I never thought I could.

If you are struggling with a particular dream or nightmare, I invite you to try this dreamtime practice.

Three Steps to Get Started:

#1: Start with an intention to remember your dreams, if you don't remember them currently. You can even try repeating this 25x before you drift off, "Tonight I will remember my dreams."

#2: Keep a little notebook by your bed to write down notes when you wake up. Or, open a "notes" feature on your phone.

#3: Visualizations, affirmations and spoken intentions are MASSIVELY helpful. Some of my favorites are:

• "I am in a lucid dream." X 25
• "I am in a lucid dream with _____" X 25
• "I am seeing my highest potential outcome in a lucid dream" X 25
• "I am breaking my nightmare pattern with a lucid dream" x 25

Or anything you desire. 

The book I linked above is SUPER helpful, funny, and interesting if you are interested -- it will definitely help you have a lucid dream!

Lucid dreaming and dream journaling can be extremely helpful in many types of situations as well.

You can use these techniques to connect to loved ones that have crossed over.

You don't stop loving people when they aren't physically with you -- and dreams often present the perfect "bridge" to connect to those you love. 

You can use them to get clarity and insight on difficult situations. 

You can tap into the deepest parts of your subconscious and overcome patterns that have been running "in the background" for years!

You can even use these deep levels of the mind to talk to and speak to people that you love that are in your life right now.

And find that it shifts your external reality.

Yes, it really does. 

Dreamtime is where you reclaim your power, my friend.

Know that you are STRONGER than any nightmare you have.

Know that you possess more power than you think you do!

You are infinite.

You are capable.

You are deeply supported.

You are never alone.

You are loved. 

You got this!

Happy dreaming!! And thank you for reading...it means the world to me!

PS: Have a weird dream that you want some clarity on? DM me or leave it below as a comment, I have umteen books on dreams and would love to help!!