One of the interesting things you stumble on when ancient civilizations are one of your areas of fascination is what is taken seriously during different time periods. With the myriad messages our brains encounter on a daily basis, which are the ones we lend credence to? What signs or omens are the ones we take note of, if we do so at all? Where do we draw wisdom or new ideas from?
The dreams we experience while sleeping are a fascinating example of this shift. The enlightenment period swung the pendulum toward putting more credence in things we can measure, quantify, and replicate in consistent ways. This was a good and necessary thing at the time – we were still executing people for witchcraft when the enlightenment period began. But, this focus on measurable phenomena means anything that didn’t fall into that category got pushed into the shadows and devalued. And the truth, of course, is that some events really are not replicable in a double blind scientific study. Dreams, and the messages they can contain, fall into that category.
I grew up in the 1980’s, which means some of the more recent breakthroughs in neurology, psychology, and behavioral science had not yet happened when I was in formation as a person. As a vivid dreamer, I remember being told repeatedly that whatever I had experienced while unconscious was “only a dream,” and to pay it no mind. It’s actually a little funny to think of it now. My sister and I are close in age, and both vivid dreamers. We also both have a condition called REM Intrusion. R-E-M, sometimes pronounced “rem,” stands for Rapid Eye Movement – this is the phase of sleep when dreaming most frequently occurs. Intrusion, of course, means that there’s a little bit of a boundary problem. For my sister and I, our brains sometimes fail the gear shift between sleeping and waking. Our bodies essentially wake up and start moving while we are still dreaming. So, growing up, I lived in a house where there were two little girls sleepwalking, having conversations, and occasionally wandering out to the living room and turning on the television at 2 in the morning, all while unconscious. And my poor parents, of course, were trying to behave as though all of this was perfectly normal and nothing to worry about.
As adults, our REM Intrusion levels are not high enough to justify strong medical intervention. Most nights do not include an incident. But it does mean that occasionally we do things like throw an entire nightstand across a room or wake up standing in the hallway. At various points in time, I’ve tried a few different medications and supplements to try to reduce how active my dreaming is. And I found out something a bit odd – I missed my dreams. Even though they’re sometimes uncomfortable, I don’t feel quite right if I’m not dreaming. I began to realize that my dream life is part of who I am and how I contextualize the world.
And this brings us back to what different cultures take seriously in different time periods. My own area of historical fascination is ancient Scandinavia and Germanic Europe from the Bronze Age up until roughly the Medieval era. I think as someone with a slightly unusual dream experience, finding out that dreams were viewed as incredibly important to those cultures was a bit of a relief. Whether contemporary thinking has supported it or not, dreams have been incredibly important to me. My dreams have predicted the future, helped me understand the root issues in problems I’ve had, and perhaps most importantly, they’ve been the way some of my beloved dead have communicated with me after death.
In multiple arenas, we’re beginning to realize that civilizations and cultures once considered unevolved or backwards were, in fact, right about many things. I suspect dreams fall into this category as well. For thousands of years in cultures across the world, dreams carried a good deal of importance. One consistent theme in the written records of ancient Scandinavia and Germanic Europe is the power of dreams to predict the future.
In Njal’s Saga, a woman dreams about a plant growing on the turf roof of her home being a threat to the family. She begs the men of the household to remove the plant. They laugh off her concern. Later in the story, the house is attacked and the enemy tries to set the roof on fire. It fails to catch until that one plant growing on the roof catches fire and the conflagration then spreads.
In the Saga of the Volsungs, marriage, betrayal, and death are all predicted in dreams. Dreams as a method of communication with non-human or non-living beings appear in the written attestations as well. In the Saga of the Icelanders, a man named Bjorn dreams of a land spirit who offers to help him. Bjorn accepts and a strange billy goat joins his flock. Bjorn soon grows wealthy with an abundant herd. This use of dreams to foreshadow events or support otherworldly communication only works as a plot device if a culture already places importance on dreams and connects them with those qualities.
The importance of dreams in ancient Scandinavia was pronounced enough that the guidance of the wise was sought to interpret dreams that felt significant. As in modern dream work, there was an understanding that not all dreams carried a message. Indeed, seeking potent or prophetic dreams was a part of life when people felt like they needed guidance. Techniques like sleeping on grave-mounds or while wrapped in special animal hides were used to induce prophetic dreams.
Modern science places importance on dreams as well. They help us build memory. Most dreaming primarily involves the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, but vivid or unusual dreams include deep-brain structures like the amygdala and hippocampus. The hippocampus in particular is involved in the process of transforming short term memories into long term memories, and is vital to cognition as a result.
Interestingly, a study released in 2010 from UC Berkeley “found that a reduction in REM sleep (or less “dreaming”) influences our ability to understand complex emotions in daily life – an essential feature of human social functioning.” One of the many roles of dreams is to support emotional processing. That link is so powerful that severe REM sleep-deprivation is increasingly correlated to the development of mental disorders.
Paying attention to and cultivating dreams is useful whether you believe they can predict the future or serve as a vehicle for communication or not. We all have practical uses for good brain function and understanding emotions – both our own and those of others.
In a chronically overworked and underslept culture, emphasizing dreaming can feel like a tall order, but there are some easy ways to get started. The first step is to evaluate and improve your sleep in whatever way you can. One interesting thing that happened with a member of my own family involved the intersection of dreaming and sleep apnea. The person in question didn’t and does not snore. As it turns out, you can have sleep apnea without that telltale symptom. If your body is constantly waking up a little bit in order to restore respiration, you rarely sleep deeply enough for REM sleep to occur. My family member eventually got treatment for their sleep apnea, and almost immediately started dreaming.
So step one is to make sure you can enter REM sleep. For most adults, only 20% of our time unconscious is REM sleep, so it’s already a limited resource. Most of you already know the guidelines around good sleep hygiene, but I’ll list them briefly anyway just because our culture makes these somewhat difficult to practice and we could all use a reminder. Keep a consistent sleep schedule – go to bed and wake up at roughly the same time every day. Include a wind-down period before bed with low light. This means no screens and avoid highly stimulating reading material. Likewise, avoid stimulants like alcohol and caffeine in the couple hours before bed. Foods that can cause indigestion – things that are greasy, very spicy, or heavy – can also negatively impact sleep quality if eaten close to bedtime. Sleep in a dark, quiet room that stays fairly cool. Most people sleep best in cooler temperatures – 60 to 70 degrees is generally recommended. And, try to get out into natural daylight during the day. It helps set our sleep patterns.
The parts of the brain used for recording new memories as opposed to those used for processing existing memories are not as active during sleep. This is why it’s often hard to remember dreams – we aren’t turning them into memories while they’re happening. However, there’s a significant body of evidence that indicates that as we begin focusing more on recording and paying attention to our dreams, we begin to experience stronger dreams. A really fascinating example of “that which is fed increases.”
Many people keep a dream journal. This is a notebook that lives right next to the bed. Upon waking, lie still for a moment and remember everything you can about your dreams. This allows the part of your brain that records memories to step back into the process. Then, before you do anything else, write down all the parts of your dreams you can remember. They do not need to make sense or be in linear order. Many times, the important part of a dream is a particular symbol, conversation, or emotion. That potent message is held inside a story that may or may not be related to the core message. Write down what you can remember without worrying too much about narrative flow. Additionally, if your writing, like mine, is atrocious, consider using a simple voice recorder app on your phone instead.
If you are able to, wake up naturally or shift your alarm clock over to a daylight alarm or another type of clock that allows a gentler entry to consciousness. Being suddenly jarred out of sleep tends to negatively impact dream recall.
There are some supplements that seem to enhance dreaming. As always, be careful with any substance you introduce to your body and talk to your medical professionals as needed. Melatonin is a hormone that supports deep, restful sleep. Melatonin supplements are designed for short-term use and can help us enter deeper sleep for longer, resulting in a greater likelihood of REM sleep cycles. Mugwort is a perennial herb native to parts of Europe and Asia. It is strongly credited with increasing the vividness of dreams and can be purchased as a tea or tincture. Dream tea blends generally contain mugwort as one of the primary ingredients. Those blends frequently include other sleep-supporting herbs like kava kava, valerian, chamomile, catnip, and lemon balm. And a warm cup of tea half hour to an hour before bed is a wonderful wind-down from the day.
And one last practical technique: intention setting does seem to help people remember their dreams. As you’re drifting off, tell yourself you will remember your dreams. Some people make a point of remembering a previous dream or thinking of something they wish to dream about in great detail as they’re falling asleep.
My own experience of being alive is that our brains are so interesting and capable of so much more than we’ve been able to prove with research. As always, science only understands what science can see, and there remain many areas where science simply does not yet have the mechanism of perception. But science is not the only deep well of wisdom from which we can draw inspiration. The folklore of many cultures emphasizes the importance of dreaming.
So much of modern life involves trying to wring answers from the unknown. To make educated guesses and predictions about the future so that we can make good choices for ourselves and the world we’re trying to build. The enlightenment period inspired wonderful things, but some of what was pushed into shadow may not be as irrelevant as we thought. We’re willing to lend credence to a good deal of speculation from external sources. What if one of the best sources of information and occasional glimpses of the future has been here all along? In a time when so much feels uncertain, perhaps the inner compass of our dreams is worth calibrating and learning to follow.
This sermon was offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Hagerstown on Sunday, May 25th, 2025.
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