CHAPTER ELEVEN

DREAM INCUBATION

What’s your go-to strategy for creative problem solving? For some, it’s ringing up a friend. For others, it’s talking with their therapist, while for others, it may involving twirling the quandary around in their mind again and again, hoping that a solution emerges. But did you know that there’s another technique for unearthing personal and professional insights that involves actively turning to your dreams?

Known as dream incubation, this nighttime intention-setting practice involves consciously asking our dreams to bring forth awareness about a particular topic upon which we are focused. While it may sound newfangled, it’s anything but. Since time immemorial, people have been consciously practicing dream incubation, which featured a host of rituals, techniques, and routines to help generate dreams that would offer them breakthroughs and healing. And while these were multi-spectrum approaches that involved pre-slumber rituals and sleeping in sacred sanctuaries, as they did in the Asklepieia discussed shown here, they also involved trusting that the dream that they would experience would offer them solutions to problems they were facing.

Currently, in popular culture, the term dream incubation is defined more narrowly, as the pre-sleep practice of intentionally asking your dreams to provide you with insight on a certain topic. It can yield amazing results and is something that’s been used by artists, inventors, business leaders, and others to generate answers to creative and everyday life problems. It’s a technique that psychotherapists who use dreamwork teach to their clients. And it’s something about which you can find published research in medical journals documenting studies that show how it can be helpful with problem solving. It’s not a difficult practice that requires special skills nor one that takes a lot of time. The main thing that it requires is the belief in the wisdom of your dreams, that within you resides the answers that can help you navigate your life with more clarity and awareness.

Minding Our Intentions

Dream incubation allows us another way to more deeply etch the two-way dialogue between our conscious and subconscious minds. It invokes the will of the mind to make a declaration of intent, which may be heard by the subconscious. In this practice, we are planting seeds in the garden of our psyche, envisioning the blossoming of dreams that yield knowledge and healing. We’re asking our dream minds, with reverence and intention, to share with us understanding about something that isn’t fully yet clear to us. We query our dreams in a deliberate manner, asking that they provide us with answers to questions or challenges we are facing, or problems we would like to solve. As you are going to sleep, you turn your conscious attention to something about which you’d like more awareness. Are you struggling with a relationship quandary? Perplexed by whether you should pursue a job opportunity you just learned of? Uncertain how to support your child in the current challenge they’re facing? Whatever you’re at a standstill with, the things about which you would like to have a breakthrough can be fodder for your dream-incubation practice.

Life issues are not the only realm of potentiality, however, when it comes to this practice. It can be a powerful technique to use for gaining creative breakthroughs. If you’re working on a technical or an artistic project and the next steps just seem to keep alluding you, turning to your dreams may provide you the out-of-the-box thinking you need. The ideas that may come forth may be just the ones you need to catalyze your process to illuminate the next steps to take. As we explored in the Introduction, artists and inventors who were struggling with creative problems found that it was from their dreams that innovative solutions would emerge.

How to Do Dream Incubation

Here’s an easy step-by-step guide to doing dream incubation. On first blush, it may seem rather involved, but actually it’s not; it’s something that you only need to spend about 10 minutes each day to do.

Step 1: Choosing Your Focus

The focus of your dream-incubation query should be something truly significant, something that really matters to you and your happiness. As the process invariably honors the sacred wisdom inherent in our dreams, the question shouldn’t be about a frivolous topic. It shouldn’t be something whose answer would just be interesting, but rather something whose answer would be truly meaningful and life-affirming. Research has shown that dream incubation works better when the dreamer has an emotional connection to the issue and a strong desire to find the solution. It’s also been found to be more productive when the topic is something that the dreamer has been struggling with, working hard to find a solution to in their waking life, yet about which they still feel blocked. Therefore, avoid topics for which you haven’t tried to yet find a resolution. It’s not so much that dream incubation is a last-line strategy, but rather that there seems to be something essentially valuable about the process of already being actively steeped in the query itself that can bring forth innovative paths to resolution.

It shouldn’t be difficult to come up with a topic; after all, it’s likely something that’s been bothering you and something about which you feel really uncertain. It can be in any realm of your life: your career, a relationship, a family dynamic, a wellness pursuit, or something else that’s fully capturing your attention. It may be a situation that you know to be emotionally triggering, and yet, you’re just not clear what’s really underneath the feelings that are being stirred within. Or, perhaps, the subject is related to a creative project you’ve been working on and about which you’re still finding yourself at an impasse, not sure how to move forward. Any and all of these could be great fodder for dream incubation.

As you hone in on the subject, ensure that it is something about which you truly want to know the answer, something you will act upon and for which you’ll take responsibility if you do. Ask yourself whether if you had more insight on a certain subject you would be ready to follow through, or whether it is a situation that you’re currently hesitant to resolve. If there’s a disconnect between your interest in finding a pathway forward and your ability and/or willingness to make significant life shifts, your dreams may not provide you with the awareness you truly know you’re not really ready for anyway. Or if they do, you could find that having the understanding about how to move forward but not actually doing so may end up causing dissonance. This practice should be powerful and uplifting rather than feel like it’s adding more stress and discord to your life. That said, if you intuitively know that getting some insight may help motivate you to break out of a pattern, then it may be a focus that is beneficial.

Step 2: Framing the Question

Now that you know the domain of life for which you’re interested in getting more insights, it’s time to come up with your incubation question. Composing a well-asked question is key. The question is not only the carrier of the intention but also the scope through which you’ll understand what your dream has brought forth. You don’t want it to be too general or broad, yet you don’t want it to be excessively narrow, either. It should be straightforward and precise, simple yet targeted. It should be an open-ended rather than a close-ended question, the latter being one that involves a Yes or No answer.

It’s much better to ask about one facet of your dilemma rather than a multitude. This way, when you survey what has come through in your dream, you’ll know just what it is answering. This will help reduce uncertainty as to whether what arose in the dream applies to one part of the question or another. For example, it’s better to ask, “What is something that I continually avoid acknowledging about the way I interact with my partner?” rather than “What is something that I continually avoid acknowledging about the way I interact with my partner, why do I do that, and what should I do about it?” If you asked the multi-prong question you may not necessarily know which part of it the dream was answering. It will be much more straightforward and obvious with a pointed question.

Once you’ve come up with your initial question, sit with it for a minute or two. See how it feels, tuning in to whether or not it hits the mark for you. Give yourself flexibility to adjust it if you feel it can be more aligned. Write the question down in your journal. Remember one more thing: dreams are very visual. Therefore, see if you can frame the question in a way to allow for the answer to appear in something that is seen, rather than something that is solely heard or accessed via another of the senses.

Step 3: Asking the Question

Pose the question to yourself in a way that reflects the significance of your inquiry, sculpting it as if you were asking it of someone who held a key that you were looking for (as you, and your dreams, do). Be sincere, direct, and reverent, reflecting your commitment to want to know the answer. Ask that the answer that is revealed in your dreams be shown to you in a way that is readily understandable and recognizable.

You can say the question out loud or quietly in your mind. Let it be like a mantra, prayer, or lullaby. Focus your attention upon it as you drift off to sleep. Images may arise during the hypnagogic period —that gossamer state between awake and asleep when hallucination-like forms seem to appear. Allow those to emerge, and don’t worry if in the morning you can’t remember them (we usually can’t). Trust that they are setting the stage for a revealing dream to occur.

Step 4: When You Awaken

First, follow the steps outlined in chapter 12 on how to awaken consciously to your dreams. Then, record your dream, using the strategies outlined in chapter 13. At first, don’t try to understand the dream in the context of the question. Just write down everything you remember without interpreting it. At this point, you’re not looking for the dream to fit the shape of the intentionally constructed question; you want to fully access what transpired and not restrict anything. Later on, you can then reflect upon the dream to see what insights it has revealed related to your inquiry. When’s later on? It can be right after you’ve recorded it or anytime during the day when you’re focusing upon your dreamwork.

Remember that the dream may reveal the solution directly. Or, it may be more clearly understood through the lens of symbols or images that wove through the dream. If the dream seems relevant to your focus, you may get answers that reflect an action to take. Or you may not. Rather, it may give you further insights into how you are feeling, or perhaps more awareness about the situation that wasn’t previously apparent. If the dream revealed relevant information, you may want to synthesize it with your waking-life thoughts on the matter. Marrying them may yield a solution that offers greater potentiality for seeing the best step forward than either one alone.

Once you have what appears to be an answer, sit with it and see how it feels. Do you have a sense of positivity as if a cloud has lifted? Remember that you can do follow-up dream incubations. You can incubate the same question of focus again if you want further understanding, or you can reframe it based upon the new insights that already undertaken ones have yielded.

When to Hone in on Your Dream Incubation Focus

Some people like to concentrate on their dream incubation as they’re winding down in bed. They survey their day and zero in on what may have emotionally triggered them or what consideration they feel they are still grappling with. Others like to begin to concentrate on their dream incubation realm beforehand. Throughout the day, they open their mind’s eye to situations that feel provocative, having that direct them to discover the topic for their nighttime inquiry. Yet, others may wait until their evening relaxation time — say, while they’re bathing or writing in their journal — and turn their attention then to the sphere of life that’s of most interest to them to resolve.

ENCOURAGING THE INCUBATION

In addition to the question carrying the intention of your query, there are practices you can do to further encourage your dream to zero in on your realm of interest.

▪ Place objects in your bedroom — either on your nightstand, dream altar, or some other place visible from your bed — that reinforce your question. For example, let’s say you’re seeking guidance on a relationship, then keep a photo of the person near you, glancing at it before you sleep. Or if you’re looking for a breakthrough on a design project on which you’re working, have some of its elements close at hand.

▪ Given that dreams are containers of mood and emotion, you may find that listening to music, reading a poem, or looking at artwork before sleep is a wonderful way to help incubate your dream. It’s important, of course, to select it intentionally, as you want it to be relaxing yet revelatory, something that lulls you sweetly to drift off to dreamland.

▪ As fragrance is a powerful catalyst of mood and memory, using specific essential oils in your bedroom may help induce dream content that’s in alignment with your focus. For example, if your query is centered on your sex life, use a sultry fragrance like ylang ylang. Or if you’re looking for insights related to your childhood, and rosemary reminds you of that time, use that in your aromatherapy diffuser. (For more on using essential oils, see here.)

▪ Remind yourself that you will remember your dream when you awaken, and practice a visualization exercise that will encourage the incubation. For example, you can do a quick meditation in which you bring the following image to your mind’s eye: you, waking up in the morning, with clear dream recall, writing down what you remember in your bedside journal, being content that you are filled with the clarity that you had sought.

Timing Is Everything: When to Do the Practice

Dream incubation works best when you can carve out the time for it, and when you feel a sense of steadfast determination that you are truly interested in the answers that this practice may yield. Therefore, it’s not necessarily something you need to do every night. You want to do it when you have time and focus. So, if your schedule is such that you need to rush out of bed the next morning, save it for another day. Also, given that you want to have this be as attentive and intentional as possible, it’s better to not do this practice on nights that you’ve been up late, have had a few more drinks than usual, or are otherwise distracted.

POSSIBLE CHALLENGES

Of course, it’s possible that you may not remember your dream. Keep at it, perhaps seeing if any of the dream-recall techniques in chapter 12 can help you better remember your oneiric visions. Relatedly, what if your dream, no matter from which angle you perceived it, had nothing to do with your question? That can definitely happen, so don’t be dismayed. In research studies, many participants didn’t have success inducing focused dream content on the first try, and for some, it took weeks of practice. If that’s the case, continue to focus upon your question for several days to see if something comes through. If it doesn’t, then trust that and your inner knowledge; perhaps it’s just not the right moment for the answer to be revealed.

Other Incubation Applications

The pre-sleep intentionality that’s inherent in this dream-incubation practice is also one that is used for other aims. For example, if you suffer from nightmares, before going to sleep you could tell your mind that your dreams will be pleasant and full of ease. Those who lucid dream use a form of incubation wherein they remind and encourage themselves that they will be able to recognize that they are in a dream once they enter that state. Dream incubation can also be a practice that you modify for your children when working with them and their dreams. For more on nightmares, see chapter 8; on lucid dreaming, chapter 9; and on children’s dreams, chapter 19.