Quick guide: How to prepare for a night of dreaming

You might think that preparing for a night of dreaming is much like preparing for a good sleep. However, there are some small tweaks that will ensure you sleep well and dream richly. In this video with psychotherapist and dream expert Machiel Klerk, he reveals the 6 things to do to dream tonight.  

Tap the play button to find out, because *spoiler alert* reading before bed isn't one of them. 

To view this video with subtitles please click here to watch it on YouTube, once there please follow the subtitle instructions below.

WHY DREAMS GO BAD  

Sometimes we can do all the right things and then - bam - you wake up heart racing, sweat pouring from a scary dream. So why is it that we have bad dreams? "Often it's due to stress or anxiety in our waking world," says Klerk.  

Let's take a look at these bad dreams in more detail:  

1. Nightmares 

Nightmares are anxiety dreams, and so it's a function of the body, not unlike a fever. They are actually really important forms of dreams because they try to wake us up to the fact that something isn't right. Our fears are shown to us, usually in an exaggerated form. You come face to face with a huge spider, or you try to move but can’t.  Just writing down the nightmare is helpful. In one study, veterans came back from war and they had a lot of nightmares and what they noticed is that, just by writing down the nightmare, the veterans started having fewer nightmares. And that was even without interpreting it or doing any dream work. They just wrote down the nightmare and then it calmed down.  

2. Recurring dreams 

While a recurring dream isn't always negative, often their role is to alert you to something that is unresolved in the waking world. This could be grief, anxiety, progress and so often they can feel like a bad dream. But if you do have a recurring dream, know that they are trying to help you.  

3. Sleep paralysis 

When you dream, your muscles are paralysed. This helps you not to act out your dream while sleeping - which is for our own good! But this is also the reason for sleep paralysis where we are awake but can’t move. It is often scary, yet harmless and will go away within minutes. Sleep paralysis tends to happen during times of stress, when you're not sleeping well, are sleep deprived, have a poor sleeping position or you’ve had too much caffeine or alcohol. If it happens regularly, it's worth keeping a note of when they happen and what's happening in your life.