Jen Sonstein Maidenberg

If you’re someone who has ever experienced insomnia, you may have come across the term “sleep hygiene.” It refers to the lifestyle choices we make that have a positive or negative impact on our sleep. For instance: What kind of activities are you engaged in right before sleep? How much physical activity do you get during the day? What’s the light like in your room when you go to sleep? When is the last time you ate before laying down in bed? 

It’s a big topic, so I won’t be covering it all today. I want to focus specifically on why sleep hygiene also matters as it relates to our inner work using our dreams. If you are interested in a one-on-one personal consultation about your own sleep hygiene, please contact me directly as this is something I offer in collaboration with an acupuncturist who specializes in Classical Chinese medicine.

Many of the tips for getting better, deeper sleep also work well for increasing dream activity and recall. So examining your general sleep hygiene is useful when it comes to dreamwork. These include:

• Maintain a regular sleep schedule. Try to go to bed at the same time every night, and get the same amount of sleep. For those of us with children and loud neighbors, this may be less in our own control than we prefer, but if you’re able to go to bed every night at the same time, and wake up around the same time, the body and brain like this. (FYI: this is also a top recommendation for migraine sufferers, as shared with me by a top neurologist I once saw for my own migraines.)
• Sleep in a dark room with minimal electrical lights or screens shining. It’s curious to me how people will take melatonin to sleep, but not dim their lights, turn off their TV, or stop using screens before bed. Light has an impact on melatonin production. I understand that many people, including grown adults (myself included) feel more anxious or even afraid in the dark and silence at night. A lot of people sleep with the TV on for comfort or to distract themselves from their thoughts. Nonetheless, this may be preventing you from maintaining the above sleep hygiene tip of getting to sleep at the same time every night, and may be keeping you awake longer. I need white noise to sleep due to being a very sensitive sleeper: I use a loud air purifier, and I cover up the blue lights on the screen with a washcloth. A small soft white night light near the floor is okay if you are afraid of total darkness or need light to get to the bathroom, but try to avoid blue lights or cover up artificial looking LED lights on electronics.
• Mind your naps. This will vary from person to person, and may change over time depending on age and health. But in general, if you nap during the day it should be many hours before you wish to fall asleep for the night, and it should be for a short amount of time, like one sleep cycle, a range of 30 – 90 minutes. I was never a napper for most of my life, but have found in recent years a short nap of about 45 minutes at 4pm is both refreshing, and sometimes a good source for a different kind of dream than I will have during my night sleep. So, I am not suggesting you don’t nap, but that you don’t take ultra long naps, and that if you do nap, it should be at around the same time and for the same length of time each day.
• Consider your diet and digestion. In general, most professionals will suggest not eating so close to bedtime, and I would agree. Ideally, you’d eat a few hours before bed to give your system time to digest. However, I understand it’s not realistic for everyone because some people can’t fall asleep if they are the littlest bit hungry. If you feel the need to eat before bed, choose something light, not spicy or too flavorful, and easy to digest. Definitely avoid stimulating foods or beverages like chocolate, juice, soda, spicy chips, etc. Additionally, if you are someone prone to reflux in the night, or nausea in the morning, it would be wise to consider reviewing your diet in general to see if eliminating certain foods would help. Those conditions affect sleep and make their way into our dreams, too. When my own reflux has been bad I’ll have more dreams of choking or nausea. Reflux can also cause a person to choke in their sleep which may interrupt a good dream!

Okay, so those are some very basic sleep hygiene tips that should both improve the quality of your sleep and set you up for sleeping deeply enough to dream.

But what about the content of our dreams? Have you ever considered that what you see, hear, and sense during the day, especially in the hours before bed, can affect the content of your dreams?

It does. A lot. 

You probably know by now that advertisers use images, music, and language to manipulate consumer preferences. It’s a tactic that’s been used for decades. If you are someone who interacts at all with any kind of media, whether print or digital, you are being emotionally influenced by everything external you see and hear. The more you watch during the day, even when “mindlessly” scrolling, the more you are being externally influenced by others.

Emotions aroused from our interactions with television shows, movies, Tik Toks, Instagram reels, You Tube videos, podcasts, news media, print ads in magazines, Spotify ads, etc. are then processed at night when we sleep and dream. The images of your dreams, the mood of your dreams, the pacing of your dreams, are all affected by this external input.

I personally consider these media-triggered emotions to be in a way artificial, and they will unfortunately keep your own deeper feelings submerged when you dream. For those of us attempting to use our dream images for spiritual work growth, media gets in the way. The images that appear in our dreams may be more reflective of what we are watching and listening to than what we are encountering in our own lives with other people.

Basically, we end up dreaming about an emotion we felt as a result of watching a couple fight on Love Is Blind, rather than dreaming about something more relevant to our own life, interpersonal relationships, and spiritual work.

Now, there is a case to be made that the emotions we feel watching a reality TV show have some distant connection to our deeper feelings and therefore unintentionally activate us in a way that will bring about a dream that’s relevant to our inner work. Possibly. But in most cases, no: media is designed to arouse particular emotions, embed ideas subtly or not-so-subtly in our minds, and even trigger physiological reactions, such as increased heart rate and brainwave activity. 

If you are seeking to get in touch with your unconscious mind, or the part of your psyche that you do not have access to simply by thinking or journaling or reflecting, you must be mindful of your external input during the day.

In this day and age, it’s nearly impossible to eliminate all external input. However, you can start by reducing your scrolling time, minding the type of content you engage with (ie. anxiety-inducing news, high-paced videos with a lot of flashing images, dark or graphic imagery), and choosing carefully when to watch media you know has an effect on your nervous system.

Start paying attention to how your body feels after you watch a certain television show. You can even notice subtle changes while watching or listening. Has you heart rate increased? Is your body tensing up? Do you feel sad or scared?

Shows and movies that make you feel “good” emotions are not necessarily better for you. These shows or videos send messages, too, and create narratives that you ingest about everything: couplehood, culture, beauty, activism, politics, social change, etc.

You probably know all that already, but maybe knowing, too, that the subconscious messages in all media also heavily impact your sleep, dreams, and dream content will cause you to reconsider how much you’re engaging with and when. 

You can make small changes. Try eliminating one social media app at a time. Watch the true crime show in the morning, rather than before bed. Filter out the depressing news content from your feed for a month. See if making small changes has any affect on your dreams.