Brain Surgeon REVEALS the NEUROSCIENCE of Dreams & What They TRULY Mean! | Dr. Rahul Jandial

The Ultimate Gift of the human mind I think is dreaming love and all those things yes but the process of dreaming now I'm going to be bold here this is a conversation I think we sleep because we must dream he is a dual trained neurosurgeon who is both an MD and PhD and he's based out of the world famous City of Hope hospital here in Los Angeles he's a researcher and author of 10 books and countless academic papers on the brain Dr Raul John di why after dozens of years of doing brain surgeries being a PhD in neuroscience and understanding the Mind did you want to dive into understanding dreams I mean you put it right where it needs to be this is a big topic when color TV showed up the dream reports of thousands of people being asked woken up in their sleep what are you dreaming about the dream started to be more in color I've woken up but not been able to move or speak and I feel like I'm screaming but nothing's coming out yeah what is that sleep paralysis what you describe about this is great just give me a minute to take this one cuz this one I got a lot of science what the do you think our dreams have meaning in our Waking Life well that has the massive question right so that's the um what I would say is welcome back everyone to the school of greatness very excited about our guest we have the inspiring Dr Rahul John dial in the house good to see you man welcome back my pleasure the last interview we did blew up people are fascinated by it you are a neuroscientist who who studies the mind but also a brain surgeon who has been helping remove cancer for dozens of years uh to over thousands of patients and so you studied the material brain but also the spiritual side of the brain as well the mind let's say yeah and you're an expert in both and the last interview we did we talked about many different things around these topics but you have a new book called This is why you dream what your sleeping brain reveals about your Waking Life and this is interesting because we were talking before that there's not really anyone who's a scientist of Dreams out in the world yet except for you're starting this path you're you're starting to talk about the Neuroscience of dreaming which I think is fascinating because you told me about a third of the time we don't remember what we're doing in our lives third of the time we're asleep and a lot of us don't remember our dreams we don't understand our dreams they don't make sense to us we have nightmares we have erotic dreams we have inspiring dreams we have dreams where we feel like we're falling or dreams where we feel like we're about to die and then we wake up in a shock we have all these weird moments sometimes we remember and we we we we overemphasize what the dream was but it really didn't happen and then other times we have no clue what happened in our dreams and so why after dozens of years of doing brain surgeries being a PhD in neuroscience and understanding the Mind did you want to dive into understanding dreams I mean you put it right where it needs to be this is a big topic there's a reason people haven't been tackling it cuz it's like trying to grab a cloud or like trying to hold on to something that's just like we all know what it is we know what dreams are we all have had dreams I don't have to explain to you what a nightmare is you know what it is I know what it is we don't talk about it we can't really wrap our minds around it but it's something we all experience is something we all undergo so your question about why did I want to write a book on dreams what I would tell you is I was asked to write this book so the way I've my journey that's ended up here uh a lot of it is you know I have sons I have three as we were talking about they're 18 19 and 22 I've taken care of thousands of cancer patients um I've done surgery in South America that these experiences are also part of my resume now I happen to have a PhD in neuroscience and I'm a neurosurgeon but there are other neuroscientists there are other neurosurgeons I believe and in this conversation when you see me hear me say I believe or I wonder or could it be it's out of respect for you and your listeners because you you don't want anybody come in on this topic and saying aha I got it all figured out one two three no it's an exploration I'm looking at fragments and pieces across broad scientific things I'm bringing my own stories into my own experiences and I'm saying look look at these little they're almost like fireflies these little glimpses of knowledge that we now have or that 3,000 years ago they were talking about lucid dreaming they being Aristotle like what is the consistant pattern uh not not my dream not your dream but what if we look at 10,000 dreams do we start to see some patterns we do and we'll get into that nightmares and a dreams are essentially Universal falling dreams and teeth falling out have happened for hundreds of years across cultures like when you went from carriages to cars to electric vehicles to television those dreaming patterns are consistent so the first thing I thought wait wait a second they're being driven by the brain then when Technicolor came in dream reports people cataloging what dreams are going on right that's where I'm studying is like how what dreams happen most commonly what dreams don't happen at all so two things popped into my mind I was looking at this and saying when color TV showed up the dream reports of thousands of people being asked woken up in their sleep what are you dreaming about uh the dream started to be more in color so clearly Waking Life fed dreaming life and then the other thing I noticed was rarely did they report math in dreams yeah I don't think I have a math dream thank God that doesn't sound fun but but there most people we look at 10,000 dreams everybody's at a nightmare nearly every when in science I say everybody I don't mean 100% it's like you know above 90ish it gets to be essentially Universal nightmares and erotic dreams very few lots of emotional dreams lots of visual dreams a lot of movement dreams and we'll get into that but very few math dreams right like very few people said and even the scientists that say I came up with the idea of dreaming it's a visual thing like the snake eating itself for two comets moving apart and what I realize now that those you know what we dream and now the last 20 30 years we could have brain scans that's a that's a simple word but we're going to dissect that in this conversation like the metabolis how much glucose your brain is using where is that glucose being used what's the electricity so when I say brain scan there's a lot of different ways of scanning brain information the brain scans at night in a machine with people sleeping with people dreaming they were notably dampened not off let's change all of this there's no part of your brain that's off otherwise it'd be a stroke you know that part would die but everything in the brain is a modulation it's always like 5149 nothing is ever on or off it's not a switch there's blood flow always going everywhere okay if a branch is blocked then you have a stroke what happens is the executive Network in the prefrontal cortex just the the part of the brain behind the forehead the the part that does reason and logic and math it's it's 49 it's 48 during the right now it's probably 51 52 but it's dampened at night and so dampening the executive Network in our dreams allows for them to be illogical allows them for to be wild in my opinion and also explains why we're not doing math because that's needed for math interesting so then I just it took my breath away I was like wait a second so some patterns of dreaming from thousands of Dreams can be explained by some patterns of the dreaming brain and that was uh the idea in my head and uh my publisher in London penguin UK um we were talking about doing a different book that's going to be the the next one hopefully but um you know she said we we we need we and I think she meant like the publishing world and readers and people in general like they're they're real they're they're real you know they put out books that are like french fries I love french fries but they also want to put out some stuff like look this an important book we need a book about dreams explained about the science of it the story of it a love letter to dreams because there is no dream scientist you it's not a field I'm a neuroscientist with live experiences trying to put put together brain scans dream reports uh neurons in a Petri dish to to put together a story of what I think is happening in dreams and dreaming wow that's how this started this and it's just what's that happened has been an ignition in my mind for about 18 months so there's been a there have been reports on lots of different dreams right there's been like people documenting their dreams and there's is there studies around that great question first of all again not my dream or your dream but there are great dream Banks uhhuh uh people for decades have uh woken people up in sleep labs they put an electrode on to make sure they're sleeping and they say hey wake up what are you dreaming about and they're wrri it down yeah yeah so that that world's been happening okay that's where I'm getting like the uh you know certain percentage report dreams of falling certain percentage dreams of uh you know uh being chased a certain percentage of M really that's yeah everybody nightmares everybody sexual erotic dreams okay so you I that pattern is not mine right it's what other people methodically have been cataloging by people either sending in writing journaling uh or sleep Labs being you know woken up and that that's where I'm getting those patterns do you think our dreams have meaning in our Waking Life well that is the that's the massive question right so that's the that's the um um what I would say is is let's go backwards a little my answer is yes but but to be able to share with you how to go by go about extracting that meaning yes one it's going to be individual I I can't tell you what your dreams are about and you can't tell me what my dreams are about so it's a process of self-examination yes uh dreams have meaning not all dreams right not all a waking thoughts are fresh or or you know or important or worth holding on to but what let's get to that is can do dreams have meaning but with your permission you know let's let's AR let's equip people with what is happening in the dreaming brain yes and then what different dreams mean so then they have a Playbook at the end um yeah and what I would say is the dreaming brain is this was the essential question is okay so you got all the dream patterns right so we got what we dream you looking at what people have catalog uh to make sense of why we dream that's your essential question that we get to and then there's this like this this thing like like the the dreaming brain and the waking brain right like and so and I believe these big ideas are applicable to everybody like getting groceries frustrated why am I stressed out why am I overreacting like all the all the things for living a better Waking Life you can't separate them from that that that third of your life you spend sleeping and potentially dreaming right so I go way way back to try to understand this and to make sense of it for myself and and I think you'll find there's there's science and there's stories but there's synthesis so first thing is all life is is governed by the rotation of the planet let's just start with square one like let's just get to the basic here like like whether it's like those hot springs deep in the ocean and there's some bacteria there or a venus fly trap that opens and closes or the moon and the tides um or sleep right like this is this is governed because that was the foundation on which life arose right and when when you look at that what I would say is the material the living material on planet Earth follows that whether it's the tide or the Plankton or you know all migration but also the material in our brain really like there's nothing in our skull that if you pieced it out there's no special ingredient like from Krypton or something everything in nature is also everything inside our skull in these brains right that's connected differently it's functioning differently but that was like the first thing that really tripped me out I was like we too follow the laws fundamental laws of Earth's rotation and these circadian rhythms you're hearing about and cycles and and seasons and that was the first time I said okay so the brain is the brain is the the waking brain and the sleeping brain are doing a 24-hour cycle for as long as the run you have on this planet that's the first thing that cycle it it actually you know there was like I love this topic by the way I like this like go there are like people who go into for like 6 months it's still in a cycle oh like it's not based just on dark black ey Shades or not like we we the tissue in our bodies the cells it we're following this Earth's rotation okay so if we say that there's the waking brain and the sleeping brain and every 24 hours it does its things two3 waking one3 sleeping and that and that happens for the most part you know for how long you live now a surgeon in training I'm might skip a few nights um so maybe I've had 500 or a th000 nights but overwhelmingly I follow this cycle too and in that cycle we have to ask ourselves well what's going on in the dreaming brain and right away I'll tell you it's so important there's something called Sleep pressure you could you can do you could defy a lot of things but you go a day without sleeping there's something Building inside you saying sleep sleep sleep you'll fall as sleep in a dangerous spot you'll fall asleep standing up sometimes you'll fall asleep even though you haven't eaten like there's something fundamental called Sleep pressure that makes us follow that that Rhythm right your body will force you to sleep eventually well I would say your brain your brain just shuts off it's it's it builds a pressure you can startle people and they'll wake up but at some point there's this pressure that's bringing you down to sleep really that that you see that we I think torture techniques were based off of that we saw that we nobody could stay up a third night in the hospital they tried to get us to a long time ago the battle day really yeah but two night second night you could do third night and po so there's a sleep pressure that the brain generates not the body the brain because in just to give you just examples like we're talking about like regular examples we're not trying to get we'll bring the science in but the the complexity is in the um in the concept I can we can put Hearts from one to another livers from one to another lungs from one to another uh they all follow the that person's brain's order so really what we're talking about is the brain is saying I need to sleep brain is saying I need to sleep brain is saying okay there's some threat going on or You' got some some demands you're running an ultramarathon you're a surgeon on call I can go a day but I need to sleep so that's the first the first thing in this discussion is why do we need to sleep oh now I'm going to be bold here this a conversation I I think we sleep because we must dream now let me just set that up for you wow what happens when you go without sleep you have surges and RAM and dreaming sleep right away first thing you do when you've gone a day without sleep if you put that person in a brain scan but there's Exquisite ways of checking it is that they they first thing they do is they dream wildly right like so that's that's an interesting thing to me the longer we go in our night of rest quot restful sleep the more you're dreaming on the tail end M right so maybe mental Clarity if we take that phrase comes from having that longer night sleep well what happens in that fifth sixth and seventh hour you're dreaming more so when I start to see these patterns I wonder One the brain not the body needs to sleep and then what is the brain doing in sleep just check this out man it's it's doing something that if you put electrodes on the surface of our scalps and we all fall asleep at night during the day the waves the the measurements are uh you know sort of wavy there's different ones depending on how you're engaging at night there are some sharp 90minut [Music] patterns that stuff is designed that's built in really yeah so that's not new we don't have that when we're awake no during the like if something startles us the the electricity will be different if we if we meditate the electricity will be different during during waking but at night you're on you're on something programmed then that's not new Louis that's the stuff that I we I've known for 20 years and sleep people have known for 40 years what I'm trying to do is give you an explanation a synthesis that's not random that's not a glitch 7 billion brains on 24-hour cycle sleep pressure you got to lie down you got to sleep the brain is saying you got to sleep and when it sleeping is doing this 90 crisp Cycles REM sleep you've seen the the charts they're like they look like Lego they look like the top of a a Tetris thing or a Lego thing that is something fundamental that's happening in my opinion and so that's why I think we must sleep but I think what's the most important part of sleep is the dreaming my kidney and my liver don't need to sleep you could take part of the liver from a mom and put it in the child it's no longer connected the the transplanted liver to the to the web of nerves liver's fine lungs are fine moving between humans wow right so you what I'm trying to point out there is that it's the it's the brain that's running the show it's on the Earthly pattern it wants to sleep and in that sleep what is it doing KN it's dreaming the brain in my opinion with respect and humility the brain needs to dream the the sleep is so that the brain can dream and stay fine-tuned and stay fully adapted and stay fully enriched in all the corners of his mind without just the boring boring part of our day right if the brain only did what we did driving the one ofone or doing this which is fantastic but it would become rigid right it would become like like an arm that's never stretched past a certain distance right you get a contracture well the brain tissue my opinion that dreaming is the brain's way other people have other ideas like it's threat training or it's a nighttime the therapist I get that and I think in some capacity but at the most fundamental level it's like high-intensity training for your mind at night it just goes wild to make sure all those capacities and resources imaginations if you will are accessible to you if you needed them during the day if the environment or uh you know Evolution needed it so that's like the big explanation about what's happening when we sleep We're Dreaming dreaming is important it's metabolically active it's electrically active it puts us at risk and even if you are in D danger your brain will force you to lie down so it can sleep to dream and that's how fundamental I think dreams are now what if people that's that's powerful glad you shared that and what if people are listening or watching say well I can't remember any of my dreams and I don't think I dream at all yeah cuz I can't remember them that's so what's wrong with me and should I be worried if I don't have dreams well I would say the genius is built in so that that's happening whether you want it or not and the essential question of I've had people ask me that like well if I don't remember my dreams is it useful I mean what is it well if you're not remembering them so let me take that one apart a little bit here's my thinking on it we'll bring in imagination and even Sports visualization to try to understand that and we'll bring in something called autobiographical memory so let's start with memory first okay it's it's not what you're seeing on TV or like you know remembering names or addresses I like I like my phone I don't want to remember phone number again you know like there's that kind of memory then this procedural memory like riding a bike tying your shoelaces uh then there's episodic memory remembering episodes of your life right so we have lots of different shades and types of memory and the one that connects me to the fact that I was here with you maybe about two years ago was something called autobiographical memory when I I have gone through so many different things in so many different countries and places but I feel as if I have been the uh I've inhabited and lived through all of those experiences think about that right what's the thing that stitches all my life together that's a type of memory it's called autobiographical memory and and so I think by design by and importance um it it's to some rare cases it's to a away avoid waking and dream confusion so it has this wild run at night but when you wake up and we'll talk about that transition like this the transition between a a dreaming brain and waking brain it's not a hard line it's a little it can be fuzzy in the morning and that's why some people report sleep paralysis and goblins and weird stuff but um the autobiographical memory has to come back into command because that's what stitches are waking life together that's what's get food get to work get on the subway so the autobiographical memory takes over every morning when we wake up and for it I think for us to stay to not be confused about what reality is cuz we had such a wild ride it it there there's a the memory is designed to have dreaming Fade to the background and so I think I think it's it's happening electrically it's happening and what we're catching are a few glimpses of it bleeding into our waking brain and say o man last night what was going on in my head right those those are the glimpses and the flares of the dreaming brain bleeding into the Waking Life and those are the ones that that um that we want to pay attention to you know so that's the that's the way I'm I'm thinking about dreaming and trying to explain it too okay there so many questions I want to ask here but there there's different types of Dreams there's nightmares there's erotic dreams there's weird crazy dreams there's sleep paralysis and I think I know what that is cuz I think I've had that a few different times so I'd love to start there because this is something I can relate to where I've woken up but not been able to move or speak yeah and I feel like I'm screaming but nothing's coming out yeah what is that terrifying I know right but you're asking me to like you're asking me to tackle Giants of giants of mystery tell me everything what it is yeah in one afternoon you know but but what I again W with humility if you hold on to the concept if you just if you just say look that was look this we don't have to do a study but I get what he's saying we're on planet Earth we clearly have to sleep right our brain I I believe him our brain is the thing that needs to sleep and now what he's saying is um that hey check this out while you're sleeping you're you're dreaming whether you remember none of it a little of it or some of it you're dreaming okay if we if we if we hold on to that and then always come back to like if one person later On's like huh I am a cycle of waking brain dreaming brain just if you just walk away one thing like you're waking brain dreaming brain 24 hours waking times whatever life is waking brain and just to ask yourself is this contribution to my thinking to my emotion uh from The Waking brain or the dreaming brain or or somewhere where it where Blends so when you uh sleep paralysis um a third of people have experienced it I haven't but when I wrote started writing about sleep paralysis the what you describe about uh this is this is great just give me a minute to take this one cuz this one I got a lot of science when you what the dreaming brain also does is not just hyp hper emotional and Hyper Visual and dampen logic right that we we open with Hyper emotional hyper visual dampen logic okay so that's there what it also does is it locks down your body so you're temporarily paralyzed right there's some exceptions or reflexes or sleepwalking but in general you're temporarily paralyzed so the dreaming brain can let loose be emotional be wild and in the morning that paralysis has to come off interesting right that's an that we can all agree on right that's that's the dreaming brain and the waking brain when there is a mismatch um of you waking your dreaming brain the mind is coming to but the chemicals that have locked down your body right the chemical paralysis is still there people will wake up locked locked in their body that's kind of what you're describing yeah and then on top of that they start describing goblins and monsters and different things lurking Intruders I've never experienced I never experienced that either but that's described so much so that if you go to Italy you go to Africa you go to other places they all have a similar story of being locked in the body and having a threatening presence in the room and sometimes a feeling of Suffocation wow that grouping is something humans experience and something cultures have come up with their own stories about so if people want to look it up like succubus the incubus and succubus come from that and it's a famous painting with a goblin on top of a woman who's asleep but right what I want people to go is ah I see that sleep paralysis that LS brought up was because the dreaming brain and the waking brain they don't just snap to the next phase that sometimes they bleed into each other and that's called Sleep exit that little window is called Sleep exit sleep entry is a fascinating one too but sleep exit I've almost I've had it a couple times at night like in the beginning of sleeping also where I've like fallen asleep but like 30 minutes later I've like woken up it's almost I'm not asleep yet that's my favorite time I am from minute and so my fiance says I mean this is just from her uh theories but she says you know that's you entering a lucid dreaming like allowing that to happen allowing the sleep paralysis to happen because you're half awake half asleep and if you stay there and you don't freak out and scream like try to scream you could actually enter she says that's what happens for her and she enters the most incredible lucid dreams that are vivid in memories for her she's not wrong and so it's more of just like surrendering to I can't move so she's not wrong but again so you know people are like what are they talk like if you just if you if if you keep this conversation on the framework of dreaming brain and sleeping brain dreaming brain and waking brain then you know where the explanations land so what you're talking about is the waking brain entering the the sleeping brain the Sleep worlds yeah the very good the and that again doesn't happen like in a millisecond like you don't blink your eyes and go into that mode it bleeds and I remember this how to I explain I was in I was diving the wait I don't do it anymore but I was diving in the caverns of like the yukatan and where the fresh water meets the ocean water crazy there's like four feet or it's like Blurry and I was like yeah it's not going to go from uh freshwater river to oce and like what like a hair there's a period of overlap interesting and so if you hold on to that uh your waking brain is starting to enter your dreaming your sleeping brain that window there's a word for it it's called hypnogogic and hypnopompic forget about that I like because I want to have a conversation sleep entry sleep entry is also a 15 20 minute period where you can kind of be in these Lial spaces where you're you're like remembering a lot but man I'm having some wild thoughts lucid dreaming is when you've been asleep and then the uh awareness your in a dream returns that's a whole different topic so she's right it's a blended State uh your significant other but sleep entry has been channeled by Salvador Dolly and others and in movie Inception as a place to extract fresh ideas your fresh ideas might be great my fresh ideas might be bad I'm not saying that's the way to be become a creative genius but people have used that window and now there's some devices that that when they see you feel you falling asleep they'll wake you up so sleep entry is the blurry movement from uh the waking brain to the dreaming brain and that is an interesting uh space for creativity sleep exit is the dreaming brain to the waking brain and sometimes the body stays locked in and locked down and the mind comes back and that freaks people out that's called sleep paralysis wow that's that's my synthesis and I that's interesting now this might be off topic here but I'm curious to have an optimal day is it better to wake up organically without an alarm or to wake up with something that is alarming you okay when you wake up so great question first of all because now we have the concept so if you believe your dreaming thoughts are ones you want to hold on to if they're nightmares maybe you want to forget but nightmares won't let you forget that's a different topic they're they arrive in children for a different reason but what I do now because I have the luxury of a bed and curtains so it's out of respect for all the people in this world that don't have that but I believe when I have had a good idea actually forget that my last 100 bad ideas have come from somewhere in sleep entry and sleep exit and when I'm driving around I or whatever I'm you know I'm in LAX or he thr whatever it is uh when I go oh that's interesting thought that a it's not aha moment when when you have a thought that you don't know where it came from I believe it's from that nightly process that's going V interesting that work you're putting in at night on your own the design for the brain to dream to stay creative to stay enriched uh to activate emotions and sights that are Way Beyond what you would even tune moves forward during the day right we'd become so boring if our brains didn't dream at night right the capacity would be constrained so when I have a interesting idea I try to think about did that come from my dreaming brain or have I been working with that so I've been giving these talks on creativity and people so there's an incubation period and extraction period I believe habits during the day well this like like colored te television more color dreams put some red colored goggles on people and they had more red colored dreams I believe like I do things like I like to flip through magazines or I listen to different music and I I take different routes home I believe I'm feeding uh my dream life and then at dream at sleep entry or sleep exit I try to hold on to what was I thinking about what was I thinking about how did I feel about that what was that going on and to do that you you can't have the alarm which is a luxury and the first thing you can't check is your phone cuz the minut you check your phone right that autobiograph autobiographical memory is onto the day what you want is that autobiographical memory thing that stitches every day together not to come on so fast and to some people I mean you can read about it but the concept is there to slow down the uh the Sleep exit or to pay attention to the Sleep entry and jot down or hold on to those windows and I believe for me whether it's coming up with a new surgery coming coming up with an idea for science or working with the LA ballet now or writing like when I have had a good idea it's come from those spaces interesting so not from being rushed and waking up with an alarm and going right into that's important you got to you know shelter and food and get you got to stay staying employed showing up on time like I'm not it's a luxury but if you're really trying to take yourself to the next level my process for extracting ideas uh is is to work with my dreaming wow that's amazing so you mentioned nightmares why do you think kids have nightmares and also kids or teens start to have erotic dreams at the same time yeah um and I'm sure they wish they had more erotic dreams than nightmares but why do why do we need both erotic dreams and nightmares as we're growing up all right so again we return to the the foundation of our conversation that um these are back to what we dream okay like that's been described for a long time I'm not I'm not coming at this new right like and so when we look at the pattern of what people dream um you know there simple stuff like oh you you have a flight tomorrow you have a dream about missing your flight you don't need to interpret that you know what that is you got a presentation tomorrow you have a dream about showing up naked or something behind the podium like we know we get that uh but why would you have nightmares like that this chapter 2 for a reason cuz I wanted to come across and just say look this is a work of imagination it yes that there's nobody that can take these few glimpses of Science and life and come up with like a foolproof hey I got it all figured out story so here's what's interesting about nightmares um if there's anything that would make somebody say look hey this dreaming thing is not good for us why why do we have nightmares like that's like it feels like a glitch right it feels like the mind uhhuh uh uh like a mind's mistake if you will I don't think it is but so when you look at the patterns um to understand it there are two types of nightmares and there's the one with the big idea but let me get to the other one that's easier if if you have been traumatized assaulted P PTSD nightmares are flashback there a bad memory on Loop stamped with raw motion can't shake it that we have some firmer understanding of so if you're struggling and you have uh worsening headaches you say hey I got to think about seeing a doctor if you're an athlete you have worsening pain the key is if you have worsening new onset and Progressive nightmares talk to your doctor or therapist about it it could be a psychological thermometer that things aren't going well for you that's a big topic and I think other people are in that space I'll leave that one there yeah the one that interests me is having three sons and uh is each of them at one point I had to say to them it's all right it was only a nightmare it was only a dream so the first thing I thought was does that mean they didn't and I'm looking at I'm looking and now I'm looking at a neurodevelopment to understand this I want to a whole different space like how you know we're not born walking and talking right so you see kids they're putting things together the movements become fluid you're physically mature not born made and you're cult cated physically right I believe the mind is also being cultivated internally and one example would be you got to remind kids it's only a dream so that means at some point when they're young likely they're confusing or cannot separate uh dreaming thoughts and waking thoughts that and at that time when you ask them what they think about it's very in general I mean this one kid might tell you the wildest thing I'm not telling that person or that parent that that's not what they're experiencing but the pattern is um the dream reports of children and some families signed up for this I've just I studied it they followed their dream reports from like Age 2 to 20 wow longitudinally like what are you dream about now what are you dreaming about now what are you dreaming about now and their dreams are simple it's like a table or a blanket interestingly when they dream of animals they're not often pets they're like beasts and monsters and teddy bears so I can't un explain all of that but that's what they're describing it's not the pet that they have that's in their dream and as we're learning to walk and talk to h23 4 something's going on in the mind there are some structures just I need a moment for this one there there's a type of cognition that's developing first is visual spatial and and then these these developmental scientists they looked at it that the wildness of kids dreams correlates more to the complexity of how they navigate visual spatial things they have a test called block design it's not how well they can spell or remember the more three-dimensional they are the the that parallels complexity of dreaming in a child so all all the parents out there you know make them memorize you know in my opinion I had to like cultivate their sense of gymnastics music art whatever you can different foods different diversity experiences it's not being correlated to logic right so that also like makes me feel like that's that guides a little bit and then what happens is they develop this thing called at some point they realize it's just an example that that teacher or that Uncle or that person that they're smiling and saying hey uh I want to help you but the capacity develops it's called theory of Mind where you start to read the other person's intention Beyond just what they're saying interesting yeah that develops kids are kids are gullible that develops theory of mind yeah to people can look it up theory of mind so that's a just like there's a uh me I can throw the ball like that's develops at a certain age around five or six seven and it the idea of that person's intentions may not be completely clear or they might be misrepresenting their intentions or maybe I shouldn't trust them or maybe they would hurt me these important Concepts arrive in the brain at the same time as nightmares arrive wow so I think if I were to say why do we and then these nightmares all go away for kids and then as adults we get them if we have trauma they come as a wave interesting it's crazy right wow I might be completely wrong but I you know I would love to hear somebody come up with a better so you're not just gullible all the time what everyone says I think nightmares make the Mind nightmares make the mind yeah they make you sharp they give you a sense of self versus other they make you less gullible they create a sense of threat they they the the fleeing and the terror I think it guides the cultivation of this thing called theory of Mind where you realize just because the person's smiling that doesn't mean they have good intentions interesting and that is is cool right I mean that's they they're not not arriving for all of us at age eight 6 S8 and then fading for most of us as we get into adolescence without a reason like that's not that's not a glitch in the system wow my belief I wonder again with humility I'm I'm taking on big things here so if that's not what it is for you I I believe it I'm not saying I got it all figured out but I'm just here to show you like and then people and that we are in many ways still that dynamic as adult so whatever you're T at the grounded level your struggles with your love or your struggle with your part like you're a dynamic ecosystem of mind and body and I just want to take people back to like look at that like we're not and there's a certain part of the brain that gives you that capacity like there it's we'll get into that some other day but in that part the the newest part of the brain that pushed the forehead forward there's a part that when it's injured it doesn't work well we can't like make new opinions or we become gullible like there's some cellular basis to the theory of Mind wow but again I think n nightmares arriving for all of us at the same time as we're becoming like oh that person might hurt me or what do I want self versus other I mean self and italics um I think that's all happening in parallel for a reason wow I think that's all happening in parallel chapter two so if nightmares make the mind what do erotic dreams do okay so the these are my that's why it's just chapter 3 I know everybody's going to want to hear about this one but it's you know it's PG-13 but the but the I think the concepts are you know very mature um so again we again we returned to our primer that there's this we are waking brain and dreaming brain and they intersect we we stab we I think everybody knows that it's a matter of to what degree and how um that's the other Universal dream you know I've never had a dream of teeth falling out but it's been reported for centuries I've had it yeah yeah a few times so there dreams follow patterns right um people have dreams of falling but that's like 20% 60% like you know I had that too but but I've had dreams of fine but not you know but everybody's had essentially I mean there'll be some people say no I've never had a sexual dream okay I'm not here to majority majority I mean way in scientific terms everybody yeah yeah so I call those two Universal dreams nightmares and erotic dreams Universal Universal dreams um and I think when something is universal a part of our there's awesome feels out there like evolutionary psychology like the gifts the strengths and weaknesses today aren't just physical that we're inheriting thinking patterns dreaming patterns um and this is mind-blowing but this has been well known I'm just able to put it I think into a framework now is falling teeth dreams they don't follow they don't teeth falling out it doesn't follow a pattern in people but nightmares cluster in families think when I say exactly I the scene yeah and I've known that cuz I went to medical school and they said that I just didn't have a understanding of it but I believe and there is evidence that we inherit not just our physical traits but our cognitive traits oh yeah and if we inherit our uh risk aversion or or propability to risk if we inherit our uh our parents coping mechanisms or failure to cope um you know we may be inheriting dreaming patterns interesting and I think that that we have to be open to that that that's why nightmares all right for every kid man that's not happening by chance I may not have the explanation for it I think it cultivates the sense of self uh and sense and gives you mind reading ability with somebody else else uh that's called theory of mind that's my opinion then the next one comes is H sexual dreams and this one is is uh interesting because let me break this down for you it's different because when when my sons were born and we born with like the marble you you know it's and what you youve heard this use it or lose it you know like if you cover a child's eye because they have some health issues that part that goes to the right side of the brain and left side one each eye goes to both occipital loes it's not this one to this one is this Crossing M if you cover those parts with they repurpose right it's a it's an Adaptive system um use it or lose it you've got the neurons the 100 billion neurons they're like microscopic jellyfish use them or you're going to lose them that makes sense and that's what happens for vision hearing taste movement if you wrap somebody's arm the motor area will wither wow okay so that's that's built in but this is but how does a touch become a caress that's a capacity from the same from the same sensation um now it can become erogenous right right there there aren new nerves being laid down in our fingertips right but when when a lover a Lover's touch is different than a intention even right not even a touch just so that capacity develops uh in in the human brain uh around the time of 11 12 and 13 interesting and it's it's not after puberty it's not like puberty however people conceive puberty but you don't go through bodily puberty and then say I think I'm turned on it's different you get turn you you you your brain develops the ability to be turned on I believe through erotic dreams wow that erotic dreams are again the mind's cultivation for desire and then you start to see changes in the sensation part of the brain where now it's not just now erotic touch is possible you know without getting too deep into like child rearing and all that but sensuality arrives it's not CH prepubescent it's not it's not there it must come at a certain time and around that time people who have never had uh intercourse people who have uh been castrated chemically for cancer treatment people who have had chemotherapy people have their ovaries removed they still have herotic dreams really it's not the body saying I like it let's think more about it I think it's the other way around wow and that it arrives and in the biggest sense wouldn't that be an important thing for for people to procreate that desire arrives and the fact that it Ares before so here it's not use it or lose it you know it's here you go it's time to use it it comes before it's ready very good yeah so it's something it's I I would love a conversation at a different time with somebody else with that that doesn't follow normal neurod devel neurodevelopmental Pathways usually it's like yeah I can see and if I cover an eye I lose that ability you're sort of equipped and then you cultivate here it arrives and the again erotic dreams like in that J Co song wet dreams he says he I think I'm smashing but I'm but I'm sleeping wow so before he has his first relationship intimate relationship with this person uh he's he's rapping about like he he's performing the act in his dreams in his erotic dreams before they even happened in real life that's not the usual order of how the brain and nerves work so again my humble opinion is wow um erotic dreams um are the embodiment of Desire they they make sure that we want and that's advantageous for us as as creatures species and people do you think the brain and the mind have to dream something first before it can actualize it in real life that's a big question um do they have to dream something or think something first before they can actualize it I think there's two ways to think of that there's the things you there's the things you want and you pursue and the way I would look at that is um returning to another example is that the the dreaming brain and the waking brain is one is one way to understand it but the structures in the brain during Waking Life they're called the executive Network the one we talked about are damping down so if you have a goal pursue it this conversation is not to be like hey just dream around all the time like you got to get after stuff you got to get things done and that's the executive Network and that's what drives you to your goals you can think about your goals you can choose your desires and I that's that's been most of my life um but then the role of Dreams in that I think are twofold one because I have thought about this for myself it's again it's my story I with respect um I believe that if I have chosen a goal with my waking brain it's been you know contributions are coming from my dreaming brain I'm incubating thoughts it's feeding me it's feeding some aha moments I'm using sleep entry I'm using sleep exit and then the bigger one for me is are there things I want are there things I hope for that my waking brain just does not have access to and that's the big question in the beginning like what's the meaning of dreams and then you know if we look at what is happening in the dreaming brain returning to our is that it's hyper emotional it's hyper visual and this is some real profound stuff when I was learning about this and reading about it the I can't get into brain anatomy too much but I would just say the executive think of the if you flatten out your brain the executive Network would be like different continents and countries going going revving up a little bit and the imagination Network which is liberated in the dreaming brain it's different other countries coming up you know it's like bager water fall some come up some comes down like sure it's it's a toggle um and so your brain at its most emotional metabolically electrically is in dreaming you can't you can't rock that hard during the day really yeah by measurement so then it says to me so if there is a meaning if the if if I can gain further insight into myself I must look at the way my dreaming brain is exceptional I'm not going to look at my dreaming brain for a math solution but I might look at my what my dream brain is putting forth uh for an emotional solution an emotional Insight right like that's that's the thing that really I mean a lot of this is um but the meaning of dreams is that the act of self-examination with the recognition that I hope you leave today is that's a hyper emotional state what is the value of emotion yes it's profound when people have injury to these areas they can't even make any decisions like decision making requires emotion Instinct requires emotion my my dog Frankie she knows when I'm sitting in the booby trap like he we're going out for date night Frankie come here she's like there's some Brilliance to emotion right and we have become again don't get me wrong you got to wake up you got to go to work you got to get it done like that and that takes the waking brain and that takes the executive network but if you want insights that can't be gained through the executive Network through always focusing outward then you are getting glimpses of your own brain your own life's hyper emotional states through dreaming and I think there's insight to be found in that and that that is the way to dream interpretation is to recognize the ways that your dreaming brain is exceptional so the way I look at dream interpretation if I could just jump into that that's like the last chapter we go rock all day but this is like it fits nicely here is is there are dream there are dreams you know what they are you know they're like it's like naked behind the podium you had a speech to give late for a flight you know there's no dream interpretation there you know what that is there are dreams that make no sense at all there's noot tional stamp on them it's just it's just it's clutter we have thoughts during the day we don't pay attention to yes there are dreams that parallel your life and the two most important ones are end of life dreams and pregnancy dreams really if as reported when people are pregnant patients are pregnant um they they have a lot of dreams about babies and rolling over babies and you know so that doesn't need interpretation if people at the end of life with a cancer diagnosis and they my patients tell me that they're thinking about like Finish Lines and visiting people from the past really the dreams are accompanying you right cuz you're you're making those dreams so of course the dreams fit what's going on in your life Wow again those don't need to be interpreted you know what's going on sure you're dying and your dreams are comforting you you've worked on a lot of people who have only had a year or a few years left to live canc what are most of those dreams of people who are dying okay that's a big question that goes back to the last conversation we had uh I am surprised um by how by how Valiant most cancer patients are when I look at cancer patients in general I would think most would fall apart right because it's it's quite the word it's quite the journey but it's overwhelming not all some suffer some handle it poorly understandably but they do well they show up for their appointments they're Brave they're they dig down for strength and composure and um they find meaning sometimes they are able to enjoy some things more knowing that the the finish line is in view they're not encumbered as I mentioned last time with with fuss um and those patients when you talk to them um they will report again not all I'll make a simple statements here but a lot of them report that the dreams they have are positive they're helpful they're not of being eaten alive they're not of what did I do to get this interesting it's reconciling with lovers and family it's having an expansive view of their life the dreams in these cancer patients and this is reported in other other people who study this uh dreams comfort you toward the end of life Wow and so again um the hyper emotional dream um so if we have dreams that don't need interpretation cuz you're falling or you're Fly you're flying and you're falling or you're giving a talk and you show up naked or you're your it's end of life and it's comforting you or it's just you there's no emotional feeling to it I believe if you are to go after a dream to really reflect upon you wake up and that intense dreaming life gives you a little a glimpse a little Peak at something don't waste that and the one to choose is the one with a powerful Central image and a powerful emotion so and that to me as that makes sense with what's going on in the brain hyper emotional hyper visual right I'm trying to make sense of it um and just be aware that a lot of times it's symbolic it's not going to be literal right because we talked about the executive network is dampened and hyper emotional hyper visual brain it's a Storyteller it you want to extract the meaning out of the story much like a good movie and it's not hey why am I so for example some veterans when they're having trouble with a marriage will have dreams of of War but they don't generally dream of War so you have to be able to think about it and try to I can't give you that answer I don't know if you're a veteran or not I think that's where it's hard to go online and say I dream I dreamt of a leaf a bridge what does it mean now it's it's different for it's individual and you may not be able to figure it out let alone somebody else but if you have the luxury to remember your dreams or through Auto suggestion and journaling you're trying to remember dreams more which can happen um those are the ones to go after the hyper motional ones the hyper visual ones and just just just keep them here you know you got 15 things in front of you you're you're focusing out where your executive network is on but don't forget about that Glimpse you got into your hyper emotional brain and what it what it produced about you yeah for you wow that was fascinating I feel like we're we're like one% of all the things we could be talking about right now um why why do we why do some people have lucid dreams why are lucid dreams important and how can we enter lucid dreams faster okay uh that got two chapters out of nine so that's this a big one um and just to just to be clear what lucid dreams are um I have not had them but Aristotle wrote about them 3,000 years ago so this is not like it's not some current thing okay what is new is the understanding again we return to your body's locked down executive Network and logic are dampened emotions are up Visions up well when your body is locked down uh in lucid dreaming um what happens is there's one part of the body that's still not locked down on the eyeballs so you if when you're waking up in the morning it just happens that the eyeball the muscles to the eyeballs are not locked down and the muscles to the breathing of course right cuz you're still breathing in lucid dreams or in dreaming in general so what lucid dream experts and people looking into that have started just recently after 3,000 years of many different cultures and books writing about I felt I was awake in my dream MH and I could steer the direction of the dream so not only were you an actor in the dream you're the director interesting right that's been written about for thousands of years right right right but what they can do now is in these sleep Laboratories what they put the stickers on their head to measure the electricity to prove their asleep cuz I could imagine like you know some of my friends they be like I just I woke up how do you know you didn't just wake up right how how do you know you're awake in a dream so you have to prove your asleep through the whole time cuz otherwise you might just wake up yeah I I'm loose to dreaming and then fall back asleep right so some essential questions to be asked so the the electrical measurements with the stickers on the head the sleep spindles is a certain Spike that proves your sleep can't you can't fake being asleep uh to you know to the EKG of your mind if you will right and then um you know they started communicating with them they'll say certain things and they'll they come up with this technique called left right left right and they'll move their eyeballs left right left right answer simple questions and that's progress to some people being able to demonstrate when they enter when Lucidity arrives within their dream they will signal to the people out standing outside the window and so these there are these back and forth experiments going on um so far as even basic things like oh what's two plus two and they'll try to do a left right left right four times and some of you might say well I thought you couldn't do math but that's part of the magic and the Mystery of lucid dreaming is that the executive network is coming back online Little D so for that awareness to happen inside your dream proven by sleep spindles on a EKG EEG you can't fake when the awareness comes back that primer we're talking about the executive Network comes back too so they can do a little bit of basic math so it's like when you talked about the beginning what is it called like 4951 yeah so where is that when the lucid dreaming is happening what is happen is it kind of rocking back and forth like this constantly or is it one side and then it goes back that's a good question it's fragile that's a very good question so you've you''ve gone from dreaming brain you've gone from waking brain to Dreaming brain and what happens is a little bit of the waking brain returns but a little flourishes they report it's not like hey I'm lucid dreaming I got 90 minutes let's let's ride this like I get it like I just you know somebody might be able to but I want to I want to leave you with the fascination like uh these overlap states which are really fascinating sleep entry sleep exit a bit of awareness returning with impr proven sleep that it's uh that it is something um that it's something it's something fragile it's something fleeting think of like birds and murmurations and Aurora Borealis we're not talking about and that that that's also the lesson for people who are listening is stop thinking that your brain is wires and on and off think of it as think of as dreaming brain waking brain waking brain dreaming brain think of this executive Network mostly interacting here a little bit of imagination Network returning because I'm I'm daydreaming while we're talking a little bit of blend right well lucid dreaming is coming to awareness that you're dreaming within your dream and for some people being able to steer the content of their dream that's crazy off like Christopher Nolan likes to talk about new movies and stuff like that but what I'm here to tell you is it exists have proven that it exists I'm not saying you lose the dream I have not Aristotle wrote about it but they have proven with responses from preserved eyeball movements documentation that that person is asleep with the electricity of sleep that they they have been able to communicate with people uh who are in dreams it's crazy that they can steer their dreams that's what they report isn't that crazy yeah but if you if you step back a little bit and stop thinking as the brain on on off wired hardwired not if you start to think of it as States as Tides right as flows as seasons and every night there's the waking brain and dreaming brain and there's sleep entry and there's sleep exit and sometimes Lucidity returns it starts to make sense of a lot of the stuff I've been seeing in the hospital really well I mean people wake up from anesthesia there pum people are awake Drink they communicate in anesthesia during our awake brain surgery really wake up and they're dreaming gnarly stuff you can give people certain medicines and they have more lucid dreaming something based on a cetto colomine the reports of lucid dreaming go up with galantamine so what that tells me not not to get too medically about it is that when you mess with pills and drugs and the dreams change like this is a biological process wow it's not coming from the heavens it's coming from our brains really yeah well speaking of the heavens when we dream are our dreams in our brain or in our minds and is our mind on this Earth and planets or is it in another realm big stuff man we could be like around a fire 500 years go ask 3:00 a.m. you know yeah oh yeah um I mean that's why this is so special for me is that and you may not have the anwers I'm I have I have some direction yes to those questions I mean if somebody told just the fact that you asked me that question means like I'm doing all right you know no but it's a it's I am fortunate to have uh people ask me just to weigh in on that and what I'm trying to do is build it on science but bring it to you in a way where you can go home and talk to your family about it right like that's so what what is your thoughts on that so the first thing is the brain and mind thing can't be separated it's not like software Hardware the brain the a whole big topic but the the mind is an emerging phenomena that emerge that comes from from the brain one example would be like uh we see it the crystals form we see an in organic matter right it's a self-organizing thing termites can make Mounds um stadiums with a roar outside right is more than the 880,000 individuals inside that Roar is my best way of understanding what a 100 billion neurons do uh they the Mind comes from it wow now the what we think can go back and shape the brain um so it's a reciprocal interaction our habits can shape the brain um our brain creates the habits so the brain mind I don't think you can really separate it out The Ultimate Gift of the human mind I think is dreaming love and all those things yes but the process of dreaming um so let's let's for one second say we're talking about brain and mind as one thing okay we just call it brain mind um and I was reading about this oh this is this is great um here's a story of course they had to come from the heavens till about our understanding till about 100 years ago you plop down you're not doing anything and then you wake up and whether you tell somebody or not you're like man I was on fire last night my thoughts right so if you're asleep and you're hibernating or you're deactivated or whatever the phrase was was it had to come from something external how it's in there how could inactive flesh of the brain the resting brain brain doesn't rest at night brain doesn't rest ever brain rests when you're dead right um there's no there's no like like I said the electricity in sleep is so similar to the electricity during waking they call it paradoxical sleep like you're you're on when you're asleep okay so but they didn't know that nobody could know that until this is a great story I don't think it's been told but it's it's the story that I've come to understand um so that makes sense it had to come from something outside of us you're out cold and you're thinking that kind of stuff monsters and pterodactyls and erotic dreams and nightmares okay so that came from the heavens or the gods they're Omens but what happened was somebody about a 100 years ago did a surgery for a brain tumor then there was a physician there and they had just figured out at that time uh that you could put a a wire wasn't just for sending electricity it was for measuring it right so when you put a sticker on your heart and you know the electricity of a heart right it's from the nerves on the surface of the heart it's not from the muscle interesting it's EKG is the measurement of the electricity in the nerves on top of your heart okay when we shock you to wake you recharge your heart we're just shocking the three nerves not the muscle muscle just listens um well what if you put 96 stickers on your brain you would get a measurement that's called EEG okay what he did was he put a sticker on right on top of the hole like skull had a hole but the Stitch work the flesh was covered we do that still sometimes but in that area where there was no skull about the size of a coin he put a little sticker on there a little wire on the brain on the yeah but there was a hole surge do on the brain but there was a hole so and healed flesh put it just on top of the flesh with the hole underneath he thought he's going to get better readout I guess right the hole that would be a direct line to the brain yes but not touching the brain got it and then he got he got squiggles and that was like and that was where the e was invented about 100 years ago wow the interesting part was when they all left the room or whatever they were doing the person fell asleep nobody paid attention to it but the squiggles were happening at night it wasn't squiggles during the day and a flatline right at night so somebody could have said at that point like wait a second that flesh is not inactive then 60 years ago somebody in Montreal Dr Penfield he was uh so now he's numbing up the scalp laying it open patient is on relaxing medications but not on a machine drills the whole like ice fishing takes it off sees the covering of the brain called the dura and sizes it the surface of the brain is there and then they lighten up her medication and he's got like a little fountain pen that delivers little electricity uhuh and he's mapping it and he's trying to find the thing the patient has seizure and says before the seizure I always get this feeling this Aura he thinks if he can find where that feeling originates dissect out a little bit of that tissue he can break the seizures he ended up being right that's a massive field that imagine major centers around the world W seizure surgery but at times when he would zap CU he's marking you know the patient reports desire and one patient reported at night recurrent nightmare that they had been having interesting you zap the surface of the brain with a little faint electricity the brain doesn't have a nerve endings of its own so you can touch it you wouldn't know C wouldn't feel it when you yeah not you but this is known and I've done this the surgery this is established stuff awake brain surgery you can cut the brain you don't you won't feel the pain no you only it only feels through it's tentacles so when you're doing an awake brain surgery only only the scalp feels it but we numb it up the patient is awake and you're in there and they can talk to you and and you can dissect the brain and they don't feel the thing is this the one I mean you see the videos of like I guess violin or guitar where it's like okay you know connecting it's so crazy but when he was mapping it a nightmare which is a type of dream was returned and he took he took the pen off nightmare broke wow at that moment we knew that dreams the only thing I can say with certainty today is dreams come from our brain they do not come from the heavens wow that I can say with certainty everything else this has just been a f fascinating F it's and the ride will continue you know but that that we can say was certain dreams are an electrical process of of the human brain when you've done brain surgeries um have you noticed people you know six months later saying I used to have this type of dream and now those are gone or I have these different dreams now after brain surgery have you ever that's a good that's a good question um a lot of dreaming changes very good question uh and I've tried to keep the medical world out of it even though it informs dreaming quite a bit but the patterns I saw from like drug drug dreams anesthetic dreams are just I couldn't find a way and that's also again to let you know like if it didn't fit if there wasn't a if it wasn't going to be a thoughtful um Love Letter to dreams and dreaming I'll tell you and I'll tell you I can't the the pattern of dreams that happened with anesthetics and stuff I can't say aha this one causes this and this could mean there's no I can't find meaning in it's that wild the ones that you're seeing here I feel good about yes but patients with brain injury brain surgery on medications on steroids for swelling their dreams change completely there's a brand new dream life and what it says to me is again dreams come from the brain if you take a pill that goes in your blood change create different Dreams yeah interesting that's yet another example of Dreams must come from the brain interesting so not from some other realm right what about the pineal gland uhuh you hear a lot of this in you know ancient texts and Mystics and meditators and yogis talking about the pineal gland like the power of the pineal gland to activate the mind and the brain and create more powerful visions and and I'm happy to get into all of these things like Aura is a thing a a people look it up that's a that's a hunch so I'm not I think a lot of the stuff is real I just think it's it's muddy and it's easy to manipulate so I would say be careful so um the pineal gland has been you know because of its location people thought it's the Mind's Eye the philosophers have commented about it what I can tell you is as a brain surgeon what is what is it for I can take it out and the person is exactly the same really pineal gland surgery Pine pineocytomas P have you ever taken one out yeah you've taken part of neurosurgery you've taken one out of it yeah you come in through the back here it sits between the loes so people can look that up is um pineal gland or it's it's a gland whether it's got cancer in it or whether it's just a cyst non-cancerous but growing and pushing whether it's normal pineal or abnormal when you remove it they have almost no significant consequences really yeah and the Melatonin is bottomed out and they still sleep okay so I'm not here to I'm not here to go against the whole world of things that are out there but again if we're having a conversation you come into my house where we're hanging out we're taking a walk and you ask me that question I'm trying to come to you both with things I can't make sense of and aesthetic dreams Pineo gland no they're being removed across the world and there isn't the pituitary gland if you take that out you got to take a bunch of hormones and medicine that's a big deal interesting the pineal gland the ones that has has been giving sort of this Transcendent value that comes out and goes in the in the canister and it's fine and the next day we don't change the stuff the patients on they don't need some replacement thing and it makes melatonin and I wrote about in my last book when when the melatonin drops to zero or nothing they're still sleeping all right really I'm not going to say don't take melatonin or take melatonin we're not doing Health advice I mean I don't mean like we can't go there but yeah yeah where I'm at is Concepts exploration and what about and does the pineal gland impact dreams or dreaming do you know after you remove it people still dream it doesn't have those kind of connections when interesting the back to the dreaming when when talk to about like if the brain was laid flat and different continents and countries are up the imagination Network liberated in the dreaming brain different countries and continents and oceans are up for the executive Network trying to get the days work done the the pineal is like it's irrelevant in that map of things that come up when you sleep huh that thing that goes 51% when you sleep pineal glass not even a bench warmer what what the what's the primary purpose of the pineal gland we don't think it has a primary purpose I know well just you we can look it up but there are parts of the body it's like the appendix of the brain we can remove it and it doesn't change people still live long lives oh yeah oh yeah but you know you don't have to what part of the what part of the brain if you remove it is going to be you're not going to be able to perform the same way well okay that's a bigger concept so and how and how much of the brain can you still have yeah you can you remove or have left to still live a great life yeah so let's take that uh that's an interesting question that when you if you think of the brain laid flat as a yes as different continents and countries right it's like a mosaic it's like a puzzle if you cut out half of the continent well we we do surgeries in children where we remove half the brain hemispherectomy half half the brain yeah not the not the reptilian and not the emotional Instinct but half the hemisphere the two Walnut so what what that points to is this this what we call some areas you bump into it with a suction at 20 20 20x and it leads to a change some areas um nail gun injuries happen and you take out that part of the brain you know like car like you know like framers they use the pneumatic nail guns and when they kick up a little high they'll spray a nail through the the thin floor the yeah this part of neurosurgery is taking out the penetr it's called penetrating trauma depending on where it goes they can handle a nail in one front of lobe or the other but hitting both front of lobes it changes a person so some areas have redundancy other areas can't take a joke some areas uh you could take one occipital lobe and you uh basically just lose your rearview mirror you don't lose sight but if you take both or injure both so there's that's what neurosurgery is about is knowing what you can go through what to expect on the person waking up after you do that wow that's neurosurgery but it also informs that we have to stop looking at the brain as some homogeneous thing that return to like a slice through and you'll see all different shapes in there it's not like it's not like cake it's not like H like liver it looks the same yeah this is brain is diverse oh yeah structures and Connections in there is beautiful so I mean how many people have you seen have a a nail gun like in brain six when I was training yeah really gunshot wounds nail gun injuries fights you know but so you learn what trauma what parts of the brain can handle trauma cuz you're not doing those types of surgeries you're doing cancer removal but right but that informs me if I'm getting to a deeper tumor and it's inside and it's got a normal brain on the outside that has informed me along with mapping what is the route that I can get to the tumor this is fascinating but not inj the person that's that's Nur surgery it's not the it's not the Chopsticks in a jar like the tech the hands it require skill but there's something more to it that I love and the stories from the patients informed the last decade and a half and still are informing this book and so it's the patient stories and the Neuroscience on top of the nail gun and that's what we open with look I'm trying to come at you with like petri dish stuff nail gun stuff wow Heavens Networks I'm trying to bring it all in um to to have done a real proper look at dreams and dreaming this is why you dream uh Dr Rahul this is this is this is powerful I want to do a a two-part with you because I feel like there's so many more questions I want to dive into that we we've gone like 5% of what I want to talk about um but I want people to get this book because I think this would be a great Baseline for you to understand a lot more about the neuroscience and the the remarkable meaning behind your dreams understanding your dreams better and having a better road map for navigating your dreams for the future but I'd love to have you come back on and do part two of this I think it'd be really powerful well I think you know you you you um you said something really important there that in trying to understand dreams and dreaming I understood myself better in trying to if you read this book and you find something interesting learning more about your brain and mind will inform your Waking Life yes so then you'll then when you people say the brain is this you'll say wait a second because you're going to walk away learning about Neuroscience you're going to walk away learning about art and literature nightmares erotic dreams and more importantly um you know for me it was it's sort of my um it's my gift um this is my legacy that yes uh somebody try to put together something that like how's somebody going to do you take take a proper shot at this and uh I'm very happy with uh the honesty there and you'll see phrases like could it be I wonder I'm tempted to speculate so I'm not just telling you I'm taking you through how I'm thinking and so well I mean it's I mean how long have you been a brain surgeon for now uh wow 25 years 25 years and what it sounds like is you've had 25 years plus your residency so called 30 plus years of researching the brain and as a PhD in neuroscience and understand the mind when you first came on you talked about the brain is kind of these waves and patterns I remember you talking about like uh like birds moving in waves and patterns the electricity does move like that it's not on off exactly it's not a switch and then to me it sounds like you know last 30 years you've been able to interpret these waves and patterns through all the different operations you've done through the different case studies you've seen of people coming in before and after and now deepening your research in understanding the brain the mind with dreaming and so I'm so excited for people to get this book this is why you dream and I'm excited to dive in more with you I think we got to do probably multiple episodes on this because I'm fascinated by this I want to know more about how also you know the health benefits of dreaming how much we should be sleeping to maximize our dreams and our Optimal Health uh and so many other questions around this if you guys have a question on dreams leave a question below uh and we'll try to get to that in our next episode in the future whenever we can get you back on Pleasure um but Rahul this has been super inspiring how can we how can we get a copy how can we support you and um what else can we do to support this yeah I'm feeling good about it and uh um you know I think the usual things where to get a copy on Amazon where the Publishers are just doing a massive thing they sold it it's already picked up in 22 translations I they believe in it and they've been reading this material and the the uh and the two things that really touched me were this can never be explained like you know cuz I I'm a surgeon I want answers I want to fix but they're like this can it's dreaming rul it'll never be fully EXP explained we want to know what you think and pull from everything you've lived through amazing and then the and then the New York publisher just was like this email and just the first sentence just took my breath away a little book a little bit there was it just put this this book is important wow period I was like okay that's a mic drop moment for me I'm excited for this where where we where are you spending most of your time online should we follow you on social media your Instagram Dr John diall but you know I'm an Oldtimer man Dr John deal you're you're young old-timer right you're still young um do you have a website also though no but you know I mean I Instagram yeah Instagram Instagram and follow you there and um get the book this is going to be powerful for anyone that you know in your life who maybe talks about Dreams they're going to be fascinated by this as well so get a couple copies give it to a friend again Rahul I'm very excited about this this is why you dream make sure you guys get a copy appreciate you very much for being on and for part one of hopefully many on this topic cuz I'm there's so many more followup questions I have but I want to let people start with this first so we could take each chapter deeper let's do it I appreciate you being here memory is important memory is the thing that determines whether the event remains traumatic in your heart whether it's painful still for you go so let's get into that so we just need to heal the memory of the trauma this exactly where I'm taking it

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 428,378

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: y6vEWdGVsAA

Length: 88min 23sec (5303 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2024