Dreaming Techniques

3. On my front, with my pillow underneath my stomach

I have just eaten a fifty course meal in a kind of strange French restaurant. Every course includes a side plate with red coconut jelly for some reason. There is the boy-prince from Temple of Doom sitting next to me, and we digest by watching a performance by an avant-garde dry-cleaning outfit singing a number called ‘I Dream of Cleany’. The performers finish their song and try to chase us from the restaurant down a circular but not spiral staircase, and I don’t think we ever escape.

I wake up lying halfway off the bed, with one of my feet on my red chair. I have no breakfast hunger, and feel like tidying my flat.

Some background:

Dreams are mystical and sexy. They have a kind of quantum logic whereby things are relevant and reliant on each other simultaneously.Inception and the Matrix and so on are deliberately dream-like, and all to do with enlightenment and awakening. Our favourite dreams are often the vivid and filmic ones.

For a period of time I was quietly troubled because I was forgetting almost all my dreams and waking up bereft. For some time I went around tinged with regret and sadness. What was the point of going to sleep if there was no bizarre parade to witness and belong to?

Then one day I got a girlfriend and a designated bedtime, and had to sleep in a more sociable way than curled up against the wall like a sulky croissant. I started sleeping on my back, and – open sesame! – my subconscious reopened.

Sleeping on my back makes me dream better than when I sleep in a curl.

a) I breathe properly, deeply, measured, nasally.
b) My posture is better, more spinal.
c) I can remember my dream, either immediately or later in the day.
d) When I wake up I don’t feel groggy.

Kafe Adams is an expert on deciphering dreams and has worked for Emperors and Sultans for one thousand years. She is now a lecturer at the horribly-named University of Bishop Grosseteste.

I emailed her once about a horrible geometric dream I used to have when I was littler, and she was the first person I told of my discovery about the benefits of back-sleeping.

I ended my letter: Our species have been waiting for a new revelation like this since the moon-landings. This is the inner-cosmos. Let us explore it on our backs!

And she wrote straight back, furtively nodding me in the direction of the shady and mysterious IASD the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

These IASD guys are seriously into dreams. Their website has one hundred and seven drop down links to choose from on their homepage. Their President is hard-ass dreamer Jody Grundy. Ropert P. Gongloff is Vice Prez (what the P stands for nobody knows). Their Chairman of the Board is Robert Waggoner. He is said to have once dreamt a mattress in two. Robert J. Hoss is the Treasurer, which means he keeps their treasure in his dreams. And Kate Adams is the Secretary.

Yet for all their know-how and might they have no scientific information about why dreams are forgotten. For people who want to remember their dreams they shruggedly advise Before you fall asleep, remind yourself that you want to remember your dreams.

This is both proof that dreams are mysterious, but also of the Dream Associates immense power. What else can their remind their bodies to do? Walk through walls? Regenerate? Fly?

Further proof of power: each year these warlocks hold a telepathic dreaming contest. You have to dream which image one of the Senders are telepathically broadcasting. One year it was this. (http://www.asdreams.org/telepathy/contest2000/target40.htm )

I could learn a lot from the IASD. One day I may be able to turn invisible or speak to animals. But the first step is to be accepted into their ranks.

So to impress these slumber titans I have done some further research into back-sleep and recorded my data. I have sent them my data.

Bear with me:

My thesis is most valuable.I sleep for 20 hours a day for the good of all mankind. The pursuit of a settled and interesting night’s sleep is a noble chase.

I have not yet had any replies from the IASD Dream Lords, from the Pillow Association, or the Night-Light Group. But I shall post them as I receive them just a matter of time.By all means badger them yourselves, you have my blessing.

If you are a dream pilgrim like me and have dataand experiencesof your own, please share.

Sweet dreams.

David Thomas

Part 3… next week ‘On my back with my hands behind my head and legs crossed the *recommended* method.’ Read Part 1 here.