Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 191: Vigilia ad Pacem

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

John Navilliat ~ https://www.insomniatopeace.com/

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today our guest dreamer is John Navilat. There we go. We just talked about this before and you said, you did good. And now I can't remember what I said. Close enough. He's out of Southern California. Thank you for being understanding and generous.

He is an insomnia coach. His private practice is Insomnia to Peace specializes working with athletes. So we're going to get into all that in two seconds here. For my part, would you kindly like, share, and subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. I do video game streams Monday through Friday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific-ish. This episode brought to you in part by ABC Book 6. You can see it on the screen there.

It is Studies in Dreams by Mrs. Mary Arnold Forster. It is one of the earliest works I've found addressing the topic of lucid dreams. She describes her experience, being able to fly in dreams, dream guides that she experiences in there that sometimes, I think she's. she said take the form of her father. Very interesting. Very, well, all of these works are interesting, and you should buy them all,

but definitely buy this one. All this and more, of course, at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, including an encyclopedia and downloadable MP3 versions of this very podcast, so you can take the Wizard with you, wherever you wander with or without Wi-Fi. I love alliteration.

And if you'd head on over to Benjaminthreamwizard. Locals.com, it's free to join attached to my Rumble account. Best place to reach out to me if you have a dream. And that is enough out of me. So, John, thank you for being here. I appreciate your time. Yeah, thanks for having me, Ben.

Happy to be here. Very cool. So, of course, everyone probably asked you, how did you become specialized as an insomnia coach? It's got a niche like mine. I do dreams. That's all I do. So how did you, yeah, how'd you, what's the path to that? Yeah.

So my, I myself went through insomnia for seven years. and I've been in recovery for a little over a year now, just across the one-year anniversary mark. And it was a really, I mean, it's a scary problem for anyone, but for me in particular, it was particularly alarming. And my case is not unique or special at all. But what happened was, I was a lifelong great sleeper. And my troubles started on the night of my professional career as a software developer and I put a lot of pressure on myself to say okay well I want to be able to make a good first impression want to be able to crush it at this job so I told myself well the only way that's going to happen is that I need to make sure that I get a lot of good quality sleep and sure enough

that night I didn't get any sleep and you know it's not particularly unusual for people to any go any for anyone who's going going through any sort of life-related stress whether it be work or relationship or anything like that or maybe a new medication change to lose a little bit of sleep it's not anything to be worried about that's part of the normal part of the human experience but you know it's it was particular it started to become a little bit concerning when i also didn't get sleep Tuesday wednesday thursday and this was the first time this has ever happened to me and uh sure enough on friday night i told myself well i don't have any work tomorrow so i don't have to worry about that. It was not the best first week at work because I was going with very little

sleep, if any. So I'll be able to get plenty of sleep tonight. Same thing Saturday and Sunday. I did not get any sleep at all. And that's what really kick started this whole seven year, often nightmare known as insomnia. And throughout those seven years, there are a lot of things I experimented with and that's more or less the same thing that everyone does when they start to develop insomnia. They go through, they do all the things, all the low hanging fruit that they can find online, whether it's, oh, are you practicing your sleep hygiene? Are you mindful of what you're putting into your body?

What sort of practices are you doing? And for me, I was under the impression that this was exactly what you should do. all the medical doctors, all the sleep experts, everyone I can find online, that's what they all say to do. And yet that didn't seem to make a dent, if anything, that seemed to make it worse. So when you start to do that, that's when it becomes really scary. So I don't know what's going on with my body. I'm doing everything. I'm setting up the absolute tip top perfect conditions to force sleep to happen and nothing isn't happening. And so it can be a very isolating thing because I didn't know anyone else personally who went through this at this point in time.

And now that I know better, now that I've worked with a lot of people who have insomnia, now they have after speaking to a number of people who also act as, work as insomnia coaches, it's not an unique or special case at all. That's more or less the same pattern that everyone goes through. And I can speak to any part of that if you want, but I'm just keeping it at a very high level, how I got into insomnia coaching for starters. Absolutely.

That was the question. at the, you know, kind of 30,000 foot overview. Like, and it's very, it made me think, too, is like, so I've gone through, I've a degree in psychology. I practiced in, in, patient psychiatric for 20 years. And so I know a lot of general information. And a lot of what you were mentioning is like, you know, the idea of sleep hygiene, a good routine, looking at dietary choices.

Are you eating particular kinds of, are you eating too late at night? Your stomach's full. You can't get comfortable. That's a thing. are you having too much caffeine? I mean, these are all the things we're aware of on the surface level. I was going some of the... Oh, but so it's very interesting.

So a lot of people last me that too, they're like, do you have any recommendations or strategies or whatnot for, say, insomnia or specifically, you know, like what to do with, say, sleep paralysis and different things like that? I'm like, and while I know a general bit, my specialty is, say, the, the, the, was dream interpretation. So it's a separate. It's not,

I'm not actually a sleep, Wizard of Sleep. So you would be, perhaps. You know, that's, it's up to you to decide if you meet that criteria. It's kind of a self-appointed title in a way.

If you do what a wizard does, then that is what you are. But also, it reminded me of the saying that we have from years back that some of the best, say chemical dependency counselors are former addicts, because they've been there, done that, they've seen it.

They know that, they know what you're going. through like literally not going oh i sympathize but like no i that that was me i did that that's happened to me that's one of the best ways i think and they make the most successful counselors because they've been through it because they tried all the things and made all the mistakes um it is by far my most powerful asset yeah having having lived the experience then being able to pass that on no for sure that's like uh i think it's a huge it's also a huge selling point of business if you're like you know well what do you know about this thing well i rather

a lot of books. No, I've been there. I've done it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me tell you how I got out of that hole. Um, just that the things I was making notes of is the idea of, um, anxiety and pressure to perform our, our mental state being a huge, a huge component of it. Um, I don't know if it's given away trade secrets to say, how did you resolve it? Because it's going to be different for each person. There's going to be common elements, but different. Or maybe am I assuming that? Maybe I don't know. That is it more a standardized process we can get people through? Or does it really have to be tailor made sometimes?

I don't know what your opinion on that. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm more than happy to speak to. I don't believe in trade secrets. I put all of my, I can speak to insomnia all day in all of its various aspects and particularly in little nuances. The whole thing is just navigating certain nuances.

And it more so depends. I guess the tailoring comes into how, what exactly the client is particularly is kind of struggling with. Because at a high level, it more or less is the same sort of approach or philosophy. But people can get tripped up on certain tricky things. So, for example, let's say that you have a client. I was working with a client recently who was utilizing. marijuana to help with their insomnia. And where that can be tricky is they did not like using

THC recreationally, but sometimes people do. And for this person, this THG was a safety behavior. They utilized the safety behavior because they had some intermittent success with it, but at the same time it was coming at a cost. They didn't like how they didn't like the sensation of being high. They were a parent, so they didn't want their kids to see any paraphernalia or anything like that. And he just didn't want to dedicate a few hours of his life in the evening towards getting high just for the sole purpose of making sleep happen.

And that's more or less a symptom of insomnia at a higher level is that we have insomniacs, they have developed a strong fear or a sense of an easiness around not being able to sleep. So they'll go about taking up all these things that they think are doing well, but in the long run isn't really doing them any service. But where it can be tricky is if you have some people

who, for example, are used THC and they also like to do it recreationally. So there are times when it can require a lot of handholding or navigating to say, okay, well, am I doing this for the right reasons because I'm doing this too, because I want to make, because I just like to do this with my life, or am I doing this for the wrong reasons? I'm trying to chase and force sleep to happen. So those are the particular things.

That's when the sort of tailoring and customizing can come into play. And a lot of people have maybe certain life situations that they need to be discussed. For example, it's like, oh, my next door neighbor always wakes up at four o'clock in the morning. I can always hear it and that creates a lot of stress or so, for example. So that's when it's still the same approach and solution at a higher level, but it has to be, broken down and articulated in a way that lands with them because it's another interesting thing that I've found is that you could explain this stuff all day long in a textbook and all the information can be correct but for every reason it doesn't really make an emotional impact on them

so these people really need because they're it's an enormous amount of fear and anxiety for them definitely yeah I mean I've discussed this with with past guests and just in general saying you know sleep is not optional it's not like something you can just go well So I don't sleep. You go long enough, you become literally psychotic. And more than that, very, you know, just a couple of days of, of, of, of, of not sleeping well, even not full insomnia. Like, I'm awake all died.

I can't even close my eyes. But just interrupted sleep, poor sleep, short, short sleep. No, boy, it has those physical impacts. You're tired, you're groggy, mental fog, that kind of thing, which is, I don't know, maybe this is, I got going on this morning. It takes me a long time to wake up. That's, that's always a thing for me. I don't know.

I humans are variable in in a lot of different across a lot of different dimensions. Um, one thought that occurred to me and I'm like, well, let's tie this into what I do is, um, have you noticed any trends or commonalities among people with legitimate insomnia according to, you know, criteria and the quality or nature or absence or whatever of, of dreaming? I mean, have you noticed a correlation? it's funny to ask, hey, you can't sleep, how are your dreams? But it doesn't mean you never sleep. Doesn't mean you don't get a cat nap now and again, you're 30 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever you can, when your body finally breaks down and you're just exhausted and you pass the fuck out.

Have you noticed, I don't stop there. I'm rambling, but if you noticed anything connected to dreams and dreaming that might be common to insomnia acts. Sure, yeah. And just a point of clarification, when I say I had insomnia for seven years, to your point that doesn't, I don't want to give the impression that I didn't. sleep at all for seven years. That's impossible.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were good and bad stretches, but the underlying, the reason why I say I had insomnia, even during periods of the good stretches, was because I never really resolved that underlying root issue, which is that developed this sense of an easiness around being awake because sleep deprivation hurts. In terms of the, in terms, as far as dreams go, there isn't so much a particular thing. theme or like some sort of archetype dream or union archetype or whatever that comes about. But I'm so sorry about that's okay.

There is a, uh, I'm surprised I'm not covered in cats. They're usually on top of me. They found a sunbeam over there in the corner. Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah. Keeping them occupied. Um, but in terms of the actual dreams themselves, it's not so much the theme of the dream, but it's more so how people experience the dream.

And what I mean by that is because when you're struggling with insomnia, the type of sleep that you do get, it's very common to have this sleep that's in a hyper aroused state because they're very afraid, they're very anxious, and they're focusing on trying to make sleep happen. So what that looks like to them and what it looked like to me was I could have sworn up and down that I was wide awake for the whole night. But you'll come to find out that you actually from either a loved one or from if you managed to get a sleep study done on you and said you actually get more sleep than you expected. It's very common for people suffering from insomnia to hear from their partner. Oh no, you were out. I mean, you were definitely snoring. And the person who went through who suffers from insomnia had no recollection of that.

But as a result, they're in a very, they get put in this. very limbo state of mind where you know i'm sure that's happened to you where you've been on an airplane you kind of get that like half awake half asleep sort of sort of state where you never really quite get into that REM sleep you never really have that sensation of you wake up but what that can look like for dreams is that you never it becomes very confusing if you actually experienced a dream or if you were daydreaming i like to call them thinking dreams because it's very hard it's very very very hard to distinguish them. I myself personally, you know, when I was growing up, I had a very active imagination.

I spent a lot of time daydreaming. And when I would wake up, it wasn't totally clear to me if I was, if I was just lying in bed daydreaming. And I guess I could go, I could speak into the, go into the particular dream I had in mind for this, for this podcast. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great, great segue, because I know we're short on time and we want to get you out of here on time, but we also want to give you a good experience. Just a couple of things.

Just to put a pin in this, I suppose, is there is long history. So why have I published all these books? 17 currently available works of historical dream literature. Because I wanted to basically create my own master class and dream interpretation. What is what of all the famous people said in this, all the learned scholars throughout history on this subject? And a lot of them, because you can't avoid it, talk about sleep itself and what it is. And there's been a long history of comparison to, you know, daydreams, but also hallucinations.

And what the French called reverie back at that time and how it was also similar to a trance or hypnotic state. And they're trying to tease out, what is the brain? What are we experiencing? What is this thing? How do we define it? And so and a lot of it comes down to that, you know, humans have what we used to call or some people called the imaginative faculty. We have the ability to imagine things to conjure images in our mind to play out what if scenarios. And then that all, you know, we don't lose that when we're going to sleep.

It just becomes that's what we're doing. When we're in sleep, it's all in that imaginative faculty, which is, it's very weird. It's like, what's the difference? How are we using this thing unconsciously? And that's where they, you know, develop that idea of the unconscious. Well, you're not conscious. So there's, you are unconscious. And then there is the unconscious, all the theories that developed around that.

I just want to throw all that in. There's fascinating stuff to me. But let me, let me make a timestamp here. And, oh, okay. So as usual, I'm just going to shut up and listen. Our friend's going to tell us his dream beginning to end, narrative wise. And then we're going to, we're going to talk about it. So I'm ready when you are.

Benjamin the dream wizard wants to help you. Here's the veil of. night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his dreamscapes program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New Dreamscapes episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks exploring the psychological principles which inform our dream experience, and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms and through the contact page at

Benjamin the DreamWizard.com, where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon, documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. I imagine that you like me, I have a sense that you might be a Lord of the Rings fan as well just from just a little yeah only slightly i have a gandoff hat over there i usually leave it over i usually put it here i forgot today yeah um so i was really into the books and the movies when i was growing up and this particular dream happened maybe three to four years ago um

and if you remember towards the end of the second movie they were in uh... osciliath where it was like this broken down ruined city of uh... that men used to live at, but it was overrun by orcs. It was like a modern-day battlefront. And at the end of the second movie, Frodo and Sam are going through the city that's under siege. There's this raging battle going on. Eventually, they have to escape and get out of there and get closer to Mordor. And my dream was, I was, for whatever reason, I was one of the ring wraiths, one of those dark cloak figures that were riding on those dragon-like things, the fell beast, and they were just causing a whole bunch of a

They were a real nuisance at that battle. They were just flying around eating guys and You know causing a whole lot of mayhem and I always thought it was like a really cool scene, but I never really like had any emotional impact But I was just like okay, that's looks like a really cool well-done scene. I you know and So for every reason I was dreaming as one of these monsters and it was just cool. It was like kind of like the same sort of thing that you the same sort of like I don't know experiences if you got like we're playing an unlockable character in a video game that you like like and so I haven't uh you know this is a this is a new one and I've dabbled in lucid dreaming a little bit but a bit before but I don't think I was really

aware that I was that I was dreaming and after flying around doing all this you know cool stuff I that's when I woke up but when I woke up I just To my earlier point, I wasn't really sure if I was actually dreaming or if I was just simply having a cool daydream. Because it can be a very uncomfortable sensation when you're, for obvious reasons, when you're dealing with insomnia. But one of which is that you just get put in a weird state of mind if you're in the middle or towards the end of a difficult night of sleep. So yeah, it was a very tricky thing for me to navigate. And ultimately what I experienced was what I call, like I said, a thinking dream where you're, you almost, you know, it feels like you have a foot in both the sleeping world and the waking world. Absolutely. There is, so Jung had a practice of, and I think Freud might as well, but it's hard to tease the two out sometimes, like whose ideas or who is because they shared a lot in common.

and they only differed on certain points and then went went much further down their respective roads. But one thing, I believe was young. One thing he would do is if a client came in and they did not have a dream to share, he would do what, they would invent a dream. It would be a present fantasy. Let's imagine. Let's just relax, close your eyes.

What do you see? Let's talk about that. And then a sequence of events will unfold and they'll just talk about it. and it's a completely, you know, artificial dream in a way. This, this, this, this, this is, there's a term I think they use for it. I'm not remembering it at the moment, but so I would say those are, I mean, at least young believed and I, I have no reason to doubt it. It seems to be true that that that daydreams, fantasies of that kind and, you know, a lot of

people think put a sexual connotation to fantasy, but fantasy is sword and sorcery. We call it fantasy. It's anything that's not real as, as separated from say hard sci-fi. Even most sci-fi is fantasy. We got aliens and robots. Those don't exist. Not yet. We're working on it.

But so even that falls under, anyway, fantasy. So imagination dreams. And then the idea of, let's see, there's the constructed artificial dream. There's involuntary daydreams. Just suddenly you're abstracted and you're thinking of something else. You're not presently focused. And then scenarios play out. And then there's actual nocturnal visions.

So there's actually three categories that are almost all the same. And it deals with the same functions of the brain that imaginative fact that we're talking about. Yeah, yeah. So we'll talk about that, but in terms of an interpretation, what we want to do, I need to see your experience a little bit better. So you've given the broad strokes. I am one of these creatures. I am flying around on the winged beasts. and what was, give me, if you can, a little bit more of the sequence of events.

You know, when I first appeared in the dream, I'm on the ground getting ready to take off. I'm already in the air, observing what's going on. What was the first vision or scene? Yeah. So I think the dream started out when I was already flying. I was already in a participant in this battle. and I was just causing all sorts of mayhem. And, you know, it's like the classic dream situation

where you never call your dreams out on their bullshit. You're just like, oh, okay, this is just, this is my life. This is a, oh, yeah, I remember, this is what I do all the time. Of course, I'm a ring, wreath. I always have been. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I don't think it even lasted that long. It might have only been five or ten minutes of actual dreaming time

of what I perceived. But yeah, it honestly just felt like I was, I mean, it was the same exact setting or seen in that movie. Yeah, I was just more or less filling in the gaps because obviously the camera's not flying, following this particular ringwreath all the time. It was just, it was just more or less how I imagined that one ring wraith would have perceived that battle. Sure. So the first thing you saw probably was other action happening around you before you joined and actively participated. Is that what it seemed like? Maybe it's hard for me to, I don't think I remember exactly how the dreams started.

I just remember the guts of it. Gotcha. Fair enough. Does anything stand out in terms of how many other rates were there, the nature of the combat down below? I mean, specific actions. You know, like, for example, did you see one dive down, pick up someone, drop them from a height? I mean, it's any kind of specific actions that you saw.

Maybe, honestly, details can be a little fuzzy for me or a dream in general. I just had a big picture idea of just, there's a vague amount, sense of medieval combat, whatever. Like maybe I got swooped down to the, to the, I think I remember this one point I I swooped down to this tower that was destroyed. So I was kind of like, so it was perfectly exposed. And I landed there and I had the, you know, the fell beast or their dragon, whatever you want to call it. It was sticking its neck out and trying to bite these guys that had, you know, typical full suit, suited knights in armor.

Now, at the time, I wasn't assigning any real meaning to it at all. I didn't think much of it. I was just, you know, oh, this is just a, just, you know, a typical nine to five for a ring rate, you know. It sure is. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the other thing, too, is, okay, so we've got, it seems like pulling out a, a narrative of like, first I was here, and then I went there, and then that happened,

and then I did this. A lot of people have those. Now, some people don't. My dreams are almost always a little fuzzier, too. Weird thing about me, so many tangents that it's, it is, what it is. Um, I am, uh, I am the dream wizard who doesn't dream. I almost never wake up remembering I ever had any nocturnal vision or experience. Now that said, we used to think you only dream during REM sleep. And then we started waking people up at any other time except REM sleep.

And 100% of all people report, well, 99.9, whatever reported, reported, uh, yes, I was dreaming. So we dream constantly. It's just what we do. And the way I've learned to understand it or what it seems like to me is that, you know, the, as I say, the lungs, breathe, the heartbeats and the brain thinks. It's just always got activity going on there. And dreams are, in my estimation, more like what our raw, unfiltered thought process actually looks like before we turn it into coherent, rational, communicatable speech or symbols. So that's what I had a whole point there I don't remember what it was

But a lot of times they're there they're fuzzy What what people do bring out and then okay so then we start looking maybe it's more about the themes And less about the actions because sometimes you can Tease out some Idea of what you're thinking about by the by the next sequence of events And sometimes it's more about the about the themes here so We've got some interesting points which is um okay sometimes dreams are fluff and fantasy and they're not that important if you just saw lord of the

rings recently or you had reason to think of it again in in some philosophical sense you could then have a have a vision in your sleep of uh what if i was in those times what if i just want to go on an adventure what if you know so there could be leaning towards something like that of like uh but then what you've got here is that you put yourself in the scene and not as as you're not as the heroes, but as the villains, to look at it from their perspective. So there's something about what I would start with and start looking at, we're short on time, so we're not going to like walk you there slowly is, is to say, um, what was going on three or four years ago where you needed to consider something from the, the perspective of, of an opponent or, or, you know, an enemy,

in a sense, like what was their experience? And in the context of that, we would say, you know, that it felt so normal do you like just doing a nine to five job it's like this is nothing personal it was very unemotional in the dream for you um what i phrase it that way or ask that question does anything come to mind around that time period um no not really um i don't think there i was in a position to really empathize with somebody that was or some some sort of monster that was causing me or anyone else around me uh grief i don't i don't think i don't think i I was necessarily curious in that. And the one thing that would be interesting for me now that we're talking about this

isn't so much that when I describe the stream, it sounds like, you know, I'm literally this monster. I'm causing like a great deal of mayhem, but it wasn't, you know, that's something that, me and my current conscious state now wouldn't enjoy doing, going around hurting people. But yeah, when I was in the dream, yeah, I guess I thought of the good guys, the nights as bad guys or just generic enemies. And I was like, no, no, I'm on this team now. So therefore, I'm the good guy. I'm not actually doing any harm.

I'm just going about, you know, trying to make my boss happy and all that sort of stuff. Oh, yeah, no, for sure. And that's one thing I like to emphasize with people too. So if you brought me a dream, you say, you know, hey, Ben, I had this dream about stabbing my dog and I woke up horrified. I don't want to stab my dog. Why did I have that dream? And I'm like, number one, you don't want to stab your dog. This is not a secret wish.

A lot of people misunderstand Freud with his idea of, you know, every dream contains a wish. It asks a question or contains a fear or an aspiration sometimes. It can be all of these things. At the same time, it can be none of them. It can be just selective. It can be random. I mean, there's so many, so many things. I tend to, you know, say, let's get something out of it if we can.

But I wrote down, you know, you're not, and I think you are correct on this one. So sometimes when we say, well, look at it from the other side, it's because we want that person to be more empathetic. And so you address that directly. I don't think I was trying to be empathetic towards an enemy or, and also it's not aspirational. So you're not like, well, I, wish I could be more like these guys. It's more of like understanding, uh, Sun Suu, know your enemy as well as you know yourself type of type of thing.

That's why I went to that regard. So it's, it's more like if you were confronting and it may not be a, the way I, I addressed it. It sounds as if I was saying a person. It may not even be that, you know, environmental and personal problems, uh, can also be enemies to conquer and to see it from the other side means I'm looking for insight into, how to defeat that more than anything. I don't know if we phrase it that way, if anything different comes to mind or I have some other ideas, but I'll stop there for a moment.

Um, yeah, you know, possibly. I honestly at the time, like I said, it just felt like I was playing a cool video game. It was a cool experience. It was like, oh, cool. I get to fly around this badass dragonish thing. Um, and I didn't really see myself as doing any actual harm. It was just a cool experience, almost like putting on a or something like that, you know? Yeah. Well, there's something to be said for that too. And that's, uh, well, speaking of the book that I.

Well, mentioned at the beginning and I'll mention at the end again in a few minutes, but studies and dreams by, uh, Mary Arnold Forster, um, a lot of her dreams she described as just having fun. I just wanted to go fly. So I flew. And, and that's, it's interesting because I don't. What am I trying to say? I am not expert enough in lucid dreaming.

I cannot do it myself, never have, maybe once, maybe, but I'm not sure. She was always able to attribute some explanation to different elements of her dreams, but a lot of it was, you know, I just realized I was dreaming and I went up to the highest point in the building and jumped off and flew and it was fantastic and I loved it and I enjoyed it. And the purpose was the enjoyment of it. That may have been along these lines. I mean, it could have been a. okay, I'm always looking for like meaning that's going to get you.

It's going to pull something out of your chest and you're going to have a moment. You're going to go, whoa, I never realized that about myself. That's, that's all well and good. That's not everybody. If I try and force that to happen with you when it's not relevant, that's a bad idea. So we've got to go, you know, we're talking, Taylor to, to the individual. This whole dream could have been as simple as a stray thought during the day of like, I wonder what it would be like to ride one of those beasts.

And then you're like, well, if I was going to ride one, I'd have to be a ring rate. So let's, okay, let's imagine I am. And I'm flying around. Oh, well, we're probably in battle because we serve the Dark Lord and all that good stuff. And there's an actual battle you referenced. You know, you were at Oz Gileth and the ruin city and just seeing it from the other side of the battlefield in a sense. It could be as simple as, let's just have some fun.

Let's fly around on a big lizard, you know. I think that that's what it feels like to me. I don't know if there's any sort of like deep psychological. Yeah, there might not be. Yeah. It does happen sometimes. What was I going to say? The only thing that makes me wonder is the fact that it stuck with you.

And just giving you an explanation for that. I mean, there's a possibility that it stuck with you because, like, wow, I had a dream. I just enjoyed it. It was just a cool dream. And so you just remember it because it was a pleasant experience or rather, you know, interesting in its own right whether pleasant or unpleasant sometimes sometimes unpleasant things stick with he was like well that was actually pretty cool even though it's weird um so you know the the question would then be you know why would that one stick around why would you want to ask me about it

you know maybe maybe you're hoping there was something more to it and we're just at a point where we're like ah maybe not i don't know well i if i it more so stuck with me because of the character there are some very sharp characteristics that other people suffering from insomnia have and If there are any some sort of like deep-rooted psychological truths to it, you know, that would be really interesting. I was curious to see if that would play into it. But the two things I were thinking of, the two characteristics were, one I touched on already was the fact that when you actually come to, you're not sure if it was an actual dream before I was just lying there, daydreaming. And the second thing, and this is very common as well for people suffering from insomnia, it was the vividness of the dream. It can feel very as fragmented and as limited as it can be.

It can feel very, very vivid. Like, I remember at the time, like, I can still remember the perspective, like, one particular perspective. Like I said, when I landed down in the destroyed and exposed tower, I can still picture that really well. And usually with dreams as time goes on, like, I'll lose, like, a... maybe some some of the details or whatever but this one for it's it's strange because as vivid as it was in one moment you'll still when you wake up you still have that really strong sense of confusion of was i actually asleep you know yeah yeah definitely that's um maybe that's why this one stuck with you more too is because it was it was more of that confusion upon awake at those

there was an additional mystery to solve. Like maybe the dream is, is simple and not mysterious, but the mystery is, why did I wake up? Not sure if I was waking up. Maybe that experience of confusion, maybe your emotional response to that moment of awakening

is more relevant than the dream itself. Yes. Something like that. Maybe that's why it stuck with you. Yeah. You're saying yes, but I don't know how to explain that any better. Yeah, you know, I think you nailed it.

That's that I think that's the principal reason why that experience stuck with me for for so long. And it was very reassuring, very reassuring to hear that other, it's, it's fairly common. I was going to ask you that too. I mean, back to your, your expertise of like how many other people or how common is it that people experiencing insomnia have that blurring of, of, am I awake, am I asleep? And then like panic around it or fear that it's going to come back. or am I a man dreaming? I'm a butterfly. You know, I don't have any numbers, but it's very, it's a, it's common enough of a symptom that if I was speaking to a client and they told me about that outside, yeah, that's

that happens. Yeah. It's nothing unusual, nothing to really be concerned about. It's also, I guess it's usually typical for people to have stressed out dreams, which which makes sense because they're in a very hyper vigilant state of mind. They're inherently, they're, it's a very, sleeping or nighttime has become a very stressful period for them. I get that a lot too.

I know exactly what you're saying. It's like even what we would call typical dreams, most people don't have them all the time. They're not that common. They are common enough across populations that we've been able to draw a category. but on a given night a given person is probably not having a typical dream which is what's what I call them typical it's kind of a weird dichotomy there um yeah so that's so um I don't think you need to have statistics to say you know in my experience I've talked to a lot of people and this happens pretty frequently enough to say it is a phenomenon it's the thing and I love

being able to do that too with people they'll bring me concerns as a part of their our interaction around analyzing and dream and I'll be I can just go I don't worry about that that's if that happens to everybody one time or another, not a big deal. That's being able to offer that reassurance is something I really enjoy. You know, let people know, nah, you're normal. Don't worry about it. Yeah, a lot of my job is providing, is being able to, I almost feel like I'm most the time, like a reassurance coach.

Because not only are they very frank because they haven't, A, they haven't dealt with this before, or they've been dealing with it for such a long period of time where even if they, uh, they've simply lost hope that they can overcome insomnia, which is difficult for them to, I can't blame them because they might have had it for as long as decades and they've done everything. Um, and too little to know or at least inconsistent success. Absolutely. No, that is a very scary place to be. It's almost a hopeless place to be of like, this is my life now. This is awful and I can't escape it. And they've just run out of ideas themselves, but they haven't dug into it deep enough to know that, well, there's a few more

things you can try that might work. I mean, you definitely try the front line defenses. As you were saying in the very beginning, the sleep hygiene, the, I wrote a couple that and now the cats laying all over. Of course, here's my bubba. He said, Bubba boy. Just to clarify something. As far as the sleep hygiene goes, it's not that I don't think that that there's any

clinical benefit to it. I'm sure that, you know, there's plenty of research and white papers done that show the the benefits of all the typical sleep hygiene stuff, you know, limiting screen time, making a following a consistent schedule, maybe take some magnesium before bed, well, I'm sure that stuff there is benefit to most people. But the issue is that those are really only helpful for people who do not have insomnia. And the issue becomes for somebody who has insomnia, if they become hyper fixated on chasing a solution. It's almost like they're almost like a drug addict that they're addicted to trying to get sleep.

It's become a craving for them. And so anytime, but it's also not because it's a very, what's the phrase, character stick situation for them where if they get sleep, that'd be really great. But if they don't get sleep, that would just be awful. They'd feel terrible for a long time. It would, I mean, it hurts. It's torture. Yeah, yeah.

And I sure if I forgot where I was going with that. Um, oh shoot, where's I going with that? What was I saying right before carrot and stick? Uh, I wish I could tell you. My memory's awful. I was trying to put a pin in things I was going to respond to. I remember. I remember.

Yeah. Please. So the reason is so it becomes unhelpful for somebody with insomnia, because if you give them a prescription, uh, they could call it or a list of rules. Okay, listen, you're going to want to install blackout currents. You're going to make sure that all the lights in there are dimmed to ours beforehand. maybe take a hot shower. And you can see this list growing and growing and growing.

And they get the sense that because their sleep system, they've come to develop this belief that their sleep system is so poor or weak that conditions have to be absolutely perfect in order for sleep to happen. And if they mess up one of those things, even so much as maybe taking a slightly lower dose or too high of a dose or at the wrong time of a supplement, that's it. They're not going to get any sleep at all whatsoever. So then they get sent into a tizzy like, oh, I don't know how it can, because I took my magnesium at 805 instead of 8 o'clock.

That's a sort of that little deviation can cause a lot of anxiety for people. So that's one reason why following all these, the typical rules and tips and tricks to get sleep don't really aren't particularly helpful for insomniacs. Whereas if somebody who didn't have sleep like you, for example, if you were curious like, oh, you know, I think I'm going to install. blackout curtains. I heard some expert on some podcast talk about it. I'm just going to give it a shot. You're more or less doing it with like an, you're not doing it because you believe you need to do that to make sleep happen. You're more or less kind of curious about it. Like, hey, maybe I get like another hour of sleep, whatever. And you're not really thinking much to it of it. Whereas for the person who's suffering from insomnia, they're doing it out of, they're taking this action out

of fear in really hoping that this, that this will work. They hope that this is the final, the silver bullet that they're chasing. For sure. The thought I was having while you were describing that is it is it kind of sounds like it's less Biological in a way and more cognitive behavioral so you do or are you doing a lot of because there's a Having read these books they look into like well what is sleep itself? What are we actually doing? What is it for? What? What what's the biological process? What purpose does it serve? You know, and very early on they said you know it's it's purpose is restorative you get a show you shut down for a while and then you become refreshed afterwards. And they're just doing that on behaviors.

But then they talked about, well, what is the process of sleep and how does it actually work? And it's a funny thing. I mean, I challenge anyone out there to do it. And if I meet someone, ever meet someone who can give me a different answer, I'll be amazed. But you might remember your moment of awakening in the morning, but no one remembers the moment they fell asleep.

It's almost like you, in order to form a memory. So logically, in order to form a memory, you have to, um, uh, attend to the present circumstance, whatever it is, and then that gets encoded in short term. You hang on in short term. It goes in the long term. And then eventually you have what we call a memory. But no one has memory of falling asleep.

And it seems like the process of falling asleep. And as many of these guys have theorized in the past, it's a moment. It requires inattention, abstraction. And a lot of people said it requires like boredom or dis, what they used to call disinterest. Because if you're interested in something, you're focused.

If you're disinterested, your focus dissipates. And it's this weird thing where, like, the harder you focus on, I've got to sleep, I got to sleep right now. The more you work yourself up, the more you're focused on that present moment. And the less likely you're ever going to fall asleep. You have to, it's almost like you have to not care. And then the funny thing popped into my head too. I might have seen me smile in a minute ago like that silly.

It's like, it's like trying too hard to pick up a girl or something like that. You got to be relaxed enough that she doesn't think you're coming on too strong or being a a creep or a weirdo. And it's funny because if you're worried about me, be a creep and a weirdo. You're going to be a creep in a weirdo because you're coming on too strong. Ah, and you work yourself up. So I'm going to stop there for a second, let you respond to that in terms of insomnia. Yeah. So it's a good analogy where you can't want it too bad because then, but at the same thing, and that becomes very scary to, that's another reason why it becomes

scared for people suffering from insomnia because that is, it becomes such a severe problem that is the number one thing that they want. And it's not only something they really want, but it's also, they're in a very scared state of mind. So, and they've convinced themselves that, well, because I'm already in the state of mind, there's no way I can honestly and earnestly say that I don't want to not sleep. So they become afraid that they're in this trapped state of mind. But it's not so much, the good news is that they don't really have to achieve that. They don't have to achieve some sort of desireless Buddhahood in order to make this very natural thing happen.

The only thing they really have to do is be willing to experience wakefulness. Because when they're not in, when they're not in that, when they're trying to make efforts to escape wakefulness, that's when they're constantly, that's when the struggle happens. Whenever you have a struggle to make sleep happens, to make sleep happen, that's not very, that's not very helpful. And that's when we get a lot of, um, that monitoring behavior of in my sleep yet, okay, I kind of feel myself falling asleep. I feel sleepy. Am I sleeping? Nope. No, no, that's not yet. Almost, almost, almost. Nope. I just jerked myself awake. When people who haven't, don't have any issue sleeping, they don't have that thought process at all. To your point, they're just awake, awake, awake, and then they go right out.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And for me, I, um, I have a busy mind. And so if I'm in a dead silent room, um, my thoughts keep me awake. Like, oh, this and that and that memory and all, I was embarrassed about that and I got something to do next week. And so what I found I have to do it. And a lot of people listen to white noise. It doesn't work for me. A lot of people listen to, uh,

nature sounds or thunder. I mean, that isn't the, you know, white noise or waves or whatever water, water trickling. Um, for me,

I need, I need to be paying attention to someone else's conversation. So I do podcasts. I do, uh, and sometimes I do the, um, all comedy radio or just stand up comedian clips. Um,

and I put it on real low and real quiet. So I have to actually kind of pay attention to hear. it and that replaces and suppresses my busy mind with something going on externally. And then before I know it, it's the alarm's going off and it's time to get up in the morning. I don't know if you found that. And we've got to get you out of here in just a minute. But I can stick around for like another 15 minutes or so. Okay, fair enough.

Fair enough. Yeah. I don't want to rush you and I don't want to keep you. I don't know if you've had that experience too of like those type of things as a distraction device. Or is that like that's usually is that usually a surface level thing people try and then they really need to try something else? Yeah. So that's those sort of techniques while they are helpful for people who don't suffer from insomnia,

we can lump that in the same category of sleep hygiene where they, and it's a, it don't make sense for people to try out. It's like, oh, I know my friend Greg says that he tries a white noise machine to get him to sleep. I better do the same thing as well. And any time that's sort of chasing to find a solution. It's totally understandable, but usually it doesn't work. And the reason why it doesn't work, at least consistently, is because it's not addressing the root cause of the problem, which is that they have developed a fear or an easiness of being awake at night.

Because what happens then, let's say that they implement this white noise machine. Maybe they see some success for a little bit. And then something happens. It starts to stagnant. And they say, well, you know what? I bet it's because the white noise machine isn't loud enough. Or better yet, maybe I should change out. I bet I need to fall asleep to rain.

Maybe that rain needs to have the occasional thunder boom in it. Maybe there's not enough thunder on this. Maybe I need to try listening to wind chimes instead or whatever. Do you see, I think you see the point of that. Absolutely. Yeah. It's almost starting to sound akin to or at least cousin to obsessive-compulsive behaviors in some ways. Have you noticed a parallel or is that only in, you know, superficially on a behavioral level?

it just looks like it. I'm not in, I know what, you know, I'm familiar with OCD, but more so as a, as a layman, I'm certainly not an expert by it. Fair enough, yeah. But what I can say is that as far as personality types go, there's a very strong correlation between insomniacs and type A personalities. Oh, yeah, yeah. And the reason for that is because type A personalities, when they are, they have a problem,

they fix it. They put a lot of conscious thought in energy into fixing it. And almost always, in any other domain in life, that's going to serve you very well. Whether it's starting a business or getting in shape or, I mean, these are all daunting tasks that require a lot of effort and energy. And so these, usually these type A personalities are really excited or they're very headstrong. They're very ready to take on that challenge. but sleep is the one thing that that doesn't work for it. The more effort than you throw it at, the less helpful it is.

Yeah, definitely. That's, that's, it's, uh, it's easy to understand how people would, could be put into a panic about these things and become obsessive in the, in the layman sense, um, is because it's, it's not optional. It's so important. And, and then you've got, yeah, and then you mix in that personality type where it, like, damn, I got a problem. I solve it.

That's how I, that's how I roll. And, uh, I can see someone getting really trapped in this in in this thing and just almost I think I was going to mention this earlier, but it didn't just the idea of hopelessness of of feeling yeah feeling trapped in a situation you cannot fix. And then that's, um, becomes its own problem too because then you're just suffering. Uh,

I don't know where I was going with all that. You mentioned, you know, you don't have to become a, um, carefree Buddhist type of thing. But you do have to lean in that direction. direction. You got to go, well, you got to let go of some of these things because they're not helping you. Um, that's probably part of it is maybe when you, when you get a new client and they, and they say, I've been through all these things and I just, nothing's working.

Is that maybe one of the first things you do is say, okay, get rid of all that. Let's start over. Let's don't, don't don't. Don't, don't, that's not helping you. Um, or I don't know. Is that your approach? I don't know. I don't know what I would do. Yeah. So it's more so I try to, I try to avoid telling people exactly, do this and not that. I explain, more or less I explain to them the principles of when something isn't helpful or when it is helpful. But usually, let's say if we had somebody who, I mean, some of my clients will dedicate almost

every waking moment of their life to trying to get, try to get sleep happen from the moment they get out of bed. That's counterproductive. Always slightly. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the right way to go about it. Nope, not helping for multiple reasons, but um I feel terrible laughing at it like oh,

that's obviously a mistake. No, I mean it's it's crazy. I mean like and it's looking back on it myself when I you know put use those same sort of efforts. Um, it's obvious to me now that that stuff wasn't going to work out. But when you're year three, year four into this thing and you're you just cannot figure it out becomes very it's very easy to get very desperate. I mean, I have some clients who are discussing suicide even after only a few weeks or months of it. Yeah. And that'll do it to you, you know, not just psychologically, but physiologically.

Your body gets run down. And the more, I think people understand this too, just the basic concept that if you're under stress, it's easier to get sick, say, or it's easier to, not easier is the wrong word, but you're more likely to say, make a poor decision about something else because you're so distracted and obsessed with what's going on here that with this source of stress. it just impacts everything across across multiple dimensions your whole life for long periods of time. So it's very understandable. You know, it's a real, it's a real problem that needs addressing.

You know, it's not something you can just say, eh, screw it. You know, I got a, what do you call it? What do they used to call them? It was a car bungle. It's not the right word. I got a something on my toe. I can live with it. You know, I'm not going to, you know, it's not killing me.

It's not pleasant. but whatever. But this is something more, much more serious like cancer in a way. It's like you're not going to survive this if you can't figure it out. Well, to provide some reassurance for a lot of people, I think that in almost in 99.99% of cases, and I'll talk about the cases where this isn't the case,

but I think that almost everyone can recover from insomnia. And when I say almost everyone, there are conditions, There are some diseases, fatal familiar insomnia, sporadic fatal insomnia, where it's a really poorly named disease because insomnia is just one aspect of it. There's a slew of other horrible symptoms that go along with the condition. But the good thing about it is that it's exceedingly rare. There's only maybe, I don't know, 30, 40 cases worldwide.

And of course, everyone's suffering from insomnia. all believe that they have this the terrible uncirable thing that can be fixed. But again, like if it's been that you don't have one of those one in a, you know, billion sort of diseases, I think that everyone can recover from insomnia for good. Absolutely. Yeah. And I would want to make it, you know, over, over dramatize it myself and say, and this is going to kill you. But it's one of those things where it's like, yeah, you're probably not the one in a million cases.

that it's incurable. And even then they have things that they can do medically. I mean, that's a huge medical problem. And you can take that to a doctor and get that diagnosed properly and they can actually, you get to be careful with that kind of stuff. Because I think what was Michael Jackson using? He was using Propheaval. He was actually having himself rendered unconscious to sleep.

And that's probably extreme. But, I mean, those are the types of things that properly medically managed. I would say to everyone out there, there's a treatment. even if you've got to go extreme, but probably that's not you. You probably don't need that as much as you might be afraid of it. So that's probably a good way to put a pit in it. I think now we're running up against the clock for you. We should do the outroes unless you had any additional questions or comments.

I can give a few minutes just to speak to that. Sure. It can be very, that's often a understandable solution that people try out as well, I have this condition where I can't fall asleep. I should go to my medical doctor. And unfortunately, it's very common for people suffering from insomnia to not get the help that they need from their medical doctor. Usually that they get a prescription for something and maybe it works for a little bit.

But again, these drugs are not addressing the root cause of the issue. So there may be a placebo effect or in my line of work, we call it a delegation effect where they outsource their responsibility to sleep to this magic pill that's going to take away all my problems. Hey, this is a special pill too because you didn't even develop a tolerance to this. So it should solve it for good forever. That was Trazodone for me. And it worked great for six months. But then because I wasn't treating, I wasn't addressing the root cause of the issue, it started to slip and it started to fall back down.

So that can be another reason why I feel so demoralizing for people suffering from insomnia because they will go to the highest possible authority known, the doctor. And then on top of that, they'll go to a sleep doctor. That's it. That's the guy who spent who spent decades of his life studying sleep in and out. And he graduated from medical school and they didn't get the help that they needed. I know that was the case for me. I went to sleep doctor and I forget what was discussed in those two appointments, but I remember leaving the office feeling very defeated. But again, some reassurance is that, you don't need, not only is a magic pill, we don't have a magic pill to cure insomnia,

but the good news is that you don't need a magic pill to cure insomnia. All you need is to be able to, you need to be willing to experience wakefulness and accepting it. And there's a lot of strategies, there's a lot of practical ways we can go about and implement again. I know that sounds very high level in borderline woo-woo,

which is unfortunate. No, no, not at all. That's, uh, no, it's good to have a great big bag of tricks of like, look, we can try all kinds of things. And, and I think you're very right to say addressing the root cause of stuff. And that's the whole practice of psychology. It's not just here's a behavior I want to stop. It's, well, let's look at why that behavior became a pattern, why you may feel motivated or

compelled to enact that behavior. And you start digging into those roots and you find stuff that's important that then changes your relationship to that behavior. You, you view it a different way. that actually in a lot of ways gives you the detachment to stop without hanging on to it in a lot of ways. And there's a lot of great, great melding of, say, Eastern traditions with Western medical practice and psychology, specifically, that is very much into changing the way your mind works around a particular idea. That's why I mentioned cognitive behavioral therapy. It's a mind-body healing, all all-time.

together at the same time, you know, and there's different, different strategies that work better for different people and different strategies that work better than other strategies. But it's good to know that there is, there's a lot of things you can do. And there's, there's specifically people like you out there that are, are specialized in this, looked into it, know what you're talking about because you've been there. You've been there and done that. And let me tell you what did not work. And I see you doing that. And let me tell you what did work for me. I think that's fantastic. I love it. This has been a great opportunity for me to, um, pick pick the brain of an expert in tangential field that is but gives me a better understanding

you know i'm going to be able to carry this forward with with other folks too so i really appreciate that um opportunity to thank you for being here yeah thank you for having me ben this is great this is a great conversation right on definitely well let's yeah let's let's let's wrap it up and get you out of here uh oh i'm going to do it again hi um this has been our friend john naviliat yeah there we go from uh out of southern california uh he's an insomnia coach his business is insomnia to peace. He does specialize in working with athletes, but give him a call, you know, website.

I think I forgot to mention it at the beginning, but in the description below right now, it is insomnia to peace.com. That's T.O. Insomnia to peace.com. And for my part, would you kindly like, share and subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers. I do video game streams Monday through Friday,

5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific on YouTube and Rumble. This episode brought to you in part by ABC book six Studies at Dreams by Mrs. Mary Arnold Forster. My brain is Swiss cheese. Sometimes I can't find the information. Of course, all this and more at Benjamin the Dream Wizard. com, including MP3 versions of this free podcast.

And if you'd head on over to Benjamin the Dreamwizard. Dot locals.com building a community there. Free to join attached to my Rumble account. You don't have to give me any money. You just say hello and tell me about your dream. So once again, John, Thank you for being here. I appreciate your time. Thanks a lot, Benjamin.

And everybody out there, thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.