External Influences on Dreams

#1

So I’m new to the dream journal and have been keeping entries since March 20th. I have a hard time sleeping when the room is silent so I always put on something over my speaker just to add some noise in the room.

I was playing a track that had sounds of ocean waves lightly breaking on repeat for the entire night for the first 14 nights. I recently switched to just a white noise (only 4 nights).

After reviewing my dream journal, I’ve noticed that I had a substantial amount of dreams where I was out in the water - primarily the ocean (sometimes lake). Out of the 14 nights I recorded the dream journal while the ocean waves music was playing, I had 12 dreams that I recalled that were of me in a boat in the ocean or lake. Some nights I would not have one and some nights would have like 3 in one night.

Since I switched to white noise I have had only 1 dream in the water out of 4 nights. I probably need some more time with white noise to confirm the pattern but it seems to be there.

Has anyone played around with sounds while sleeping to manipulate the dreamscapes? The thought I had was that maybe I could play the ocean waves and focus my intent for being in the water as a dream sign in order to help induce lucid dreams?

Thanks,

Mac

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#2

Haven’t tried that myself but I’d bet that it will work since it’s a form of prospective memory (remembering to do something (become lucid) on a future queue).
Tibetan dream yoga has also forms of audio queues while sleeping/dreaming. A person would whisper in the dreamer’s ear while he/she dreams “This is a dream” or “You are dreaming” and queue them into lucidity.

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#3

Interesting. Seems like a whisper would be tough to pass through to awareness while sleeping but I guess it can help.

Ive only had a single dream with water since switching to white noise so it seems pretty clear the waves sounds caused the dreams. I’ll have to give it a shot sometime. I would still have to associate water with a state check I would imagine before it would have any effect.

Thanks,

Mac