Q book: INSIDE YOUR DREAMS

Edited extract from Inside Your Dreams: An Advanced Guide to Your Night Visions by Rose Inserra (Rockpool Publishing $29.99), available where good books are sold and online at www.rockpoolpublishing.co

6 TIPS FOR HAVING BETTER DREAMS

During any time of restricted social activity when your physical body may be confined to your home your dream body and mind are still free to wander in whatever places they wish to go. You can practise this through waking visualisations, meditations, daydreams and night-time dreaming. 1. Be inventive and imagine what you would rather dream about. As you're drifting off to sleep, tell yourself what imagery you want to dream about and begin to imagine what it would look, feel, sound, taste and smell like. Are you at the beach, the forest, a lake or mountain? Who are you with? This imagery will seep into your dreaming mind. It's called dream incubation, where you set the intention to dream whatever you wish.

2. Remove excess fear and notice beauty around you, because when you are over-fearful you create more fear in the world. Everyone vibrates differently when they are in fear mode, and one way to release fear is to calm your senses. Do whatever works for you: walking where and when you can, being in nature, bringing nature to you with lots of plants, watching a nature program or burning candles or oils that are plant based. Listen to a favourite uplifting book as an audio or music.

3. Create a possible future. Just as you can incubate dreams and influence what you dream about, the same applies to dream scenarios. (A dream scenario is a dream that has a full scene, usually with a loose beginning, middle and end. Most of the time dreams come in fragments without beginnings or endings.) You can do this in your normal waking state, ideally when you are relaxed and have time set aside to do it.

4. Create desirable future scenarios out of your anxiety or dream state. Your subconscious is open to suggestive prompts: the more you feed it suggestions the more it will take them seriously and store them for a time when it's possible to realise or manifest these future scenarios. What does your dream home, partner or job look like? Where do you want to travel to that you haven't already visited? Focus on a past holiday you enjoyed.

5. There are ways to change dream endings if you are willing to persevere with the practice of conscious dreaming. You don't need to go to sleep in order to dream; your most powerful dreaming may unfold in the twilight zone between asleep and awake.

6. Keep a dream journal, which is essential if you are at all interested in dreams. We forget most of our dreams on waking even though we think at the time we will remember them. Date each entry and give it a title, as this is going to become the most important book on dreams you will ever read. It is going to be an oracle book of your personal symbols that will enable you to create a data log of your dream history. It is an intimate sharing of lessons from your inner self.