Q&A: What our dreams can tell us about ourselves and connection to the world

Do you ever wake up from a vivid dream and wonder what it means?

Western University Professor Sharon Sliwinski has been studying what dreams can tell us about ourselves, our relationships with other and the world around us. Sliwinski's work led to the creation of The Musuem of Dreams, which sparked the podcast series The Guardians of Sleep and a record deal for the musician who created soundscapes for the project.

Sliwinski talked about the significance of dreams with London Morning host Rebecca Zandbergen.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

RZ: Why are you so passionate about dreams?

SS: Dreams are important to me because they've always been at the centre of human culture. We're dreaming creatures, but that has gone away. At least in the Western world, we've lost our interest in dreams, I think.

RZ: What can our dreams teach us?

Well, they are a very important form of thought. You know, a lot of the great social innovations came from dreams. We think of it when we're awake as daydreaming or a wandering mind or reverie.

Teachers seem to hate when students are not paying attention, but, in fact, that's when some of the most important thinking happens. And researchers, in particular neuroscientists, are now starting to understand that dreaming is, in fact, a crucial mental process that helps emotional regulation. It helps in a whole host of things, and if we lose our dreaming, we lose our space for sleeping, and all kinds of bad things start to happen.

RZ: What is The Museum of Dreams project all about?

SS: The Museum of Dreams is a project that's got a social and political edge to it. It's trying to think through how dreams help our collective political lives together.

It began as just a simple archive. I was doing research on the social and political importance of dreams and I found all these amazing dreams and historical records, like Nelson Mandela, for example, had a recurring nightmare when he was in Robben Island. I wanted a place to put that so the public had access to it. If you're just looking up dreams, you know, like did Nelson Mandela have dreams, you'd be able to find it. You know, they're everywhere, but there's not a central place to find them.

RZ: Do dreams actually tell us what our minds, in some sort of subconscious way, are worried or anxious about?

SS: You can think of them as a way of working through emotional conflict, they're almost like a little bit of a therapist that happens to us at night. They help sort through whatever it is that we're anxious about.