THE SUBTLE ART OF DREAMING
As a quick follow-up to Herbs for Sleep, I wanted to share a post on my favorite herbs for dreaming: mugwort and damiana.
Dreams hold a lot of importance in certain cultures, like the Achuar people of the Amazon who regard dreams as the bearers of important messages and begin each day with dream sharing, much like the Senoi people of the Malaysian jungle who share their dreams every morning over a communal breakfast.
In a different tradition, the Aboriginal people of Australia trace their creation back to a time called the Dreamtime, believing the world was formed here within the dreams of the the creator, and that everything on earth also exists in the ongoing realm of the Dreamtime. In some West African belief systems, according to Mary Chinkwita in the book The Usefulness of Dreams, “dreams convey warnings or messages pertaining to one's future. In this process, ancestor spirits act as intermediaries [for the] Supreme Being.”
Here in the US, where the concept of 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep has gained its own kind of mythic importance, we tend to take a different approach to sleep, are much less relaxed about sleep interruptions, and more commonly medicate ourselves into a dreamless darkness. As far as dreams, views like this one shared by the brilliant author Michael Chabon are common:
“Dreams are effluvia, bodily information, to be shared only with intimates and doctors. At the breakfast table, in my house, an inflexible law compels all recountings of dreams to be compressed into a sentence or, better still, half a sentence...Pretty much the only thing I hate more than my own dreams are yours. ‘I was flying over Lake Michigan in a pink Cessna,’ you begin, ‘only it wasn’t really Lake Michigan…,’ and I sink, cobwebbed, beneath a drifting dust of boredom.”
This isn’t to say that there aren’t people in the western world who care about dreams, but that it’s not a big part of our culture to share them with our community. I personally love dreaming and belong to three different dream sharing groups on Facebook, I like hearing about them so much. So there are other dream sharers if you go looking, but in America, you’re probably not going to start your day hearing the next door neighbor’s dream.
In cultures where dreams are more readily shared, celebrated and intertwined into daily life, it also seems to be more natural and accepted for sleep to happen in segments or be interrupted by things like the movements of communal sleeping or the sounds of the forest.
The connection there seems obvious — if you’ve ever experienced the intensity of a cat nap dream, or a night in a tent (or maybe raising a newborn?), it’s easy to imagine how culture-wide sleep conditions like this, which lend themselves to more vivid, memorable dreams, might naturally result in dreams taking on a cultural significance, especially if that culture is communal.
However, this style of sleeping is actually not far off from our own western tradition, not so long ago. In her brilliant article To Dream in Different Cultures, T.M. Luhramm synopses a fascinating anecdote from author Roger Ekirch’s written history of nighttime in the early modern west:
“...people fell asleep not long after dark for the ‘first sleep.’ Then they awoke, somnolent but not asleep, often around midnight, when for a few hours they talked, read, prayed, had sex, brewed beer or burgled. Then they went back to sleep for a shorter period. Mr. Ekirch concludes, ‘There is every reason to believe that segmented sleep, such as many wild animals exhibit, had long been the natural pattern of our slumber before the modern age, with a provenance as old as humankind.’”
It kind of makes you wonder whether our ancestors in the American west ever dream-shared over ye olde hearth during these midnight carousings, and what messages we might be missing out on now if we’re not paying attention? Like many, I believe dreams can serve a lot of important purposes as messages postmarked from the subconscious, untiers of annoying mental knots, revealers of difficult truths, but I have a lot of trouble recalling mine when I wake up. The following are two herbs I've found especially helpful for this common problem.
HERBS FOR DREAMING
If you want to start paying closer attention to your dream life, here are my favorite herbs for dreaming:
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris): Mugwort is believed to heighten the senses, both increasing the vividness and color of dreams and making them easier to recall. Mugwort is historically associated with the Greek goddess Artemis, who was known to send divine dreams.
Damiana (Turnera diffusa): Damiana is an herb that can create a pleasantly mild euphoria in waking life, and in dreamland is believed to create more vivid imagery. Some claim it helps them induce lucid dreams, a claim sometimes made for mugwort as well.
Both mugwort and damiana are also indicated for their nervine and anxiolytic effects and are used by some to treat anxiety and depression.
Preparation: Combine 1 TSBP of dried mugwort leaves with 1 TBSP of dried damiana leaves, the fresher the better, and steep in 4-6 ounces of hot water for 10+ minutes. Drink at bedtime.
Sweet dreams, dear reader ☁️ and keep a dream journal by the bed!