Now Entering Dreamland is a podcast that centers around dreams, sleep and everything in between. Sit back and relax- you’re now entering Dreamland.
Season 2 begins! This episode we discuss a dream/ nightmare that has been causing me to sleepwalk.
Episode Transcript
Are you ready to wake up? You are Now Entering Dreamland.
Hi everyone! Welcome to Now Entering Dreamland: a podcast about dreams, sleep and everything in between. Welcome back to those of you who have been to Dreamland before, we are happy to have you back. Welcome to those of you joining us in Dreamland for the first time.
We have made it: this is the start of Season 2 of Now Entering Dreamland. I am glad to have made it this far with this podcast, that stemmed from a passion project about talking about dreams and sleep.
I had several ideas about how I wanted to start Season 2 of the podcast. I knew I wanted to continue interviewing people about their dreams. I wanted to continue having interesting conversations. And I wanted to continue diving into sleep and dream questions: like, what is the deal with dream analysis? Is this a real science?
Well, we will continue to look at all of those topics, and more, this season.
But we are starting this season a little differently. Because for the past two weeks, I have had a repeating dream. And the dream is… making me sleepwalk?
Let me explain.
I am calling this dream The Dream of Three Rooms. I’ve had it four times.
The dream starts where I am in a spacious room. Even though I know the room is spacious, I can sense it, it is cramped as well. There are a lot of people in the room. Faces are a blur.
The mood is lighthearted. I wander through the room with some difficulty, opening drawers, taking out objects. I am looking for something. At one point I leave the main party and walk down a hallway, feeling inspired. I know what I am going to find!
Well, because this is my mind at work- of course, I don’t get what I want.
I open a door and I am in a second room: a classroom. So this is not only a new room but a new space entirely. I am sitting at a desk like I am a student. There is a test in front of me, and I feel immediate panic. I am not prepared. I am staring at the paper and it is full of rows of mathematical equations. The panic turns to dread. I feel like I might cry.
And then I hear a voice behind me. The voice says: “Don’t cry. You’re wrong.”
I bolt up from the desk, and I walk to the classroom door and I open it. I open the door because I am afraid to turn around and see who is speaking to me.
And when I open the door I am in a new space. This is the third “room” and it is a glamorous hotel hallway, with plush red carpet and gold trim. At the end of the hallway is a slightly open room door, and very gold light can be seen inside. And at this point, I am scared. I feel like something, or someone, is behind me and I don’t want that person or thing to reach me. So I start to run towards the open door. But I can’t make it. Because every time I almost reach the door, I am jerked backward.
I never see the person or thing pulling me backward. I always wake up with a sudden jolt. And that is when things become weird (or weirder because things are already pretty weird with this) because every single time I wake up, I am standing upright and I am in my kitchen. This means that at some point during this dream, perhaps even the time of the dream when I am running, I am sleepwalking out of my room, down my hallway, and into my kitchen.
This is all strange to me. I have a lot of vivid dreams. And I sleepwalk a lot. But I don’t typically do the two things at once. When I was a kid, I remember having dreams in which I was stuck on a rotating circle. And occasionally after those dreams, I would have rotated in bed, so that my pillow would be opposite where I started sleeping at the beginning of the night. But that happened years ago.
And the dream component about school is odd, too. I haven’t been in formal education/ schooling in more than six years. So I am not sure why, now, I would start dreaming up test anxiety.
Does this mean anything? Do any dream experts want to try to analyze this for me?
For the start of Season 2 of Now Entering Dreamland, I wanted to start by talking about this dream. Hopefully, I can find some answers and report back by the end of this season.
As always, I am planning to post new episodes on Sundays. Looking forward to continuing exploring dreams and sleep on this podcast.
You’re now leaving Dreamland. But we’ll see you next time.
Now Entering Dreamland 