Decoding Your Dreams: What Your Soul Is Trying to Say - Episode 156

Your dreams are how your soul speaks to you. — SanSan Fibri

Have you ever woken up from a dream and felt like it was trying to tell you something? What if your dreams weren’t just random, but a secret language from your subconscious—one that holds the key to unlocking your greatest potential?

Our guest today, Sansan Fibri, believes that every great transformation begins with a story—not just the ones we watch, but the ones we tell ourselves.

For years, she crafted stories on screen as a Film & TV producer, working with Comedy Central, Bill Burr, and Kevin Hart. But she soon realized that the most powerful stories aren’t the ones on our screens—they’re the ones shaping our minds, often without us even realizing it.

Now, as the Founder and CEO of Wakefully, Sansan is pioneering a new frontier in mental wellness--one that goes beyond conscious mindset shifts to rewrite the subconscious narratives driving 95% of our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors.

Wakefully isn’t just about understanding dreams—it’s about using them. Whether it’s removing inner blocks, sparking creativity, or turning sleep into the most untapped performance tool in the world, Wakefully is working with wellness leaders, executive coaches, and high-performance professionals to bring subconscious transformation into the mainstream.

✨ Whether you’re dreaming of flying, being chased, or reliving high school tests (ugh), your subconscious is a spiritual inbox—and your soul is leaving messages.

SanSan helps you:

-What your dreams really mean (no generic symbol lists here)
-How to remember your dreams (if you don't already!)
-Understand recurring dreams (spoiler: they’re not random!)
-Begin decoding your own dreams
-Reconnect with your higher self—while you sleep
-Plus, SanSan shares her own powerful dream stories (they involve mystical messages, ancestral visits, and—no joke—a dream that told her exactly what to do next in life).

You’ll laugh, you’ll relate, and you might even get goosebumps. This convo is equal parts mystical + practical—and it just might change how you think about bedtime.

Sansan dives into the power of subconscious transformation, the science of AI-driven dreamwork, and what happens when we wake up to the stories shaping our lives.

If you’ve ever woken up wondering what the heck was that—this one’s for you.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:54 Decoding Your Dreams: What Your Soul Is Trying to Say

Transcript

Robyn: [00:00:00]  I'm Robyn Miller Brecker and I'm Karen Loenser. Welcome to Seeking Center, the podcast. Join us each week as we have the conversations and we, through the spiritual and holistic clutter for you, we'll boil it down to what you need to know now, we're all about total wellness, which to us needs building a healthy life.

Karen: On a physical, mental, and spiritual level, we'll talk to the trailblazers who'll introduce you to the practices, products, and experiences that may be just what you need to hear about to transform your life. If you're listening to this, it's no accident. Think of this as your seeking center and your place to seek your center.

Robyn: And for the best wellness and spiritual practitioners, experts, products, experiences, and inspo, visit theseekingcenter. com.   

 Have you ever woken up from a dream and felt like it was trying to tell you something? What if your dreams weren't just random, but a secret language from your subconscious, one that holds the key to unlocking your greatest potential?

Our guest today, Sansan [00:01:00] Fibri believes that every great transformation begins with a story, not just the ones we watch, but the ones we tell ourselves. For years, she crafted stories on screen as a film and TV producer working with Comedy Central Bill Burr and Kevin Hart.

But she soon realized that the most powerful stories aren't the ones on our screens. They're the ones shaping our minds often without us even realizing it. now as the founder and CEO of Wakefully, Sansan is pioneering a new frontier in mental wellness. One that goes beyond conscious mindset shifts to rewrite the subconscious narratives, driving 95% of our thoughts, decisions, and behaviors.

Wakefully isn't just about understanding dreams, it's about using them. Whether it's removing inner blocks, sparking creativity, or turning sleep into the most untapped performance tool in the world. Wakefully is working with wellness leaders, executive coaches, and high performance professionals to bring subconscious [00:02:00] transformation to the mainstream.

Today, Sansan joins us to dive into the power of subconscious transformation, the science of AI driven dream work, and what happens when we wake up to the stories shaping our lives. There is so much to discuss. Let's get going. Hi, Sansan. Hi Robyn hi 

Sansan: Karen. I'm so excited to have this chat with you. 

Karen: Oh my gosh.

So are we. We've been going to bed every night purposefully begging for our dreams to be remembered, 

Sansan: actually. Great. Is it working? 

Karen: Yes.   

Sansan: Good. 

Robyn: It is working. And. there's so much to dive into here. but before we get into that, where did all of this come from in your own journey?

We wanna hear a little bit about your background and how it led to creating Wake  

Sansan: in parallel to my film and TV career. I've been a screenwriter. I've been an actor. I've ended up as a producer. At the end of the day, it's just about telling impactful stories. [00:03:00] And really when it comes down to it, everything is story the way we communicate.

I'm telling you a story right now. And that's the only way we know how to relate to each other. That's the only way we know how to understand ourselves. We have a story about ourselves and about our past and about the world around us. Everything that happens to us out there in the world becomes this story.  

 it's not the events. That we are affected by. It's our interpretation of the events that we are affected by, the story that we create around the event. And what I really always wanted to do is give people that agency over their own story. So you get to direct your life. You get to create your life.

You get to tell the story of who you want to be, not of who you think you are in limiting ways. I'll fast forward through, when I first started Wakefully to a very seminal, what I call my origin dream. 

So it was during the very chaotic early pandemic [00:04:00] days. New York City was trauma central. Nobody was leaving the house nobody was seeing each other. We were all trapped inside the cages of our homes and of our psyche. And I was also going through one of those legendary early pandemic, COVID breakups, relationship implosion five year.

Live in relationship where I literally got thrown out, lost the place I called home for five years. Just everything was a culmination of This really anxiety making time, very isolating. And here I am strapping my startup and not knowing how am I going to live? How am I going to survive?

And it took a little time, but I eventually moved out and one of the first nights that I moved to my own space, I had this dream where I found myself standing at the edge of a cliff with two other versions of me. So there was the [00:05:00] embodiment of male energy, me as embodied as its own self, and the embodiment of female energy me.

And then little mini me, the kid the helpless child the limiting beliefs. The I'm not worth anything and nobody loves me and I can't do this and it's not gonna work out. And I'm worthless. And all these stories that we often tell ourself when we push it really down, and we don't wanna admit it, but these are the stories we're telling ourselves.  

So we find ourselves at the edge of this cliff and it wasn't a big heroic moment when we decided to jump. It was literally We're going somewhere. We needed to get somewhere and nothing was gonna come to the edge of cliff trains Planes. Automobiles, no. So the only way out was to jump. So we jump and now we are in midair over the abyss.

It's just abyss everywhere. [00:06:00] And little, fear-based me is asking, are we falling? And the two mama papa me the higher wisdom versions of me said, no, we're flying. And in that moment, like a flip of the switch, that abyss opened up and made way to this beautiful blue sky, almost a cartoon-like picturesque French countryside.

And here we were, peacefully flying and floating towards our destination. So that dream really flipped my mindset on being that first time founder, non-technical founder, woman founder, immigrant founder, solo founder, all these things that were supposedly stacked against me. And that's the story I was telling myself.

And the dream showed me there is another story where I choose to fly. And if I choose to fly and I choose to believe it, and I had to believe it because that was me too. Fear-based me was me too, but also higher Wisdom me was me. So I had to believe it and go with it, [00:07:00] and that if I do, the universe is gonna come and meet me there.

And I kid you not. The next day I closed my pre-seed investors. 

all: Wow. 

Sansan: That's what it did in terms of flipping my mindset. And that's what is everything behind Wakefully, is I want to give people the agency to own the story. Find out where it's a story that doesn't serve them. I can't, I'm not good. I'm not worthy.

first of all, once you recognize it, once you become aware of it, you are already dismantling that power it has over you. You're no longer telling yourself. Now you understand that there is something, there's this duality where there's something in you that's telling you this story, but who's the you and who's telling the story?

And so you are observing the story. So to start with observing that story, which you can do through your dreams, cause that subtext, that narrative of what you really experienced or how you really interpreted events is really coming out in [00:08:00] your dreams. So take agency pinpoint, oh, this may not be serving me.

And then have agency to change that. 

Karen: So much of what you said, I'm writing things down because that hit me the most of what you just said, sansan, is the duality in our dreams. I was thinking to myself, gosh, have I ever had a dream like that where I felt like I came out of it?

Oh my gosh, that was such a life-changing experience. Most of my dreams, I feel are just, they make no sense at all, right? So I know we're gonna talk about that, but that duality aspect is so important because we don't even know in our subconscious if that is working against us or for us, that metaphor of what we're being given.

And that experience can be working against us as well as. Can you just talk a minute about what you mean by that? I think that's so 

Sansan: important. Yes. Some of the great spiritual leaders, Eckhart, many others are really coming out and saying that our [00:09:00] pain and suffering is not, from the events, but from our interpretation of the events.

Furthermore, it's from our identification with those interpretation. So if you said something and it rubbed me the wrong way and I felt oh, she's mocking me, I. Now on top of that, I become that person who believes you mocked me, who believes somehow I deserve to be mocked. And I take that identity on me.

Beginning to observe your thoughts and say, oh, I just had a thought that she mocked me. Once you understand that you are not your thoughts, people like to say, don't believe everything people tell you. I like to say, don't believe everything your own mind tells you.

Your own mind has a negative bias. We have 95% of our thoughts are repetitive and 80% of them are negative. So we're trapped in those negative thought loops and in these stories that are not serving us [00:10:00] and. We've been telling those stories to ourselves for so long that we actually mistake them for who we are.  

And that's where we get lost. 

Karen: it's like what Robyn said in the open. I actually write that down. It's our narratives are driving 90% of our thoughts and our emotions. Correct. And our experiences. I think we all know this, but so how does understanding our dreams then help us 

to rewrite that narrative? 

Robyn: And just wanna point out that it is the subconscious narrative. You are not realizing That's right. That's right. Is running through.   

Sansan: What's great is our subconscious comes out to play in our dreams. What it does is it's sifting through the events of the day, Our interpretation comes out. Think of your dreams as a movie, right? It feels like a movie Except that your own subconscious mind was the screenwriter.

It's the producer, it is the director. You are the hero and you're the only audience member. So these are really important stories and what it's telling is the real story [00:11:00] of how you've experienced the events of today. How maybe, something somebody said again, ah, I said, oh, it's not important.

But then in my dream it becomes this big betrayal and it's a dramatized version of how we really feel. I. But how we really feel, as I said, again, don't always trust your mind. And don't become your feelings. Not don't trust your feelings and don't let them be completely acknowledge. And this is something that you can do through your dreams.

'cause your dreams are gonna show you how you really experience life, how you really experience the event of the day. How do you really feel about things? So you automatically, when you are reviewing the dream through, through journaling it through somebody asking you questions about it, through kind of an active self-reflection, you are becoming that observer.

And you are no longer it. The minute you observe the dream, as you observe the thought, you no longer identified with it. [00:12:00] And you can say, oh, that's interesting. I had this thought, oh, that's interesting. I had this dream. Is it really true? Is it really what happened? Or. Is it showing me something where it's triggering my fear of rejection?

 And that's when you start gaining freedom and that's when you start gaining agency. So the dreams are really just a window in, they're just a really fun, playful, it's a mental playground.

 Your mind is doing it. Why not harness it? If you are dreaming every night, why not take that and actually expose that, exposes the story. So before you can change anything, and this is another great mentor of mine, Dr. Joe Dispenza says, before you can change every, anything you need to know what the it is that's already there and not serving you.

So that's what looking at your dreams does. It's showing you the it, and then you can choose what you wanna change or not. In the case of my origin dream, it was [00:13:00] something that enlightened me in a certain way two aspects of me that already knew that I can fly.   

That's 

Robyn: right.  

And just for a moment, when leading up to that origin dream, you had been interested in dreams. Since you were little, right? Is that the case? Yeah. Yeah. I'm obsessed, I'd say. Okay. So talk about that for a moment and then we're gonna come back to how we all can start to pay more attention to what is really going on and how to really use those dreams to change our lives.

Sansan: So again, I'm somebody who's very story driven. Even before I had a career in film and tv as a little kid, I would perform for my family. I'm the youngest of three daughters. There was a lot of typical the performer, the attention seeker. I'd make my sisters perform with me, which they hated.

But I would make up stories. I would write stories. I had a very fertile imagination. And so I [00:14:00] was also a very high dream recaller. And that's something that you can develop. In a heartbeat. But for me it was something that for some people it's just, there inherently, I guess because these are stories and I pay so much attention to the story of things that I naturally remember my dreams in a very high rate, and they really shaped my life.

They shaped my creativity. When I started screenwriting, I would dream up an entire scene . And at the time when I was writing my first screenplay, I only had a computer for about a year, and I didn't grow up typing at all. So I had to hand write because the voices in the head, the characters from the dream, I still had to capture them so quickly.

And I just was typing with two fingers and it was just not quick enough. just have always inspired me and inspired me for my art, but also inspired me for my life, just like in my origin dream example. And it's not one-to-one.

I want people to know, to be very careful [00:15:00] from taking dreams at face value. Couples very often will dream that their partner had cheated on them. This does not mean that you're subliminally picking up on some story Again, don't believe everything your mind is telling you. Just see that this is your interpretation.

Maybe there is some unresolved conflict between you where you felt they didn't have your back. And in the dream again, it becomes inflated, it becomes dramatized. And Think about those, big anxiety dreams. If we didn't have that space to actually take the sting out and emotionally process and emotionally regulate, this is getting it out of our system a little bit so we don't wake up with all this pent emotion over this thing.

So again, this is not about dreams that where you know your partner is cheating or where, somebody is killing you or you are killing somebody. Don't worry, you're not crazy, you don't have the DNA of a mass murderer, [00:16:00] right? We all have really strong emotions and really strong reactions, but just so don't take it at face value.

Dreams are very emotional. They're very symbolic. They're very metaphorical. If you start thinking of your dreams as a metaphor, what, is this a metaphor? Even thinking cliches like, is this the apple doesn't fall far from the tree? what comes first? The chicken or the egg? I don't know.

There was always some kind of metaphor that you can apply to it to understand that this is trying to tell you something behind the metaphor.   

Robyn: I know you studied Carl Jung theories on dreaming? Is that where some of this can you explain that a little bit and what you learned from studying those types of theories?

Sansan: Yeah, so as I say, I was always obsessed with dreams and was already inherently using them. When I studied Jungian dream analysis, I learned a couple of the fundamentals that only made me more obsessed about dreams and dreaming the dreaming mind, and One is before, before that time, like [00:17:00] everybody else, I've looked at dream dictionaries.

Mostly offline, but then also online. And they give you those kind of one size fits all. A dog means this, barking means that, or a rainbow means in your dream means this. And the number one rule that I've learned in Jungian dream analysis is that there are no universal dream meanings. Let's say you've been bitten by a dog when you were 12, and I was born into a family with two older sisters and a great Dane, which I really was.

For you, a dream about a dog barking may symbolize some threat that you're perceiving in your life. And for me, it may symbolize protection or family or, togetherness, closeness, connection. completely different. So that was the first thing that kind of illuminated me and I thought, oh no, everybody's getting this wrong.

Yeah. That's like blowing my own mind. Yeah. And what I understood is it really has to do. With the dreamer and you really [00:18:00] have to find out what is the Dreamer's emotional landscape. And obviously you can start that with yourself and go what does dog mean to me? And think in adjectives.

It's really helpful to think in metaphors and adjectives. Is a dog for me, protection? Is it connection? Is it threat? And that way you can start decoding those symbols. This became a great party trick that I would start analyzing. Everybody would come to me with their dreams and I would analyze them.

And it was a great party trick. But again I had so much more mission behind this. And as I grew in the world of filmmaking I only grew deeper also in that aspect of storytelling and only grew deeper in my research and my understanding of how dreams Can and do really shape our life. They are a commentary on our life, but they also shape our life because again, it's a matter of we become identified with commentary.

 We can actually understand that they are just [00:19:00] a thought and a thought is not who you are. 

Robyn: so fascinating to me. 

Karen: before we even started recording this podcast, we had that pre-meeting.

I actually wrote that down. And when you said that, I feel like I need to be reminded of that all the time. and I know it's an Eckhart thing, but it's like the, you are not your thoughts thing is such an important message for us all to hear wanted to ask you a question about the metaphors and the storytelling in your dreams, because I'm just learning so much about dreams in general, but when you wake up in the morning and something seems very nonsensical and you're trying to like, go through and interpret it I know we have the app and we're gonna talk about that in a minute, but like, how do you explain to someone the significance of that nonsensical information that they're getting?  

the impact that it could potentially have on your day to day experience. 

Sansan: Yeah. Dreams don't follow a logical reasoning. They follow an emotional [00:20:00] logic. So there is a logic there is a story there, even though it can seem to span, time and space and you can be a wall or you can be trapped inside a cookie or your aunt can suddenly be replaced with your kindergarten teacher, et cetera.  

Because our prefrontal cortex is shut down when we are in unconscious state, when we are sleeping but actually our more creative parts of our brain and our more intuitive parts of our brain are firing at double the speed. And they're making a lot of connections that may not even occur to you in your reasonable wind.

So again when the dream seems nonsensical, this is just the envelope, this is the story of the dream, but what's behind it is important and is significant because it's again, think of even a silly movie. It's still trying to say something about friendship, romcom about love and relationships.  

[00:21:00] It still has a message there. Your own mind is communicating to you. Why wouldn't you wanna listen to it? Over 55% of people wake up with a sense of dread in the morning. They're dreading work. They're dreading the day. They already feel overwhelmed and anxious. And when you start looking at your dreams, you wake up with this excitement of, what am I gonna find out about myself today?  

It's exciting. It's, what kind of weird story is my mind telling me today? And what is it really saying to me? And that can be really exciting. That can really change your mindset. They say that success starts with a mindset, but mindset starts at the source. And dreams are specifically designed to be that window to make us curious, to want to explore more.

Robyn: so true. And by the way, we all dream and we have the ability to remember our dreams. Even though when we started talking previous to this [00:22:00] conversation, I said to you, I don't remember my dreams. And you're like, I can help you with that.

So for those, because we're gonna start talking about Wakefully and how it really can transform the way, not only you analyze your dreams, as you said, it can really help you transform your life. How can you start remembering your dreams if you're like me and you're like, I don't, it's like once a year that I remember my dreams, but now I have.

Put things into practice. So tell us 

Sansan: easy breezy, 20 seconds at bedtime. Tell yourself either out loud or inside yourself. I will remember my dreams in the morning. I want to remember my dreams in the morning. Really mean it say five times within three to six nights. You'll be amazed. You will start remembering your dreams.

And as you start remembering at first, you may just remembered little fragments. You're like I was in a closed space and I felt a little trapped [00:23:00] and. It'll come. The more you do it, the more it comes. the brain is a muscle, so anything can be trained, but this is the easiest breez training.

And the minute that you start getting some significance, your subconscious mind will already want to remember it because it will see that has value in it for you. And in terms of like little tips about how to even start looking at your dreams, is look at it as a story, as a movie.

So think about the active characters, the people o other than you or animals or any, animated object, anything that's alive. The characters, the places. Where it was the people who were there and the actions, what activity or action, what was happening. So the what, the where the who.

And think about how you feel in this dream? 

Remember that other people in our dreams are very often. Representations of different parts of [00:24:00] ourselves. So dreams about sex are usually not about sex, and people have a lot of dreams about sex. And usually I like to quote I think it was Oscar Wilde who said everything in life is about sex except for sex.

Sex is about power. And so what dreams about sex can mean is a desire to connect or a desire to have that power with. People often dream about sex with celebrities. So what does that celebrity specifically represent to you? Do they represent empowerment? Do they represent kindness?

Whatever it is that they represent maybe a quality that you're looking to connect with to mate with, so to speak.   

Karen: For me, I used to write down my dreams a lot in the morning, but I got tired of them in a way, because I really had a hard time understanding what they meant. I gave up for a while.

Yeah, I think the trick really is if you can just remember one little thing and you do it first, [00:25:00] write it down first thing in the morning, then the rest will come really quickly. It's just remembering that one little nugget. But what I love about Wakefully, and I love the excitement that you just had earlier about but I wanna know, I wanna understand, I know there's important stuff here, is now that I've using the Wakefully app, what I really get excited to get it written down and get it as, oh, I'm like, because it'll tell me what it means.

, you add prompts in there of your own. To your point earlier about what does this character mean to you or what does this. Food mean to you so that the app itself can help you really accurately interpret it. But just like when I go into chat gpt now and I'm like, I just can't wait to see what it says.

I feel the same way now when I have my dream and I can put it in there. Yes. Because it's one aha after another. Yeah. it blows my mind like, oh, of course. That's what that meant. Of course. And now I feel like I'm armed with information that I can use rather than it like going into [00:26:00] the ether and it being wasted, my brain was doing all this work trying to give me all this important information. And if I don't take a minute to try to remember and interpret it it's lost. 

Sansan: So I love the one aha after the other that is gold. 

Karen: For real. So we should just talk about the app and the structure of it.

And, yeah. Tell us about 

Robyn: Wakefully. . Yeah, 

Sansan: It's a really fun tool. First of all, it's something that is already by a bedside. You turn your alarm off and you can start speaking your dream. So you can actually, click the record button and you can keep your eyes closed, which helps you retain the memory of the dream a little better.

And you can just start speaking. It doesn't have to be a fully formed story. Again, it could just be fragments monkey. And then I was at the beach and I think I was swimming, but then also I was walking inside the water, whatever. Comes to mind. Feelings, anything, any thoughts, any feelings? Like you said, [00:27:00] Wakefully uses ai.

To really customize the prompts and ask you questions so that we understand, not so much we tell you what your dream means, but we help you understand what your dream means to you. Because your dream is only in the context of your life, your beliefs, your thoughts, your life situation. Everything affects your culture.

 Everything you're going through personally or collectively as a nation, as a group as a demographic is all going to pop up in your dreams. So today we know, those rich stories, those rich movies that our brain delivers fresh every night, several times a night.

We finally have the technology to listen. We finally have that technology and specifically with ai, specifically with large language models, which are what's behind chat, GPT, et cetera. Today we can really map out and [00:28:00] understand the symbolic representations and dreams and understand that dream symbols and dream images are purely scientific and they can be to a mathematical accuracy.

They can be mapped out and analyzed. And that's what Wakefully does. It really delves into your story. What is the rest of the story? Not the little one of what just happened today or of the dream of last night, but in general, what is this bigger story you're telling yourself?

And beyond just helping you uncover some of these subconscious narratives and limiting subconscious narratives, it helps you actively reshape them. So we have dream rescripting tools where you can take a recurring dream or a disturbing dream, and actually we help you rewrite the ending into this beautiful empowering or inspiring, whatever you rather feel like at that moment where the monster is out to get you.

And it's almost, it's [00:29:00] claw almost got you. And you're about to fall into a pit and it's been chasing you through a forest. And in that moment we actually help you rewrite that script, actually rewrite the dream. And come up with this empowering. I want to, the app ask you, do you want to find a hidden way out?

Do you want to turn around, face the monster and realize it's just the shadow part of you? Do you want it to melt away or find a magical sword that you stab it with whatever it is. We will help you write that into this epic scene that you then rehearse, meaning you read with intention again every night and your dream will change because that narrative starts going into your subconscious.

And so that same dream is gonna happen. You're running through the forest, that monster is chasing you, and suddenly your subconscious is aware that there is another way out. It may not be that exact [00:30:00] Hollywood ending that we wrote, but you're subconscious because you rehearsed it enough. It will know there is another ending that could be here.

And your dream will change. And once you change the narrative of your dreams, it's much easier to get to changing the narrative of your thoughts because you realize, again, that you are not your thoughts. And if you can change a dream is just a dramatized thought, then you can change the way you think about yourself and the world around you.

And that to me is the ultimate freedom and the ultimate power. 

Karen: Okay. Doesn't it make you crazy sometimes? That we're not taught, we say this all the time, we're not taught this, like every child from the very beginning should be taught Yes. Learning because the reshaping aspect of their lives could be so profound.

Sansan: Our natural tendency is to recoil and to close up when something seems painful or unpleasant. And it's the same thing about dreams. Kids have a lot of [00:31:00] nightmares or kind of distressing dreams about monsters, et cetera, and actual monsters under their bed. And the parent wants to protect them, to shield them from that pain.

And they go, oh, it's just a dream. And so our whole childhood we're told it's just a dream. We grew up to thinking, oh, it's just a dream. It doesn't mean anything. And what it actually is it does talk about our fears, but we already know that the best way to enhance our fears is to run away from them, is to not wanna look at them and to try and avoid them because that avoidance then only gives it more and more power.  

And I agree. It should be taught in schools 

Robyn: , what's so interesting is that there's science, there's spirituality all tied together when we're talking about dreams and now ai, which is crazy. It's just this combination because even when you were talking about your [00:32:00] origin dream and the fact that you were able to recognize that there were these different.

Versions of who you are and that there is higher wisdom, right? Because it is your soul at the core it's your soul helping you by helping you this dream, right? By helping that become a thing within you. And then there's, it's that guidance from within. It is, and so it is that combination.

Yeah. How did that part, the spiritual part, tie in with the science as you created Wakefully 

Sansan: in an amazing way that I never even thought possible. So when I started Wakefully, I have definitely had spiritual beliefs and, I'd say, thoughts or way of life. But I haven't yet developed.

It was more in recent years that I've developed a spiritual practice, a daily meditation practice, and really delved much deeper into some of these spiritual leaders. [00:33:00] And when Wakefully started, I knew I wanted people to be able to tap into that wisdom, into that inner guidance within their dreams.

And I knew about these other tools because everything in Wakefully, the dream Rescripting these are based on clinically validated by Harvard, by MIT, the National Association of Sleep Medicine. These are very validated technique that are used in clinical environments that we're availing in a more fun and, user friendly way.  

In a way where you no longer have to be afraid of what you don't understand, like your dreams, and you don't have to fear the unknown. But what it really did is it helped me understand that Wakefully is not only about unlocking the power within your night dreams, but it's using that power to manifest your life dreams.

It's using that knowledge from your dream and [00:34:00] understanding your dream to then empower you in your goals to then help you get to be aligned with what it is that you wanna manifest with, who it is that you want to be. And that's what that spirituality aspect of completely made it a whole level. 

Robyn: I feel like it could be for many that are listening or watching that haven't necessarily really tapped into that spiritual part.

This is such a gateway, just like Karen and I always say, sometimes astrology can be a gateway for people. Yeah. Just seems, could be even a more basic 

Sansan: gateway 

Robyn: because 

Sansan: Totally. Everybody dreams and everybody, over 80% of people have either Googled their dreams and or spoke to friends about it. it's so immersed in the culture of who we are.

We are naturally curious about them. It's a great gateway drug to actual personal transformation at the core. 

Karen: Yes. Robyn, I'm so glad you [00:35:00] asked that question because as I was listening to your story San and that dream that you had. I guess I forget, or maybe I didn't even really understand that your dream the soul mind connection, right?

'cause I'm thinking about again, like God, yeah. I have a dream like that where my higher selves and I, 'cause mine's all gibberish and little crazy seemingly unrelated things. But with this tool you can, to your point, almost retrain your mind. So retrain the asking when you go to sleep to ask for that so that it's not so muddled that it is coming from this higher source.  

You 

Sansan: can even ask your dreams to bring you a solution to a complex personal problem, a decision you need to make between two careers. To answer a question, what can I do about, how do I resolve this conflict with my partner, And your dreams again, because they're more intuitive [00:36:00] if you ask it.

And it's called a dream incubation technique. And in the Wakefully app it's called the Dream Manifester. We help you come up with that dream manifesting phrase or question. So instead of saying, I will remember my dreams tomorrow morning, you say, how you ask your dreams, bring me a dream that tells me how to resolve this conflict.  

Which career is better for me? Should I make this career change? Those big questions, ask the same question five times. Really think, what would it be, what a relief it would be. To know the answer and your dreams will bring you the answer. And this is, again, clinically proven within six nights of doing that, of repeating that one phrase, 90% will dream about this topic.

64% of study subjects have actually solved real life and work issues.   

Karen: We're so powerful. We're 

Sansan: Yes. And it's not out there. It's [00:37:00] all in here. 

Karen: Oh, no. We have it all within ourselves. This has been such a game changer in terms of how to think about the power that we have and how we can work directly with our soul as we sleep our soul and ourselves together.

Befriend, 

Sansan: befriend your dreams. I say, befriend yourself befriend even your shameful thoughts. Even the ones you are ashamed of, befriend it because it's the only way to actually, What's shame? What's fear? If it's just energy what's pain? It's energy. If you recoil from it, you keep it stuck.

If you let it flow through you in a way that nothing is more valid than the other a fun dream is not more valid than a distressing dream. And also, to look at your thoughts in that way of non-judgment and equanimity. This is not, oh, it's good or bad that I dreamt that, my partner betrayed me.

It's just how I [00:38:00] interpreted this conflict. So that knowledge is always good. 'cause knowledge is power. So what's a greater power than knowing yourself?   

Karen: And another aha that came from me even just this morning using this is how much I brush off my emotions, right? yeah, experienced, we had a conversation yesterday about one of our friend's grandmother's passing away and it.  

, there must have been a trigger. I talked about it, but there must have been a real trigger in me because she was the big part of my dream. And as I went through the interpretation this morning, I'm like, oh my gosh. I was sad by that. There was a moment in the dream. I was really sad.

Sansan: and that's beautiful because in a way Yeah. You didn't get to do it in a conversation because maybe you're recording a podcast or you're doing something, or you're in a professional conversation, whatever it was, you had your own grief about it. Yeah. And your dream allowed you that space.

Our dreams allows us space, and we say hold space for me to feel my, your dreams will hold space for you to feel [00:39:00] everything and everything is valid. It just doesn't have to be your end all, be all. It can just be something you observe and go, okay. I needed a moment of grief. Maybe it had something to do with some other grief that I had that was not fully processed.

Yeah. And so isn't that great? We have that machine built in. 

Robyn: And I wanna bring up also nightmares. How can we reframe those as messages rather than extreme fear?   

Sansan: So again the rescripting helps a lot. First of all, when you are waking up even from a nightmare and you are recording or typing your dream or writing it by hand.

You know that you're safe in the dream. We don't know it's a dream unless it's lucid dreaming, which is another topic We are the fear, we are the body of the fear. but when we awake, we [00:40:00] know that there is no monster behind us. And so writing it helps us with that healthy disassociation of dis-identification.  

There's no monster. I'm in my bedroom. I'm not in a forest. There is no monster. And so that already helps with gaining that perspective, that space between the experience and who you really are and what's really happening. You really are safe. And once you start and with those kind of questions that we ask, and with just looking at your dream, it's already dismantling it from its power.

I like to call it deconstructing the monster. So the monster is, kids have the monster. You have the cheating. You have whatever nightmare about falling from a tall building or whatever it is, that's your monster, let's call it. The worst thing you can do is keep running away and not look at it.

So people go, oh, I [00:41:00] don't wanna look at my nightmares. It's the worst thing you can do. It's the only way to perpetuate the nightmare even more, because it just has this amorphous shapeless and therefore unknown, and therefore the scariest thing that you can imagine because. When it's the unknown, it's the scariest thing to us.  

Once you start looking, for example, at the dream and you take it apart, we help you take it apart again, you're in a safe space. And now we go what did this eye mean? So we take the eye apart and we take that fang apart and this whisker and this claw apart, and suddenly it's just a collection of pieces.

It's no longer a monster. Suddenly you're seeing it for what it is, just a collection of objects and a fang in and by itself can't really do anything 'cause it doesn't have the mouth to activate it, et cetera. So anything you do with your nightmare will help alleviate it if you just wanna talk about it to someone.

If you just want to [00:42:00] write it down, if you want to type it into the app, never look at it again. Anything you do. Is gonna help another stage. Then you do look at it, then you do answer the questions, then you do get the analysis. Now you're seeing, oh, what's behind it is really, this is about this conflict that I couldn't resolve with my boss.

And I felt, a little persecuted and it's no longer this amorphous thing and it's something that you can deal with. Maybe you wanna go and talk to your boss, maybe you wanna talk to your therapist when whatever it is, you have agency now. You're not just blindly led by your triggers and reactions 

Karen: And I love that dream persona aspect of the app too, . Talk about why that's important to understand. 

Sansan: All of these personality tests from MBTI to the Silly Witch character or from Sex in the City You are which totally dates me 'cause I'm sure today it's some other kind of TV show.

But personality tests were really originated from [00:43:00] Jungian archetypes. Again, Carl Yung is the father of modern psychoanalysis and modern dream analysis. Specifically he was a descendant of not a relative, but a thought descendant of Freud, but really took off in a different direction and in a direction where our dreams really show us who we want to be and who we really are.

And what is that story that we're really telling ourselves. And he came up with the 12 archetypes upon which all the personality tests are built. So our dream persona tool takes your dream and with prompts, , gives you that personality analysis based on your dream, and helps you understand that your personality is not static.

It's a dynamic thing. So even if your MBTI type is ENTP, whatever it is your personality dynamically shifts day by day and according [00:44:00] to circumstances. Let's say you're somebody who is 60% the hero and 20% the magician or whatever the NBTI names are. But maybe right now you're taking care of an ailing parent.

Your caretaker may come out in your dream. So you actually might be inhabiting 60% of the caretaker personality these days because of that. So to understand that your personality is not a static thing, again, just like you can rewrite your thoughts, you can in a way. I don't want it to be quoted out of context, but in a way you can rewrite your personality and I don't mean it is, I just come up with some character and I suddenly become it.

You can become more of who you are, of who you truly are beyond the subconscious limiting narratives. 

Robyn: again, so powerful.   

Karen: and again, it's helping you understand yourself better. Yes. That's the beauty of it. . I just can't say enough about how this has helped me and it's wow. [00:45:00] Fun to use because it's almost like the curiosity of what the message is gonna be when it comes back, and like I said before, that aha moment of oh, 

Sansan: and this is why people love, those personality quizzes so much.

We do want to be able to place ourselves in our world. How do we fit into our world? And again, I say, how do you wanna fit?   

It's so 

Robyn: empowering. Question in terms of sleep. Is there a certain number of hours that you suggest? And sometimes let's say, I don't know how often people nap or if you only get like a, a short window of sleep, but you still have those dreams, all of that still is important, right? All of that is something you want to record potentially.

Sansan: Yeah we know stories about Thomas Edison I believe a few others. Thomas Edison used to do those kind of active meditation naps. [00:46:00] In his office, he would sit and nap on his chair holding a rock. So when once he fell into deep sleep, the rock would fall and the thump of the rock on the floor would wake him up.

He wanted to remain in that in between state, because that is a very intuitive, inspiring state. So sometimes you get those crazy ideas right before you fall asleep and you're like, what? That's called the hypnogogic state, and . There's a mirror of the hypnogogic state, which is your hypno pic state, which is when you wake up, you know how you have, the first few moments are so fuzzy.

You barely know who you are, what you are, where you are, you're in that beautiful state, and that is a really great state to harness because some really great thoughts, ideas you're very primed for a mindful thinking for a non-judgmental, because you don't have all this consciousness to tell you, oh [00:47:00] no, this is not appropriate or this doesn't make sense to tell you that.

In terms of sleep, listen I'm not a sleep expert and so I'll defer to them in terms of the hours sleep, but I will say that again, a lot of people are having problems falling asleep because of stressful dreams, because they are afraid to go in and dream that dream. And so that's where dreamwork can really help you because you no longer need to be afraid.

And subconsciously you're not going to stop yourself from falling asleep because, and again another thing that keeps us awake at night are, those negative thought loops or this, this anxiety this, what do I need to do? This dread, this kind of pre-dreading tomorrow and that, gives us anxiety, which activates certain hormones that are not letting us fall asleep.

So again, every work that you do in terms of your wholeness of your wellbeing helps. 

Robyn: that's so [00:48:00] good. I love that. 

Karen, I would love for you to share some of your experiences so far with using Wake fully because I've been able to at least start remembering and recording some, but you are been able to do it consistently, and you are making me even more excited to continue this journey.

Karen: I'm just having so much fun with it because there's so much of myself that I think I just brush off that my dreams are inviting me to explore more on a deeper level. And I think for anybody listening, most of us we're so busy in our day-to-day that we're robots, right?

We're getting things done. We're crossing things off the list. That really allowing ourselves to immerse into the emotion and to the experience of what we're dealing with on a life level versus just a day-to-day get things done level. We miss all of that, and I feel like I'm learning more about myself 

it's more of like [00:49:00] a reinforcement of who I am as a person and a soul, and that those emotions that I'm. Just pushing through and not really thinking about are really important and they're really impacting me in a deep way. I was saying earlier this morning, I woke up 

and I was so overwhelmed because none of it made sense. It was so random. Like you were saying earlier, these little snippets of I'm in Europe with my grandmother taking pictures on her old camera that didn't actually take all of the pictures that I wanted and that I'm at a conference with some friends who gave me an old Christmas card of my grandmother's that made me cry.

And then I'm with my best friend on a phone call talking about a party I went to the night before and how my husband would've been really upset to know that I was talking to some guy and I said to my friend my husband's never here, So those are two emotions. The emotion of feeling like I'm alone right now.

And my husband isn't around very much. I wasn't really thinking about that. It was just kind of part of my day to day. [00:50:00] And so the app really helped me understand holistically how it all that's what it does. It takes all that seemingly non-associated information, and it tells a story with a real plot and with a real experience and a real message for you to take away from it.

Sansan: . What I'm hearing a lot from this experience is self empathy, is it's giving yourself the space to feel all the feels in a place where it's very forgiving and self empathetic, and I love that.

Karen: so I have to ask because everyone will say, how does it know this? 

Sansan: First remember two things.

One that, LMS are trained on the internet and the internet holds big chunk of the world's wisdom. Any kind of written wisdom, let's say e experiential is another. We hold that wisdom which is why we are the key to deciphering our dreams, which is why the [00:51:00] app has to ask you questions so you can even go to chat GPT and you're not gonna get what you get from Wakefully because we have trained that LLM specifically on specific methodology and to incorporate the information you give us.

That's not always even just the dream itself, but it's other, oh, is what I feel about such and this is what's going on in my waking life. And take all that information and use it against that world's wisdom or. A very specific methodology of dream wisdom, it's just able to tap into a much data set that our brain can, that any one person can.  

So it has a broader reach on top of that, we have trained it. So Wakefully right now is not only the largest, but it's the most relevant and context rich dream database. So it means that it's not just [00:52:00] dreams, it's about, the emotions you associate with certain symbols in your dreams.

It's about what are you going on in your waking life. And that is what we train our AI model on. So it's trained on over 40,000 other dreams. And growing. Wow. And so it has that wisdom because it's also analyzing all of the analyses from all of these dreams and all of these different data points So that's how AI becomes smart. that's when it becomes very skillful in getting to the bottom of what's behind the images of your dream, specifically for you, Karen. And the more you use it, the better it's gonna become for you, but also for everybody else.  

Karen: And just to add one other piece to that, I think that will be helpful to people is I've always had a recurring dream. I'm on my last day of vacation at the beach I've been working too busy to get to the beach.

I finally have time. I have a little sliver of the [00:53:00] day that's left to go outside and enjoy the beach, and it starts raining. And when I get out there, I've lost my phone. Which my phone has always been my life connection to all of us. my work and everything else.

Okay. So anybody listening can probably, obviously figure out what that means. I always thought that I knew what it means, but I kept dreaming it all the time and I would always make up going, oh yeah, I just had that dream again. So now that I've put it into the app, 

 I'm picking up more on the emotional things that are triggering me during the day. I'm giving a place to be deciphered. In a way. So I don't have that dream 

Sansan: anymore. Even if it's a recurring dream, there is a reason why it shows up in certain times in your life, and that's where the app can really help you start patterning.

Is it when I'm about to go on vacation? Is it happening when I'm overwhelmed with work? In which type of times in your life does this very [00:54:00] similar dream show up? Because that would be a big key to the mystery. And that's again, something that the AI can do is start showing you those patterns.

Karen: I do think that what it has helped me do is get deeper, Yes. So whereas that recurring dream was just always the same and I'd be like, oh yeah, I'm stressed and I'm just feeling there's not enough time in the day to do what I want. That was always that message I took away from it.

Now what's showing up are different kinds of stories that are a little bit deeper, that bubble up the emotions that are actually behind that larger metaphor. So now it's helping me process the emotion versus just wake up going, oh yeah, I guess I'm stressed and feeling overwhelmed. So that's the beauty.

It helps you get a little bit deeper into the real meaning

Sansan: I'd love for you to try it with a dream re script tool and read that script every night for a few nights. And I would love to know. If the dream comes back and in what way? And did anything change?

Robyn: [00:55:00] How can you not be excited about doing this? I'm so glad that Reoccurring Dreams came up because that is something that, again, we all dream and we all have those one or two reoccurring dreams or reoccurring places and it's really important to have that better understanding.

And , like with you Karen, and that kind of dream, you want a different ending. And I think the whole point is that. How is that also then impacting your actual waking life? That's right. So once you start changing that narrative, to your point, using that tool and rescripting it, you're not only rescripting your dream you're rescripting your subconscious and who you are and what you deserve in life 

Sansan: If you think of recurring dreams as a recurring thought, yeah. So why is it that you're having this recurring thought or again, where does it connect in your life? And also if dreams are a message from your subconscious, [00:56:00] what is the message that you're refusing to listen?

So it keeps bringing it back. . 'cause you haven't heard it yet.   

Karen: For everybody who's struggling with mantras. Affirmations. This is such a cool experiment to try, Yeah. Because, think about how effective it will be too, because it literally is reshaping your subconscious and your sleep.

I know 

Robyn: it is that effective San do you have any personal nighttime rituals that help you have clearer insights into your dreams that we haven't talked about today? 

Sansan: Yeah. That short 22nd thing about, I wanna remember my dreams. I'm already at a stage where my subconscious wants to remember my dreams.

I don't need to actively tell myself, it just does. I do try to detach from, the tv, the electronics, the storytelling. Especially , if it's news or if it's a show that's implanting a story in my mind that's not even mine. 

So I don't want my [00:57:00] dreams to be susceptible to those messages. Definitely not the news. If I watch or listen to anything, it would be a spiritual person speaking, a spiritual guide or leader I have, certain, neuro sound wave binaural beats and those kind of things. I listen to that. I just want my thoughts to be my own, but I also want to stop the hamster wheel of the thinking mind because that was something that kept me up and it wasn't all anxiety thoughts, but it was keeping me up.  

 Just be present in the moment. So whatever helps me be present in the moment, which could be music, or it could be just quiet and just connect to my inner self so I use it as a meditative space, although it's not a sit up meditation for me, it's more of a lie down meditation. And I just come back to the present, come back to myself and let it all go.

Robyn: Do you find [00:58:00] yourself setting intentions for instance, asking for wisdom Yes. Or answers or, 

Sansan: yes. So again, because I'm somebody who does it inherently I don't always, but sometimes I'll use the app just to help me phrase the question that dream incubation. 

So sometimes it will be a very specifically directed, but my mind already does it subconsciously. So sometimes I'll just talk about something that I have a problem with.

Sansan: I won't even remember at bedtime that I want to resolve this problem. But it'll come up in conversation and then suddenly in the morning I come up with a solution and I'm like, oh, I forgot to even, 

Put it into my dream. So once you're very well practiced, it happens automatically. 

Karen: Ah, do the experiment.

Everybody listening, I'm gonna do it too. Like just come up with something, even if it is solve this problem or give me this insight or this inspiration what happens. Why not? How fun. I it's really working for you. 

Sansan: It's very grounding. Yeah. we [00:59:00] still all have, battles with ego within ourselves and with others.

And there is such a non-ego place to dreams because you really can't pretend there's no pretense. They're just gonna show you. It's you naked or your thoughts naked with a funny cover. 

Robyn: That's so true. I can't get over how your past has really set you up.

For where you are now without you ever at that point, the intention of creating a dream analysis interpretation app with ai that was never on the radar. But here I was not a 

Sansan: tech person. I was a storyteller. That's what I mean. I didn't know anything about tech, let alone ai.  

Yes. It's just been a wonderful journey and I feel that with that growth and whether it's, those exploration into the self or whether it's professionally, my experience of life expands. It's like there are more [01:00:00] colors to my rainbow. 

all: Aw. I can 

Sansan: see more nuances. every day anew. 

Robyn: You're helping us all do the same. 

Karen: And just, thank you. Made me realize what the term dream come true actually means. I thought you were gonna say that before. It's this has been a dream come true and it really isn't it?  

Yeah. 

Sansan: The 

Karen: cliche. I don't wanna sound like 

Sansan: a 

Karen: Yeah, I'll say it for you. I love it. Think about being able to truly say, dream come true from a place of deliberate creation, Yes. Versus my dream is my subconscious. All that stuff is running my life in a way that I don't like it.

This is an opportunity for your dreams. Truly come true. Yes. for you to 

Sansan: dream of the best dreams to dream of the what you want and who you want to be, and then to become it. 

Robyn: Yeah. to make those wakeful dreams it's the connection between the night Yes. The night 

Sansan: dreams and the wakeful 

Robyn: dreams.

That is it. It is then literally, as you just said, dream come true. 

Sansan: Yeah. And 

Robyn: You're [01:01:00] providing that vehicle for us to do that. So 

Sansan: Thank you. 

Robyn: It's humanity inspires well, and to me it's like the best use of why, we hear a lot of times not to have your phone next to your bed, but this is a reason to have your phone next to your Yeah, 

Sansan: we all still do.

So That's might as well use it for a benefit. And, we use sleep trackers. That's so you're tracking your sleep. Why not track your dreams. And 

Karen: you probably sleep better because your subconscious mind will know that you're actually looking for its wisdom 

. It's a good experiment in seeing if your sleep is deeper and more nurturing for yourself. 

Sansan: or to get it to be deeper and more nurturing.

Yes. Yeah. Where can people find Wakefully? 

Wakefully is available on both app stores, iPhone, Android. And for you and for your listeners, I'm going to create specific codes where you have a 30 day free trial to the premium subscription. Oh, thank you. And I would love everybody to try it. My goodness, 

Robyn: [01:02:00] San that's incredible. 

Thank you. 

We'll have that up for a specific amount of time within our show notes, and we're so grateful you are gonna change so many people's lives. Through their dreams and through what you've created. This is huge.

Thank you. 

Sansan: you already are. And you've already changed mine. And I love talking to you both. And I think it's such a deep exploration. it fills my heart. I'm writing notes here. Same. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you.