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Incubation is the religious practice of sleeping in a sacred area with the intention of experiencing adivinely inspireddream orcure. Incubation was practised by many ancient cultures. In perhaps the most well known instance among theHebrews, found in1 Kings 3,Solomon went toGibeon "because that was the most renowned high place to offer sacrifices." There "theLord appeared to Solomon in a dream at night," and Solomon asked God for the gift of an understanding heart. Among the members of the cult ofAsclepius, votive offerings found at ritual centres atEpidaurus,Pergamum, andRome detail the perceived effectiveness of the method. Incubation was adopted by certain Christian sects[1] and is still used in a few Greek monasteries. Modern practices for influencing dream content bydream incubation use more research-driven techniques, but sometimes they incorporate elements reflecting ancient beliefs.
A form of incubation was also used by theiatromantes of the ancient Greeks. According toPeter Kingsley, iatromantis figures belonged to a wider Greek and Asian shamanic tradition with origins in Central Asia. A main ecstatic, meditative practice of these healer-prophets was incubation (ἐγκοίμησις, enkoimesis). More than just a medical technique, incubation reportedly allowed a human being to experience a fourth state of consciousness different from sleeping, dreaming, or ordinary waking: a state that Kingsley describes as “consciousness itself” and likens to theturiya orsamādhi of the Indianyogic traditions.
Dream incubation is a modern psychological technique for inducing a dream about a specificdream topic, either for recreation or to attempt to solve a problem. For example, a person might go to bed repeating to themselves that they will dream about a presentation they have coming up, or a vacation they recently took. While somewhat similar tolucid dreaming, dream incubation is simply focusing attention on a specific issue when going to sleep.
In a study atHarvard Medical School, Dr.Deirdre Barrett had her students focus on a problem and found that it was possible to come up with novel solutions in dreams that were both satisfactory to the dreamer and rated as objectively solving the problem by an outside observer. In her study, two-thirds of participants had dreams that addressed their chosen problem and one-third reached some form of solution within their dreams.[2] Other studies have found this type of bedtime dream incubation effective in solving problems of a more subjective, personal nature.[3] In Barrett's book,The Committee of Sleep, she describes her study of prominent artists and scientists who draw inspiration from their dreams. While most of these dreams occurred spontaneously, a small proportion of the respondents had discovered informal versions of dream incubation on their own. They reported giving themselves successful pre-sleep suggestions for everything from seeing finished artwork in their dreams to developing plots or characters for a novel to asking dreams to solve computing and mechanical design problems.[4]
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