Mining Your Dreams

PROVO, Utah – Jul 14, 2017 – Have you ever had a dream where you feel like you're flying like a bird, falling, are naked in public, or missed a test? If you’re like most people, you’ve probably dreamed about at least one of these scenarios. And if you’re like most people, you probably have no idea what any of it means. Fortunately, BYU information systems professor James Gaskin is here to help you decipher those dreams.

Gaskin and his colleagues have created an app that will catalog and interpret the sweet (and not so sweet) dreams of all the dreamers who sign up. The app allows people to record dreams, connect with other dreamers and consult with psychologists to find more resolution and meaning in their nightly visions.

“We want to help people use dreams to improve their lives,” said Gaskin, a self-proclaimed dreamer. “We also hope to generate a lot of dream data. As a data scientist, I would love to be able to identify descriptively what is going on in the world through dreams.”

Five years in the making, the uDreamed app lets people:

• Record their dreams
• Analyze dreams for insight
• Share dreams with friends
• Network with similar dreamers
• Consult with dream professionals
• Understand and associate their wildest dreams with reality

As part of the uDreamed project, Gaskin and his team have also created a YouTube channel with videos that explain possible meanings behind common dream scenarios. The videos currently cover five topics from the river of dreams: falling, being lost, being naked, flying and being chased.

According to one of the videos, flying in a dream indicates a sense of freedom from a previous obligation or burden that made someone feel restricted or limited. Flying can also mean a dreamer senses power and fulfillment in his or her personal life.

While Gaskin himself is not a dream interpreter, he has always been a vivid dreamer and comes from a line of dreamers (parents and grandparents are dreamers too). While he acknowledges not everyone is a dream weaver, when it comes to using the app, any dream will do.

“Dreams are a big deal in most non-western cultures; people get married because of dreams, take jobs because of dreams. They live and die by dreams,” Gaskin said. “But people in the U.S. and Great Britain think dreams are fluffy and don’t mean much. We want to change that thinking.”

The uDreamed app is available for free on the Android and iTunes app stores.