Dreams are often surreal, frightening or just plain bizarre, but one expert reckons we ignore them at our peril.
Hypnotist and TV dream interpreter Davina MacKail, says our dreams hold the key to creating everything we want in life.
After all, she says, if it hadn't been for dreams, Einstein would never have come up with the theory of relativity, Paul McCartney might never have written Yesterday and Elias Howe might not have worked out how to build a sewing machine.
Davina, whose book The Dream Whisperer is out now, said: "People are fascinated by dreams. Friends and family now make a beeline towards me every morning to find out what their dreams mean.
"I am getting to the stage where I tell them if they read my book, they will know how to work them out for themselves.
"Dreams for me are the manifestation of something that concerns us, either through internal or external influences,or they reflect an imbalance in a person.
"This means dreams are a fantastic feedback mechanism. The only problem is they tend to work in terms of a metaphor, symbols and archetype, which is incredibly difficult for our rational awake mind to make sense.
"My book is filled with simple exercises to help people find clarity of meaning, which then provides the dreamer with fantastic answers to everything they need to know about themselves and life.
"Dreams are, after all, emotional barometers. The emotion you feel in a dream can indicate what the dream relates to in your current life and can help you to deal better with the things you are not dealing with."
"In The Dream Whisperer, Davina looks at every aspect of sleep and dreams. These range from creating a bedroom conducive to sleep, to how to decipher every kind of dream and find the message at its heart.
Davina said: "There is no need to go to therapy if you start paying attention to your dreams.
"Consider recurring dreams for an example. We have a perfect biological system and it is not going to start replaying a dream every night like some stuck record. It is happening because it needs you to take some action to resolve what's emotionally blocked.
"We also get prophetic dreams, which are a common phenomenon purely because there is a lot of information out there for us to pick up on with our extra senses, which then manifests in dreams.
"Often, people who lose a close loved one dream of them during their grieving process to help them resolve that.
"And the scary dreams which waken you up are actually our greatest gifts. In fact, dreams in general are a phenomenal resource we don't make use of.
"My book is not a dream dictionary though. I think we all need to make our own interpretations through our own personal filters.
"Einstein had his dream when he was 19 but it took him the rest of his life to work out what it meant."
Davina can testify to the power of dreams. She was prompted to try to find her father after a message she received during a night's sleep.
Having never met her father, all she knew was his name, the fact he was American and what she believed was his star sign.
Amazingly though, with the help of the internet , she managed to track down 11 addresses connected to his name.
She sent letters to them all - and just two weeks later, her father emailed her from Paradise Valley in Arizona.
Davina said: " I don't actually remember the details of the dream but as I was waking, I had the though I was going to find my dad.
"At the time, I was 38 and had never really looked for him before. I had had counselling in my 20s and made a half-hearted attempt to get in touch with him then but never got anywhere.
"I think it was all so simple the second time I tried because the timing was right. I truly believe if you pay attention to the messages in your dreams, then life will be simple. We are solution-seeking missiles when we are asleep and it is possible to train yourself to make use of that facility.
"Go to bed saying to your dreaming mind you need to have a clear remembered dream about a certain issue and you will wake up with the answer"
The Dream Whisperer by Davina MacKail is available here: UK or US
