What They Tell Us While We Sleep and How They Can Change Our Waking Lives. We spend a third of our lives sleeping and, as new research would suggest, almost all of that is spent dreaming. Despite this, very few of us try to explore the messages that our brain is projecting, or try to use this knowledge in our everyday lives. In 'The Magic of Dreams', psychoanalyst and Director of the Dream Research Institute, Melinda Powell, teaches us how to better remember, understand and interpret the dreams we have, and shows us how we can use this to improve our waking life.