10 Things You Didn't Know About Dreams
Who become blind after birth can see images
in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but
have dreams equally vivid involving their other senses of sound, smell,
touch and emotion. It is hard for a seeing person to imagine, but the
body need for sleep is so strong that it is able to handle virtually
all physical situations to make it happen.
You
Forget 90% of your Dreams
Within 5
minutes of waking, half of your dream if forgotten. Within 10, 90% is
gone. The famous poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, woke one morning having
had a fantastic dream (likely opium induced) - he put pen to paper and
began to describe his vision in a dream in what has become one of
English most famous poems: Kubla Khan. Part way through (54 lines in
fact) he was interrupted by a Person from Porlock. Coleridge returned
to his poem but could not remember the rest of his dream. The poem was
never completed.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
Everybody Dreams
Every human being dreams (except in cases of
extreme psychological disorder) but men and women have different dreams
and different physical reactions. Men tend to dream more about other
men, while women tend to dream equally about men and women. In
addition, both men and women experience sexually related physical
reactions to their dreams regardless of whether the dream is sexual in
nature; males experience erections and females experience increased
vaginal blood flow.
Dreams
Prevent Psychosis
In a
recent sleep study, students who were awakened at the beginning of each
dream, but still allowed their 8 hours of sleep, all experienced
difficulty in concentration, irritability, hallucinations, and signs of
psychosis after only 3 days. When finally allowed their REM sleep the
student’s brains made up for lost time by greatly increasing the
percentage of sleep spent in the REM stage
We Only Dream of What We Know
Our
dreams are frequently full of strangers who play out certain parts -
did you know that your mind is not inventing those faces - they are
real faces of real people that you have seen during your life but may
not know or remember? The evil killer in your latest dream may be the
guy who pumped petrol in to your Dad car when you were just a little
kid. We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces through our lives,
so we have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize
during our dreams.
Not Everyone Dreams in Color
A full
12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The
remaining number dream in full color. People also tend to have common
themes in dreams, which are situations relating to school, being
chased, running slowly/in place, sexual experiences, falling, arriving
too late, a person now alive being dead, teeth falling out, flying,
failing an examination, or a car accident. It is unknown whether the
impact of a dream relating to violence or death is more emotionally
charged for a person who dreams in color than one who dreams in black
and white
Dreams are not about what they are about
If you
dream about some particular subject it is not often that the dream is
about that. Dreams speak in a deeply symbolic language. The unconscious
mind tries to compare your dream to something else, which is similar.
Its like writing a poem and saying that a group of ants were like
machines that never stop. But you would never compare something to
itself, for example: That beautiful sunset was like a beautiful sunset.
So whatever symbol your dream picks on it is most unlikely to be a
symbol for itself.
Quitters have more vivid dreams
People
who have smoked cigarettes for a long time who stop, have reported much
more vivid dreams than they would normally experience. Additionally,
according to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology: “Among 293
smokers abstinent for between 1 and 4 weeks, 33% reported having at
least 1 dream about smoking. In most dreams, subjects caught themselves
smoking and felt strong negative emotions, such as panic and guilt.
Dreams about smoking were the result of tobacco withdrawal, as 97% of
subjects did not have them while smoking, and their occurrence was
significantly related to the duration of abstinence. They were rated as
more vivid than the usual dreams and were as common as most major
tobacco withdrawal symptoms.
External Stimuli Invade our Dreams
This is
called Dream Incorporation and it is the experience that most of us
have had where a sound from reality is heard in our dream and
incorporated in some way. A similar (though less external) example
would be when you are physically thirsty and your mind incorporates
that feeling in to your dream. My own experience of this includes
repeatedly drinking a large glass of water in the dream which satisfies
me, only to find the thirst returning shortly after - this
thirst… drink¦ thirst¦ loop often recurs until I wake up and
have a real drink. The famous painting above (Dream Caused by the
Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening) by
Salvador Dali, depicts this concept.
You are paralyzed while you sleep
Believe
it or not, your body is virtually paralyzed during your sleep - most
likely to prevent your body from acting out aspects of your dreams.
According to the Wikipedia article on dreaming, Glands begin to secrete
a hormone that helps induce sleep and neurons send signals to the
spinal cord which cause the body to relax and later become essentially
paralyzed.
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Posted
by Ian May
2 comments
Aug 05, 2009
Shevonne Polastre said...
I didn't know we were paralyzed. What about those restless sleepers?
Aug 19, 2010
Flo said...
My friend she talks in her sleep and she can perform actions. i have had very honest conversations with her, but she doesnt remember afterwards. i do know its proven that people can not lie in their sleep. but i dont think we're paralized. because i asked her to text the word "hello" and she did.
