i was reading some web site's facts which i find interesting about dreams since i personally i have been having some weird dreams lately..anyways, these are some of the fast facts about dreams i read about:
When we sleep our body undergoes a series of physical changes. Our heart rate slightly increases, we begin to breathe faster and our brain waves adjust to different states of consciousness. While the small muscles around our mouth, fingers and eyes can twitch, our large muscles don't move freely as they normally would. Because of this, we do not act out our dreams. A dream is an experience that happens during sleep and involves images, sounds, thoughts and other types of sensations. These events typically seem unrealistic and are beyond the control of the dreamer. Sometimes though, people are conscious of their dreams and can alter different aspects of their dreams. (Read more about this in lucid dreaming...) We also experience emotional changes during sleep. For example, we may experience a level of sexual arousal so our dreams may have some type of sexual element to it. Additionally, the images, sounds and smells that we have may reflect our emotional state at the time of the dream.
Color can appear in dreams in different ways. There can be a single image in color (a woman in a red hat for instance), colored shapes and areas such as yellow or blue squares, or an entire scene that's in natural color (green grass, blue sky, yellow sun, brown and green trees, etc.). Dream researchers (yes, they exist!) have found that although most dream are in color, people usually don't see them in color unless it has to do with something specifically vivid. Studies have shown that when people dream in color, it is often forgotten.
Most people dream during the state of REM sleep, which stands for rapid eye movement. REM sleep is the last step in the four stages of sleep and it is when your eyes begin to move around quickly under your eyelids. It's completely normal for this to occur.
While some experts believe dreams occur without reason or purpose; others believe dreams happen for a variety of reasons. Some say dreams happen because our brains "twitch" during the night. This is because of the incredible amounts of information we store everyday. Others believe dreams serve as a way for our mind to understand daily events or solve specific problems in our lives.
Sigmund Freud was one of the first people to actually study dreams. He was an active dreamer and believed that dreams were meaningful. After analyzing his own dreams, Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1898.
In the book, he discussed what he believed were two levels of dreams--the "manifest content," which was the actual dream, and the "latent content," which was the hidden meaning behind the dream. He theorized that dreams were wishes people wanted fulfilled and he believed dreams could be interpreted.
Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, a protege of Freud, felt that dreams were deeply connected to the unconscious mind. He believed that when people slept, their minds would be consumed with an image or symbol. Then the unconscious side of the mind would create a story around that particular image or symbol. According to Jung, that story would reveal something significant about the image.
Everyone dreams! Experts believe that people dream about 100 minutes per night. Even so, it's completely natural to forget one's dreams. In fact, most people forget nearly 95% -99% of their dreams.
People may not remember their dreams because the level of awareness during sleep is so low that memory skills are mediocre at best. People remember their dreams more when they are awakened during or soon after a dream.
What dreams mean varies according to experts. Some believe that dreams don't really mean anything, while others argue that they are connected to our thoughts and emotions. Those experts suggest that dreams express our deepest concerns, fears and desires; and if we study them we can understand what's going on in our lives.
On the flip side, some dream researchers believe that dreams aren't necessarily filled with meanings, but instead are mind games about different aspects of our lives or things we see on TV or read about in the papers.
There are different types of dreams such as daydreams, lucid dreams and nightmares. Daydreams are the most common because they usually happen during the day when people are awake. (It's still considered a dream because our level of awareness is low and we get lost in an imaginary world or fantasy.) Studies have shown we can daydream an average of 70-120 minutes a day!
Lucid dreams are dreams we have control over because we are aware we are dreaming. With this type of dream, people usually decide what to dream about before they fall asleep and dream of that very thing when they are sleeping.
Psychologists used to think that it was impossible to be conscious during sleep, but research has shown that lucid dreams are real and seem to be triggered by high levels of stress, anxiety and physical or mental activity during the day.
Some people claim they can encourage themselves to have lucid dreams by simply thinking about their state of consciousness while they're awake or by waking up in the middle of the night and doing something active before going back to sleep.
Nightmares are disturbing dreams that cause us to wake up feeling uneasy and sometimes frightful. They can be connected to traumatic experiences in our lives or images we saw on television. Sometimes they can be a warning about something in our lives that we should be mindful about.
Everyone has nightmares from time to time, but children seem to have them more often than adults. While the subject of a nightmare varies from person to person, there are some common types of bad dreams many people seem to have, like dreaming of falling, being chased or being naked in public.
