What You Don't Know About Dreams
The popularity of dream studies goes in waves and right now the dream wave is cresting. As New York dream researcher Ross Levin told me recently, "Dreams are hot right now." It's not too surprising that in times of turmoil we dare to dream. But what are the practical applications?
In the hierarchy of dreaming, lucid dreaming -- where you partially control your dreams -- is the highest level. Current research shows that lucid dreaming can help improve problem-solving skills and creativity, overcome fear, improve confidence, hone new skills, and dramatically increase "flow," the mental state in which you are fully immersed in what you are doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and success in the process of any activity. Lucid dreamers can also act out fantasies and, you guessed it, frequently report orgasmic experiences during sleep.
Dream experts say lucid dreaming leads to higher levels of consciousness and greater facility in dealing with the stresses and conflicts of waking life. Sara Mednick, a psychologist at UC San Diego and the author of Take a Nap, Change Your Life, reports that napping with REM (dream) sleep promotes creativity and improves problem-solving. You can read an interesting post about the benefits of napping here.
As it turns out, men are more active lucid dreamers than females because the process lends itself to the need for control. Plus, guys have a sense of needing to go through initiation. Lucid dreaming is used for calling on monsters and confronting battles, getting churned up and spit out. Ryan Hurd, a 34 year-old dream researcher and active lucid dreamer based in San Diego, recently wrote in his blog, Dreamstudies.org, that "working with your dreams will revitalize your career, rekindle your love life, and unleash your creativity so you can go after what you really want in life... by simply paying attention to your dreams, the dreams you have will also change, becoming more clear, more directed, and more focused on the issues you are most interested in."
Men and women can use dreams to dramatically improve their emotional intelligence and therefore become better lovers and more successful at work, sports, etc. -- and have a lot of fun in the process. Dreaming is like the ultimate virtual training camp, complete with games and fantasies.
Interestingly enough, video games can enhance lucid dreaming. Although President Obama has come down hard on video games for promoting a sedentary lifestyle, dream psychologist Jayne Gackenbach says they're like a training camp for dreams and can make lucid dreams even more lucid. So keep playing. And keep dreaming.
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I am going to say something that will expose me to ridicule, however: while on the subject of dreaming, what about dreams that are windows to the future? I do not understand it, but I have had many hundreds of dreams about the future, oft times about events that would not occur for 10, 20, 30, and 40 years into the future. Sometimes they are just interesting, and other times they warn me to avoid a "path" that would lead to unfortuneate events impinging on my life.
When talking with others, I have found anecdotal evidence that dreams can be amazing windows into various aspects of our lives, usually for our benefit.
My own opinion is that our understanding of things like what many people have reported experiencing are so far out of the realm of our current scientific understanding, that we cannot even form a framework for research into the phenomena. I would like to be around when and if we someday start to get a scientific comprehension for the many types of dream phenomena that so far we don't even want to talk about.
You're not alone. I have been having precognative dreams as long as I can remember. Embrace it. I think most people have them but block that gift out of fear. Google "precognative dreams" you'll be suprized how much information is out there. Ignore the ridicule, it's a gift. As a christian it's something I keep mostly to myself. A lot of evangelicals atribute the gift to the devil but I know it's a gift from God.
Thank you for your kind words!
Your use of the word "block" has special signifigance to me. I believe that many people shut off the possibility of experiencing things that are not what we would call normal, by adhering to a strict world view advanced by a limited understanding of the world around us. In other words, if one has firm beliefs about the world, whether seemingly based in science or religion, then one tends to block the ability to accept the evidence from one's senses that which does not agree with one's world view.
While a firm believer in science and the benefits of education, and an admirer of some religious teachings, I choose to believe that the universe we live in is far stranger than what is described in any science books, and is certainly not subject to any dogma.
Getting back to dreams, from my own limited experience, I would say that some of them can be linked to our conscous perceptions of reality in ways that we hardly understand at all.
USING your psyche for profit and gain is about as wise as this culture is. Not.
I HAVE A DREAM!
THE DREAM TREE
When I was young and on the farm
My favorite place to be
Was by the pond in the woods
High in a Sycamore tree.
I climbed her high
As high as I could
Built me a tree house
Out of tin and wood.
I searched the barn
And found an old chair
Then used a long rope
To pull it through the air.
I placed it inside
And sat right down
I felt like a king
With the moon as my crown.
Everywhere around me
I could see flashing lights.
The fireflies were dancing
To the breath of the nights.
Now that I’m grown with kids of my own
I stand beneath the same old tree.
What I built has long since gone
Though it's easy for me to see.
By Conservative Poet
Tom Zart
Most Published Poet
On The Web
Promoting video games a precursor for better lucid dreaming is ludicrous! The types of video games that are violent (most of them are) could promote nightmares and aggression, rather than problem-solving. Quantum learning is based on both right brain and left brain use - and problem-solving and critical thinking skills can be acquired through the balance of the two.
The Senoi Tribe, used dreams as a way of life. They had very little violence in their community and every day they would have discussions about the dreams they had, lessons that were learned. They were able to reenter the dream and change the outcome. Dream interpretation and its symbols was part of the process. Lucid dreaming can be taught, and practiced.
Dreams can work out repressed feelings and can mitigate, trying daily circumstance lingering in the subconscious. MerrieWay Muses: How many of us have had prophetic dreams? It is more than a déjà -vu.
Thats a mighty large brush you're using ma'am.
There are many video games that capture the very essence of creativity and can inspire and move a person to tears as much as some of the best and most beloved movies.
Not all video games are about shooting people and blood, lets be careful not to demonize a medium that has vast and endless potential, just because of our own personal feelings on the subject.
You used the operative word- manipulating. As a filmmaker I'm very aware of manipulating images to evoke emotion. We are the product of the images and emotions that we see daily, as well as the archetypes that are embedded within.
Video games and excessive TV viewing are curtailing the natural imagination of our youth. MerrieWay Community’s "Media Smart 4 Young Folks" is a useful tool for parents and teaches the rudiments of media literacy. And, back on point, may our dreams reflect our wholeness.
I appreciate that your passionate about a topic or that you present some opposition to the authors ideas however JusticeWain has some perspective you're not considering sufficiently.
I regularly spend time in an online game environment and the images, events and storylines evoke the same senses as watching a movie at the same time being challenged with a problem.
I have post traumatic stress disorder and sleep escapes me alot. So I regularly practice lucid dream sleep to keep myself asleep and overcome mental emotional challenges. I do not take any medication. And I often dream of experiences that could have been sourced from the video game, some good some frightening. No more frightening than driving on the freeway or being in society where the moral majority run the show.
Most games are replicas of real life. Doom is a prime example of a bloodlust game where the avatar has the sole mission of killing everything in its path through a labyrinth of building tunnels. When is the last time you watched world news and hear that Darfur was the site of genocide deaths of 100,000 people ?
Games (entertainment) is why we fight for our freedoms. Why else would we bother ? If all life has to offer is "real life" and no fantasy. My God what a horrible world that would be. I wouldn't want to live in it and I damn sure wouldn't fight to preserve it.
Regarding Lucid dreams and video games. 25 years ago I was experiencing a great deal of Lucid dreaming. So much so at that time I hadn't heard anything about it and began to look and see if I could find something on it and what it was called. I found Stephen LaBerge :Lucid Dreaming. There were no video games at that time.
Long story short 25 years later I rarely lucid dream but have a variety of video games and play quite often with my kids. It would appear to me based on my experience that playing video games reduces Lucid Dreaming! Or is it aging?
On a side note at that time there was something new and pharmaceutical produced called MDMA that wasn't even classified as a drug. It was legal and easily available at that time in Austin Texas. Doctors, Psychiatrists, Therapist, and marriage councilors had been working with it and said it was like 6 months of therapy with one session I think MDMA is better than video games in triggering Lucid Dreaming. Regrettably pharmaceutical produced MDMA is no longer available and there are incredibly Draconian restrictions against it's possession and use. Even more unfortunate young people are taking illegal stuff called ecstasy to get high that isn't MDMA. They have no idea what they are taking. It could be anything and dangerous. Thanks DEA.
Lucid dreaming can be triggered with Lucid dreaming exercises.
. my favorite happiest dream ever was winning american idol.
i feel like a lot of my dreams convey my fears, and instincts. the latest weird one was a sex dream with the lead singer of some band i used to regulary see in high school- never thought about him that way before- totally random. come to find out i went to one of their shows and he decided to pick up my purse and wear it for part of their playing time. i thought that was rather ironic.
For me dreams are a way to problem-solve and work through frustrations and other obstacles, kind of like the Elias Howe anecdote mentioned here. For example, when I have dreams about things being out of control (car steering wheels won't work, bridges fall apart as I try to cross them, etc.), I can usualy identify what needs to be 'gotten under control' in the waking world. I make a point of focusing on the obstacle so things go more smoothly. I think there are studies about how learning is consolidated through sleeping brain activity (call it dreaming).
What I wonder is, why have I had so many dreams about specific events and circumstances that were so far in the future, that I had no way to consciously be aware of them ahead of time? Foreseeing specific interactions with specific people I have not yet met, in specific places I have never been to, can be a very unsettling experience.
Most people are afraid to admit publicly extraordinary things they have experienced. That scientists are usually in the forefront of those who condemn the possibility of things that fly in the face of our current understanding of scientific possibilities, is to my way of thinking akin to the way the Catholic Church was in the vanguard of the attacks on Copernicus hundreds of years ago.
I would like scientifically trained people to publicly accept that reasonable people can and do report amazing experiences which cannot currently be logically explained. Saying that things happen which we cannot yet explain is not the same thing as asserting that ESP, teleportation, and precognition are controllable.
When more scientists stop criticising the reporting of experiences which are not yet explainable, more people will be willing to come forward and talk about experiences which are not currently accepted as possible. When more people are willing to talk to scientists about their experiences, a greater body of observations will be collected, perhaps someday leading to theories which will help us to better understand our dreams, and thus our lives.
One of my favorite anecdotes that shows how dreams can be useful for real-world problem-solving is the dream of inventor Elias Howe who had been working for years to perfect his sewing machine. His first design used a needle with a hole in the middle, and it didn't work. then he had a nightmare in which he was being boiled alive by a group of cannibals. he awoke as the cannibals began to jab at him with the ends of their spears - and the spears had a hole at the tip. He awoke and tried the sewing machine with the hole at the tip of the needle - eureka!
source: Kaempffert, W. (1924). A Popular History of American Invention, NY: Scribners.
I taught myself to lucid dream when I was about 10 (I'm 32 now)... I like to fly in my dreams at every opportunity. Probably because I'm physically disabled so moving while waking is often very painful. Flying in my dreams is like a gentle full-body massage. I love to do loops like I'm on a roller coaster without the train or tracks. I've also dreamt of having conversations with people I admire (living and dead) that really put life in perspective when I've needed to. I have dreams of giving birth pretty much any time I'm facing a major transition in life (starting from when I was getting ready to graduate from high school - nearly a decade before actually having my first child). My birth dreams are always painless, often in the dream I didn't realize I was pregnant before I went into labor, and I deliver the healthy baby unassisted or with very little help from others. My actual waking, unmedicated childbirth experiences were not painful either, I think because my dreams taught me it was possible. I also credit watching other mammals (particularly guinea pigs) with convincing me it was possible. 2nd degree burns on my fingertips I got when I was 16 were way worse than childbirth, as were several other pain experiences.
I once finished a high school computer program in a dream...for years I'd wake up with answers to questions...mark them down and go back to sleep...
the dream team.
and cute too.
Some of my dreams end up in the news the next day.
I was once in a car (the passenger)...I heard myself saying that I could sense an accident ahead...the man next to me...the driver... said..."oh no, 'ventoi,' you are going to be the death of me'...
...next thing I know he'd somehow thrown my spirit ahead to the cars in front of him...
before I could see what I'd accomplished, I woke up/passed onto the next dream sequence...
Next day I see the 'accident' on the weather network...not a bump...a big line of cars...on both sides of the road...all pulled off the highway...
Magnificent!
I have not been ahead...that I know of, in my dreams...I don't know that I'd want that.
I don't want this either, though.
Last night I was in a tent with a bunch of girls ... one moved a backpack...and I heard someone say there is a camera there...behind the backpack...in one dream tent it was there...at the second tent (like model tents in multiplicity) it was not...
my 'character' pulled back out of the tent and looked at her friend who said.."We've been caught?"
Bizarre...
I gave up worrying about analysing my dreams...I try to move from bed to bed in our home, instead, to avoid some of the characters who show up when I sleep in one room instead of the other.
When I was very young I dreamt I was at a famous battle and I saw some battle weapons I didn't even know existed, I was too young to have made them up,or have seen them any where, but I saw them being used.
I have watched my dreams ever since. Some dreams are nonsensical, some tell a story, and some are precognative, telling which is which is the big question. I am amazed at the detail in the places of my dreams, I don't often dream of real places in my life, they're usually some place new. If we are supposed to be working out problems in our life when we dream why don't I dream of real places more? and real problems? I'm starting to question the idea that we work out problems in our dreams. Thats not to say I haven't come up with solutions in a dream, usually in that half dream half awake stage. I think that the mind is just playing when we dream.
I once put together a 6,000-piece puzzle of Neuschwanstein Castle.
Waking life is the same as dreaming life, but very few are catching on. For instance the man who sang at his City Council Meeting seemed to be in a waking dream http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kuNnnW-7Ws
I dream every night, sometimes 2 or 3 that I can remember. Sometimes, I'm able to recognize when I'm dreaming and I try to control the outcome, but every time without fail, I wake up in the midst of my attempt to control my dream. But, usually, when I start to get the idea in my head that what is going on MUST be a dream, something will happen that will distract me from that thought, and the dream will just continue, like I'm just an innocent observer.
Exactly - Right there with ya! Even the attempts to change the occassional recurring are brief-but fun tyring!
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