5. Not Everyone Dreams in Color
4. Dreams are not about what they are about
3. Quitters have more vivid dreams
2. External Stimuli Invade our Dreams
1. 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."
Bonus: Extra Facts
1. When you are snoring, you are not dreaming.
2. Toddlers do not dream about themselves until around the age of 3. From the same age, children typically have many more nightmares than adults do until age 7 or 8.
3. If you are awakened out of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, you are more likely to remember your dream in a more vivid way than you would if you woke from a full night sleep.
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.
4. 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.
3. 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 vividthan the usual dreams and were as
common as most major tobacco withdrawal symptoms."
2. 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-his thirst-drink-thirst-loop often recurs until I wake up and have a
realdrink. 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.
1. 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."
Bonus: Extra Facts
1. When you are snoring, you are not dreaming.
2. Toddlers do not dream about themselves until around the age of 3. From the same age, children typically have many more nightmares than adults do until age 7 or 8.
3. If you are awakened out of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, you are more likely to remember your dream in a more vivid way than you would if you woke from a full night sleep.
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