November 15th

This past week has been very stressful for me, which has led me to have a lot more dreams. Everything has an upside, right?

I got a new sleep app that lets me see how much of the night I'm in deep sleep, light sleep, and awake. It's called, "Sleep Better". I recommend it. You put it under your pillow while you're sleeping, and it senses any kind of vibrations you give off by moving or breathing. It also has a feature where you can record your dreams. I've been using it quite often. Recording your dreams regularly can help you to remember them better each night, and also may help achieve lucid dreaming.

I recently watched a documentary by Nova titled, "Why do we Dream?"
I learned that there are different parts of our brains that are activated during different parts of the night. During REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, the amygdala is highly active. Since this is the part of the brain that deals with bad and stressful situations, this is when most people have nightmares. During NREM (Non Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, we also dream. Although, since different parts of the brain are active then, it leads us to have different kinds of dreams than in REM sleep. This is when most people experience strange, weird, and unexplainable dreams.

So, we all know that there is almost nothing more peaceful than a sleeping baby. But what goes on inside that precious bundle of cuteness' head while it's sound asleep? This question has always intrigued me because of the fact that babies know no language and have very little life experience. Yet, they spend more than half of their time asleep and, in fact, in REM sleep.
Neuroscientists believe that dreaming serves a completely different purpose for babies than it does for adults. It's commonly thought that dreaming helps babies form pathways in their brain to things like language, imagination, and many cognitive skills. Once they enter early childhood, children develop the head space and imagination to think up thrilling adventures and incredible things to dream about. Our dreams develop more as we get older, and so does our imagination. Although, nowadays, many people's imaginations seemed to have gotten lost in the midst of technology and pop culture.
So why is it that many of us had distinct, vivid dreams as a child that we remember to this day? It is thought that self-awareness plays a large roll in having structured dreams with an actual plot to them. Once established, we let ourselves enter into our own dreams. From then on, dreaming becomes a tool for the brain to process emotion, events, and understand the world. Children's dreams are often vibrant and full of meaning, which may just be the brain learning how to use its tools.

"For often, when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream."
            - Aristotle

November 8th

As the great Dumbledore once said, "For when we dream, we enter a world that is entirely our own." A world where anything is possible. Tonight, I'm going to be talking a little bit about Lucid Dreaming.

Lucid means for something to be expressed clearly, and is easy to understand. In a Lucid Dream, you have the ability to think clearly and have total control of everything that happens. Although quite difficult to master, it is a worthwhile skill to have. It may be a way to consciously escape from reality, or maybe even a mechanism for testing out different reactions to situations you may encounter in your waking life. Whichever purpose you use lucid dreaming for, it's pretty cool none the less. 

You can start practicing by recording the dreams you remember each morning. By doing this, it helps  your conscious mind get in contact with those weird subconscious thoughts you have while dreaming. The next step would be to continually ask yourself if you're dreaming or not, while you're awake. This way, it's always in the back of your mind. Though it's a tedious process, the results are quite worthwhile. 

I've heard an abundance of positive results with the "Wake Back to Bed" method. In this method, you set your alarm for a certain time during the night. When you awake, stay awake for an hour, constantly thinking about lucidity. Once you go back to bed, your brain might just allow your two sides to clash. 

I've only achieved lucid dreaming several times in my life, both by accident. Once I dreamed that I was spider man and I robbed a bank. The other time, I stole a lot of macaroni and cheese. I have been keeping dream journals and trying to get myself to lucid dream, but it seems a lot easier than it is. 

I encourage you all to try it :)  

Thanks for reading, more soon.

November 2nd

This past week, I was talking to my therapist about how I'm writing a blog about dreams. She proceeded to tell me about two ladies she knows who live in different parts of the U.S. who belong to something called a "dream group". She offered to contact them for me, and said that they would be very interested to help me interpret some of my dreams over the phone. Now, this struck me as sort of strange because these people know literally nothing about me, so it might be a little tough to interpret my own personal dreams. But they think they can. I guess I'll give it a shot though because: why not? So stay tuned for that I suppose.

On a different note, I'm going to talk a little bit about a reoccurring dream I used to have when I was little. I have tried to interpret it over the years, and I think I may have finally found a way to make sense of it all.
It always started off when I would fall asleep in my mom's bed with her. My thoughts would all go away for a little while when I shut my eyes, but it wasn't long before they returned. My body was paralyzed and my mind was the opposite. Looking down my basement stairs, I saw a green-faced devilish creature smiling at me. Before I could see its entire body, I started running; immediately associating this creature with morbidity. The next thing I remember is being in a forest, still running. The green-faced Thing chasing me. I tried to scream, but there was something wrong. No sound would come out of my helpless body.
At this point, something strange would occur. Trying to scream in my dream made me try to scream in reality, and I would wake up with my mom shaking me. "Stella, what are you doing?" She was confused, as anyone would be if they heard their child making a muffled, not-quite-screaming type of noise when they're sound asleep.
This dream would occur several times a month for several years. I remember it so vividly.

My Interpretation:
At the time in my life when this would happen, my home life was shifting. My grandmother's death, my parents' divorce, and let's not forget the struggle of growing up as a young girl in a world full of bullies. The green-faced Thing representing my hardships and burdens chasing after me. My not being able to scream, represented my bottled-up feelings not able to be expressed. I remember as a child never being able to show my emotions properly. It's just strange to me that that showed in a  vivid nightmare.
It took me several years for the meaning of that dream to register, and it's the only one I've had that really sticks out to me. It's common for children to have nightmares and dreams in general that represent their lives, but it was just such a perfect depiction of my feelings.