This afternoon I had a (very rare) nap. During that nap I had a lucid dream (most of which I no longer remember). As I was waking up, I was thinking about my dream and thought that it would be a great idea to write a list about dreams for the site. So, here are the top 10 amazing facts about dreams.
10. Blind People Dream
People 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’s need for sleep is so strong that it is able to handle virtually all physical situations to make it happen.
9. 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’s 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.
[...]
Curiously, Robert Louis Stevenson came up with the story of Doctor Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde whilst he was dreaming. Wikipedia has more on that here. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was also the brainchild of a dream.
8. 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.
7. 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. [Source]
6. 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’s 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.
5. 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. [Source]
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 vivid than the usual dreams and were as common as most major tobacco withdrawal symptoms.” [Source]
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 – 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.
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.
Is anybody else ever amazed at the distortion of time-perception while they are dreaming? I mean, it happens to me sometimes when I wake up and look at my clock and it says something like 8:17am and then fall sleep and have a very lengthy and involved dream where lots and lots of stuff happens but when I wake up the clock says that I was sleep for only 2 or 3 minutes. I just wonder, do brain processes run at a different speed when we are dreaming? If not, then how can events in dreams seem like they are running in normal time while in reality they must be running in fast forward?
Drake: I know exactaly what you mean! It is very strange. It takes longer to explain the dream to someone than it did to dream it. =p
just this summer i began to be able to wake myself up if i was getting to a point in my dream where it was becoming a nightmare, and sometimes i feel pain in my dreams, but i think its just the memory of a pain i felt, also, today in my dream i had a headache and when i woke up i had one also. Dreams are extremely fascinating, i want to write my dreams down but i am too lazy to do so =P, actually, i did write my dreams down once, those were really weird XD
Beautiful!
Regards from Brazil
When I was younger, I would have the same dream for weeks at a time. I could also control my dreams, to a point. I was aware in the dream that I was dreaming and I could wake myself up if I wanted. This has gone away as I have gotten older, but my son, who is 13, says that he can do this. Seems like it may be something that children can do. I’m a very deep sleeper. Takes a lot to wake me up, not sure if that has an effect on anything. My recurring dream for the last 15 years or so, (not nightly but once every few months or so) involves a house. It’s like I find a hidden doorway from my home into another home, very, very nice home, until you go into the living room and you immediately sense something. It’s nothing you see, it’s more like just a sense of something there that’s evil or very bad and the dream ends with me leaving the house and realizing why we aren’t living in it. Wonder what that’s about? Basically, I think dreaming for humans is much like defrag for computers. It’s giving your brain a chance to sort out all the junk, file away what’s worth keeping and delete the rest and if you don’t get this REM sleep, all of your memory will be used up and you will be so scatterbrained you can’t do anything.
I have had external stimuli a lot! I would dream that zombies were eating my head and I’d wake up with my arm around the back of my head and me hand just resting on top of my head. Another time, I fell asleep reading a comic book and slept over the pages… It was awesome because I dreamt that the characters came alive and that I was inside the comic strip.
Since I was a kid until about 2 years ago I would have sleep paralysis. It was so scary! Especially because I would see what was happening in tunnel vision (sort of ) and I would try to move and every time I tried it felt like there was something on top of me pushing me down harder. I would panic and it would freak me out. I used to think that it was ghosts because I could see my surroundings but I couldn’t see whatever was crushing me. Then I started relaxing every time it would happen, and try to convince myself that it wasn’t ghost, it was angels or something and now it doesn’t happen anymore(even though my conscience mind doesn’t believe in angels). Weird.
Surely #4 is pure speculation. I don’t think anyone really knows if dreams are even “about” anything, or just random scenes that our brain tries to decode into rational occurances.
The other night I dreamed I was a chicken, suddenly I had an intense pain in my stomach. I asked another chicken what the deal was and she told me it would pass. Well it got worse, and worse, and worser still, until it did pass and behind me I could see I’d laid an egg. I awoke to my wife punching me in the ribs saying, “Damnit dan wake up, you’re *****ting all over the bed!”
Lucid dreaming isn’t always so great – I had a nightmare recently during which I became lucid. I was trapped in a horrible dream, knowing it wasn’t real but unable to wake myself up. I can’t even remember what the dream was about, but I can remember how horrible it felt being trapped like that.
On the flipside, I have had some pretty awesome lucid dreams, so I won’t complain too much.
@Ovidiu C.: I never had teeth-falling-out dreams until not long after someone told me about one they’d had. Maybe I should brush extra!
Dreams are weird. I NEVER remember my dreams, but i did this morning. I was locked in a little cylinder, and couldn’t escape. Then it turned out i was in a reality tv show, where i won a crapload of cash for not panicking.
great discussion! I love dreams, and reading all your stories…and wow, finally I understand what sleep paralysis is. That has definitely freaked me out before…..didn’t realize the possible back sleeping position connection?
I too can have some pretty involved full color, full lucid dreams in a 15 min power nap in the afternoon….they always end the same way: I start wondering if it is a work day in my dream, then I realize I am possibly oversleeping (even though I always use an alarm)and I panic thinking about it being actually 5pm already, since I have been having this incredibly long detailed dream…..Bam! I wake up with an adrenaline rush to find out I was sleeping for 12 minutes….
I wake up one minute before my alarm, 95% of the time, even though I have different waking times throughout the week….even when traveling in different time zones…usually my alarm goes off randomly in my dream, waking me to see the time is one minute before I have to wake up….thus preventing me from having to actually wake up to an alarm, which I hate more than anything…
I used to be in outside sales, always driving…I would pull off for naps when I got TOO tired to to drive, and I would sleep in the front seat….I always dreamed at some point that I had fallen asleep driving and I would wake up and slam my foot on the brake….only to realize I was in a rest stop! Fun!
I find it is damn near impossible to read any printed text or magazine/ book in a dream, I have only pulled it off a few times, mostly I see what should be letters, but when I focus on them, they are moving shifting symbols for letters? or just squiggles…
I taught my kids how to control a bad dream, that you can stop it at will, it seems to have helped them with their dreaming skills.
My favorite reoccurring dream, mostly from childhood, but recently it is back: I have a magic peanut butter jar, mostly empty, no lid, and with it, in my extended arm, I can fly at will….I do not enjoy flying in my waking state, not on small planes, big planes or helicopters, I would never sky dive or bungee jump for fear of an actual heart attack in real life….but in my dream, I love it! I go all over the place, see places I have been, and new ones I explore, I can cover thousands of miles in a night it seems….
Music: I can remember it from dreams, and enjoy seeing my favorite bands live in my dreams, complete with them playing, sometimes songs that they have never played, or “new material”
I do find that I wake up tired after a long dream of walking thru the snow, or being lost looking for a friend, or being at work struggling….
Kind1002: You seem to have a zooming mind on such matters. At first I thought you might be over-worked/under-compencated(sp?) Are you speedy thoughted in general? Just wondering? Do you abide by a very fixed schedule or are you receptive to what occures in novelty? i’m only asking because your comment intrigues me. I dont know.. I would love for you to elaborate further.
p.s.– I agree and have experienced most of what you say.
Diogenes: I am a zooming kind of guy yes…..coffee makes me tired, so I enjoy drinking it at night sometimes…
Fixed schedule in a sense: I work 40 hrs a week, but have loads of freedom at work.
Novelty rules…..Novelty is a big part of how I see the world, as opposed to good and bad…..It’s clear to me that we live in very novel times!
So….can you read in your dreams at all?
Kind1002: Perhaps the reason I replied first of was because of a rther irksome awaking today, regarding texets, a book, and bugs.
Reading to me has never been a life long “skin” . I have never connected my thoughts or beliefs to what I have read. ,,for the most part. What I say is simply for tellng you of the dream I recall today and that I have thought about it in this way:
From what I woke up too early to was a tiny travel clock that I had placed elsewhere last night aand this morning was ticking trimple volume.. Anyway, (i’m only trying to extent this rather b***** aspect of my reply} In the dream I was outside and about, maby off the sidewalk as I walkes, I saw a weatherd book on the ground and picked it up. I knew it to be of importance and stared to look through the rippled firm/ slightly stuck together/ and somewhat brittle pages. I realized that it was a book of “knowledge” that I was in search of, but HERE THERE tiny bed bugs started to catch me finger eyes and I flicked the book down and began to see the bugs expand in growth as I searched them out in horror as I knew the book that I wanted was also within my domain…
Yeh that’s most recent. otherwise I dont really dream of reading or books. The contents or abstract mulch tends to be the results in another form.
sorry if I ramble here. I just toss this out to you.
dont blame you for not understanding a word of what I just said. reading over –the letter configuration makes no sense.
in any case- There are fleeting truths told and bugs in bindings. I am with you on the novelty of life. I dont know how much it is a part of my day to day ..NO! wait. …I do know and it has its way at times as mostly a buffering between -with what is considered matter of fact.
hmm.
When I was young I had a loft bed, about 4 feet off the ground. One night had a dream I was being chased off a cliff. After running off the cliff I fell for what seemed in my dream to be 1 to 2 minutes, and then was awoken by the impact of hitting the floor… I actually fell out of bed. This has always made me wonder how long dreams really last. Is a dream that seems several minutes/hours/days long is really just a second or two?
nice dream facts…
I saw this sketch in the deleted scenes of robot chicken season 2 that 2 reminded me of. Some kid is getting chased by a bear and suddenly it stops and starts making alarm noises, and he’s yelling at it to stop. Then it show him asleep with his alarm going and his mom starts calling “Billy, wake up”. Back in the dream, something else shows up (I think it was a bird or something) and starts saying “Billy get up” in his mothers voice. Then Billy crosses his arms and just says “I hate you guys”.
my most vivid dreams were when i was a child. i can still see images from some of them. i had two in particular that at the time i swore were reality. i must have been about 4 or 5 at the time. one involved my sister who is younger by two years. she has a pretty big mole on her forehead by her hairline. i dreamed i was looking in the mirror and it was my mole, always had been. then i put my finger on it and the mole slid onto my fingertip. to get rid of it i wiped it off onto my sister’s forehead. i woke up feeling so guilty that i apologized to my mom who, of course, denied that this happened. to me it was reality and i could not be persuaded otherwise. the other is that my mom taught me to peel oranges into the toilet. that really *****ed her off the next morning.
I’ve had dreams in parts 1 2 and 3 some good some bad
LOL @ wheelnut, it’s true, sequels are rarely as good as part one.
whoa that iz koolioz badoolioz
the modern theory on dreaming states that it is the experience in the conscious world that helps create dreams, by neurons firing and sorting out images in the subconscious state.
I agree with this theory, but i think there are more variables in play here. i beleive we have a soul, or spirit, or source of complex energy pattern, or whatever you want to call it. i think this is what gives us our consciousness. without it, i beleive we are zombies, or a zombie-like state.
when we fall asleep, i beleive there may be some complex mechanism that releases our souls. as we travel into unknown realms, the meterial our souls are composed of absorbs some kind of information, valuable or not (another persons soul, future events, things occuring in another place). meanwhile our zombie-like brain is now free to fire neurons in a random disordered state. when we awake, our soul comes back… but the information it contains most likely will not be complimentary (will not fit) with our brain system of memory. an *****ogy would be converting one type of file in a computer into another type of file. perhaps some “special” people can gain this information.
this will be proved one day. if ghost particles such as dark matter exists, this theory of mine is not to far off.
about that parylized thing everyones saying they were thinking there awake but cant move…same here lol
about 5 weeks ago [[it stopped after 2 weeks]] i keep seeing a hand coming up next to bed in the tiny little crack between my bed and the wall…im 99 percent sure i was awake and i tried to scream and get up to turn on the light, and hit it or get up but it never worked…but then i would blink a few times and it would be gone…and i KNOW it wasnt a real hand…it was really scary…one time i thought it was trying to strangle me.
you know what else is weird?
you ever have those dreams were like your falling or something, and you wake up like sweating on your stomach and your like jumped awake and scared outta your mind? I always have the same dream when that happens lol…you ever see that optical illusion, its like crazy stairs or something and there all like weird…well i always see my selfe walking up those and the railing breaks and i fall awake.
Good post about facts of dream
“1. When you are snoring, you are not dreaming.”=FALSE!!!
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One morning i woke up extremely scared cause i was dreaming of an invisible monster crawling near my bed slowly to reach me and eat me.
I was hearing the monster’s horror sounds louder and louder as it was approaching to me, and when i heard it right near my head i woke up almost screaming.
Guess what were actually the monster’s horror sounds that woke me up.
I experience an interesting phenomena that occurs during my dreams – I’m a programmer and on occasion I leave work with an unsolved coding problem, this always bugs me and I end up thinking about it laying in bed. The interesting part is when dreaming my brain is still processing the problem.
I often see a visual representation of the problem, it can be blocks moving around or odd diagrams that don’t seem to make much sense, although I can tell they are related to the issue.
Often when this happens, I will wake up in the morning and instantly have the solution to the problem. I shoot into work, code it up and it works.
This has always fascinated me and I think it’s proof that the brain is processing data acquired during the day.
I don’t have recurring dreams that are exactly the same but i often dream about a particular place. i dream i am in a kind of field, and its long, and its got hills rising up on all sides so its shaped like a kind of basin, but its a bit fuzzy, and all i can focus on is the gap in a fence at the farthest end away from me, and I’m running towards it, but i mustn’t run straight across the middle of the field, its not allowed, i have to run around the outside. I run up the side of the far hill, and then, suddenly, either i switch dreams, can’t remember any more, or i wake up. I have no idea why, it’s not exactly scary, but its puzzling.
I want to take a degree in clinical psychology in a few years time.
I know a lot of people like to attribute all kinds of things to dreams but the plain simple truth is that it is the brain running through your memory banks to see what is still valid and what is not. For example, the section that talks about smokers, the same is true for anyone withdrawing from any dependency. Alcoholics usually have the same type of dream. At some subconscious level the brain knows that the neurons associated with you addiction have not been tripped in awhile. The brain will replay the experience to see what the emotional reaction is. Depending on the response, it will maintain either a positive or negative memory of the experience. The same is true for someone who has died who you were very close to. The brain has not received the stimulus of that person so it replays the experience to see the emotional reaction. We of course attribute it to a visit from the beyond, which is okay if it makes us feel better.
EF
For those who suggest that dreaming takes place during deep sleep, you are mistaken. REM sleep occurs in stage 2 sleep, quite light and easy to awaken from.
Stage 2 sleep, or REM, is when our bodies make their routine repairs and maintenance psychologically. People deliberately deprived of this stage of sleep eventually go crazy.
Stage 4 sleep, very deep sleep, is when our bodies do their physiological maintenance and repairs. It is hypothesized that many of the symptoms of fibromyalgia are caused by their inability to get adequate stage 4 sleep due to stage 1 & 2 sleep intruding into our stage 4. It is called alpha intrusion.
I’m sure no one cares but I just wanted to say:
All the dreams I can remember are very video-game like, where I have some mission in a surreal environment, often with obstacles. I remember one where I was traversing a castle full of of booby traps and monsters and everytime I died I would respawn at the beginning and start again. Who needs a playstation anyway
I find that I almost never dream (or never remember anyway) and I blame smoking pot for this, cause I smoke pretty much every day. But if I don’t smoke for a day or 2, I get dreams. I only mention this cause of the bit about smokers and dreams.
Interesting list. Dreams are fascinating.
My dreams are always vivid, colourful and I never see myself.
Lately I’ve been having this dream about fighting groups. There are lots of people in a field(high school football fields, usually), and there are a series of fights going on. It’s almost as if they’re regulated. Often people watch me cause I take them by surprise(I hate people watching me). After my fight, the guy I beat comes after me. He has glowing blue eyes that look like sunglasses but it’s nighttime. He comes into the light to threaten me and I kiss him.
I also have created a character in my dreams to represent me being sick. In these dreams, usually my Mom, sister and cousin are with me and we’re going out to do something, but have to stop at this guy’s place(seems like a drug deal at first). He gives my family gifts, but I don’t trust him, so I fight him. He’s supernatural. Sometimes I hit him and he breaks into a million little pieces, and his brother sweeps him up into a dustpan, brings it upstairs and then the guy I am fighting comes back. We fight and fight and I keep hurting him but his brother keeps bringing him back. I’ve never had this dream unless I am sick, which is not often at all.
I also have this really weird occurance where I’ll be fully awake, the middle of the day and a dream I’ve had, anytime throughout my lifetime, will pop into my head, out of nowhere. It happens at least 2 or 3 times a week.
And finally, I don’t think that we dream only of what we know. I used to have this recurring dream about a man I just met at my work. I recently had this dream and finally realized it was this man. There’s kind of a mutual crush between us. It’s almost as though he exists because of my dreams. There is no way we could have met before as he just moved here from Europe. It’s scary because he’s perfect.
Re #4, some people say dreams don’t have meaning, but some of them do. dreams about ***** and wet dreams mean you’re horny.
I have lucent dreams often, I can control dreams easily.. usually when you take hold of the reings it fades quickly. Unless it is extremely disturbing I therefor opt to just sit back and watch the show.
Many of my dreams have come true, many of my dreams do have very deep meaning.
Nicola Tesla dreamt an angel was flying down to him, turned into his mother, and he knew she had died, which turned out to be the case. His personal beliefs as to how he could see/know this, led to the invention of what we all know today as radio.
Freud was a coke head and most shrinks today are dope pushers themselves, I will put faith in my own reasoning and not what they have read off the latest pill pamphlet.
i never dream, well ok, maybe once ina few months.. what does that mean then?
Not dreaming? Well you must be dreaming we all dream every night several times. Look more into why your not remembering your dreams. You could be like stressed out or something that is conflicting on awaking with remembering the content of your dreams. and are you interested to remember? Having an interest is really important in remembering your dreams. Check out this site http://www.realmeaningofdreams.com
They have some really insightful information on everything about dreams but also on how to improve your dream recal! Go check it out…
The website link above doesn’t seem to be working so here it is again:
http://www.realmeaningofdreams.com
As one that haven’t been able to remember a single glimpse of a single dream for more than 13 years, This discussion gives a great insight to how others tackle their dreams.
To me, the last dream I ever had was a nightmare – my father had just died less than 1 month earlier, and I just remember lying in his coffin. I woke up quite sudden when I sat up in it… luckily it turned out that I was just sitting in the bed. This was in March 1994.
Last night I slept with Bethoveen’s Moonlight Sonata (first movement) repeating over and over and not only did I find a distinct increase in remembering and being aware of dreams, but the music seemed to incorporate itself into the dream in abstract, vague and subtle ways.
I once had a dream where I was being stabbed repeatedly by a group of babysitters. Not only did I sort of feel the pain
(This used to happen rather frequently, I once dreamed I was in a flying chair and I could actually feel the wind going past as I soared overhead, as well as other occasions)
I ended up being in control of the dream and telling the babysitters that I forgave them because I realized that it was only a dream and that I was going to wake up.
I have also had that sleep paralysis. Happened randomly over roughly a 2 week period. Scared the crap out of me. The best way I found to break out of it (after researching on the net) is to just concentrate on moving your toes. Just when you start to feel them move you will instantly snap out of it and be fully awake. Very strange. (was told by the doc it can be caused by stress, not getting enough sleep)
Steve: that is interesting – when it happened to me last it was in the middle of a nightmare and I just could not get myself out of it – it was an awful feeling!
I have never thought about the fact that I’ve seen all the people in my dreams before. It’s odd. I’ve always thought of them as some random faces I’ve never really seen.
A couple of times I’ve realised in the middle of the dream that I’m dreaming. It’s a wonderful experience. I’d alway thought what it would be like to jump from somewhere high in a dream. It was great to realise I was dreamind and I could try jumping.
Dandelion: it is a really amazing feeling when you can control your dreams – apparently there are things you can do to improve at it too.
I always listen to nature music when I sleep (waterfalls, wind through trees, birds, and all that crap). It is so relaxing. Controlling dreams is fun and amazing but I generally don’t do it anymore because there is a reason that I am dreaming what I am and if I alter it I might not be able to figure out the meaning behind the real dream.
If I am really tired, but have set my alarm clock set to wake me up, I will often have a recurring dream where the beep beep beep is incorporated. Most often I find the source of the beeping in my dream and usually smash it with a hammer or something, but it never stops beeping no matter how hard I try to destroy it. Some times I unable to find the source and run around like a mad man. I then wake up after my alarm clock has been going off for 30 minutes and I’m late. Very very stressful.
I don’t have OCD but because of this, I often check my alarm clock upwards of 10 times before going to bed.
Stumbled This
If you are paralyzed when you sleep then how do people sleepwalk???
@bobster – a chemical imbalance.
hi, im from mexico so i apologize now for my grammar…
I usually have like the paralysis but its horrible!
i feel like i can´t breath and when i try to wake up i can´t move at all! and also y can´t open my eyes..i hate this feeling…and i think that i really stop breathing ..is this part of the dream paralysis? somebody told me once that my brain wakes up first but my body reacts a little later…
what do you think about this?…
alexa, it sucks but you usually “grow” out of it within a year or two. I had it for like 2 years.
The stop breathing part, you might want to mention it to a doctor just in case.
Regarding external stimuli: I once had a dream where I fell asleep with a pencil in my bed. during the night, i had rolled onto it so that the point (dull thought it was) was pushing into my side. In my dream, I am behind glass and my deceased grandmother is on the other side, strapped to a table. I scream, but no noise comes out. Two men in white robes walk into the room with a large needle and shove it into her side. I feel it instead. Then I woke up and removed the pencil. It was a terrifying (and very realistic) dream.
About the “Snoring” one.. Many number of times I’ve either been brought out of a dream by someone sleeping with me saying I was snoring, or the snoring itself waking me up.
Cite your sources. These sound like urban legends.
goodnight to everybody
goodnight to everybody xD
Interesting stuff here, the comments are even more fun to read than the topic!!
I also have been able to control my dreams in a few occasions. It’s when the girl I’m not supposed to be with in real life turns up and we get intimate. This happened after several nights of waking up from comparable dreams in which I chose not to react to it, because I didn’t know I was dreaming.
But after a couple times, I somehow learned to recognize it was a dream and went for it, waking up very happy….
Being stabbed or killed is also very common to me, though I don’t remember pain or much fear, the fear usually stops when the knife’s in, with the stabber and me just looking at it, talking as friends, forgetting the whole issue of a knife sticking in me.
And then there’s the super-fast running dream, in which I reach car-speeds, and the helicopter-like flying dreams. Super-cool rides!
On the other side, though, indeed dreams sometimes just follow your activities during the day, like waking up (half) out of a dream and trying to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to drive my taxi down the stairs.. lol
Keep dreaming!!
Haahaha oh yeah, forgot this one: During our road-trip this year, my friend and I parked the car after being unable to find a place for the night. We turned the seats back and tried to sleep. After about 10 minutes or so, I violently get up out of my seat and in panic turn the wheel, to avoid a collision with a truck (in my dream). My friend, awakened by my frantic wheel-turning, suggested (after finally having stopped laughing at me) it would be a good idea to take the key out of the ignition and hide it while I was looking the other way, since we were standing at a harbour, car facing the water.. lol
Also, on the way home, we took precautions ’cause we drove in 3-hour ‘shifts’, with the other driver sleeping while the other drove. I suggested he always had to have a firm grip on the steering wheel, so I wouldn’t crash ourselves waking up from a similar dream. It happened about 3 times, though, but luckily I was just trying to brace myself for the impact and not reaching for the wheel. We got home safely.. lmao
Oh my ged. I thought I was the only one who dreamed.
Lucky (148) – I believe Descartes developed the Cartesian graph in a similar manner! Bloody Descartes…shattered my GPA.
Some believe the other realm you enter when you dream is more “real” and significant than our waking reality. This is not something I personally believe but I do find it extremely interesting.
I can also relate to some of the so-called facts about dreams. Until I gave up smoking ***** I could not remember any of my dreams. Now I remember most of them very briefly.
I have awoken in a dream and found myself unable to get up off the couch….this was very disturbing as I dreamt a burglar was in the house!!!