Are Dreams Important? Is There A Physiological Function?

We all have them, we often discuss and think about them... but how important are dreams? Discussed on this blog before are different methods to remember and then analyse dreams or nightmares for the purpose of understanding our inner psych and interpreting the often seemingly baffling dreams we have. But what about a physiological function to dreaming? 

(PhysOrg.com) -- Dreams have long been assumed to have psychological functions such as consolidating emotional memories and processing experiences or problems, but according to a Harvard psychiatrist and sleep researcher the real function may actually be physiological.

According to Dr J. Allan Hobson, the major function of the rapid eye movement (REM) sleep associated with dreams is physiological rather than psychological. During REM sleep the brain is activated and "warming its circuits" and is anticipating the sights, sounds and emotions of the waking state.

Dr Hobson said the idea explains a lot, and likened it to jogging. The body does not remember every step of a jog, but it knows it has exercised, and in the same way we do not remember many of our dreams, but our minds have been tuned for conscious awareness.

Hobson said dreams represent a parallel consciousness state that is running continuously, but which is normally suppressed while the person is awake. Dr Mark Mahowald, a neurologist from Hennepin County Medical Center, in Minneapolis, said most people studying dreams have started out with fixed ideas about the psychological functions of dreaming, and try to make dreaming fit these ideas, but the new study makes no such assumptions.

In evolutionary terms REM sleep seems to be relatively recent, and has been identified in humans, other warm-blooded animals, and birds. Earlier studies have suggested it appears early in life, in the third trimester in humans, and research has produced evidence the brain of the fetus may in a sense be "seeing" images long before its eyes are opened, so the REM state appears to help the brain build neural connections, especially in the visual areas.

This does not mean dreams have no psychological meaning, since they do at times reflect current problems, anxieties and hopes, but people can read almost anything into dreams. A recent study of more than one thousand people at Carnegie Mellon University in Harvard, showed that there were strong biases in how people interpreted dreams. So, for example, subjects attached more significance to negative dreams about people they disliked and to positive dreams about people they liked.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2009-11-important-physiological-function.html#jCp

Do Dreams Affect Decision Making?

Need to sleep on that big decision? Your dreams might influence your final choice, suggests new research.

Scientists disagree as to what extent dreams reflect subconscious desires, but new research reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Vol. 96, No. 2) concludes that dreams do influence people's decisions and attitudes.

Social psychologists Carey Morewedge, PhD, at Carnegie Mellon University, and Michael Norton, PhD, at Harvard University, conducted studies to find out how people respond to their dreams. Their study of people in the United States, South Korea and India found that 56 percent, 65 percent and 74 percent of respondents, respectively, believe that dreaming reveals hidden truths.

The researchers then wanted to know whether dreams could influence people's decision-making. They asked 182 Boston commuters to consider which of four scenarios would most likely change their flight plans: the government raising the national threat level; consciously imagining a plane crash; learning an actual flight crashed along your route; or dreaming about a plane crash. Commuters said the dream would be just as unsettling as a real crash and more unsettling than consciously imagining a crash or a government warning.

People also seem to selectively find meaning in their dreams based on their biases, Morewedge says. In another study, the researchers asked people of assorted religious beliefs to imagine that God spoke to them in a dream and told them either to travel the world or go work in a leper colony. The very faithful said that either dream would be meaningful to them, while the more agnostic said the travel commandment might be somewhat meaningful, but not the leper colony commandment.

These experiments gauge people's attitudes, not their behaviors, but Morewedge thinks one follows the other. In a different study, he found that 68 percent of people believe their dreams can predict the future. If they believe that, and they have a dream that weighs heavily on them, "it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy," Morewedge says.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/04/dream.aspx

https://www.apa.org/index.aspx

New Dream Research Opens The Door To Treat PTSD

Since the first human woke from a dream and asked what it meant, science has tried to find an answer to that question. Despite significant advances in sleep research and a constantly evolving understanding of the role sleep and dreams play in our health and wellbeing, researchers haven’t been able to conclusively determine why we dream, until now. A new study from the University of California, Berkeley, has determined that dreams help us sort through painful events and deal with traumatic memories.

The study was originally envisioned by lead author Matthew Walker, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley. After hearing that one of the medicines used to treat high blood pressure seemed to prevent recurring nightmares in veterans with PTSD, Walker wanted to understand the connection blood pressure had with why we dream. He determined that one effect of the blood pressure medication was to suppress norepinephrine, one of the brain chemicals related to stress. This convinced him that there must be a link between stress-free sleep and the elimination nightmares those suffering with PTSD may dream. The intention of the study was to find that link.

The research team‘s theory centered on the idea that a dream is like therapy for our brains. Being able to reprocess painful, traumatic events in the safe, calm environment of a dream allows us to experience those memories while awake without creating the same emotional response we experienced while the event was happening. In people with PTSD, this mechanism doesn’t work properly and the brain never descends into the kind of calm, stress-free state required for the reprocessing to occur. This leaves the emotional connection tightly tied to the memories, causing sufferers to dream recurring nightmares and flashbacks so common amongst those with PTSD.

To test their theory, the team organized a group of 35 healthy adults into two groups. Each group was shown a series of 150 emotionally charged images at two separate showings. The first group saw the images for the first time in the morning and then again about 12 hours later on the same day. This group did not sleep between the two showings. The second group was shown the images for the first time in the evening, sent to sleep for a full night, and then shown the images for the second time. All participants were monitored by MRI while being shown the images and were asked to rate the intensity of their emotional reaction to each image. Additionally, the second group’s brain activity during sleep was monitored by electroencephalogram.

In analyzing the results, the research team found that the second group experienced a significant reduction in their emotional response to the second showing of the images. This finding supports the original theory that sleep diminishes the emotional connection to traumatic memories and helps explain why blood pressure medication can eliminate recurring nightmares those with PTSD dream. By suppressing the production of stress chemicals in the brain, the blood pressure medication reproduced the calm, stress-free dream state people without PTSD experience, essentially repairing the broken mechanism that keeps those with PTSD from reprocessing traumatic events properly during REM sleep.

The findings open the door to new treatment options for veterans and others with PTSD and provide the first scientific explanation for why we dream.

http://valleysleepcenter.com/blog/new-dream-research-opens-the-door-to-treating-veterans-with-ptsd/

http://www.valleysleepcenter.com/

Or why not use dream hypnosis?

9 Things You Did Not Know About Dreams...

Everyone dreams—every single night—and yet we tend to know so little about our dreams. Where do they come from? What do they mean? Can we control them and should we try to interpret them? We spoke to the dream experts to bring you nine surprising facts about dreams. Read before snoozing.
1. Dreaming can help you learn.
If you’re studying for a test or trying to learn a new task, you might consider taking a nap or heading to bed early rather than hovering over a textbook an hour longer. Here’s why: When the brain dreams, it helps you learn and solve problems, say researchers at Harvard Medical School. In a study that appeared in a recent issue of Current Biology, researchers report that dreams are the brain’s way of processing, integrating and understanding new information. To improve the quality of your sleep—and your brain’s ability to learn—avoid noise in the bedroom, such as the TV, which may negatively impact the length and quality of dreams.

2. Just like men, women can have orgasms during dreams.
Did you think only men experience this phenomenon? Not true, says Barbara Bartlik, MD, a psychiatrist and sex therapist in New York. Warning, further reading may produce blushing: “Women have orgasms during their sleep, just as men do,” she says. “These orgasms often accompany erotic dreams, but they also may occur during dreams of a nonerotic nature.” When women dream, she says, it’s not uncommon for their genitals to become engorged and lubricated. “This occurs during REM sleep, which happens several times during the night,” she says. A similar thing happens to men. “Men get erections during REM sleep, whether or not the man is having an erotic dream.”

3. The most common dream? Your spouse is cheating.
If you’ve ever woken up in a cold sweat after dreaming about your husband’s extramarital escapade with your best friend, you’re not alone, says Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, a dream expert, author and media personality. “The most commonly reported dream is the one where your mate is cheating,” she says. Loewenberg conducted a survey of more than 5,000 people, and found that the infidelity dream is the nightmare that haunts most people—sometimes on a recurring basis. It rarely has anything to do with an actual affair, she explains, but rather the common and universal fear of being wronged or left alone.

4. You can have several—even a dozen—dreams in one night.
It’s not just one dream per night, but rather dozens of them, say experts—you just may not remember them all. “We dream every 90 minutes throughout the night, with each cycle of dreaming being longer than the previous,” explains Loewenberg. “The first dream of the night is about 5 minutes long and the last dream you have before awakening can be 45 minutes to an hour long.” It is estimated that most people have more than 100,000 dreams in a lifetime.

5. You can linger in a dream after waking.
Have you ever woken up from such a beautiful, perfect dream that you wished you could go back to sleep to soak it all up (you know, the dream about George Clooney?)? You can! Just lie still—don’t move a muscle—and you can remain in a semi-dreamlike state for a few minutes. “The best way to remember your dreams is to simply stay put when you wake up,” says Loewenberg. “Remain in the position you woke up in, because that is the position you were dreaming in. When you move your body, you disconnect yourself from the dream you were just in seconds ago.”

6. Even bizarre dreams can be interpreted.
While it can be hard to believe that an oddball dream about your mother, a circus and a snowstorm can have any bearing on real life, there may be symbolism and potential meaning to be mined in every dream—you just have to look for it, says Harvard-trained psychotherapist Jeffrey Sumber. "The meaning of our dreams oftentimes relates to things we are needing to understand about ourselves and the world around us,” he says. Instead of shrugging off strange dreams, think about how they make you feel. “We tend to dismiss these dreams due to the strange components, yet it is the feeling we have in these dreams that matters most,” he explains. “Sometimes the circus and the snowstorm are just fillers that allow us to process the range of emotions we feel about our mother and give us the necessary distraction so we can actually experience that spectrum of emotion.”

7. Recurring dreams may be your mind’s way of telling you something.
Do you have the same nightmare over and over again? Loewenberg suggests looking for underlying messages in recurring dreams so that you can rid yourself of them. For example, a common recurring nightmare people have involves losing or cracking their teeth. For this dream, she recommends that people think about what your teeth and your mouth represent. “To the dreaming mind, your teeth, as well as any part of your mouth, are symbolic of your words,” she says. “Paying attention to your teeth dreams helps you to monitor and improve the way you communicate.”

8. You can control your dreams.
The premise of the new movie Inception is that people can take the reins of their dreams and make them what they want them to be. But it may not just be a Hollywood fantasy. According to the results of a new survey of 3,000 people, dream control, or “lucid dreaming” may be a real thing. In fact, 64.9 percent of participants reported being aware they were dreaming within a dream, and 34 percent said they can sometimes control what happens in their dreams. Taking charge of the content of your dreams isn’t a skill everyone has, but it can be developed, says Kelly Bulkeley, PhD, a dream researcher and visiting scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkley, California. The technique is particularly useful for people who suffer from recurring nightmares, he says. Dr. Bulkeley suggests giving yourself a pep talk of sorts before you go to sleep by saying: “If I have that dream again, I’m going to try to remember that’s it’s only a dream, and be aware of that.” When you learn to be aware that you are dreaming—within a dream—you not only have the power to steer yourself away from the monster and into the arms of Brad Pitt, for instance, but you train your mind to avoid nightmares in the first place. “Lucid dreaming enhances your ability to learn from the dream state,” says Dr. Bulkeley.

9. You don’t have to be asleep to dream.
Turns out, you can dream at your desk at work, in the car, even at your kid’s soccer game. Wakeful dreaming—not to be confused with daydreaming—is real and somewhat easy to do, says Dr. Bulkeley; it just involves tapping into your active imagination. The first step is to think about a recent dream you had (preferably a good one!). “Find a quiet contemplative place and bring a dream that you remember back into your waking awareness and let it unfold,” he says. “Let the dream re-energize.” Wakeful dreaming can be used as a relaxation tool, but Dr. Bulkeley says it can also help your mind process a puzzling dream. “It creates a more fluid interaction between unconscious parts of the mind and wakeful parts of the mind,” he says.

http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/9-things-you-didnt-know-about-dreams-110657

http://www.womansday.com/

More on dream therapy, with links to other articles about dreams

The Significance of Dreams: 12 Famous Dreams

Paul McCartney Finds "Yesterday" In a Dream
Paul McCartney is one of the most famous singer/ songwriters of all time. According to the Guinness Book of Records, his Beatles song "Yesterday" (1965) has the most cover versions of any song ever written and, according to record label BMI, was performed over seven million times in the 20th century.

The tune for "Yesterday" came to Paul McCartney in a dream...

The Beatles were in London in 1965 filming Help! and McCartney was staying in a small attic room of his family's house on Wimpole Street. One morning, in a dream he heard a classical string ensemble playing, and, as McCartney tells it:

"I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, 'That's great, I wonder what that is?' There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th -- and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it. I thought, 'No, I've never written anything like this before.' But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!"

(Note: I had also read that Paul McCartney dreamed of his mother sometime after her death that inspired another very famous song. He had been struggling to come to terms with her loss, but in the dream she appeared before him with the message 'Let It Be'. 

Sources: Paul McCartney -- Many Years From Now, Barry Miles (NY, Henry Holt, 1997)
The Committee of Sleep, D. Barrett, 2001
Wikipedia

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Inspired By a Dream

In the summer of 1816, nineteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her lover, the poet Percy Shelley (whom she married later that year), visited the poet Lord Byron at his villa beside Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Stormy weather frequently forced them indoors, where they and Byron's other guests sometimes read from a volume of ghost stories. One evening, Byron challenged his guests to each write one themselves.

Mary's story, inspired by a dream, became Frankenstein.

"When I placed my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think... I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision -- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous Creator of the world.
...I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. ...I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my ghost story -- my tiresome, unlucky ghost story! O! if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night!
Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke upon me. 'I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted me my midnight pillow.' On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, 'It was on a dreary night of November', making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream."

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, from her introduction to Frankenstein

Dream Leads to Nobel Prize
Otto Loewi (1873-1961), a German born physiologist, won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936 for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. In 1903, Loewi had the idea that there might be a chemical transmission of the nervous impulse rather than an electrical one, which was the common held belief, but he was at a loss on how to prove it. He let the idea slip to the back of his mind until 17 years later he had the following dream. According to Loewi:

"The night before Easter Sunday of that year I awoke, turned on the light, and jotted down a few notes on a tiny slip of paper. Then I fell asleep again. It occurred to me at 6 o'clock in the morning that during the night I had written down something most important, but I was unable to decipher the scrawl. The next night, at 3 o'clock, the idea returned. It was the design of an experiment to determine whether or not the hypothesis of chemical transmission that I had uttered 17 years ago was correct. I got up immediately, went to the laboratory, and performed a single experiment on a frog's heart according to the nocturnal design."

It took Loewi a decade to carry out a decisive series of tests to satisfy his critics, but ultimately the result of his initial dream induced experiment became the foundation for the theory of chemical transmission of the nervous impulse and led to a Nobel Prize!

Dr. Loewi noted: "Most so called 'intuitive' discoveries are such associations made in the subconscious."

Sources: The War of the Soups and the Sparks: The Discovery of Neurotransmitters and the Dispute Over How Nerves Communicate, Elliot S Valenstein
Otto Loewi, "An Autobiographical Sketch", Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Autumn, 1960

Abraham Lincoln Dreamt of His Assassination
President Abraham Lincoln recounted the following dream to his wife just a few days prior to his assassination:

"About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary.
I soon began to dream.
There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break?

I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully.

'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers "The President" was his answer; "he was killed by an assassin!" Then came a loud burst of grief form the crowd, which awoke me from my dream."

Lincoln ascribed powerful meanings to his dreams. One of his recurring dreams in particular he considered foretelling and a sign of major events soon to occur. He had this dream the night before his assassination. On the morning of that lamentable day, President Lincoln was discussing matters of the war with General Grant during a cabinet meeting and believed that big news from General Sherman on the front would soon arrive. When Grant asked why he thought so, Lincoln responded:

"I had a dream last night; and ever since this war began I have had the same dream just before every event of great national importance. It portends some important event that will happen very soon."

His friend and law partner, Ward Hill Lamon, noted that Byron's "The Dream" was one of Lincoln's favorite poems and he often heard him repeat the following lines:

Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being;

Source: Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1885, Ward Hill Lamon, 1911

Kekulé - Dreams of Molecules & Benzene Structure
Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz is a remarkable figure in the history of chemistry, specifically organic chemistry.

Twice Kekulé had dreams that led to major discoveries!

Kekulé discovered the tetravalent nature of carbon, the formation of chemical/ organic "Structure Theory", but he did not make this breakthrough by experimentation alone. He had a dream! As he described in a speech given at the Deutsche Chemische Gesellschaft (German Chemical Society):

"I fell into a reverie, and lo, the atoms were gamboling before my eyes! Whenever, hitherto, these diminutive beings had appeared to me, they had always been in motion; but up to that time, I had never been able to discern the nature of their motion. Now, however, I saw how, frequently, two smaller atoms united to form a pair; how a larger one embraced the two smaller ones; how still larger ones kept hold of three or even four of the smaller; whilst the whole kept whirling in a giddy dance. I saw how the larger ones formed a chain, dragging the smaller ones after them, but only at the ends of the chain. . . The cry of the conductor: “Clapham Road,” awakened me from my dreaming; but I spent part of the night in putting on paper at least sketches of these dream forms. This was the origin of the Structural Theory."

Later, he had a dream that helped him discover that the Benzene molecule, unlike other known organic compounds, had a circular structure rather than a linear one... solving a problem that had been confounding chemists:

"...I was sitting writing on my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by the repeated visions of the kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformation; long rows sometimes more closely fitted together all twining and twisting in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke; and this time also I spent the rest of the night in working out the consequences of the hypothesis."

The snake seizing it's own tail gave Kekulé the circular structure idea he needed to solve the Benzene problem!

Said an excited Kekulé to his colleagues, “Let us learn to dream!”

Source: From Serendipity, Accidental Discoveries in Science, by R.M. Roberts, as used byhttp://www.woodrow.org/teachers/chemistry/institutes/1992/Kekule.html

Madame C.J. Walker - From Dream to Millionaire
Madame C.J. Walker (1867-1919) is cited by the Guinness Book of Records as the first female American self-made millionaire. She was also the first member of her family born free.

Madame Walker founded and built a highly successful African-American cosmetic company that made her a millionaire many times over. Walker was suffering from a scalp infection that caused her to loose most of her hair in the 1890’s. She began experimenting with patented medicines and hair-care products.
Then, she had a dream that solved her problems:

“He answered my prayer, for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big, black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up in my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind to begin to sell it.”

Walker was an entrepreneur, philanthropist and social activist. She best sums up her rise from a childhood in the poor south to being the head of an international, multi-million dollar corporation in the following quote:

"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations....I have built my own factory on my own ground."


Sources: On Her Own Ground: the Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, A'Lelia P. Bundles, 2001
MadamecjWalker.com
Wikipedia
Hope in a Jar: The Making of America's Beauty Culture, Kathy Peiss, 1999, Owl Books

The Sewing Machine
Elias Howe invented the sewing machine in 1845. He had the idea of a machine with a needle which would go through a piece of cloth but he couldn't figure out exactly how it would work. He first tried using a needle that was pointed at both ends, with an eye in the middle, but it was a failure. Then one night he dreamt he was taken prisoner by a group of natives. They were dancing around him with spears. As he saw them move around him, he noticed that their spears all had holes near their tips.

When he woke up he realized that the dream had brought the solution to his problem. By locating a hole at the tip of the needle, the thread could be caught after it went through cloth thus making his machine operable.

He changed his design to incorporate the dream idea and found it worked!

Source: A Popular History of American Invention. (Waldemar Kaempffert, ed.) Vol II, New York Scribner's Sons, 1924

The Strange Dream of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The novelist Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) described dreams as occurring in "that small theater of the brain which we keep brightly lighted all night long."

Stevenson said of his now classic novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it was "conceived, written, re-written, re-re-written, and printed inside ten weeks" in 1886. And was conceived in a dream as he describes:

"For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers."

His wife related picturesquely how one night Louis cried out horror-stricken, how she woke him up and he protested, "Why did you waken me? I was dreaming a fine bogy-tale!" She also related how he appeared the next morning excitedly exclaiming, "I have got my schilling-shocker -- I have got my schilling-shocker!"

Stevenson wrote extensively about how his passion for writing interacted with his remarkable dreams and said that, from an early age, his dreams were so vivid and moving that they were more entertaining to him personally than any literature. He learned early in his life that he could dream complete stories and that he could even go back to the same dreams on succeeding nights to give them a different ending. Later he trained himself to remember his dreams and to dream plots for his books.

Sources:
A Chapter on Dreams by Robert Louis Stevenson, Across the Plains, 1892, Chattus & Windus
Robert Louis Stevenson a Critical Biography V2, John Steuart, 2005, Kessinger Publishing
The Committee of Sleep, D. Barrett, 2001
The World of Dreams. R.L Woods, 1947, New York, Random House

Jack Nicklaus Finds a New Golf Swing in a Dream
Golfer Jack Nicklaus found a new way to hold his golf club in a dream, which he credits to improving his golf game. In 1964, Nicklaus was having a bad slump and routinely shooting in the high seventies. After suddenly regaining top scores he reported:

"Wednesday night I had a dream and it was about my golf swing. I was hitting them pretty good in the dream and all at once I realized I wasn't holding the club the way I've actually been holding it lately. I've been having trouble collapsing my right arm taking the club head away from the ball, but I was doing it perfectly in my sleep. So when I came to the course yesterday morning I tried it the way I did in my dream and it worked. I shot a sixty-eight yesterday and a sixty-five today."

Sources: Jack Nicklaus, as told to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, 27 June 1964
The Committee of Sleep, D. Barrett, 2001

Mathematical Genius & Dreamer- Srinivasa Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) was one of India's greatest mathematical geniuses. He made substantial contributions to analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptical functions, continued fractions, and infinite series. In 1914, he was invited in to Cambridge University by the English mathematician GH Hardy who recognized his unconventional genius. He worked there for five years producing startling results and proved over 3,000 theorems in his lifetime.

According to Ramanujan, inspiration and insight for his work many times came to him in his dreams...

A Hindu goddess, named Namakkal, would appear and present mathematical formulae which he would verify after waking. Such dreams often repeated themselves and the connection with the dream world as a source for his work was constant throughout his life.

Ramanujan describes one of his dreams of mathematical discovery:

"While asleep I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote a number of results in elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing..."

Source: Ramanujan, the Man and the Mathematician, S. R. Ranganathan, 1967

Subliminal Clues From Fossil Perceived In Dream
Louis Agassiz (1807-1883) was a Swiss born naturalist, zoologist, geologist, and teacher who emigrated to the US in 1846. He trained and influenced a generation of American zoologists and paleontologists and is one of the founding fathers of the modern American scientific tradition

While Agassiz was working on his vast work "Poissons Fossiles" a list of all know fossil fish, he came across a specimen in a stone slab which he was, at first, unable to figure out. He hesitated to classify it and extract it since an incorrect approach could ruin the specimen. At that time, Agassiz reports having a dream three nights in a row in which he saw the fish in perfect original condition. The first two nights -- being unprepared -- he did not record his image.

By the third night he was ready with pen and paper, and when the fish appeared again in the dream he drew it in the dark, still half asleep. The next day he looked at his drawing which had remarkably different features from the ones he had been working out, hastened to his laboratory and extracting the fossil realized it corresponded exactly to his dream.

Agassiz' creative dream of the fossilized fish may have been induced by having perceived unconsciously a clue in the stone slab which he had ignored while awake.

His dream may have emphasized and drawn his attention to stimuli he had perceived subliminally while he was awake!

Source: Interview with Nikola Tesla, speaking of Agassiz, Tesla, The Modern Sorcerer, Daniel Blair Stewart

Dreams and The King of Horror
Novelist Stephen King describes how dreams affect his writings in an interview with UK reporter Stan Nicholls:

Nicholls: "If the inspiration for Misery didn't come from a real-life incident, where did it come from?"

King: "Like the ideas for some of my other novels, that came to me in a dream. In fact, it happened when I was on Concord, flying over here, to Brown's. I fell asleep on the plane, and dreamt about a woman who held a writer prisoner and killed him, skinned him, fed the remains to her pig and bound his novel in human skin. His skin, the writer's skin. I said to myself, 'I have to write this story.' Of course, the plot changed quite a bit in the telling. But I wrote the first forty or fifty pages right on the landing here, between the ground floor and the first floor of the hotel."

"Another time, when I got road-blocked in my novel It, I had a dream about leeches inside discarded refrigerators. I immediately woke up and thought, 'That is where this is supposed to go.' Dreams are just another part of life. To me, it's like seeing something on the street you can use in your fiction. You take it and plug it right in. Writers are scavengers by nature."

Nicholls comments: "This could explain the line in Bag of Bones that goes,
Perhaps in dreams everyone is a novelist."

During an interview with Naomi Epel for her book Writers Dreaming, King described his use of dreams this way:

"I've always used dreams the way you'd use mirrors to look at something you couldn't see head-on, the way that you use a mirror to look at your hair in the back. To me that's what dreams are supposed to do. I think that dreams are a way that people's minds illustrate the nature of their problems. Or maybe even illustrate the answers to their problems in symbolic language."

[Anne Rice, another leading horror writer, also noted she uses dreams -- both fortuitous ones and those more intentionally provided for her books.]

Sources: Interview with Stan Nicholls, SFX Magazine no 45; December 1998
Writers Dreaming: 26 Writers Talk About Their Dreams and the Creative Process , Naomi Epel, 1994
The Committee of Sleep, D. Barrett, 2001

http://www.brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm

http://www.brilliantdreams.com/index.html

Interested in dreams and their meanings? Read more from Connecting Hypnotherapy HERE

Children's NIghtmares

When you combine the active imaginations of children with dreams, very disturbing nightmares can occur.  Adults often feel helpless when it comes to dealing with a child’s nightmares.  It helps to keep a few ideas in mind:

1. Never, ever brush off or dismiss a child’s fears.  When you say, “Oh, that’s nothing, you’re being silly,” you are insulting the child as well as diminishing their concerns.  If they are legitimately frightened, it’s far from “nothing” and they aren’t being “silly,” they’re being children.
2. You don’t want to blow the nightmare or the dream up larger than they should be, of course, but you should listen to the child as she or he tells you what happened in the dream.
3. Instead of saying, “Monsters don’t exist!” – ask the child if he/she has ever seen a monster.  Tell them that you haven’t either (which will carry a great deal of weight, since the child probably thinks you’re about as old as old gets!).  Allow them to come to the realization that it was just a dream and that monsters (or whatever) really don’t exist.  Stay calm, casual, and never tease or make fun of them.
4. Help them  understand that dreams are like little movies our brain creates to entertain itself while we’re asleep.  Tell them that, apparently, their mind thought it was time for a scary movie and that it will probably want to create a comedy next.  Let them know that watching several cartoons (lighthearted) before bedtime the next night will probably encourage their brain to keep things funny!
5. If the child is afraid to go back to sleep, ask yourself this question:  “If you were their age and felt totally afraid of your dreams and the dark, what would you want your mom or dad to do?”   You’d want them to let you stay awake for the time being – with the lights on!  If you try to force them to go back to a frightening place, you aren’t going to be much of a hero, are you?

Nightmares are a part of growing up, so are “monsters under the bed” and “creepers in the closet.”  Just try to be as calm and reassuring as you can and you’ll help them disappear soon.

From: http://www.dreamprophesy.com/

Read more about Dreams Facts, Lucid Dreaming, The Meaning of Dreams, What are Dreams Nightmares, Sleep Paralysis

What Do Blind People See When They Dream?

Written By: Vicki Santillano From the Website: http://www.divinecaroline.com/

I've heard people ask questions like, “Do blind people dream?” The simple answer is yes, of course they do. Most land mammals - including our pets - can dream, so why should a lack of sight affect someone’s ability to do the same? The way blind people dream is quite unique, but dream they do, just as frequently as anyone else. On the other hand, “Do blind people see in their dreams?” has a much more complex answer. 

When the Sightless See

In 1999, researchers at the University of Hartford set out to determine what, if anything, the blind can see while dreaming. They analyzed 372 dreams of fifteen blind individuals and found that the age of sight loss affected the visual quality of the subjects’ dreams. The study determined that people who go blind at age five or younger tend not to have visual dreams, whereas if blindness occurs at about age seven or older, chances are the blind will see some images. When people go blind between ages five and seven, their potential for dream sight could go either way. 

It all depends on how long a person experiences the world with sight, as opposed to without. Someone who goes blind later in life could experience visually intense dreams for years afterward; however, the more time that person spends without sight, the less frequent such visual dreams become. And people who are congenitally blind (born that way) or lose the ability to see at a very young age have completely nonvisual dreams from the beginning. 

It’s similar to the black-and-white dream phenomenon some older individuals experience. A 2008 study at the University of Dundee in the UK found that people who grew up when television was first invented sometimes have dreams in black-and-white, while those who have experienced only color television usually have colorful dreams.

Other Senses Take the Stage

Research has shown that blind people demonstrate very little to no rapid eye movement (REM) during the REM phase of sleep - the deep-sleep stage in which we have vivid dreams and the most brain activity during the night. As time progresses, the movements stop altogether. But that doesn’t mean that dreams aren’t happening - the eyes just aren’t involved in them. 

People with sight tend to have highly visual dreams with some auditory qualities. Very rarely are any other senses, such as taste or smell, part of the process. But the opposite is true for blind people. Studies like the aforementioned University of Hartford one suggest that their dreams activate the other senses - touch, taste, smell, and hearing—to an intense degree. Since our brains draw on real-life experiences to shape dreams, it makes sense that blind people dream the way they experience their environment. Because they rely on nonvisual cues to make their way through the world, the same heightened sensations come into play in their nighttime worlds, too. 

Regardless of how we see, almost all of our dreams have a narrative quality. Most of the ones we remember also have some sort of troubling aspect to them, which is why they stick out in our minds. What we’re worried about in our daily lives often becomes the subject of these types of dreams, usually via symbols that require interpretation. So it seems logical that blind people tend to dream more about issues related to traveling and transportation, since getting around safely and efficiently is one of their greatest obstacles. In the University of Hartford study, 60 and 61 percent of the male and female participants, respectively, had dreams revolving around such problems. Among the sighted people surveyed, only 31 percent of men and 28 percent of women had similarly themed dreams. 

We may never fully understand the way blind people dream, since they experience life in a totally different way than those of us with sight do. But we do know that their dreams can be just as vivid and intense as ours, perhaps even more so because they utilize four senses instead of one or two. Still, I wonder how one goes about applying dream-interpretation techniques to these types of dreams, since such analysis usually relies on visual symbols. The analyst would have to use other clues as a way to find the dreams’ hidden meanings, but what would those clues be and what would they imply? Who knows - more research on blind dreaming could bring about a whole new way of looking at dreams.

For more on dreams and dreaming visit:

http://healnowtherapyhypnosis.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-are-dreamsand-what-do-they-mean.html

http://healnowtherapyhypnosis.blogspot.com/2011/12/meaning-of-dreams.html

The Meaning of Dreams

In a previous post I explained the basics of dreams; what dreams are, how and when we dream, possibly why we dream and the importance dream interpretation plays in our waking conscious life. Read it here.

I find dreams fascinating, both my own and other people’s, as I think they offer a window into our innermost minds, metaphorically sending us instructions we are not always tuned in enough to take on board. In this post I want to share an example of how dream hypnosis can be used to further understand our dreams, using the fundamentals of Gestalt Psychology, also explained in the previous post.

I have been given permission to share a session from a fantastic woman from Ireland, although I will keep her name anonymous. She initially came to me for hypnotherapy to treat a phobia, but her recent vivid dreams soon came up in our conversation. She described a dream/nightmare that she had been having repeatedly for a number of months but could not understand why she was having it. I asked her to close her eyes and recount the dream as if she was having it all over again. Her description of the dream went like this:

I find myself in an old house, all made of wood in a setting similar to what I imagine would be somewhere in the Caribbean or one of the southern states of the USA. I am looking after children in the house, many children – all by myself. I am trying my best to look after all these children when I look out one of the windows and I see crocodiles…they are moving around in a large pond or a swamp outside and I begin to feel nervous…what if they come inside? I begin to go around shutting the doors but as I do so the crocodiles are coming inside…they are breaking through the walls! I try to stop them by closing more doors and putting chairs in the way – but they keep coming, through the toilets and through the walls…everywhere I look they are coming. The children have disappeared I don’t know where…I run up the stairs looking for them but all I can see are the crocodiles coming closer towards me…and then I wake up.

What could this dream possibly mean? What do the crocodiles and the young children in the old house represent to this woman? In my opinion the answer cannot be found accurately in any book or dream dictionary. The only way to find out what these dreams meant was to get the answers from the woman herself; it is a unique insight after all.

I completed a hypnotic induction in no more than a few minutes until I was certain she was in a comfortable, no more than light stage of hypnosis. I then got her to recount her dream again, exactly as if she was having it all over again and to commentate on what was happening. Somewhere in the middle of the dream I asked her to pause her vision as if she was pausing her DVD player at home. I told her that she was no longer going to be viewing the dream from her own point of view, but instead from the view of one of the children, as if she was indeed one of those children answering me. When she indicated she was ready to continue, I asked her what she was doing in the house. (the dialogue has been shortened and condensed to make it more blog friendly).

‘The lady is looking after us all’ she replied, slipping seamlessly into the role of a child.

‘Why? Where are you parents?’

‘I don’t know, they are not here. She is the only one who takes care of us. We live here in the house’

‘Is it nice in the house?’

‘Yes it is. Until the crocodiles come and they only want to harm us’

‘Why do they want to harm you?’

‘They are evil. They come and they want to eat us. The lady tries to help us but there are too many of them’

I get the woman to pause the vision and switch characters again, this time to one of the crocodiles.

‘Why are you attacking these poor children and the lady?’

‘It’s our swamp’ she answers in a deeper, meaner voice.

‘But the people live in the house not the swamp’

‘The house is next to our swamp. And we’re hungry’

‘Isn’t there anything else you can eat?’

‘No’

‘Isn’t there another swamp you could move to?’

‘No we are happy here’

I pause the dream and switch characters again, this time to the house itself.

‘Why do the crocodiles break through your walls so easily?’

‘I am old and weak. I don’t have the same defences I used to. No one takes care of me any more’ (the woman apparently has no trouble speaking as an inanimate object)

‘What about the woman?’

‘She does her best, but she has all the children to look after. She has no time to look after me’

‘Could you be repaired?’

‘I suppose so. But the crocodiles come all the time; they make so much damage I would not know where to begin’

I ask the woman to change character back to ‘herself’ again.

‘How do you feel about this situation? You have the children feeling scared, the house feeling neglected and in a state of disrepair and the crocodiles disliking you as their neighbours. It seems you have a lot to think about’

‘I don’t like the situation. I try to look after the children but it’s hard work, the house is falling to bits but I can’t deal with it. The crocodiles won’t leave us alone. I feel scared for us all, I feel unhappy’

‘What if you asked the crocodiles to leave you alone?’

‘They won’t. They just said they are hungry and are happy where they are’

‘Why don’t you ask them? Speak to the crocodiles now and tell them what you want’

(pause)

‘I want you crocodiles to leave my children alone and stay away from my house!’

‘Ok good. Now switch and be the crocodiles, what would their response be to you?’

‘This is our home. Why should we move?’

(I continue switching her back and forth to make the dialogue work)

‘Because you are making us all very unhappy’

‘That’s not our fault. This is our home and we are only doing what comes naturally to us’

‘What you do feels evil to me and the children’

‘We are not evil. We just live like we are supposed to. We don’t mean to be evil it is just the way we are’

‘So…maybe you are not evil. Maybe we are just different’

‘Very different. But this is our home’

‘But there must be other places you can go instead of my house? Your swamp is very big and there is plenty of room’

‘Yes it is. But your house is easy. We don’t even have to try at all to get inside the walls just crumble. The children are easy to eat and there’s nothing to protect them. That’s why we come’

I ask the woman to pause the dream, feeling that some kind of conclusion could be drawing nearer. I speak to her directly again.

‘So the crocodiles only come to your house because the defences are so weak, leaving you and the children vulnerable. What do you think about that?’

‘The crocodiles are only doing what they do naturally, they won’t change but it is up to me to keep my children safe’

‘Are there different ways that you can accomplish that?’

‘Yes’

‘Why don’t you speak to the children – tell them what you can do for them’

‘I am sorry that you have been scared and the crocodiles have been tormenting you’

(once again the dialogue is switched back and forth)

‘We feel safe with you, but not when the crocodiles come’

‘Don’t worry, from now on I am going to make sure the crocodiles can’t get in so easily. And if they can’t get inside the house so easily they will soon go away to a different part of their swamp – away from us so we can be happy in our house’

‘Thank you! That would make us very happy! We would feel much safer in a better house’

(me) So maybe now you could talk to the house to let it know what you are going to do.

(switch dialogue to the house)

‘I have neglected you for a long time, and it has left me without security. My children have suffered and so have I because the crocodiles have found this easy place where they can come and eat as much as they like when there is plenty of other places they can go to. I want to make you a strong house again, so strong the crocodiles can’t get inside and we can be happy again living inside’

‘That would be great for me. No more crocodiles coming through my walls and up through my toilets! If I was strong again like I was before I would keep us all safe’

The session continued with a small amount of dialogue before I took her out of the dream and gently brought her back out of the hypnosis. I allowed her to settle for a few moments before beginning the debriefing. What was to be made of all that?

She was clearly moved by the experience and I could see right away that the session had made her look at the dream in a whole new way. It had shifted from being a nightmare about crocodiles attacking her and the children in the old house, to a dream being about parts of herself.

I asked her what she thought about the experience and whether she thought it had been a useful practice. She agreed right away that it had been very useful, and said with confidence that she saw exactly how the dream related to her personal life. I asked her what she thought the different parts meant and she said the crocodiles were her depressions and fears, waiting on the outside always hungry and ready to take advantage. She said the children felt like her vulnerability – needing protection and not being able to cope on their own without being looked after. The house was her defences and stability, and she felt sure she had let these dwindle over the years, allowing her fears, or the outside world, inside and allowing them to cause her distress. The woman said that she herself in the dream was like her conscious being, trapped and without anywhere to run, desperate because she did not know where to begin to solve the problem, or without any real understand of what the problem even was.

The metaphor of her dream was finally pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. That realisation in itself of the problem, and the meaning of the persistent dream, was enough on its own to ease this woman’s discomfort. Because she could see her situation in a new light she was able to begin thinking ways around it, keeping the crocodiles away by making herself stronger.

I heard from this particular woman just twice more, once more in session and then a follow up email. She reported a new feeling of clarity and direction in her way of thinking, and she felt a great sense of change for the positive in that, knowing what she must do to improve herself. The next session was a week after the dialogue reported above and the follow up email more than a month after that. She said that she had not had the nightmare again, nor any other nightmares for that matter, and as far as I know she hasn’t had any since. Why? Because the subconscious problem that was not being dealt with consciously finally got dealt with! The blockage was unblocked leaving her with an altogether clearer mind that allowed her to sleep peacefully.

Do you have a dream you cannot quite explain? Have you had recurring dreams that you can’t seem to stop? Why not take advantage of my festive season special and get a hypnosis session absolutely free… Email me to find out more.

What are Dreams...and What do they Mean?

What are dreams? What do my dreams mean? What are my dreams telling me? These are very common questions we ask ourselves, from early childhood right through our lives in all likelihood. They scare us, they excite us, they inspire us, they can confuse us altogether...but why are dreams such a mystery?

Dreams have been studied and considered for thousands of years, but the truth is there are still not many ‘hard facts’ about dreams as science has not yet found a way to accurately measure their content, and is the reason why we have to rely on theories to explain something that plays such a strange role in our lives. It has been said that we spend around 6 years of our lives in dreaming state, a state often feeling so real we have no idea we are dreaming until we wake up. In dreams we feel pain, pleasure, fear, happiness – in fact every emotion possible in a form as real as we would in our ordinary waking life. The question is why do we feel these things and can these dreams have meaning?

The brain has been studied rigorously when asleep, with brainwaves being recorded through our 8 hours of nocturnal bliss. There have been four main stages identified in sleep when the brain works at different speeds, or cycles. The first three stages are different depths of sleep (N1, N2, N3) while the fourth stage has been names REM (Rapid Eye Movement) due to the quick movement the eyes make at the onset of this level. It is known that dreaming takes place during REM as when subjects were woken up in experimentation during the fourth stage they would always report being mid-dream.

Studies suggest that we dream every single night we sleep (when we reach REM that is, during a short nap not necessarily) and we skip through our sleep cycles every 60-90 minutes, therefore dreaming several times per night for periods as long as 20 minutes at a time. Whether we remember the dream or not is dependent on the stage of sleep we wake up in. Like in the studies those who are awoken in REM remember their dreams, while those awoken in the different stages don’t necessarily and sometimes never at all, although it is reported that you can train yourself to remember your dreams using various different methods (I can account for this myself).

In ancient times dreams were relied upon as interaction with the Gods or the dead, a supernatural world that was some kind of split reality from our own where messages of importance would be delivered (see ‘The Bible’) as well as warnings of the future foreseen. In other times nightmares were connected with contact with the devil while pleasant dreams with Gods or angels. In history dreams were considered highly important and served as messages or instructions to use in waking life, but those feelings towards dreams did not last.

Later, especially in western culture, dreams began to lose importance and became thought of as meaningless until Sigmund Freud wrote about their importance to psychology. Freud thought that dreams represented the innermost desires of the individual and were highly important in understanding the workings of the mind. Fritz Perls had similar thoughts to Freud but believed that every aspect of a dream was a representation of oneself, if someone was having a dream about an angry monster for example, that monster would represent an aspect of their own mind, perhaps anger or fear that was being projected by the subconscious mind.

There are also modern theories that dreams actually have no meaning at all and that they are just some kind of scrambled version of memories and emotions unwinding as we sleep, the brain untangling itself after a day filled of multi-sensory absorption. The one main problem I have with these theories is that they don’t seem to offer explanation to recurring dreams and nightmares, dreams with near identical structure or themes that we don’t seem to have control over and cannot shake off. Recurring nightmares can cause considerable stress and create immense frustration. Are these dreams without meaning and simply a process of memory/emotion? I find that very hard to believe.

Fritz Perls and successive gestalt psychologists/hypnotherapists such as Randal Churchill, have had great success using dream therapy, analysing dreams as projections of subconscious issues in order to fix problems in their client’s lives. Recurring dreams would be seen as subconscious problems that have not been dealt with, perhaps repressed feelings that the conscious mind has not overcome and the subconscious mind is continually pushing to be dealt with. During dream therapy the issues would be explored and dealt with, and after such work the recurring dream/nightmare will typically cease, with the individual reporting a great sense of relief and a feeling of being able to move on in their life. Is this proof enough that dreams are not simply scrambled memories?

I have seen this for myself first hand. I had a recurring dream for a number of years surrounding a childhood friend who would inexplicably enter into my dreams on a regular basic. It wasn’t distressing but it did make me wonder why he was there, and filled me with a sense of frustration. It wasn’t until I fully explored my feelings of guilt surrounding this particular friendship and circumstances surrounding it that the friend disappeared from my sleep! It was actually quite a wonderful experience to have my personal mystery solved. I have since worked with clients myself as a hypnotherapist and have found similar results, and not just with recurring dreams. Every dream has themes that can be explored and these are always of interest and of use to the dreamer so long as they are open and willing to delve deep enough.

In conclusion it is my strong opinion that dreams are a clear view of what is going on in your deepest state of mind; a strong connection to the subconscious. These messages from your subconscious can certainly be worked with to help further understand the mind and the way that it behaves. The subconscious mind works in mysterious ways that we cannot fully explain yet, but we can see the results of dream therapy enough to conclude that key inner feelings are brought to the surface in our dreams, which can then be dealt with to improve our REAL waking lives.

In short dreams can be used to help make us happier. In that respect dreams are very important to our lives and it would be ignorant to pass them off as meaningless without exploring even a little deeper beneath the surface.

What do you think about your own dreams? Is there something you find hard to explain? Please feel free to leave a comment, or if you would prefer email me at healnowtherapy@hotmail.co.uk

On the internet there are many 'dream translation' guides, such as this one http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/ Some people find these interpretations of dreams helpful, and many dreams can have similar symbolic meaning for everyone, ie fear etc, but I think it is important to point out that dreams are immensely personal and so for instance if two people dream about a cat, the cat can represent two very different things to either person. We are all unique and have a unique representation of the world around us, so it is only you who can confirm for certain what different aspects of your dream truly mean, and not a generic description.