We all dream. Not all of us recall our dreams once we are awake, but we do dream, on and off, throughout the night. (Even insomniacs will experience “trance-like” episodes which can be likened to dreaming.)
There are many ways that dreams help us and are a very necessary part of our internal health and well-being. Dreams are our subconscious mind’s way of communicating with our conscious mind. Dreaming is a way for the mind’s janitor to clean away all the debris or unanswered questions left over from the day without being censored by the critical left brain. In this way, dreaming is very similar to hypnosis.
It is healthy to dream. It is thought that if we don’t dream at all, we can actually become ill. I remember an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which the crew was not allowed to enter REM sleep (where dreaming occurs) due to some cosmic disturbance. One by one, they became psychotic, until the disturbance passed and dreaming was possible again. [Okay...I know it was science fiction...but it seems possible!]
There are typically four stages of sleep that we each experience over the course of a night. Dreaming occurs most often in the last stage and is characterized by REM (rapid eye movement). This stage occurs approximately 90 minutes after we fall asleep. Vital signs and brain activity increase. Voluntary muscles are immobilized. And, it is thought that this is the most restorative portion of the sleep cycle. These four sleep cycles will repeat throughout the night, but each time we will spend more time in REM sleep, and less in the other stages of sleep. If we should awaken during, or at the end of a REM cycle, we are more likely to recall our dream. But the longer we are awake, the more the remembrance of the dream dissipates.
Okay – but what do our dreams mean? What do they tell us about ourselves? There is a plethora of information available about how to interpret dreams. A lot of it is contradictory; some of it is quite vague. What matters most is what do your dreams mean to you? If I dream of a beach and a sandy shoreline, it may indicate that I want/need to relax or take a vacation somewhere peaceful and steeped in nature. To someone who is afraid of water or stormed the beach at Normandy, it would have quite a different interpretation.
Dreams always need to be put into context with the dreamer’s life. Dreams are rarely literal in their content, but instead are metaphorical or symbolic. Our subconscious mind loves metaphor and story and pictures. This means there are multiple layers of meaning possible, as well.
Therefore, if you see yourself running down endless, dark hallways in a big house, searching for a door out, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will soon find yourself trapped in a mansion from which you can’t escape. It could easily mean that you are searching for some kind of answer to a puzzling question in your life that you can’t quite put your finger on just yet (or Halloween has just passed!).
- If you’ve ever thought about interpreting your own dreams before, look into one of many books available on the subject to get you going. Many of the most common images we see in dreams have fairly universal interpretations and it is a good way for you to start thinking about the meaning behind your own dreams.
- Keep a pad and pencil next to the bed so you can jot down the images you dream about immediately upon awakening. The closer to the dream, the greater the detail will be.
- Be sure to get enough sleep each night so that you spend an appropriate amount of time in your REM cycle, where dreaming most often occurs.
- Always temper your interpretation of your dreams (or someone else’s interpretation) with how that feels to you; what do you really think about that? How authentic an interpretation is it, taken in the context of your life?
After all, you are the one that holds all the answers right there in your mind. Harness your power. Dream on!
Be well ~
Shawn Marie Howe
