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Scientists around the world are still trying to unravel the meaning and nature of dreams. However, some people dream extremely rarely, while others dream almost every night. Experts explain this by the characteristics of the psyche, central nervous system, as well as the person’s lifestyle.
What is sleep
First, let's define what sleep is. A dream is a subjective image that appears in a person’s subconscious during moments of his night’s rest. Even when a person sleeps, he remains fully conscious, without losing touch with the outside world.
Scientists have even found that during sleep, a person’s brain activity decreases by only 10-15%, compared to how it works while awake. This is quite enough for the full restoration of not only the brain, but also the entire body, as well as for setting up all its systems.
Where do dreams come from? No one can yet give one answer to this question, but it is known for sure that dreams are generated by the human brain. During sleep, when its work is rearranged into a different mode, neurons begin to “remember” all the events that happened to the brain during the day, analyze the information received - it is as a result of such activity that dreams occur.
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Dreams as a reflection of the human psyche
According to psychologists, dreams can reflect a person’s mental state and from them it is possible to understand and find answers regarding the state of his health.
If a person’s life is smooth, he sleeps peacefully and sees pleasant dreams.
But if there are unsolved problems that a person constantly thinks about, these searches can also be reflected in a dream, and, quite likely, hints about options for solving them.
The subconscious mind tries to give the most productive answer.
Imagine the dreams of a person who decided to start a family. Of course, he can see the girl of his dreams, but this does not mean that he can meet her in the real world. But there are also real dreams that point to a specific girl. Everything is relative. People are different, perceptions are also different, therefore, the interpretation will be different.
Pain treatment
Remember the saying that time heals wounds? In fact, simple dreams can heal any psychological wounds - the negative consequences of complex emotional episodes actually disappear over time, and night dreams contribute to this. They calm the brain after the shocks experienced during the day, even the smallest ones.
Therefore, if you dream at night, that’s good. This means that you will be calm in the morning, because your brain will have time to rest overnight and “heal” from stress. Dreams help you learn life lessons from difficult situations in order to move on with your life.
Why do I have dreams?
Dreams can be attributed to human mystical abilities, considered a part of life or games of the mind. Science studies the nature of dreams, psychology looks for manifestations of illness of the soul in them, and magic and esotericism recommend listening to the clues of dreams.
The nature of sleep from a scientific point of view
The human psyche uses information received from the conscious and subconscious. The conscious part of the mind gives a person the ability to perceive the world and analyze it. The subconscious is a hidden part of the psyche, which manifests itself in experiences, behavior, sensations, etc.
Stimulating creativity
When a person dreams often, he becomes a more creative person. The thing is that dreams can develop in a person the ability to find an extraordinary way out of any difficult situation. By the way, scientists have found that the process of developing creative abilities is stimulated by systematic dreams, and not by one-time dreams.
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Why are dreams not remembered?
Some people constantly have vivid dreams, others do not remember their dreams, and some people believe that they never dream. When a person has a healthy rest, a calm life, then dreams are remembered less. During a comfortable, quiet rest and in deep sleep, visions are recorded by the brain only before waking up in the morning. If the rest is anxious, the person is in nervous tension, waking up often, then the number of memorable dreams increases.
Why do you need to sleep a lot?
The benefits of observing systematic dreams are obvious, but you need to understand that you can see them only if the brain gets the opportunity to rest fully every night, for at least 8 hours in a row, otherwise harm to health cannot be avoided.
Regular sleep helps strengthen the human nervous system. With the onset of night, the brain begins to actively process information received during the day: all impressions received during the day are structured, which is why the memory does not become full. If a person does not dream, his memory would simply become full, causing the nervous system to gradually become thinner.
During the entire duration of a night's rest, about a third of the total time a person dreams, believing that the duration of dreams is actually much shorter.
Dreams to order
Possibility to watch dreams to order
There is an opinion that we can even order dreams. For example, a girl wants to know when she will get married, who her betrothed will be, and how many children she will have.
Or the man is interested in whether the case he is working on will be successful. It may be considered magic, but people claim that it is possible.
There are different methods for “ordering” a specific dream and attracting it into our lives. You want to find out some information and order it in a dream, but it comes to you through different images. For example, a mother asks if everything is okay with my child, if he has fallen into bad company. And she dreams of an unfamiliar young man, and he dreams of him in dirty clothes, hungry, sick. It is possible that this is a sign that the son or daughter urgently needs help, the children are in trouble.
You dream of a loved one cheating on you, but in reality the dream is interpreted in the opposite way. It is believed that you should be completely confident in the honesty of your other half.
Why are there no dreams?
After learning about the benefits of dreams, many people begin to wonder why they do not dream. In fact, this is not so, because dreams accompany the sleep of absolutely every person, he just may not remember them in a trivial way.
Scientists have found that a person who experiences a calm, measured sleep, during which the brain really rests, sees vivid and memorable dreams. If for a long time you did not know what vivid dreams were, and then at one point you began to experience them every day, pay attention to this, since this sign indicates that you have finally begun to sleep correctly and now your body is really resting and recovers at night.
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Dream World
Night scenes are completely different. Having identified the main features of visions, we can classify night dreams into groups:
- Household (empty). They are a reflection of everyday life and do not carry any special meaning.
- Encrypted information.
- Symbols. Such visions have no direct connection with everyday life. Events and characters appear in bizarre forms.
- Predictions. After them, similar events occur in real life. The dream and subsequent reality are interconnected.
In some folk cultures, there is a belief that important dreams occur depending on a certain pattern, for example, only on certain days. Also, significant images appear in the last minutes before awakening. It doesn’t have to be the early morning hours; a person can wake up from sleep at any moment of the night. Such visions are filled with special meanings and, possibly, solutions to problems that are relevant to the dreamer.
Falling asleep
Many will be extremely surprised to learn that any mentally healthy person dreams almost every day, and often more than once. Another thing that is abnormal is the absence of dreams. But most remember what they saw only the first few minutes after waking up. Moreover, you also need to wake up at the right time to remember the dream.
The reason for this is the cyclically repeating phases of sleep, which scientists have divided into slow and fast sleep. The phases received such names because of the different rhythm of movement of the eyeballs, which can be observed in the sleeping person. During the slow phase they are smooth and circular, and during the fast phase they are chaotic, abruptly changing direction. It seems that the sleeper is constantly watching something with his eyes.
But everything is preceded by falling asleep - the process of smoothly switching off a person’s consciousness, which leads to the transition from wakefulness to sleep. Normally, it should not take more than 30-40 minutes. A very tired person or someone who has slept for a long time can fall asleep in a matter of minutes. But if it takes more than an hour to turn off consciousness, certain problems can already be diagnosed.
Then comes the slow phase of sleep, during which the body finally relaxes. A person stops responding to external stimuli, brain activity decreases sharply, and along with it, the heart rate slows down, breathing deepens, and blood pressure drops. The whole body rests, including the central nervous system. Only life support functions work.
But after some time, the brain seems to awaken and begins to work actively, sending electrical impulses to which other organs and systems react.
Most scientists believe that complex neurochemical processes lead to the appearance of dreams, which the human brain is in most cases unable to distinguish from reality.
This can be noticed by observing how the whole body comes to life when the sleeper sees a vivid dream: he can begin to move and even talk in his sleep, and his heartbeat quickens. Depending on the plot of the dream, breathing may become intermittent, and if the dream is of erotic content, then it often ends with a very real orgasm.
Frequency of dreams by profession
To trace the extent to which the frequency of dreams depends on human activity, let’s consider how often adults, practically healthy people of different professions see them.
Occupation | Seen clearly | Saw it but forgot | Vague answer | Did not see |
Laborers | 56 | 4 | 19 | 21 |
Skilled workers | 58 | 5 | 20 | 17 |
Nurses | 63 | 7 | 17 | 13 |
Housewives | 72 | 9 | 10 | 9 |
Employees | 74 | 8 | 10 | 8 |
Students | 82 | 4 | 7 | 7 |
Doctors | 88 | 1 | 5 | 6 |
Teachers | 89 | 2 | 4 | 5 |
Scientists | 90 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
The table clearly shows that the percentage of dreams out of the number of dreams that fall asleep is much higher among people with mental work (teachers, doctors, students) and much less among people engaged in manual labor (unskilled workers and nurses). For the same person, depending on stress, work activity, family, household and other characteristics, the frequency of dreams may be different. In this case, both the functional state of the nervous system and the nature of the activity or the nature of external conditions matter.
In conclusion
Let's summarize the topic:
- Sleep is a natural, physiological process necessary for resting the entire body and restoring strength.
- Chronic lack of sleep increases the likelihood of developing hypertension, cardiovascular pathologies, diabetes, obesity and other diseases. Concentration also decreases, which negatively affects performance and can lead to accidents on the road or in production.
- Why do people have dreams at night? There is no clear answer to this question. There are several theories by different scientists (Pavlov, Freud and others). The most popular versions: removing unnecessary information from the brain, as well as fulfilling desires suppressed by consciousness.
- Normally, people dream every night.
Finally, watch the video on the topic:
REM sleep stage
There are different types of dreams, each of which performs its own separate function. REM sleep gets its name from the increased brain activity. At the same time, the human body is motionless, the muscles are relaxed, but the brain functions so quickly that it resembles a state of wakefulness. A sleeping person experiences an increase in heart rate, the eyeball is in motion, rapid breathing and an increase in body temperature appear. It is at this stage that the process of increased brain activity occurs, and we see bright, colorful dreams, which, unfortunately, we may not remember in the morning.
The duration of each phase is different; they replace each other several times during the night.
Classification of dreams
Types of dreams reveal the reasons for their occurrence and meaning.
- Substitution. Helps to establish peace of mind when an emotional breakdown occurs and a feeling of dissatisfaction appears.
- Actual. Conveys the heard reality: raindrops, the noise of passing cars, the sound of clock hands. This reality turns into certain images.
- Physiological. Reveals sensations: hunger, thirst, pain.
- Creative. Contains continuation of real events.
- Expressive. Present in a person with a rich imagination. The plot is usually not repeated in real life, but such vivid dreams are fateful.
- Repetitive. This is a reminder that a deadlock situation has arisen. This dream is an excellent reason for change.
- Continued. Signals marking time, coloring and arranging events, as in the series.
- Warning. A symbol of an impending threat or difficult experiences. Such dreams occur every night until an event occurs.
- Prophetic. A completely mysterious and inexplicable phenomenon. A picture of a future that is impossible to recognize.
- A waking dream can be confused with reality, realizing only after waking up that it is just a dream.
- Deliberate. He has some training. A person specifically thinks about a topic and wants to get answers to life’s questions.
In deep and shallow sleep
In life and in the clinic, we are already accustomed to judging the depth of sleep by the presence of dreams. Usually, an abundance of dreams indicates shallow sleep. The vast majority of modern researchers believe that dreams are more often observed during the period of active sleep, when the activity of the cortex and other parts of the brain increases and, consequently, the depth of sleep decreases.
The majority of people studied (92.6%) indicated the coincidence of dreams and shallow sleep and, conversely, the absence of dreams during good deep sleep.
What happens in the body during sleep
Scientists have found that at night our body does not sleep, but rather launches many processes that are important for later life. This is why sound sleep is so important for human health. While the body is motionless and relaxed, there are no reactions to stimuli, active activity occurs inside:
- The amount of collagen increases. This is a special type of protein responsible for the beauty and firmness of the skin, and also helps strengthen blood vessels.
- The body's protective functions increase. Lack of sleep, stress, and nervous tension have a bad effect on human health. The immune system weakens and can no longer fight many harmful bacteria and viruses. Therefore, during respiratory infections, doctors advise their patients to rest and sleep more. After all, resting the body determines how quickly the patient will recover.
- Blood pressure is normalized. It has long been known that when a person sleeps, his blood pressure decreases. In one night it can fall by almost 7 units.
- Stabilization of hormonal levels. Healthy sleep plays an important role in metabolic processes. Most hormones are produced during the slow-wave sleep stage. They promote cell reproduction and regeneration, and also stimulate the growth and strengthening of the body's immune system.
- Removing toxins. The body can recover well only after cleansing itself of harmful substances. High slagging levels cause various diseases. Intermittent rest can be detrimental to the health of the body and also prevents it from properly filtering out toxins. Also, chemicals such as carbon dioxide, lactic acid or cholesterol accumulate in the human brain.
According to the age
People of different ages indicated different frequencies of dreams:
- children from 6 to 13 years old often said that they did not remember or did not see dreams and their frequency ranged from 12 to 78%;
- in practically healthy people, the frequency increases with age up to 18-20 years;
- by the age of 25-30 it decreases slightly;
- and after 30 it begins to grow again until the age of 50-55.
Older people usually indicate that they dreamed often, but were poorly remembered. There is a different frequency of occurrence of dreams in people with different types of nervous system, namely: strong and balanced people dream, as a rule, less often than weak and excitable ones.
Positive emotions contribute to vivid and rich dreams
Dreams are most often a kind of reflection of what happened to a person during the day. Therefore, bright positive emotions will most likely lead to an unusual dream at night, filled with various locations and changing events.
Most often, the plots are not related to each other, but can be united by a common idea. For example, when the action takes place in one place or certain moments are repeated.
During periods of eventful events, a person’s senses become more intense and he sees more vivid dreams. Sometimes their number exceeds the standard 5 dreams per night. In some cases, the sleeper believes that he is dreaming more dreams than usual. However, he simply remembers more of them.
Numerous studies confirm the relationship between the emotional background and the occurrence of colored dreams. The more events that happened to you during the day, the greater the chances of having a dream in which bright colored details will be present.
But you should not deliberately lead an active lifestyle in order to provoke the emergence of numerous plots. It is likely that your dreams are already quite interesting and unusual, you just don’t remember them. It’s better to use different techniques for memorizing night visions. Even people who lead a calm and measured lifestyle can have vivid and interesting dreams.
About colored dreams
Who has colorful dreams? Perhaps they are a sign of genius or, conversely, mental deviation. Experts assure that the presence of bright colors only indicates the richness of life and a rich emotional load. Creative individuals, who are very impressionable and receptive to any event, continue to feel and experience in colorful dreams.
Everyone dreams, whether in color or black and white. If you belong to the category of ordinary people, then the color scheme of your dreams reflects your psychological state. It's not always illness or fatigue. Sometimes in this way the subconscious mind alerts you to the presence of unusual opportunities that are worth paying attention to. For example, there is an assumption about future events or unraveling the past.
Everyone dreams, whether in color or black and white. It should be noted that there are no restrictions on age and social status. People have colorful dreams, regardless of their specialty or age category. The more a person fantasizes, reflects, dreams, the more colorful the night dream.
Researchers suggest that the coloring of night scenes occurs during the process of memory. Describing the objects he saw, the narrator associates them with the present time and with objects from real life. However, no one can prove or disprove such an assumption.
Children also have vivid dreams
We can say that a dream is reality and internal experiences, since everything is mixed in them: past, present and future. Inexplicable visions, incomprehensible situations over time become common occurrences and part of life.
They reflect created problems, unrealized dreams, secret desires. A person seeking to unravel dreams can recognize certain signs sent by the subconscious, stop troubles, and realize deep changes. Is it better to predict or wait? The choice is yours.