Original source : from an email received
Received : July 2009
Sender : MBM Jaffar
1 Blind People Dream
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.
2 You Forget 90% of your Dreams
Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream is 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 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.
3 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.
4 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
5 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.
6 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
7 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.
8 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".
9 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 beside (Dream Caused
by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening) by
Salvador Dali, depicts this concept.
10 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.
~Blog Admin~
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