The Science of Sleep: Why We Dream and What They Can Tell About Us. What dreams are for: the concept of sleep, structure, functions, benefits and harms
Each of the people living on earth, perhaps even animals, thought about what sleep is and how it occurs in the head. Paradoxically, no matter how much time scientists spend on studying this phenomenon, no one has been able to fully understand this complex gift of nature. How to interpret your own dream is not determined by the book, but by the person himself.
Psychics and astrologers attach great importance to it, doctors perceive it as a normal life process, psychologists try to understand the human personality with its help, the rest just watch it - and all this is a dream. In the life of each person, it has a special meaning and is perceived differently. The unique riddle of the brain can plunge a person into unprecedented journeys and make them perceive events as real. It is very important to understand the difference between sleep and dreams.
Sleep reflects a physiological process, a kind of "inhibition" of the body's activity. Dreams speak of the normal activity of the brain, they are connected, but most often scattered fragments of events that take place in the head like a movie.
The manifestation of a dream can be caused by several sources:
- objective, external irritation of the senses (environmental influence, relationships in the team and family);
- subjective, internal irritation of the senses (the desire for self-control, creative impulses);
- internal, physical irritation (diseases, ailments, chronic diseases can cause pathological drowsiness, lethargic encephalitis);
- psychological sources of irritation (humiliation, insults, love, care).
To fully understand the nature of sleep, it is necessary to consider all possible positions for interpreting this phenomenon.
Sleep according to science
Scientists and doctors talk about the need for sleep as a natural phenomenon. Everything is programmed by nature: a person is tired, therefore, he needs rest, which will provide a good sleep. The earth has small and great rhythms - the key to unraveling all forms of life. A day separates day and night, solar activity fades and revives, centuries-old calm is replaced by earthquakes, the heart beats rhythmically, as breathing has its own rhythm, sleep is replaced by wakefulness - all these are rhythms that last a century, year, month, week, seconds. And only a person has learned to correctly divide the cycle into active hours and time for rest, intelligently managing his own time.
Sleep is a deep disconnection of the body from the external environment, preventing the depletion of nerve cells in the brain and internal organs.
In the Middle Ages, scientists believed that sleep was caused by stagnation of blood in the head due to the horizontal position of the sleeper. Dreams make a person subjectively perceive the images that appear in the mind of the sleeping person. Sometimes, phenomena can be so vivid, sensual that they seem absolutely real. Currently, dreams are being studied by the science of oneirology, which claims that dreams can be conscious (controlled by a person) and unconscious.
Sleep in terms of psychology
Psychologists believe that in a dream a person contacts his Shadow, namely, a part of the Personality rejected by consciousness. Usually in a dream there are positive and negative images that are formed in early childhood and are a modulation of the images of the father, mother and loved ones, depending on what the environment was like. Dreams are supported by the resources of consciousness, collected throughout life. Memorization and correct interpretation of dreams will help to cope with internal problems and experiences, correct character flaws.
Sleep - immersion in the inner reality of the human "I", the ability to know and analyze your personality through the interpretation of dreams.
Sleep from an esoteric point of view
From ancient times, sleep was perceived as a special gift, an attempt by the Higher powers to establish contact with the human mind. People were looking for clues, predictions, advice in dreams. If physical overwork is only the cause of sleep, then the manifestation of dreams is its consequences.
At the moment of wakefulness, the astral, mental and physical bodies function harmoniously. As soon as the moment of disconnection from the outside world comes, the astral and mental bodies leave the physical and realize all the plans. This is one of the reasons why a person sees in a dream the fulfillment of even the most intimate desires, which in real life were not destined to be fulfilled.
Sleep is the result of the separation of the dense (physical) and subtle (astral, mental) bodies in order to relax and streamline the senses while traveling in the spiritual world.
Initially, the population can be divided into 2 categories: people who dream (predominant) and individuals who fall into a state of deep sleep without the consequences of dreaming.
The physiological need of the body to rest does not cause enthusiastic interest and doubts, but what about the inexplicable accompaniment of this process in the form of dreams. From the moment of the birth of life on Earth and to this day, one thought has not left a person: why do you dream? The fact is that during the period of wakefulness, the brain “collects” sensations, “processes” them and gives out its own interpretations of what is happening.
To dream means to have an idea of the state of consciousness. Dreams are dreamed so that the “secret” information of the subcortex becomes understandable to the cerebral cortex.
Scientists regard the phenomena at the time of rest as an acceptable unloading of the emotional state. It is needed in order to renew energy and stabilize the emotional state. If a person does not rest from his emotions, a moment of mental breakdown may come. Only in the kingdom of Morpheus can you become a spectator of a film with your own participation.
The nature of sleep and dreams
The ideal depiction of the nature of sleep is the sleeping Buddha. The famous picture in the smallest detail reveals the secrets of an unknown phenomenon. In ancient treatises, scientists identified 3 phases of the state of the body: the wakefulness phase, the sleep phase and the dream phase. Aristotle, as a representative of the development of European science, argued that the nature of sleep is this: whoever dreams, he can exist. A person who can get to the depths of the occurrence of this extraordinary phenomenon will know the secrets of his brain.
The scientist Pavlov discovered a “waking center” in the cerebral cortex and suggested that there should also be a “sleep center”. The situation was different: in the cerebral cortex there were only inhibitory mechanisms that weakened the work of neurons and caused a sluggish state, gradually transferring the body into a state of deep sleep.
The phenomenon of dreams, paradoxical sleep, has become a true discovery. This is a special “third state of the body”, when a person is physically resting, and at the subconscious level he is actively awake, he also experiences feelings and emotions that are directly related to his real life activity.
In order to understand the reason for the phenomenon of a particular dream, it is important to study the main types of dreams:
- dreams-desires come if you really want something. The consequence may be the use of magic, conspiracies, the creation of an appropriate mood. Such phenomena can come true both at the subconscious level, and tell about an imminent fulfillment in real life;
- dreams-predictions are rare and selected people. The prediction may concern an individual or society as a whole. A correct interpretation will help prevent unwanted events and use the prediction for good purposes;
- erotic dreams are inherent in both the male and female sex in case of inadequate satisfaction of sexual desires. For spouses, this is an occasion to think about improving intimate relationships;
- prophetic dreams tend to come true, carry a hidden or direct meaning. In this case, a solution to problems, a warning, good or bad news comes to the sleeper;
- nightmares are the most unpleasant aspect of the manifestation of human fears. The consequences may be films, programs, books about violence - an artificial stimulant, or one's own human fears - a natural stimulant.
Whatever the dream, it gives an impetus to analyze the actions and understand what is going wrong in life at the moment.
The works of scientists and philosophers about dreams are a base designed to serve as the basis for an independent study of the processes occurring in the head at the time of deep rest. Dreams are so far the only state of the human body that does not have clear explanations, competent structure, definitions, and you can never predict what it will be like tomorrow.
When studying sleep, you need to start with yourself. Keeping records is the first step to the success of knowing the personality.
To study your own state of the body in a dream, it is recommended to keep a diary and regularly write down what you remember. As a result, after a week or a month it will become clear that all events are directly or indirectly interconnected. It's important to understand why do you dream when they are calm, when they are active and, most importantly, how they affect the course of life events. It will not be surprising if at one time the records of an ordinary person become an extraordinary find and discovery in science.
Video: What is sleep?
Sorcerers and ghosts, instantaneous movements in space and the transmigration of souls, abductions by aliens and encounters with the Loch Ness monster... How we would like to believe that in our everyday life there is a place for the inexplicable!
The less this or that phenomenon is studied, the more myths and fables surround it. For many hundreds of years, sleep has remained the object of absolutely fantastic conjectures. Recently, I came across information that up to 80% of the Russian population believes that prophetic dreams are true ... Being a somnologist, I cannot ignore this topic full of misconceptions. And, of course, I intend to argue with those who believe in the mysticism of prophetic dreams.
What are dreams?
First, let's figure out what dreams are. Dreams are called "shards of the day." It is believed that this is a kind of by-product of brain activity, which is formed at night during the processing of information received during the day. Separate fragments of this information flow add up, mix with each other, giving birth to our dreams. From this point of view, the origin of dreams was very well described by I.M. Sechenov, who described them as "unprecedented combinations of experienced impressions."
The content of dreams is determined not only by fresh, but also by earlier memories. For example, it happens that a sleeping person suddenly sees in a dream a person whom he has not met for several years. Why is this possible? The fact is that during sleep, the subcortical layer is disinhibited and chaotic excitation of neurons belonging to different parts of the brain is observed. For this reason, long-standing memories can be “embedded” in dreams, including even those that a person would seem to have long forgotten about.
Thus, there is no mysticism in the origin of dreams. Are there prophetic dreams that can predict the future? Most likely this is a hoax. Moreover, we can say with confidence: it is everyday reality that “predicts” our dreams, and not vice versa.
Why do dreams sometimes come true
Sometimes even the most inveterate skeptics suddenly begin to believe in miracles: there comes a moment in their life when, for some unknown reason, some dream comes true. How can this be explained?
Coincidence
The simplest answer to the question of why prophetic dreams are dreaming is a common coincidence. Every night a person sees several dozen separate dreams, their number reaches several thousand a year, so sooner or later one of them may quite accidentally repeat itself in reality.
Singer Irina Otieva, confident that prophetic dreams really exist, once said that at the age of 10 she saw herself in a dream, already an adult, singing in a huge concert hall. She realized that this dream was prophetic when, many years later, she performed in the Rossiya Concert Hall - in the very one from her dream.
However, after I started questioning her, we found out two things. Firstly, she dreamed of a singing career from early childhood, and secondly, even before her dream, she had already been to Russia with her parents. Impressions from the concert, dreams of creativity and fame - this is how, apparently, this “prophetic” dream turned out.
Even those dreams, the plot of which does not relate to everyday life at all, can be attributed to a coincidence. The reason for this is the information flows that fall on a person every day. Television, radio, the Internet… The information load from the outside is simply colossal, sometimes we don’t even record everything we see and hear, but information, regardless of our will, enters the brain, and in the process of its processing, the most unusual dreams arise. Some are interested in: what to do to have a prophetic dream? According to this logic, the answer to the question is simple: live an ordinary life, look around, pay attention and remember.
Once I spoke with a woman who claimed that a few days before the fire in the Ostankino tower she had a dream that the tower had already burned down. Was it a prophetic dream? On the eve of her dream, this lady could well walk past the TV tower on her way to work, then watch some story about a fire on TV, and then, quite naturally, see in a dream a “cocktail” of a tower and a fire.
Subconscious information analysis
Are you familiar with the concept of enlightenment? There's a problem in front of you, you don't know how 
to solve it, and at one moment the decision suddenly comes as if by itself. This is the result of the analytical abilities of our brain. We may not focus on thinking, but the brain still automatically “thinks for us” and sometimes delivers the results of its activities in such an unexpected and pleasant way.
Analysis and the search for solutions are processes that take place in our head all the time, and immersion in sleep does not stop them. That is why the intuitive, predictive guesses of the brain are sometimes reflected in our dreams. Unconscious analysis of information is another answer to the question of why prophetic dreams occur.
One man told the story of how a "prophetic dream" helped him find the missing value. During a business trip in a hotel, his watch disappeared. He left the room in the morning for the pool, and when he returned a couple of hours later, they were not on the bedside table near the bed, although he distinctly remembered that he had taken them off and put them there before leaving.
The man turned to the hotel security, he was assured that no one entered the room in his absence. Suspecting a universal conspiracy, he searched the entire room and did not find the loss. Tired of searching, he lay down on the bed and accidentally dozed off. He did not think how to see a prophetic dream - he just fell asleep. In a dream, he saw how he looked into the bag with swimming trunks and a towel, which he took with him, and saw a watch there. Waking up and doing the same thing in reality, he actually found his "treasure".
At the time of the story, this gentleman believed that he was faced with a double riddle: firstly, he did not understand how the watch could get into the package, and secondly, he allegedly saw a prophetic dream. However, by restoring the chain of events that happened on that mysterious morning, he had to debunk his belief in miracles.
It turns out that before leaving for the pool, the dreamer had a fleeting intention to look after swimming in a fitness bar, so he took his wallet with him. Or rather, I thought that I had taken it, but in reality, out of absent-mindedness, I grabbed a watch from the bedside table. He never went to the bar - he was tired of swimming and forgot. But during sleep, his brain “remembered” this, analyzed the information and provided him with a ready-made solution, telling him where the lost item was. Did this person see a prophetic dream? In a way, yes. But there was nothing mystical about it. Everything can be explained scientifically...
In the situation described above, the prophetic dream is, as it were, turned into the past, but still I would like to predict the future. Analysis and forecast are, in a certain sense, a prediction of the future based on past experience. We plan our lives, we expect that something will happen in the future, and in connection with this, we somehow prepare for this. This is precisely the uniqueness of the human brain, that it has abstract thinking, it can think and predict the future.
But for some reason, we absolutize such predictions in a dream. Therein lies the problem. Any forecast of events in the future is probabilistic. An event may or may not occur with a certain probability. For example, if you dreamed that you would go to work tomorrow (like all the previous weeks, months and years) - will it be a prophetic dream? 99% of people will say no. But how not? You dreamed about the future!
And here is another example. You dreamed that you were leaving the house and an icicle would fall on your head. You went out and she really fell! Most people will say that this is a prophetic dream. But in fact, this happened an event that could happen, albeit with an extremely low probability. The brain predicted it, as a person looked at the weather forecast the day before, which spoke of a thaw, icicles and black ice.
If you dream of some potential trouble in the future, then it is quite possible to analyze the situation and take some action to avoid it. For example, a month ago you crossed the road in the wrong place in front of rushing cars. And suddenly you dreamed that you were hit by a car. Think about it. Maybe you should walk the extra 100 meters and use the pedestrian crossing?
But it’s not worth bringing your behavior to the point of absurdity in connection with such “prophetic dreams”. Imagine the following situation. You didn't come to work today. And tomorrow write an explanatory note to the boss: “Dear Chief! I'm not sure if there are prophetic dreams, but since I dreamed that I was hit by a car, I decided not to leave the house all day. At best, you will be advised to see a psychiatrist, and at worst, you will simply be fired.
Here we can recall the saying of one Englishman: “If you dreamed that horse number 6 would win tomorrow at the races, then bet money on it, but do not mortgage your house.”
deja vu
Please note: very often people realize that some of their dreams turned out to be prophetic only at the moment when it comes true. Until then, they may not even remember it! Probably, in such cases, prophetic dreams are imitated by such a well-known phenomenon as deja vu.
Sometimes a person has a spontaneous failure in the propagation of signals through the information channels of the brain. New information gets into the departments responsible for memories. This makes us perceive the current situation as something that has already happened in the past.
Deja vu is a very specific sensation that is accompanied by a feeling of "out of reality". For this reason, during deja vu, a person may think that he saw the event that just happened in a dream. Hence the photographic coincidence of reality and some "prophetic" dreams.
Lie
“Everyone lies,” said the main character of the famous television series (“Doctor House”). And this is true - a person, without noticing it, tells a lie or half-truth at least 20 times a day.
Are there prophetic dreams? Many are easily convinced that yes. Moreover, this topic is very mysterious. It gives the dreamer significance and arouses interest in relation to his person. This is used by people seeking to attract attention to themselves. Pay attention to those who allegedly see prophetic dreams. As a rule, these are teenagers, older people and women with problems in their personal lives - a typical list of people deprived of attention. Thus, it is worthwhile to perceive stories about prophetic dreams with a healthy distrust.
Manipulation
The idea of the existence of prophetic dreams is strongly supported by various interpreters, predictors and "magicians in the seventh generation." This is a very good tool for influencing people with unstable mentality. Figures of the occult sciences, as a rule, are very good psychologists who can convince an impressionable person of anything. And just prophetic dreams are a very fertile topic, providing a strong and long-term dependence of people who have fallen into their trap.
Several times I had to consult people with severe insomnia and depression, which developed against the background of constant expectation of some kind of trouble from supposedly prophetic dreams. It usually goes like this.
A person comes to the interpreter of dreams and tells his dream. Whatever he says, he will be told that everything is terrible, the chakras are closed, the biofield is damaged, the beloved will leave, there will be no money and diseases will fall ... Of course, this is followed by an offer to fix everything, but you need to come regularly and tell your prophetic dreams; Truth, the most honest word – this will help! And it is on this that healing rituals will depend.
Naturally, all this is not done for free. After some time, a person is told that the problem is even deeper, black magic is already involved here, enemies are poking his Voodoo doll with needles and, in general, the strongest evil eye ... Even more manipulations and money are needed. The unfortunate person develops severe chronic stress, a persistent reflex of expecting trouble is formed. All this leads to depression and severe insomnia, which has to be treated by psychiatrists and somnologists.
Prophetic dreams are true. Usually they dream from Thursday to Friday, and on Christmas time you can even guess at a dream. Special conspiracies and rituals will help you see a dream that will surely come true in reality. If on any given day you had a dream and you want it to come true, in no case do not tell it to anyone for three days. If you saw a bad dream, hold your crown, light a candle and look at its flame, knock on the window three times ...
Ladies and gentlemen! Don't turn a secret belief in miracles into deliberately cultivated madness. Today there is no reason to believe that prophetic dreams really exist. Of course, it would be fun to see your future spouse long before you meet or find out what will be listed on the stock exchange next year. But, alas, this is not possible.
Psychologists say that the tendency to believe in various kinds of predictions suggests that a person does not like to take responsibility. Do not look for clues and predictions in the chaotic images of night dreams. Manage your life yourself!
Dreams take an average of two hours of sleep at night, lasting 7.5 hours. Everyone sees dreams, but many people do not remember their dreams. If the sleeper is awakened in the middle of REM sleep, he will remember a very vivid dream. If he is awakened 5 minutes after the end of the REM period, he will only have a vague memory of the dream, and if he is awakened 10 minutes later, he will not remember anything at all.
Often in a dream we see the most unexpected, sometimes funny, sometimes scary, and even ridiculous pictures and events. Waking up, we are surprised: “I will dream of such a thing!” And some, remembering what they saw, see in it some mysterious, perhaps prophetic meaning. And they are trying to find an interpretation for it.
At all times, since ancient times, people have thought about the meaning of dreams. The content of dreams was considered essential in interpreting past and current events, as well as predicting the future. For example, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC) demanded for himself not only an explanation of dreams, but also reminders of his earlier dreams, which he could eventually forget about. It was not just a whim of those in power, but the kind of human needs that are related to his nature: not to ignore the mystery of the phenomenon encountered, especially since it is directly related to the person himself and accompanies him throughout his life.
How does science explain dreams?
Throughout the 20th century, psychologists have tried to find a scientific explanation for dreams. Scientists have long expressed the idea that there is nothing mysterious in dreams, that they are the result of the revival of something really experienced in a dream.
The founder of psychoanalysis, the Austrian Sigmund Freud, suggested that dreams symbolize the unconscious needs and anxieties of a person. He argued that society requires us to suppress many of our desires. We cannot influence them and sometimes we have to hide them from ourselves. This is an unhealthy and subconscious desire to find balance, to present your desires to the conscious mind in the form of dreams, thus finding an outlet for repressed needs.
Freud's Swiss colleague Carl Gustav Jung saw the various dream images as symbols full of meaning, each of which could be interpreted differently according to the general context of the dream. He believed that in the waking state, the subconscious perceives, interprets events and experiences and learns from them, and during sleep communicates this “inner” knowledge to consciousness through a system of simple visual images. He tried to classify dream images according to their symbolic meaning. He believed that the symbols in the system of images of dreams are inherent in all mankind, that they were formulated during the evolutionary development of the human brain and passed down through the generations.
This view was best expressed by I. M. Sechenov, who called dreams "an unprecedented combination of experienced impressions."
The doctrine of higher nervous activity, and in particular the disclosure of the features of the inhibition process, helped to fully comprehend the internal mechanism, the physiology of dreams. Experiments have shown that the transition of a nerve cell of the cerebral cortex from a state of excitation to complete inhibition and vice versa occurs through a series of intermediate, so-called hypnotic phases. When sleep is deep, there are no dreams, but if, for one reason or another, the strength of the inhibitory process in individual cells or parts of the brain weakens and complete inhibition is replaced by one of the transitional phases, we see dreams. The paradoxical phase is especially interesting. Cells in this phase respond to weak stimuli much more strongly than to strong ones, and sometimes they stop responding to the latter altogether. For cortical cells in the paradoxical phase, a half-erased imprint of a long-standing experience or impression can play the role of a weak stimulus, and then what seemed long forgotten will awaken in our brain a colorful and exciting image that we see as if in reality.
Against the background of various inhibitions during sleep, those smoldering excitations in our brain that are associated with desires and aspirations that persistently occupy us during the day often flash brightly. This mechanism (which physiologists call the revival of dormant dominants) underlies those frequent dreams when we see actually fulfilled what we only dream about in reality.
Why is everything so whimsical and confusing in dreams, why is it rarely possible to catch any logic in the kaleidoscope of sleepy visions? This is due to the peculiarities of brain activity during sleep, which differs sharply from the orderly work of the brain in the waking state. When a person is awake, a clear, critical attitude towards the environment, one's own actions and thoughts is ensured by the coordinated work of the cerebral cortex as a whole. In sleep, however, brain activity becomes chaotic, unrelated: the overwhelming mass of the cerebral cortex is in a state of complete inhibition, in some places it is interspersed with sections of nerve cells that are in one of the transitional hypnotic phases; in addition, the inhibitory process moves along the cortex, and where there was just a complete inhibition, a partial disinhibition suddenly occurs, and vice versa. What happens at this time in the brain can be compared with a picture of the dark August sky, on which here and there the lights of heaven flare up, run across and go out.
What are dreams made of?
During sleep, information from the outside practically does not enter the brain (the eyes of the sleeping person are closed, hearing becomes incomplete). But at this time, brain activity switches to the so-called internal information.
Internal information is diverse. First of all, its source is the remainder of the previous day. It includes everything and literally everything that we saw, heard, thought, experienced from the moment of waking up to sleep. Scientific data show that it takes 24-28 hours for information to stick in memory. It turns out that everything that enters our brain at this moment is still stored and is in a state of subtle memory, although it seems to us that we do not remember something. At the same time, all incoming information does not have a logical sequence, it constantly and dramatically changes. All this leaves traces in the memory ("cortical nerve traces" - Pavlov), which in turn differ in their size and depth.
During sleep, out of all this confusion, a chain of a logically constructed video picture begins - a dream. A dream is reflected on our screen, which is located in the back of the brain. And since the eyes (cameras) and ears (voicing) do not send information, i.e. sleep, then the screen is purely internal information. If there are no problems, then a simple dream follows from this, if there is, then everything depends on the brightness of expression, longitude - a picture is obtained either showing a problem, or what such a problem will lead to.
The logic of construction is the same as that used by a person during his wakefulness - this is the logic of representing the surrounding world in its natural course. If the car is driving on the road in reality, then by the same logic it will move in the same way in a dream, but not at all through the air or in some other unnatural way.
The brain is looking for a connection between itself and information flows and builds them picturesquely. It happens like a lesson, when the teacher from the keywords "house", "murder", "green", "chamomile", "shadow", "curl", "coffee", "pity" invites students to compose a story. Even in this case, given the same background information, people's stories will differ from each other. Fantasy and logical thinking are individual for each individual; similar in general, but they differ in details.
Thus, without exception, every detail of the dream can be found in the remainder of the previous day. The difficulty lies in the fact that we are not able to remember everything; most of us do not even remember the characteristic features of the past day. We can't remember what we did.
Turning words into concepts with opposite meanings also brings great confusion. For example, a seen column may emerge as a column of dust. Moreover, a person can for himself individually associate some things with something else. This is more typical for slang words; for example, if in reality a person saw an oak tree, then in a dream this can go over to the quality of the abilities of a certain person seen. And yet, the main share falls on the real information received yesterday, as one to one.
Persons suffering from severe forms of mental disorders have dreams and will be devoid of any logical direction. They have their own logic - mixed, the task is more to mix, not to connect.
And, finally, internal information is superimposed with anxieties, haunting fears, excessive mental and physical experiences. Our feelings, signals of painful organs, beliefs that determine the nature of the dream picture are added to the purely informational field. They are more constant over time, which means they are fixed deeper.
In sleep, while sorting through the rest of the day, our brain is under the weight of these feelings, trying to present a vision that is subject to logic, but because of the worries that interfere with it, it gets confused. Some image, the action is distorted. We are having a nightmare, and this must necessarily serve as a signal to reconsider our attitude to former feelings. There comes a time when urgent action is needed. Otherwise, repetitions, looping, mental disorders are possible, when much more money, time and effort are required to return to the starting position.
What is the role of dreams in human life?
Here are some theories that have a certain logic behind them.
1. The purpose of dreams lies in sorting information into necessary and useless, and in laying out the "nerve traces" of information deposits in places. Like a tape record, which we erase when we no longer need it, and then we record something else in its place. In our case, the next day's information.
2. The visual construction of a dream is a test, an exercise of the brain before wakefulness, which is expressed in its ability in a short time to make a consistently constructed film from incoherent details, according to the plot of which one can check the correctness of its work, the degree of possible congestion.
3. The dream is our inner psychoanalyst, speaking in images. This is the kind of book that needs to be read between the lines, looking for the hidden logic behind the "remainder of the day" preceding the night. If, for example, a person dreams that he is building a high-rise building, this is nothing more than an element of his daily experiences due to the meanness of his position. The main thing in this dream is not the plot, but feelings (the desire to assert oneself, perk up, etc.).
4. Dreams play an important role as a transitional stage from sleep to wakefulness.
Dreams can affect the human body in a rather strange way. Even the ancients drew attention to the influence of dreams on a person. Galen, who was engaged in medical activities, encountered a patient who had a dream where his leg seemed to him stone. After some time, paralysis of the leg set in. The French neurologist Lhermitte encountered another example. The patient in a dream felt a snake bite on his leg. After a few days, an ulcer formed in that place. There are many such examples. Or no less vivid examples of how the "subconscious mind" really helps to solve some problems in a dream (at least remember the well-known fact of Mendeleev's discovery of the periodic table). Perhaps, in such a surprising way, the real-life inner sensations from the events of the previous day, hidden in the memory, appeared.
Every day in a person's life there are many events that are remembered by the brain and cause certain reactions. During sleep, only the human body is at rest. The brain during this period repeats and consolidates all the information received, which can become a so-called scenario for a dream.
In a dream, a person can see the events of the past day, recent situations, or the distant past. Under the influence of our thoughts, anxieties and dreams, additional information is formed in the brain, which can cause nightmares, absurd visions and completely implausible situations. A dream is a generalized picture of reality and inner experiences.
Sleep in terms of psychology
From a psychological point of view, a dream is a reflection of the psychological state of a person. If you are happy and your life is not overshadowed by negativity, then in a dream you see beautiful positive dreams. If you have fears or phobias, then they will definitely show up in your dream scripts. This means that the brain cannot handle the negative emotions that you experience in real life. Dreams become black and white, and dream situations cause even more anxiety.
Why do dreams stop dreaming
If you begin to notice that you have stopped dreaming, pay special attention to your psychological state. Such situations happen, as a rule, with people who are regularly exposed to stressful situations or have an unbalanced character. In rare cases, the inability to remember a dream can be a sign of a mental disorder.
There is another point of view, which is confirmed by research scientists. The fact is that sleep consists of several phases, each of which has a special meaning during awakening. Dreams are not remembered if a person is in a deep sleep phase. This usually happens when sleep is interrupted by loud, attempts to wake a person, or when sleeping too long.
Fatigue can also cause lack of dreams. In people who sleep little and work a lot, the brain is oversaturated with information. During sleep, they flash in our minds so quickly that they are practically not stored in memory.
Mystical rationale for dreams
The great scientist Aristotle was a supporter of the opinion that during sleep a person finds harmony with himself and nature. The soul at this time is able to show the future through a dream. Such a hypothesis became the basis for conclusions about the gift of clairvoyance. According to Plato, sleep is a source of creative energy and inspiration.
The mystical justification for dreams is very common. Surely, every person, having seen a terrible dream, will definitely look at his interpretation in the dream book. The explanation of certain symbols develops throughout almost the entire time of the existence of mankind.
unanimous opinion about
This is one of the few articles that I borrowed from the Internet. And although the goals in it are set frankly anti-sleep, this material can be used in both directions.
Many of us remember this situation: sometimes you sleep for a couple of hours and it seems that you have already slept, or, on the contrary, you sleep 8-10 hours, get up and walk like a plague and broken. Why is this happening?
The fact is that sleep has a complex structure and consists of 5 stages. The first two stages are the stages of falling asleep of consciousness. The subconscious at this moment continues to be awake.
The first stage of sleep is a state when we are dozing, some kind of torn visual images often appear, the muscles begin to twitch slightly, getting rid of tension. The second stage of sleep - visual images disappear, body temperature decreases slightly, breathing becomes uniform.
And only in the third and fourth stages of sleep does deep restorative sleep begin. During this period, it is difficult to wake us up, the body is completely relaxed, nerve cells restore their potential.
The fifth stage is the phase of paradoxical sleep, which is characterized by increased activity of the body - the heart begins to beat faster, breathing becomes frequent, pressure and body temperature increase, profuse sweating begins, eyes under closed eyelids begin to make rapid movements in various directions.
If a person wakes up in this phase of sleep, he may be frightened - he is covered in sweat, his heart is pounding like a hare, his arms and legs are in good shape - what is happening to me? Am I sick of something? There is nothing to be afraid of - this is just the fifth stage of sleep - the paradoxical phase (it is also called the "rapid eye movement" phase).
We inherited this phase of paradoxical sleep from distant ancestors, from that ancient time, when danger lay in wait for a person at every step - at any moment a predator could appear from the darkness. If a person slept relaxed for all 7-8 hours, then he would not be able to quickly respond to danger, muscle tone during this time is significantly reduced. Nature came up with a way out of this situation and decided to conduct a kind of shake-up of the body every 1.5-2 hours so that the muscles do not lose their tone and are ready to respond quickly in case of danger.
Motorists are well aware of the idea of \u200b\u200bnature. Even if your car is in the garage for a whole year, a good driver will definitely start it up several times a year, idling it, so that the car is always ready, so that the metal does not rust or stick together. Ideally, all these five stages sequentially replace each other approximately every 90-110 minutes (this is the time of one sleep cycle): first the first stage, then the second, and so on until the stage of paradoxical sleep. Then this cycle is repeated from the beginning. As studies by physiologists have shown, approximately 55% of the total sleep time is occupied by the first and second phases, 20% of the time is spent on the paradoxical phase, and only 25% falls on the third and fourth phases, which allow us to sleep.
As you can see from the figure, sleep reaches the fourth stage only in the first 3 hours - this is the strongest and most restorative sleep, when we really rest.
After this time, there are only two breakthroughs into the third phase of sleep (at the 4th hour of sleep and closer to the 6th). That is, in principle, after 4-4.5 hours of sleep, it would be possible not to sleep, because. the remaining time is not sleep, but mostly being in stages 1 and 2 dreams when the subconscious mind is awake. Being in these phases brings neither rest nor restoration of brain nerve cells.
This is where the reserve of free time lies. A person who learns to manage their sleep (get enough sleep for 3-5 hours of sleep) can increase their active day up to 21-19 hours a day.
Perhaps this will be interesting to someone, so I will give one of the sleep control technologies (research by the Moscow physiologist Wayne, 1975). The essence of this technology is to achieve as much stay in the fourth stage of sleep as possible. But since this phase occurs mainly in the first hour of sleep, then for this you will have to sleep 2 times a day.
First, a couple of remarks.
The first observation is to sleep only at the time of day when he sleeps most effectively. This time for each is determined individually and can fall on any part of the day. So - if it turns out that you are best off sleeping at 12 noon, then be prepared for this.
The second remark is that the night time gained from sleep must be occupied with something, otherwise wakefulness will turn into flour. Therefore, you need to decide in advance what you will do for more than 20 hours a day. There are people who quit this system just because they had too much free time and didn't know how to use it.
And now in more detail.
The first step is to identify the time when you sleep most effectively.
To do this, you need to choose a couple of days when you can afford not to sleep for more than a day and when there will be no urgent and responsible matters. You wake up on this day as usual, for example, at 8 in the morning. We live the day as usual, and our research begins at 12 at night. From 12 at night we begin to listen to our own feelings. Gradually, it turns out that you want to sleep in attacks - sometimes you don’t have the strength to keep your eyes open, but then suddenly after 20 minutes it becomes bearable again. For all these observations, a diary is started where you honestly write down the time at which you start to want to sleep, the duration of the attack of the desire to go to sleep and the assessment of the strength of each attack according to a three-point system (1 - you want to sleep, 2 - you really want to sleep, 3 - you want to sleep unbearably). The experiment should continue until 12 am the next day, i.e. exactly one day. The next day, with a fresh head, carefully study the statistics obtained.
It should happen that the attacks of craving for sleep recur every few hours, and usually they appear either with almost the same interval, or alternately with one long and one short interval.
Of all the registered seizures, you must first identify the most long-term.
And then 2 of them are the strongest, i.e. those in which there were especially sleepy phases.
So, it turned out 2 periods of time in which you really want to sleep. In principle, these moments can be at completely different times, but usually one is somewhere between one in the morning and 6 in the morning, and the other is somewhere in the afternoon.
Night sleep can be made longer and daytime sleep shorter.
For example, if you have this phase of an overwhelming desire to sleep begins at 5 am and another one at 13 pm, then your sleep schedule will be as follows.
At 5 am you go to bed and set yourself an alarm for 2-2.5 hours. During this time of sleep, as can be seen from the graph (recall Fig. 1), you will stay in the fourth stage of sleep as much as those who sleep 8-10 hours a day, and fully rest.
At 13 days you need to lie down and sleep even less - just one hour. As a result, you will only sleep 3-3.5 per day, but you will stay in the fourth phase of sleep even more than an ordinary person will wake up in an 8-hour sleep.
Accuracy is of great importance in this system. If you miss the right moment and do not fall asleep during the first 15 minutes of your “sleep phase”, then the desired rest will not come, and you will either sleep for 4 hours, ignoring all the alarms in the world, or wake up completely broken at the appointed time.
And here's what the creators of the system also note - it is important that during the day you have at least three hours of rest. It means something like sitting with a book over tea or other types of relaxation, i.e. at least 3 hours without physical and mental stress. And it must be between 10 am and 10 pm.
And one more important point: when you wake up, you need to convince yourself that you want to sleep only by inertia, and in fact the body no longer needs sleep. However, you are already familiar with the stages of sleep and understand that this is true. 5 minutes after you got up, you don’t want to sleep anymore.
It must also be added that during the first experiment it is possible to miss the time. If you think going to bed 15 minutes late would be smarter, listen to yourself and try it. If it seems that something is wrong with the whole sleep time schedule, then do the experiment to identify your sleep time again and compare the results.
Here is such a method.
However, if you do not want to conduct any experiments, strictly monitor the time, etc., then this method has a simpler analogue - it is enough to sleep 4 - 4.5 hours a day at a time, while you have to go to bed at 4.30 - 5.00 am and sleep until 9.00 am. This time of sleep is chosen because for most people this is the peak of the nighttime desire to sleep.
Based on the book by Alexei Faleev "Strength training".
Keywords: dreams from a scientific point of view, lucid dreaming
This article was created on 11/17/2010 at 10:24 pm and is located in the section. You can follow the feedback for this article via . You can leave a review. Ping is not working now.