Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
In Charles Dickens’s The Christmas Carol, the old, miserly protagonist Ebenezer Scrooge confronts his nightmares and emerges a better man. Dickens describes him as greedy, ill-tempered, and grasping. Scrooge, at least, is good in that he becomes a better person by the end of the story. Dream journalers sometimes have nightmares so unsettling they don’t…
Whether you call it “hemp tea” or “CBD tea” doesn’t matter. It’s the same thing. Hemp tea is full of CBD. Go ahead and call it whatever you prefer. In the United States, it can be confusing, almost purposefully so. There’s a patchwork of rules all across the United States. Herbal teas, on the other…
Make sure your dream journal is ready for writing every night. Your dream journaling hobby needs to be a habit. When it’s a habit, it’s at its most powerful. We spend one-third of the day sleeping or in bed. One-third of the day, every day, adds up to a long time. That’s a lot of…
How to try to solve the mystery of what bit you or someone else when you were sleeping.
In lots of occupations—and many situations—we get to see man’s inhumanity to man. When it comes to bedtime, this can affect the ability to sleep. Police officers would fall into this category. Nurses and EMS do too. They often get to see the worst of humanity. Dealing with violence, crime, neglect, narcissism, anger, and the…
Here’s a secret to sleeping well, saving money, and avoiding back pain. Do you change your sheets every week or so? That’s easy to remember to do. The sheets start feeling pasty and a little stiff, not soft like when they come out of the dryer. It’s natural to remember to change your sheets. When…
What does “self-care” really mean? Everyone will agree that taking care of yourself is important, but how do you really know you’re doing a good job of it? There are certainly indirect indicators that can be observed. Blood pressure, cholesterol levels, weight, and other similar metrics can be a good gauge of how much attention…
Get the jet-lagged, crummy feeling of an intercontinental airplane ride with none of the excitement and none of the bills—suffer from social jet lag! You can go far to the south or north, all the way to a different country, even another continent. Physically, you’ll feel fine. Your physical location won’t disrupt your circadian rhythm.…
What were you doing in the dream? Fighting, I don’t know. I don’t remember it well. Maybe there’s a puzzling line or two a character spoke in the dream. “Hopa, hopa!” What does that even mean? What makes a faded dream? A memory is formed in your brain by linking it to other memories. For…
The time it takes to understand a dream can be much longer than it takes to have it. It’s one key point when it comes to dream interpretation. Unbound by physical constraints, unlike other information transmitted through your five primary senses, dreams are more than pictures: they’re communications affecting all the senses. You’re making a…
Sometimes the words of a language fail you. They come up short when describing a concept. There are numerous examples of this. To take one, waldeinsamkeit is a German word meaning being alone in the wilderness while relaxed, solitary, and contemplative. In English, we can group words with this meaning. The result doesn’t quite match.…
When you call someone a “dreamer,” it’s something of an insult. Yet, when you call someone a “visionary,” that’s high praise. Why? What’s the difference? There’s not that much beyond the way the word sounds, the connotation it carries. To many people’s way of thinking, dreaming connotes pie-in-the-sky fancies. Impractical ideas. Something that doesn’t work…
Admit it. It doesn’t seem right to put your mattress on the floor. It’s dirty down there and hard to keep clean. There might be bugs. There might be all kinds of conditions on your floor. Furthermore, the floor is beyond firm; it’s hard. Way too hard. Floor sleeping doesn’t seem right. Is that true?…