Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
The American dream is 246 years old today. Sure, people in what is the United States had dreams for their future before we declared independence, but those should have been called colonial dreams. After Independence Day, July 4, 1776, we started having American dreams. What is the American dream? There are many definitions of the American…
It’s not at all widely talked about, but did you know your dreams can help heal you? Whether or not you remember them, they can help heal you mentally and emotionally. That ties into actual physical healing as detailed in books like The Body Keeps the Score If you remember dreams and work with them,…
Your alarm goes off, and you wake up suddenly. You get up, and you’ve got somewhere to go. The dream fades. You wake up wondering what time it is. How much longer do you have to sleep? You look at the clock on your phone or on the nightstand. The dream fades. Your bed partner…
Question: What do news reports, professional reports, certain types of poems, lyrics, and short stories all have in common? Answer: Frameworks. Sometimes referred to as formats or templates, frameworks are essential to taming a flow of information. Dreams are a type of information. A framework helps organize the information so you can understand it and…
When you develop an interest in meteorology, you look up at the clouds. Then, you may snap a picture when you see a formation you’ve never seen before. When you develop an interest in botany, you look down at the ground at the different plants. Then, when you find a new leaf, you might take…
No hobby’s cheaper to explore than dream journaling. Dream journaling is the champion for that and, as a bonus, comes with the potential to make and save you money. There have been many million-dollar ideas incubated in dreams. You can find a pen or pencil and a free notebook somewhere. Get that, and that’s all…
If you keep a dream diary for a while and try to understand each dream you recover, you’ll soon realize not every dream has a deeper meaning. Not every dream illuminates some insight into the subconscious. Sometimes a dream illustrates a slice of your life from the near-present or the past. But sometimes the dream…
You might not have your lighted pen handy. You might not have your dream journal available, and there’s nothing else to write on that’s available. You might have a spouse or partner next to you in bed. Turning the bedside light on to write your dream down wouldn’t be kind, especially if they have something…
The questions in the headline aren’t easy to answer. There are a lot of different opinions and only a few points of consensus. Here’s one definition: Dreams are a phenomena that happens primarily when sleeping, whether remembered or not. They’re a type of brain activity that results in communication between the subconscious mind and the…
In a previous post, I compared several weeks of my dream journal to Blue Opossum’s. He responded to the April 12 blog post by e-mail. Blue Opossum is a metacognitive dreamer. He’s aware of a whole lot of his dreams, far more than most people. There are misconceptions in your post, but that is to…
Understanding yourself better using your dream journal (Part 7/7) When you compare your dream journal to someone else’s, you’re probably coming as close as you can to seeing the inner mind of someone very different from you, no matter who they are. They have a different personality, different experiences, and different roles and reasons for…
4/7 Once you start keeping a dream journal, you’re not going to have a breakthrough every night for the rest of your life. That’s not realistic. Neither are you going to have one amusing dream after another, though there’s a certain joy in a dream that amounts to a fun hallucination. You’re going to have…
Part 3/7 Everyone, no matter how young or old they are, has dreams. They also have other people in their life, people who might not understand their dreams the way they do. They can’t. No matter how close you are to someone, your experiences and their experiences are different. You’re two different people after all.…