Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
There’s the old saying, “The devil is in the details.” When it comes to dream interpretation and dream journaling, however, the saying should be, “The angel is in the details.” The value of dreams is magnified by the richness of the details you can remember. People who ascribe little worth to dreams often don’t remember…
Weaknesses in plans, single points of failure, can become evident in dreams. Have your heart set on going to a particular college? Maybe you want to apply to more than one anyway, just so you don’t miss a year of school if you’re not accepted at your main college. Settling in a romantic relationship for…
Keeping a dream journal may make you feel vulnerable. You have to keep the journal by your bedside. It has to be easy to write them down in order to have the best chance to catch them with a pen and paper. Unfortunately, the journal is there for anyone who goes into your bedroom to…
The phone rung. The dogs barked. A gunshot went off. Whatever happened, you woke with a start. You’ve suddenly sat straight up in bed. Your sleep has been interrupted. The thoughts running through your mind melt away quickly. You now have forgotten most of your dream or were stopped dreaming in the middle of the…
Christmas is over but the Nativity story doesn’t end. On December 28 western Christianity celebrates a time when the Jesus’s family was saved by his stepfather. This incident came to be known as the Feast of the Holy Innocents. This incident as well as some other incidents in the life of Jesus’s stepfather, St. Joseph,…
Dream interpretation used in this way comes in somewhere at the intersection of art and science like so many other things. It’s building on the work of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, and others on what we know about how the brain functions. The art comes in applying the symbols you remember from your dreams to your life and your questions.
An episodic dream is a dream that continues in episodes over two or more nights. On the first night, the crowd sat to eat at a long picnic table. On the second night, more guests arrived and sat around the same table, squeezing together. Someone placed a plate in front of each guest. The good…
It has to be a thought thunk by every stick-in-the-mud who refuses to touch hallucinogens: I’m no fun. Here I am holding a regular job. Here I am fulfilling my responsibilities to my family and society. There they are. They’re tripping out. They sure look like they’re having a good time getting wasted. Damn them!…
Part 3 0f 3 The brain is physical. It exists in the physical world. The mind is nebulous. It’s your consciousness. It’s not entirely of this world. The brain has a physical makeup. That makeup is called anatomy. So, too, does the mind have a makeup. The makeup is called a mental state. The mental state can be compared…
A study of one allows you to see whether a given change improves health or life. A lot of things can be studied by you studying one individual, you. Two good areas are a change in diet or effects relating to a new exercise program. Studying yourself or doing a study of one is different…