Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
An area that intrigued me when I started writing this blog was the spiritual side of sleep. It seemed to be the health dimension nobody else was writing or thinking about. The spirit is one dimension of health, along with emotional, environmental, intellectual, occupational, physical, and social. This means that as the other health dimensions…
Not every dream is symbolic of something, though many are. People tend to ignore dreams without symbols unless they’re an instance of deja vu where one has the feeling they’ve been somewhere or done something before. Dream journalers tend to talk about dreams with symbols more often. They’re more interesting because we learn from those dreams. They…
One can have all kinds of sex dreams. In your dreams, you might have sex with people you wouldn’t consider in real life. Multiple partners may show up. The dreams could feature people of the same sex, homeless people, powerful people, strangers, children, machines, objects, anyone, and anything. In dreams, after all, anything is possible.…
Meditation has become a big business as part of the increased attention paid to the idea of wellness. Venture capitalists are investing millions in it. When they put so much money into it, they hope to make a lot back. Meditation has been studied to treat high blood pressure, stress, pain, irritable bowel syndrome, ulcerative colitis,…
Many health professionals and others promote meditation these days. Combined with stretching, Instagram is filled with images of attractive people in athleisure attire contorting themselves amid beautiful scenery. The Veteran’s Affairs Administration recommends it. Your health plan probably does too along with your workplace wellness program. Far be it from me to discourage it. I’m…
Recently, over a couple of weeks, more than half of the dreams one man who kept a dream journal featured the coronavirus in some way. He wasn’t alone. Lots of people around the world were dreaming about COVID-19. In his dreams, close friends were dying of the virus. Or he was lost back in 1918,…
Why did I do that? Why did it all turn out that way? Knowing what I know now, what would I tell my younger self? You look back at your decisions. Some you judge to have been good, others bad. It’s easier when a few years have passed. The emotions have dimmed, if only a…
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…
Fifty years ago, lots of people who slept alone fell asleep to the monophonic sound of AM radio. It was part of their bedtime routine. Due to the characteristics of the broadcast frequency, AM radio stations carried news, information, and music from far-off cities at night, frequently reaching communities more than a thousand miles away.…
People come up with all kinds of health advice. Some of it’s very good, very perceptive. Some of it is terrible. One of the stupidest bits of advice I’ve come across recently is that you should do calisthenics and other exercises in bed. It’s not repeated in just one place. It’s repeated in many places…
Can you imagine a world where it’s a luxury to get up from a bed to walk around in an apartment-sized living area? When self-driving cars progress further down the development curve, it could happen. Beyond the effects on jobs in transportation like truck driving and delivery, wages won’t keep up with real estate price…
If you think every dream you journal will be profound, surprising, or funny, you’ll be sorely disappointed. Here’s a little acknowledged secret: Some dreams are boring. The themes of some dreams are so dull, so mind-numbingly obvious, they’re like training produced by the human resources department at a large company. They’re reminders more than anything…
You can get in trouble when you treat relationships as tools. You can also have problems when you treat tools as relationships. Your body, however, falls into a grey area. You need to treat it both as a tool and a valuable relationship. This can be tricky and hard to do. If you manage this,…