Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
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?…
Batman has superpowers. Yes, he does. His power is his mind. Also, he has all of those gadgets on his utility belt. Those gadgets are the equivalent of superpowers. He can also travel around Gotham using cables and ropes. Can you do that? You can’t. Add to that the fact that he’s a billionaire, and…
Here are 5 different techniques to use to regain control of your thoughts. Learn and remember to use at least a couple of them to use when your thoughts seem out of control. Having the same thoughts repeat in your mind isn’t always useful. If you need to remember to do something, maybe. Even then,…
I slept like a baby. Saying that may or may not inspire an image in the listener’s mind of someone who slept well. Practically every parent has had the experience of trying to soothe a colicky baby all night at least once. However, babies sometimes sleep through all kinds of things. It’s a mixed metaphor.…
If a time traveler came from the 1980s, he or she might wonder where all the waterbeds went. Waterbeds were fairly common back then. Invented in California in the 60s, they grew in popularity over time. All together, waterbeds comprised about 20 percent of the bed market. Today, they make up a much smaller segment,…
They say variety is the spice of life. Maybe they should say the same thing about playing. Being playful brings all kinds of good things our way. It’s a disposition, an indirect root cause. Sometimes it’s not seen that way because sometimes playfulness can be confused with silliness or foolishness. They can look the same…