Dreams
I start this entry without any real defined purpose except to share a little bit of information that I found during my reading, and with that, I start off here.
I'm a huge fan of dreams, always have been. The book I've been reading actually has a section on it, which I was delighted to read through. The book is called "Spirit & Dream Animals" by Richard Webster. Here's some of the more interesting information that I found in that section.
Dreams are important to us for a few reasons. I personally love the little escapes from reality that it gives me. However, it's been studied that people who are prevented from dreaming (being repeatedly woken up in the REM stage of sleep) become unwell. So in turn, dreams are essential for our mental and physical well-being.
Our dreams come from our subconscious, which works in a different way than our conscious mind. We can think about problems in depth in our conscious minds, but eventually we have to go to sleep. When sleeping, our subconscious mind take over the problems and work them out on a deeper level. Which explains why you can sometimes wake up and have a solution to the problem that may have previously stumped you.
This is one way our dreams continuously work to help us out, whether you realize this or not. Another way that our dreams help us is by processing new information.
"Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that sleeping and dreaming after learning new information helps the brain to process new information. Professor Robert Stickgold, who led the study, says 'Dreams are the brain's way of processing, integrating, and really understanding new information. Dreams are a clear indication that the sleeping brain is working on memories at multiple levels.'".
The Harvard researches found that people who took naps after learning new material were up to 10x better at the learned task than people who did not go to sleep after their study period.
These little excerpts caught my interest because I've never really thought in detail about how dreams help us more than just giving us a little escape during the night. This has definitely opened my thinking towards the topic of dreams and how they aid us. I definitely plan on learning more on this subject, so this shall be continued.
