sleep and dreams psychology

Tell me who doesn't enjoy sleeping?? everyone does!!

 Can you guess on an average how much time does human beings spend sleeping??

26 years!!! yes, according to a recent international study on sleep human beings spend about one third of their life sleeping.Surprisingly, we also spend 7 years trying to get sleep.

Isn't this amazing? 

When we sleep, dreams automatically add up as a additional byproduct of our brain's activity.We dream whole lot of stuffs every night but the thing is we don't remember the most part of it.During a typical lifetime, a person spend on an average of  6 years dreaming!

When sleep and dreams occupy a greater part of our lifetime it becomes important for us to know about its psychological process...

SLEEP AND ITS'S STAGES:

sleep is defined as a condition of body and mind which typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the nervous system is inactive, the eyes closed, the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended.

Few ages ago it was believed that when we sleep our complete brain shut downs showing no brain activity but this was proved to be wrong! Your brain becomes more active when you are asleep than you are awake. well, that's mainly because we experience a lot during a typical day.

When you are awake your brain becomes soo busy in taking in everything you see,hear and feel that it gets little time to actually process, categorize and store information. When you are asleep  your brain finally has time to sort all these things.

before understanding how dreams work we must know what are the different stages of sleep only then you may probably find answer why do you tend to forget most of the dreams you watch?

courtesy:better sleep digest

DREAMS :AN AMAZING PHENOMENON

Dreams are the series of thoughts,images and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep. In simple words dreams are the byproduct of various activities that brain undergo while in sleep.

The scientific study of dreaming is called as Oneriology

The finding suggest that dreaming originates from the mental processes triggered in the brain stem during Rapid Eye Movement(REM) stage whose brain activities are similar to that of mind being in awake state. 

 Length of the dream can vary for few seconds or approximately upto 20-30 mins 

Sleepers awakened from REM tend to give longer, more narrative descriptions of the dream they were experiencing and to estimate the duration of their dreams as longer.Dreamers at this stage are sometimes aware that they are dreaming and can control it ,This is what is termed as Lucid dreaming.

Its not that you don't dream while you are in other stages of sleep, you do but you tend to forget it more.It so sometime happens with the case of REM stage, You forget about 95% of the dreams mainly because your brain consider that as useless/junk.Hence you find difficulty in recalling it.

The purpose of dreaming is still under research but there are many hypothesis what different scientists believe in. 

Some of the more prominent dream theory contend that the function of dreaming is to consolidate memories, process information, express our deepest desires and gain practice 

confronting potential dangers.

Many suggest that we dream due to a combination of these and other reasons rather than adhering to a singular theory.

Additionally,while many researchers believe that dreaming is essential to mental, emotional and physical well-being ,on the other hand few scientists suggest that dreams serve no real purpose at all.

SOME OF THE MOST COMMON DREAMS:

Our subconscious sometimes tries to convey us something through dreams. here i have listed top 5 dreams and their meaning.

1.FALLING: falling usually occur in the first stage of the sleep i.e around 5-10 mins of sleep, sometimes you feel a sudden jerk while you have just fallen asleep these are called as Hypnagogic jerk. Falling is an indication of insecurities, instabilities and anxieties. You are feeling overwhelmed and out of control in some situation in your waking life.

2.BEING CHASED: If you are dreaming that you are being chased, it generally means that you are avoiding an issue or a person. Your subconscious is telling you that you need to confront that issue or person in order to get with your life.

3.LOVED ONE'S BEING DEAD: Death dreams usually means a change of some sort or an end to something. If you dreamed that your parents/sibling died, then you could be afraid of losing them in real life or you are probably missing them a lot.

4.EXAMS: If you wake up restless thinking that you just failed a test miserably, that nightmare points towards your lack of confidence and inability to progress in life.

5.FLYING HIGH: It inspires people to let go of the ongoing issues in life and allow things to run their natural course. It's the liberating feeling that you get after conquering something that  had been dragging you down.

hope you all liked this article, if soo please subscribe and comment!!

before saying sayonara to my curious readers, i want you all to have a glance at this video 

courtesy: Brainy dose