My Dream Project By: Staci Mion

Dreams Your dreams can include people you know, do not know, places you have been, and places you never even knew existed. Dreams occur more frequently and are best remembered during the R.E.M. stage of sleep During the R.E.M. stage of sleep your eyes move rapidly, your heart rate and breathing become inconsistent, and paralysis of your skeletal muscles occurs. Most of our dreams tend to not make much sense because our brain just takes bits and pieces from a bunch of different memories.

Dream Journal Instructions Each night before going to sleep, make sure to write down “I will remember my dream”, sign your name, and write down the time you are going to bed. In the morning, try to remember your dream and try your best to write down as much as you can remember from your dream.

Why do we dream? Memories, learning, and moods/social behaviors are all reasons why we dream. Sleep helps us recover lost memories as well as organize current ones. Learning different and new things will affect you while you are sleeping. Sleep helps your brain retain the knowledge you gain each and everyday. R.E.M. sleep also allows the parts of the brain that control your emotions and social interactions to slow down and recuperate from each day.

Can our daily activities effect our dreams? Dreams reflect on our personal lives and experiences. Usually feelings that may have been suppressed during the day come out in our dreams. Actions and thoughts we hold in will usually show up while we are sleeping. For example, if you wanted to express your feeling of anger towards someone during the day and refrained from doing so, your suppressed anger may show up in your dream in a symbolic form.

What is the difference between dreams in color and dreams in black and white? Most people dream in color, but some people may not notice or remember colors in their dreams. People who are really aware of color in the waking world are more likely to dream in color, but if you take color for granted, your dreams may be more in black and white than color. Dreams are more likely to be in black and white if they are based on a depressed or sad mood.

How long do dreams usually last? We dream when we are in the R.E.M. stage of sleep. “R.E.M. sleep occurs every 90 - 100 minutes.” We usually hit the R.E.M. stage about 3 to 4 times a night depending on how much sleep we are getting. The dreams last longer as the night progresses. The final R.E.M period can last as long as 45 minutes. The dreams that occur during the final R.E.M period are usually the ones we remember when we wake up. Less vivid dreams occur earlier in our sleep. In average, we dream about 100 minutes per night.

Why do we have physical responses to our dreams? Have you ever woken up sweating or with your heart racing? Its most likely because you had a bad dream and your body has had a physical response to it. Even though our bodies are paralyzed during dreams, our involuntary body responses - including breathing and heart rate - still respond. When something happens in a dream, we think its real, so we get scared and nervous, just like we would in real life!

Why do we have recurring dreams? Recurring dreams are not fully understood but many dream interpreters believe that their message is more important than those of other 'normal' dreams and that the dream recurs until you understand the message. It is likely that the dream is caused by something that has had a large impact in your walking life and is thereby finding its way into your unconscious. In some causes, recurring dreams will come out of nowhere with no real warning for no real reason. This does not mean they are not based on something important, but there no logic reason to when or why they are recurring. This seems to remain one of the many mysteries surrounding dreaming.

Why are some dreams more common than others? It often seems like there are dreams that we all share. We have all had that dream where we were being chased, falling, naked in public, or unprepared for that exam, right? There is only one simple answer to why many people share these dreams; it is the fact that we all have so many shared experiences in our lives where we have experienced high emotion and so the memories make their way into our dreams. This is often described as ‘universal unconscious’.

Why do we jolt in our sleep? Many of us do it just as we start drifting off to sleep. We suddenly jolt upright or left or right, and wake again. “This is called sleep start and is not fully understood.” Sleep start is most likely caused by our brain misinterpreting the relaxation of our muscles as we are falling asleep. We then jolt awake in order to prevent ourselves from falling.

Do blind people dream? People who have been blind from birth would have no ability to recognize what sight would ‘look’ like and so they would not be able to dream. Does this mean that blind people do not dream? They do dream, but only in sounds, smells, and sensations. They are each more heightened and intense that it would be for one of us. From this comes another question. We do not use our eyes to dream, so why would blind people not be able to dream? Can they not imagine things in their heads? Because of the lack of ever seeing anything, they have no experience how to function that sense.

What language do the multilingual dream in? Dreams can be in any language and might occur in several. The dreamer will probably dream in the language that they use on a day to day basis and language they think in. However, they will also dream in other languages from time to time. You can dream in another language even if the language is not fluent. Interestingly, often we will dream not really in a language at all, but in images and sounds that we all together interpret as language.

My Dream I had a dream about my grandmother that passed away almost a year ago. In the dream, she was talking to me. I can not remember fully what she was talking to me about but I can remember her handing me a dollar bill. So, she must have been telling me something about money. The weird thing is that the next morning when I told my father about my dream, he told me that he had the same exact one. After doing a lot of research online, it seems to be true that dead people can communicate and send messages to people through dreams. I also looked up what dreams about money mean. “To see or win money in your dream, indicates that success and prosperity is within your reach. Money represents confidence, self – worth, success, or values.”