Hypnosis

Hypnosis is a mental state or set of attitudes and beliefs usually induced by a procedure known as hypnotic induction, which is known as the power of suggestion. Hypnotic suggestion is one way to hypnotize a person. Hypnotic suggestion is delivered by a hypnotist, or by yourself. The hypnotist uses the power of suggestion to get the subject into a hypnotic state. Another hypnosis method is a drug induced one, by using flunitrazepam (roofies), scopolamine, or several others. Unfortunately, amnesia, loss of memory, can be a side effect of drug induced hypnosis.

Déjà vu

Déjà vu is translated to already seen and means the experience of feeling when one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously through an event that has already happened. Emile Boirac wrote an essay explaining what déjà vu is, he was the psychologist who “found” this phenomenon. Déjà vu is most likely attributed to a previous dream, although in some cases it could be attributed to an experience in the past. Déjà vu is challenging to replicate in the lab, so it is difficult for psychologist to understand more about it. But, some researchers found a possibly way to study déjà vu, hypnosis.

REM Rebound

REM rebound is the coolest thing in the world. How cool is going into REM, the dream state faster than normal. The only problem is when we lack sleep REM rebound occurs. REM rebound means exactly what the name is, when we lack sleep, mainly the REM stage, we go directly into REM skipping the other stages. For example, Bob hasn’t slept for over one week. So when he does finally sleep, he will go directly into REM. The interesting thing is why REM, why not stage 4 rebound. There is only speculation about this specific rebound. One of the speculations behind REM rebound is the idea that REM enforces memory. Like if you haven’t slept in a long time, you start to forget things.

Reoccurring Dreams

Reoccurring dreams are dreams that repeat. As you know, dreams have a deeper meaning than the context of the dream. So when a dream reoccurs, then your subconscious is trying to enforce something or tell you something . For example, if you continuously dream that you go to school in the nude, then you might be afraid of your “true”, exposed self. These reoccurring dreams are caused from a situation that is happening or happened in the past. Something that you are not consciously aware of but your subconscious is. The frequency of the dreams could depend on the urgency of the issue.

Teeth

When people dream they are paralyzed. Dreaming takes place in the REM stage of sleep, also called paradoxical sleep. So if you wake up hurt in some way, like a swollen lip, I remember Juliana don’t worry, you probably hurt yourself earlier on in the night and woke up directly after dreaming, so you believe that something happened during your dream. But that is not possible because as I said earlier, when you dream you are paralyzed. Another possibility is that you had a dream involving teeth, like having teeth falling out, then as you were waking up you clamped your teeth on your lip causing swelling. As for the symbolism of teeth falling out, it could possibly mean that something important is missing from your life or you believe that something important is missing. This is just a guess, if you would like to share the context of the whole dream I could try to make a better analysis.

The Unicorn has nothing to do with the update.

Symbolism

Dream interpretation allows us to analyze and find meaning in our dreams. Here is some symbolism behind some events that might happen in your dreams.

If your dreams involve a lot of blood, then you might be emotionally imbalanced or severely angry. If your dreams involve clouds, depending on the cloud, ominous or peaceful, ominous clouds mean anger or a sense of danger; peaceful clouds represent “good time” that you are having in the “real world”. If you have a knife in your dream, it could mean you were back-stabbed, or you betrayed someone else. If you have a magical dream, then it could represent power and creativity.

If you have any questions about something in your dream and want an interpretation you can just ask me.

Awareness

When people dream they are aware, maybe not to the extent of “everyday life”, but there is some type of awareness and consciousness. But the thing is what is awareness, is awareness just staying awake and alert or is there something more to it? Another question is what is consciousness?
These questions will be discussed a later update.

Dreams and sleep go hand in hand, and sleeping is always a pleasure. But sometimes sleeping can be challenging. So there are ways to relax before sleeping. Like, concentrating on your breathing, the idea is similar to meditation, but slightly different. Meditation is used for rising awareness level and for relaxing, while this is just for relaxing. By focusing on your breathing you concentrate on a rhythmic motion that helps you relax. By doing so you are ridding your mind of troubling thoughts, relaxing, and eventually falling asleep.

Hallucination

Dreaming and awareness can sometimes be blended together. Like, when you are lying in bed, then this fish appears and starts to float around your room. But the question is, are you awake or asleep? You are probably thinking “of course I am asleep”. But this is the blending of reality and fiction. This blending is a hallucination. Hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid, substantial, and located in external objective space.

Awareness

I have noticed that throughout the day little, insignificant thing happen, things that we don’t really pay attention to. Then that thing will appear in a dream. For instance, one day I was taking a walk outside and I noticed a hot pink car and thought nothing of it. In my dream that night I was driving that exact same hot pink car. I believe this phenomenon happens in our subconscious, on a different level of awareness.

Crystalized Dream

The sand cascaded down the crystallized hill. The wind continues on, as if nothing disrupted its rhythmic motion. Off in the distance is a beautiful city homes made of silver, roads made of diamonds. Eventually I made it to the silvery town, but something was off about this magnificent town. There were no people. I searched every house, every store, every square inch. Then… I woke up

A Possible Reason

I was thinking about music playing in dreams without external stimuli and I think I found a solution to this problem. According to Freud, dreams are “the road to the unconscious.” So maybe if our unconscious has “music” playing then in our dreams. Remember I am not completely sure, this is just my hypothesis. But maybe this could be broadened. Every once in a while I will have certain aspects of my dreams from books. So maybe my unconscious was thinking about a book, so I had a dream from a book.

Mist

The opaque mist clouded my vision as I try to navigate my way around the towering trees and treacherous roots. But I continue on, swatting the air and shuffling my feet. I had one thought on my mind, and one thought only, I must reach the castle. I felt something breathe on my shoulder. I froze, petrified. Then I awoke, frightened.

Music Playing, You Dreaming

Music is always very entertaining, especially when dreaming. I have had complete songs played in my dreams. The weird thing is the songs are always perfect, from the guitar and bass down to the drum line. It is really quite remarkably. There was no external stimulus, meaning there was no music playing while I was asleep. I remember this one dream specifically…
I was at an ice cream parlour eating my cookie dough ice cream when one of my songs came on the radio. When I woke up I was flabbergasted, and I was wondering how this phenomenon happened. Next update I will figure out, research, why.
If you are curious as to what song it is called Blessings Be Yours Mister V by The Sound of Animals Fighting.

Lava Lamp

I was floating about in this magenta liquid, swaying back and forth with the music. As I was floating, vast blobs of green, blue, purple, red, orange, and pink drift back and forth to the beat of the music. I was watching these beautiful colours transform into different shapes and sizes, combining with each other and then separating. It was amazing. A blue blob fused with a purple blob and formed this indigo duck-like blob. It was bloody brilliant. All of the colours and shapes, floating along with me in this beautiful liquid. It was so cosmic.

Books

I was running through a lurid hallway. The lights flickered once or twice, but I didn't notice. I just needed to get out of there, it wasn't safe. So, I continued on, stopping once in a while to catch my breath. Suddenly I hit something. I squinted trying to see what it was. I started to run my fingers across it. Then I hit something hard and smooth, probably something metallic. I had a thought, it might be a knob. I fumbled with it for a few seconds, the door opened in a swoosh. Light flooded my eyes. What I saw amazed me: books were piled high, completely filling every space in the room. It was wicked, I spent the rest of the night reading the books.

The Magical Forest

Another random dream...

I was prancing through a forest. The trees towered over my head, majestic waterfalls graced the dark forest floor with a kiss light and water. I decided that it would be a good idea to explore this wonderful forest. As I cross over the tree roots, and walk around the thick green leaves on the magnificent, looming trees. Then I heard the leaves rustle behind me, I slowly turn around, thinking that something was going to pop out and kill me. When I was facing the leave rustler thing, when a unicorn jumped out from behind the leaves. I got so excited and played with the unicorn for the rest of the dream.

Random Dream

This is my epic waterfall dream...

I was in this vast. The walls were towering over my head, colourful lights were flashing bright greens and dark purple. Loud noise was vibrating of the walls, the pulse made its way to my ears, and murdered my head. So, I took refugee in this room. The second I set foot through the portal and the deathly noise vanished. There was this black leather couch, so I took a seat. I was facing this wall, but then the wall turned into a waterfall. So I spent the rest of my night watching this waterfall for the rest of the night, it was awesome.

Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams are my favourite types of dreams, they are by far the most entertaining. Psychologist Frederik van Eeden came up with the term "lucid dreams". A lucid dream is a dream when the person sleeping is aware that he or she is asleep, the lucid dream can seem real or vivid depending on the sleeping person's self-awareness. But that is just lucid dreaming as a whole, there are different types of lucid dreams. One type is called dream-initiated lucid dream (DILD), this type of lucid dream starts as a "normal" dream, then the sleeping beauty concludes that "hey I'm dreaming". Another type of lucid dream is wake-initiated lucid dream (WILD), this is when a person goes from an awake state to a dream state, without a lapse in consciousness. WILD is similar to a hallucination, a wild hallucination. The third type of lucid dream is mnemonic-initiated lucid dream (MILD), this happens when a person says they will have a lucid dream the next time they take a trip to the unconscious. The next update will go more in depth with lucid dreams, maybe even how to MILDly dream.

Mysteries Behind Nightmares

A nightmare is a dream that causes a strong emotional response, fear or horror, from the sleeping person. Nightmares are caused by something physical or psychological. A psychological cause when a person is feeling anxious or stressed. A physical cause perhaps is when a person is in an uncomfortable position or has a fever. But the psychological cause tends to be more prominent than the physical. Nightmares are NOT from psychological disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Psychological DISORDERS cause night terrors which are completely different. So do not think that if you have or had nightmares you have a psychological disorder. Nightmares take place during REM (rapid eye movement) while night terrors take place in Stage four of the sleep cycle.

Nightmares are still dreams, the only difference between a "normal" dream and a nightmare is that nightmares evoke fear, while dreams do not. If you want to know why we have certain nightmares then you would have to analyze the latent content of the nightmare. For example, the nightmare I had that is on my previous post probably means that I am terrified of the strange and unknown. But the nightmare in itself was most likely brought on by anxiety. And the anxiety manifested itself using a nightmare. The nightmare that I have might not terrify you and the nightmare you have will necessarily terrify me, so nightmares are directed toward your anxiety.

Nightmares

Nightmares are terrifying. We have all have had them, some have them more than others. I am not one that has too many nightmares, but I remember this one quite well.

It was pitch black, and I was in an exact replica of my room. The bed, the walls, the wood floor, the clothes on the floor, everything was exactly like it was in real life. I was in my bed, lying there, curled up in a loose ball. My thoughts were floating around like always. All of a sudden, I felt large hands grab my ankles. I start kicking and thrashing, I tried to scream, but my throat was dry, no noise pierced the silence. The gruesome hands began to drag me out of bed onto the floor. I dug my nails into the wood floor, grabbing onto anything that I could. The intruder flipped me onto my side, I tried to reach for the door handle. Just then I woke up, I bolted up out of bed and freaked out. It was not one of my coolest dreams, but it was the most terrifying dream I have ever had, so realistic.

I hope you like the update. If you want, you can respond with some of your nightmares... or not, your choice.

Dream Interpretation II

Freud believed that our dreams are distorted because these distorted dreams are repressed thoughts and feelings. These distortions make the manifest content extremely different than the latent content that was reached from analysis. Freud believed that by reversing these distortions we can derive what the latent content means. The operations for the analysis of the latent content are condensation, displacement, representation, and symbolism. Condensation is one dream object stands for several associations and ideas. Condensation is a colleague, many ideas intertwined into one object. Displacement is a dream object's emotional significance is separated from its real content and attaches to a different emotion to not raise suspicion from the dreamer. Displacement is like a ninja, a master of deception. Representation is a thought that is translated to visual images. Representation, hallucination; very similar. Symbolism is a symbol that replaces a person, place, or thing. Yeah... a symbol explains itself.

Dream Interpretation

Dream interpretation, or analysis, was created by Freud as a way to understand the unconscious mind. Freud wrote a book called The Interpretation of Dreams to explain to the world his analysis of dreams. Freud's book first argues that dreams are "day residue", things that happened during the day or things that you wished happened during the day happen in your dreams. For example, in a small child's dream, a boy played with a turtle and had a thought that it would be cool if the turtle was able to talk. So in his dream he went deep sea diving with a large, talking turtle. In adults, dreams tend to be more complicated. Dreams are rarely cut and dry, subject to obvious interpretation. First, there is something called manifest content and latent content. Manifest content is the content of a dream that a person experiences and remembers. Latent content is the hidden and unconscious meaning of the dream. Our dreams are like a puzzle, something that we have to piece together to discern the latent content, which is to say, to figure out what the dream means.

Sigmund Freud was a famous psychologist who had revolutionized the world of psychology. One of Freud's greatest theories was about the unconscious, dreams, in Freud's words "the royal road to the unconscious". Freud did not discover the unconscious, but he did discover a method to for studying the unconscious. In Freud's book The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud describes how to access the unconscious. Another great attribute to psychology is dream analysis. Next time we will learn about dream analysis and analyze our dreams.

Background on Dreams

Dreams are very mysterious to us. Scientists and psychologists try to speculate how dreams effect our brains and bodies. We know a certain amount of facts about dreams, like how dreams occur during the REM (rapid eye movement) cycle of sleep. Science and new technologies have helped us discover the facts about sleep. But, why we dream is still a mystery. Most of the ways to answer why we dream are theories or ideas from psychologists. One famous psychologist that tried to understand dreams was Sigmund Freud. In the next update Freud's dream theory and ideas will be discussed.

To me, dreams have always been something new and exciting, something to look forward to while sleeping. Dreams have always been the best part of closing your eyes and drifting off, not to nothingness, but to a world where anything can happen, a world located in the deep dark places of our mind, figuratively of course. This blog will have to do with exploring the "unconscious" mind. This blog will consist of facts about dreams and sleep, since dreaming is quite hard to accomplish without sleep, and also the discussion of the dreams that we, the writer and the reader, have had in the previous nights.