So the researchers will ask troops to take control of the “creation of the customized healing imagery (therapeutic dreams) to counter the impact of nightmares,” according to a military contracting document.
A brief, fast paced overview of dreaming.
The Sleep Cycle alarm clock is a bio-alarm clock that analyzes your sleep patterns and wakes you when you are in the lightest sleep phase.
Unfortunately for me, there’s increasing evidence that our dreams are not neural babble, but are instead layered with significance and substance.
In a paper published last month in the journal Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Dr. J. Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard, argues that the main function of rapid-eye-movement sleep, or REM, when most dreaming occurs, is physiological. The brain is warming its circuits, anticipating the sights and sounds and emotions of waking.
THIS COULD SOUND, I realize, like the start of a spy novel or a Hollywood bank caper, but it is rather a story about genius and madness, as well as possession and obsession, with one object this old, unusual book skating among those things. Also, there are a lot of Jungians involved, a species of thinkers who subscribe to the theories of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and author of the big red leather book. And Jungians, almost by definition, tend to get enthused anytime something previously hidden reveals itself, when whatevers been underground finally makes it to the surface.
Evolutionary theorists question whether there's an adaptive purpose to dreaming
Warren is an engaging field guide in these adventures, and The Head Trip will interest anyone curious about the black box of consciousness. In the interview below, he explains why dreaming is bananas, why we shouldnt listen too seriously to the evolutionary psychologists Just-So stories, and why we should think more explicitly about our habits of mind.
He realized that the brain wasn't designed to deal with abstractions it doesn't know how to use, or to solve variables while sitting at a desk. Our knowledge, Moses intuited, is a by-product of activity. What we end up knowing is what we can learn how to use. We learn by doing.
From visions of a past life to glimpses of the future, history is full of accounts of unusual dreams. This fascinating book explores historical, scientific, and cross-cultural research on these sorts of extraordinary dreams, and offers practical suggestions on how to work with them-either individually or as a member of a dream group-to enhance one's intellectual, emotional, and spiritual health. Each chapter is devoted to a particular type of dream, and presents a summary of research data on their nature. Specific categories of dreams discussed include creative, lucid, out-of-body, pregnancy, healing, collective, telepathic, clairvoyant, precognitive, past-life, initiation, and spiritual visitation dreams, as well as dreams within dreams.
I'm not sure whether to say that my friends and I havedeveloped a new way of working with people's dreaming processes, or to say thatwe've discovered something. In any case, it is clear that we've tapped intosomething profound.. More accurately, I feel safe in saying that something hasbeen revealed through following our inner dreaming process (what I call"following the dreaming"). I feel strongly drawn to share what myfriends and I are experiencing in our "Awakening in the DreamGroups," as it can be of great benefit to many people.
These dreams, since they appear to us in symbolic guise, are fantasies and, if you will accept the reasoning, could be classified as hallucinations. Such fantasies, or hallucinations, are inside every one of us, waiting to be released, aired and understood. Dreams are really the emotions that we find ourselves reluctant to examine, think about, or meditate upon, while conscious. [ via
mindhacks ]
As far as dream interpretation is concerned, I'd be surprised if a better book available than this. The authour recognizes that symbols will carry different meanings for different people. In dream dictionary books available on the market, the meanings of symbols can be contradictory if you check a few different books... so which one should you trust? If you have nearly drowned at some point in my life, water may carry a different meaning than "purity" or "life". If you have been attacked by a dog, a dog may not represent "companionship" or "loyalty". The authour guides readers through a very intensive process to help remember their dreams and create a personal dream dictionary. The intensive process involves working with various symbols from your own dreams, and interpreting these symbols according to the context of the whole dream and events in your life. The process requires a lot of dedication, but is very fun and fulfilling, and the more effort you devote to dreaming... the more dreams you will have.