What is sleep and dreams scientifically? Why is sleep needed? Sleep phases and interesting facts. Prophetic dreams: true or not? Opinion of a somnologist
The interpretation of dreams is an ancient occupation. But with the departure of all obscurantism into the past, he is trusted less and less. However, it is fundamentally wrong not to attach importance to dreams at all, considering them as a meaningless product of our resting brain. In fact, dreams can tell a lot about the state of mind and mood of the one who sees them. This will, of course, not be a prediction of future events, but a kind of psychotherapy that will help to cope with difficulties in real life and prevent possible mistakes in personal and professional life.
Dreams of death 
With death, everything is simple. Seen in a dream, it, of course, does not mean death. But, most likely, if you die in a dream, then you want changes. The subconscious mind tells you that the old you is no longer relevant and a new one is needed. You are striving for these changes, consciously or not. So, if you die in your sleep, consider it a signal to start a new life.
Dreams with answers
The well-known story of how Mendeleev came up with the periodic table in a dream may suggest a mystical origin for dreams. This is not true. It's just that when we sleep, our brain continues to solve the tasks set the day before. And sometimes the answer really comes in a dream. But first there is always a question to ask.
Dreams about animals 
Dreams about animals are most often interpreted by researchers as dreams about habits. Habits can be harmful and disease-causing, or vital, such as brushing your teeth or looking around before crossing the road. If the animals in your dreams are domestic and behave non-aggressively, then most of the habits do not harm you.
Dreams about appearance 
If you choose clothes in a dream, then this should be interpreted to some extent literally. Clothing is how you present yourself. If you are wearing a sports suit, then you are relaxed or serene. A business suit indicates that it is time to take a break from work and go on vacation.
Logic of dream plots 
The more logical and ordinary dreams, the more clearly and consistently you think. Boring unmemorable stories without vivid emotions are the dreams of a healthy person. And vivid and fantastic dreams indicate that you are at a loss and cannot collect your thoughts.
Dreams about illness 
Researchers believe that our subconscious is trying to tell us about illnesses not only by direct stories about ailments in dreams. Of course, you should pay attention to them, because the brain could already fix changes in the cells of the body when you still do not feel pain. However, the most traditional health plot is a dream about a car in which you are moving. The analogy is simple - in reality, the body moves with the help of a car. And our mind moves in space with the help of the body. That is why the subconscious speaks to us in a dream with such a metaphor. The manner of driving and the condition of the car in a dream is an analogy with the control over the state of health.
Dreams about the future 
Dreams are not prophecies. In the 21st century, it's time to stop believing in the stories that someone sees the future in a dream, and go to the interpreters of dreams. Dreams can be interpreted only by analyzing the present and the past. However, you yourself may have noticed that the dream you saw the day before resembles what happened later. This is just the work of our subconscious, which is more insightful than consciousness. It can analyze and draw conclusions based on data. For example, if you dreamed that you came down with the flu, and after a couple of days you really came down with it, it’s just that the brain noticed the activity of the virus earlier.
Dreams about yourself 
All the characters in your dreams are you. Even if you dream of a mother, a girlfriend or a barely known work colleague, they always behave the way you would or would like to behave. You should never think that if you dreamed of a pretty girl from a neighboring entrance and confessed your love in a dream, then this has at least something to do with her. No, any personalities are facets of your personality.
Dreams about relationships 
As already mentioned, do not interpret dreams involving other people in terms of relationships with them. Any relationship that develops in dreams is the relationship of many facets of your personality to each other. Moreover, people of the same sex as you are the literal embodiment of your visible character traits. And people of the opposite sex are your hidden inner self. Listen carefully to the latter.
Dreams about the past 
Dreams about events that have already happened to you indicate your current mood. If you return to the distant past, you have internal anxiety, and if you stay in the present even in a dream, then you are satisfied with almost everything in the current state of affairs.
All living beings on Earth need sleep. When a person does not get enough sleep, he has health problems, and he also becomes irritable. Without sleep, a person cannot replenish his energy supply, therefore, he feels overtired and there is a decline in working capacity.
A person spends one third of his life in a dream. He needs sleep as well as food. Only now, in the absence of food, a person can live for about a month, and without sleep, he will not live even two weeks. Let's find out what are the side effects of not sleeping for a long time and what sleep is in general.
Sleep facts
What is sleep scientifically? In 1960, they conducted an experiment on volunteers, as a result of which it turned out that a person who was deprived of sleep, on the fifth day, experienced deterioration in vision, hearing, memory, in addition, he had visual and auditory hallucinations, and there were still violations in the coordination of movements. Some lost weight, although all subjects were fed generously. After 8 days, this experiment was stopped. However, experiments that were carried out on dogs led to the fact that after two weeks, the dogs that were deprived of sleep died.
Sleep is a natural physiological process that occurs in living organisms - in humans and animals. This is the process of resting the nerve cells of the cerebral cortex, reducing motor and mental activity. That is, sleep is rest for the whole organism.
The whole world is conducting all kinds of research and various experiments, because many people want to understand why a person's state changes during sleep. It turned out that human life is divided into three phases - wakefulness, sleep without dreams and sleep with dreams. It also became known that the human body needs sleep, it performs a protective function.
When a person sleeps, he can often be disturbed by irritants from the external environment, such as stuffiness, cold, noise, unwanted light - all this is included in the dream itself, for example, a dream of a desert or snow, a party or a river. Thanks to this ability, a person continues to sleep.
Also, when a person sleeps, he not only "does not see", but also "does not hear". The muscles that control the auditory ossicles are relaxed during sleep, thanks to which a person cannot catch low sounds.
REM sleep and slow sleep. Sleep phases
Electroencephalograph (EEG) —this is a device with which you can find out what happens to a person when he sleeps. The EEG records the vibrations of the brain waves. They have different indicators during wakefulness, during shallow and deep sleep.
It became known that the human brain continues its work even during sleep, its activity changes at intervals of an hour and a half, and a person’s sleep goes through 4 to 6 periods - phases.
Every person has two sleeps - fast and slow.
REM sleep
REM sleep is accompanied by: rapid eye movement, twitching of the muscles of the face, movements of the arms and legs, as well as rapid breathing and an increase in blood pressure.
Meanwhile, the brain continues to work actively. This dream lasts 10-20 minutes, then is replaced by a slow sleep, this process is repeated 4-5 times a night.
During this period, a person has colorful dreams that he will surely remember.
slow sleep
The largest part of a person's sleep falls on slow sleep, which in turn is divided into four phases. Dreams in this period are less vivid, rarely remembered by a person. It is during slow sleep that a person is able to make various sounds without noticing it, also cry, laugh, and sometimes even walk.
Sleep phases
First phase of sleep- nap. It doesn't last long, about 5 minutes. During this phase, breathing slows down, heartbeat slows down, body temperature also goes down. The brain, in turn, continues to work actively, it reviews the information that you received during the day, corrects some thoughts and looks for answers to questions that tormented you.
Second phase- lasts about 20 minutes. Life processes slow down, the eyeballs are motionless. During this period, brain activity decreases, sound sleep sets in.
Third phase- deep dream. Life processes continue to slow down. Closed human eyes slowly rotate.
Fourth phase deeper slow wave sleep, lasting about 30 minutes. It is generally accepted that during this period a person grows, his immune system is restored.
The phases of slow-wave sleep take place alternately, from the first phase to the fourth. Morning sleep excludes the fourth phase and the sequence changes. After the second phase, the third comes, then again the dream goes into the second phase, then the REM phase follows, it is worth noting that the REM sleep phase lengthens with each subsequent cycle.
Why should a person sleep?
For the whole day a person experiences a very heavy load, not only physical, but also psychological, by the end of the day his body needs rest. The muscles that help the heart and blood vessels work slow down, therefore, the flow of blood to the organs decreases, so the person experiences fatigue.
A person is obliged to sleep, because he must give rest to his body, restore his strength. Also, during sleep, vital processes are normalized.
The human brain also needs rest. During wakefulness, a person receives a huge amount of information and impressions. During the night, when a person sleeps, the brain continues to work, it assimilates the information received, and also sorts it. Consequently, if a person sleeps too little, then his brain simply does not have time to do the work for which the night time is intended, and the person feels tired and depressed in the morning.
In order not to overwork your brain, you should alternate your day work, and not get hung up on one thing all day.
How is daytime sleep different from nighttime sleep?
Many cannot say for sure which is better, sleep at night and stay awake during the day, or vice versa. However, people who sleep during the day instead of at night put their body at great risk.
Specifically at night, sleep helps the brain's pineal gland to produce the hormone melatonin, which regulates circadian rhythms. Most production of melatonin occurs from midnight to 4 am.
Also, this hormone has antioxidant properties, that is, it is able to slow down the aging of the body, skin, improves the functioning of the digestive tract and brain, the immune system and the endocrine system, and in addition helps to fight stress.
However, a lack of melatonin can lead to early aging, obesity, colds, cardiovascular and other diseases.
The question arises, is daytime sleep necessary at all? Many doctors and experts believe that daytime sleep is very important for a person. It reduces the risk of diseases of the heart and blood vessels, is able to quickly restore a person's strength.
What is the best time of day to sleep?
Everyone knows that after eating, one feels tired and cravings for sleep appear. Why is this happening? The stomach received food in order to process it, a large amount of blood and oxygen enters it, and the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain decreases, respectively, the brain slows down its work and the person wants to sleep.
Studies have shown that a person feels a desire to sleep when the body temperature drops. These periods run at night from 3 to 5 in the morning. During the day, this phenomenon is also observed from 1 to 3 hours. This time is the most suitable for daytime sleep.
Thanks to daytime sleep, a person is able to increase his mental activity and increase efficiency. Nerves calm down, mood rises. Another daytime sleep will help improve memory, enhance imagination - this will lead to the emergence of new and interesting ideas.
So do not miss the opportunity to sleep during the day. However, do not sleep too long, 30 minutes will be enough. Otherwise, instead of vigor and freshness of mind, you risk getting irritability and lethargy, and, in addition, a possible headache.
The question often arises of how much time a person needs to sleep, however, it depends on the individual and on his environment. You just need to listen to the needs of your body. Biological rhythms and clocks are individual for everyone. But in general, a healthy body needs 7-8 hours of sleep.
Sleep disorders
Surely, every person is familiar with the problem of sleep disorders. When you can’t fall asleep for a long time, the thoughts in your head haunt you, you wake up because of a noisy irritant or from stuffiness, cold. Most people experience this from time to time. If a person has to experience this constantly, then these violations should be considered as a painful sleep disorder.
Insomnia is the most well-known sleep disorder. Insomnia is not considered a separate disease, it is a symptom that can result from many disorders in the body. For example, it can be caused by stress, alcohol or psychoactive substances.
Narcolepsy - immense bouts of drowsiness can overcome you at any moment. It doesn't matter where you are now and what you are doing, they usually do not last long, but these lost seconds, minutes can be especially life-threatening. For example, if a person falls asleep while driving a car.
Such a person is constantly haunted by nightmares, auditory hallucinations prevent him from falling asleep, double vision is also possible, he is overcome by headaches, and even memory loss is possible.
Sopor
A person who fell asleep in a lethargic sleep can be taken for dead. His breathing is not noticeable, the pulse is not palpable, the heart practically does not beat. The cause of such a dream can be a brain tumor, as well as a traumatic brain injury, and even a deep mental shock.
A person who has a stable sleep disorder should definitely see a doctor and conduct a medical examination and possible treatment.
If you find an error, typo or other problem, please highlight a piece of text and click Ctrl+Enter. You can also attach a comment to this issue.
From a scientific point of view, it is impossible to see in a dream something that was not previously perceived by the brain: after all, our consciousness cannot “fish out” from the memory “computer” something that is not there, has never been and, therefore, cannot be! Therefore, some researchers are still of the opinion that dreams cannot predict and anticipate events, they are only a reflection of reality.
Cases are repeatedly described when relatives saw the death of their loved ones in a dream. Comparing the day and hour, they were amazed at the incredible coincidence. From distant antiquity, the legend of Princess Olga, the daughter of Prophetic Oleg, has come down to our days. Olga saw in a dream the death of her beloved husband, Prince Igor, who, as usual, was going on a tribute campaign to the Polovtsians. Seeing him off, she asked him not to take more tribute than was due. However, Igor did not listen to his wife, he turned his horse and came for tribute again. Then the angry Polovtsy dealt cruelly with the prince. Olga avenged the death of her husband, the people nicknamed her "Wolf". But very soon they began to consider her a saint. She again had a dream in which she was advised to go to Byzantium. There Olga converted to Christianity, and Emperor Constantine himself became her godfather.
Margarita Tuchkova - the wife of the general, hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, Alexander Tuchkov - had a dream one night: on the wall above her head there was a piece of paper enclosed in a black frame, where it was written in French: "Your fate will be decided in Borodino." Drops oozed from the letters and ran down the paper. On September 1, 1812, she received news of her husband's death in the battle of Borodino.
Foggy morning. Peter-Pavel's Fortress. Drum beat. and five people awaiting execution. What's this? Description of the real events of the massacre of the leaders of the Decembrist uprising? Yes, but at the same time, this is the dream of the mother of the Decembrist K.D. Ryleeva, who dreamed about her when her ten-year-old son fell seriously ill. Sitting at the bed of a sick boy, the mother began to pray and ask the Almighty for his recovery. Unbeknownst to herself, she fell asleep. She had a wonderful dream in which she was shown the end of her son's life if he recovered. In a dream, she was asked what she would choose herself: a healthy child who would live another ten years next to her, but then end his life on the scaffold, or would he die ten years old, avoiding a painful end? Mother chose the first. Her dream became a reality in 1825, when the uprising against autocracy and serfdom was crushed and its organizers were hanged.
Abraham Lincoln was also warned in a dream about his death. In his memoirs there are such lines: “As soon as I managed to go to bed, I immediately fell asleep, and I had a dream. Dead silence reigned around me, when suddenly I heard suppressed sobs and sighs. I got up and went into another room. a striking sight appeared before me: a hearse on which lay a dead man covered with a burial veil. "Who died in the White House?" I asked the soldier. "The President," he answered me, "he died at the hands of an assassin." President Lincoln was shot by an assassin while visiting a theater.
A young American woman had a dream about her mother, who boarded the Titanic on April 14, 1912. In the dream, her mother was escaping after a ship collided with an iceberg on a boat. The dream repeated the real picture of the death of the Titanic, and her mother was among the few lucky ones who managed to survive after this tragedy.
A well-known case is when Adolf Hitler, at the beginning of his military career in the rank of a simple corporal, woke up from a nightmare: he dreamed that he was covered with debris. He immediately rushed to the exit, a few minutes later a shell hit his bunker, and everyone who was there died.
Modern analysts recognize the existence of predictive or prophetic dreams, which are based on an intuitive calculation of expected and probabilistic events. Such dreams can also occur both in the form of symbolism and in clear text. Of particular interest on the part of scientists is still the prediction of certain events in a dream.
Widely known are the modern studies of Academician P.K. Anokhin. He came to the conclusion that the brain not only monitors the subtlest processes in the body, but also evaluates the environment, models the most likely outcome of the situation and reproduces it in the form of a dream. Research conducted over the past decades has confirmed the existence of a so-called "foresight center" in our brain. It has been proven that the brain can not only feel the subtlest processes occurring in the human body, but is also able to assess the situation and model its possible outcome.
It must be said that all accidents in our life are quite natural, and much of what happens next is already, as it were, “prepared” in advance in the subtle world, both positive and negative, and everything that happens to a person sometimes has an effect on those are perfectly valid reasons. The restless state is caused by the fact that a person does not understand what is happening to him, and he does not have the opportunity to correctly assess what is happening in order to then take some action. In addition, any upcoming changes in our lives are always associated with expectation and the need to be ready for the most incredible surprises. Sometimes a person is clearly aware that there is no obvious cause for alarm, however, any living being is arranged in such a way that his subconscious mind involuntarily reacts to everything that stands out and attracts his attention, and in a dream it tries to send a warning, and such a reaction can be immediate and quite unambiguous.
A person who does not have the habit of following the rules when crossing the street subconsciously prepares himself for, at first glance, unexpected traffic accidents, and he is much more likely to be hit by a car than an attentive and cautious person. But after all, a person, according to all spiritual laws, must go to another world in a natural way, having lived the full time allotted to him, and therefore, when he begins to have disturbing dreams, it is the Universe that sends him “SOS!” and asks him to take a closer look at what is happening and analyze his behavior. Our subconscious mind is wiser than our mind. If a person does not pay attention to these distress signals, then there is nothing to be done, and a bad dream may well come true. As you can see, there is no special mysticism here!
There is another kind of dreams, when in a dream what you think about for a long time comes true. If a person has a goal and a desire to get something, then, naturally, his brain will constantly work on solving this problem. A person not only thinks about it constantly, but in real life all his actions are aimed at making the desire come true. He develops plans on how to achieve the goal and achieve the desired result, and with these thoughts he often goes to bed, which, accordingly, is reflected in his dreams. After a while, a person achieves a goal, and the desire really comes true, but already in reality. It is quite clear that such a dream can be considered prophetic, but from a scientific point of view, this event should be attributed not to mysticism, but to the ability of our brain.
The following incident happened to one American paleontologist. He studied relic plants that have survived to this day. Once in a dream, he saw whole thickets of one relic at the foot of a mountain, just located not far from the city where the paleontologist lived. When the next morning he hurried to the mountain he saw in a dream, he really saw what he had been looking for for a long time. Can this be called a prophetic dream? The scientist himself did not take seriously such superstitions as prophetic dreams, so he began to recall recent events.
As it turned out, this was a hint of his subconscious: a few days ago he was hunting wild goats at this foot of the mountain, and all his thoughts were occupied only with hunting. However, the plant he needed came into the scientist's field of vision, and one fleeting glance at the plant turned out to be quite enough so that, against his will, it was not only imprinted in the brain, but also preserved. This fact became real in consciousness during sleep.
Prophetic dreams: coincidence or truth?
This is one of the most amazing phenomena of our psyche: science has not yet decided how we should relate to prophetic dreams. Consider it a fiction or a confirmation of the colossal possibilities lurking in our brain?
At the end of August 1883, Ed Samson, a reporter for The Boston Globe, drank heavily after checking in and, unable to walk home, fell asleep on the couch in the editorial office. In the middle of the night, he woke up in a panic: Samson dreamed that the tropical island of Pralape was dying due to a monstrous explosion of a volcano.
People disappearing in lava flows, a column of ash, giant waves - everything was so real that Ed Samson could not shake the vision. He decided to write down his dream, and then, still drunk, wrote "important" in the margin - to think at his leisure what it all meant. And went home, forgetting the notes on the table.
In the morning, the editor decided that Samson had received a message from some wire agency, and sent the information to the room. "Reportage" reprinted many newspapers before it turned out that Pralape Island was not on the map and no agency was broadcasting reports of the cataclysm.
The case for Samson and The Boston Globe could turn out badly, but exactly at that moment information came about the terrible eruption of the Krakatoa volcano. In the smallest detail, coinciding with what Samson saw in a dream. Not only that: it turned out that Pralape is the ancient native name of Krakatoa.
Today, of course, it is impossible to check how true this story, which happened almost 130 years ago, is. But there is too much evidence of so-called prophetic dreams to indiscriminately declare all of them to be mere inventions.
Such dreams were witnessed by Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein, Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain - and tens of thousands of other people.
Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein, Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain - and tens of thousands of other people throughout the history of mankind, regardless of era, civilization and culture, testified to such dreams.
These dreams contain information that is not symbolic: the images are much more vivid than in "ordinary" dreams, and the meaning is not covered by anything. And to understand these dreams, there is no need to analyze them.
Since the birth of parapsychology at the end of the 19th century, which is trying to explore the supernatural abilities of a person from the point of view of science, its adherents have tried to understand whether prophetic dreams are a reflection of the process of “subconscious logic”.
Perhaps we are constructing future events on the basis of signs not fixed by consciousness? After all, without our conscious participation, the brain is able to register an incredible amount of the smallest details lost in the general array of information: barely audible sounds, images caught out of the corner of the eye, microvibrations, smells, fragments of random thoughts and words.
Without our conscious participation, the brain registers an incredible amount of tiny details.
During sleep, the brain sorts and categorizes these data, establishes connections between them, and perhaps deduces from their totality the inevitability of events whose logic is not available to us in the waking state. Perhaps this could be an excellent explanation for some dreams. But not all.
What vibrations and sounds could tell the same Samson in a Boston bar that at that very moment a volcano began to erupt on the other side of the world, and even tell the name of the island, which last appeared on maps in the middle of the 17th century?
laboratory dreams
Psychophysiologist Vadim Rotenberg once dreamed that he fell, slipping near the house, and his glasses broke on the ice. Of course, there was nothing special in this dream, but the next morning Rotenberg slipped near the house - in the very place that he had seen in a dream. Glasses, of course, fell and broke.
But it was not this event that prompted Vadim Rotenberg to think seriously about the strange dreams, but his scientific specialty - he has been engaged in the psychophysiology of memory and interhemispheric relations of the brain for a long time and professionally. And I have come across the topic of prophetic dreams more than once.
“When I began to be interested in prophetic dreams, hypnosis and other mysterious phenomena, colleagues predicted a complete obstruction of the academic world,” he says. “But that didn't scare me. I am sure that the topic still deserves serious scientific study.”
Unfortunately, there are many difficulties along the way. The subjective ones are that the scientific community is indeed very skeptical about parapsychology.
“Academic science is dominated by the idea of random coincidences of dream images with future events,” explains Vadim Rotenberg. “Such coincidences are statistically very unlikely, but they are remembered because of their high personal significance.”
We may even dream every night that a person close to us, for example, strokes a cat: most likely, we simply will not remember such a dream. But if in a dream the same person sticks his head into the mouth of a tiger, then the dream will no longer be forgotten. And if something like this happens soon in reality, then we will completely believe in prophetic dreams. Although it will be just a coincidence.
There are also objective obstacles. How is it possible to record dreams and the information received in them? Nevertheless, such attempts are being made.
Psychologists Montague Ullman and Stanley Krippner, for example, recorded physiological parameters during sleep in the participants of the experiment: the electrical activity of brain neurons, eye movements, muscle tone, pulse.
Based on these data, the onset of REM sleep, the phase of sleep accompanied by dreams, was determined. At this moment, one of the researchers, being in a separate room, focused on "transferring" certain thoughts and images to the sleeping person.
After this, the subject was awakened and asked to recount the dream. In dreams, the information that was transmitted to the sleeping person was regularly present. Subsequently, the results of this study were repeatedly confirmed.
Through space and time
Vadim Rotenberg puts forward a hypothesis that could explain the results of these experiments. Its essence is that the left hemisphere of the brain, which dominates while we are awake, is responsible for the analysis, rational explanation and critical perception of reality.
But in a dream, the main role passes to the right hemisphere, responsible for imaginative thinking. Freed from conscious and critical control, the right hemisphere can manifest its unique abilities.
Freed from conscious control, the right hemisphere can display unique abilities
One of which is the ability to pick up certain signals at a distance. First of all, this concerns information about our loved ones, since it is especially important for us.
“I had a friend who literally intimidated his mother: several times upon waking up, he said that he needed to contact one or another of their relatives or friends (sometimes living in another city), because everything was not all right with him. And every time it turned out that something tragic really happened, ”says Vadim Rotenberg.
And yet such dreams, although they impress us beyond measure, can hardly be called prophetic: after all, they contain information about events that occur with people separated from us in space, and not in time.
Is there any way to explain dreams that clearly tell us what is yet to happen? Perhaps yes. But for this, it will be necessary to revise no less than our fundamental ideas about the Universe.
"How can that be?"
Back in the 1960s, physicist John Stuart Bell mathematically proved what was then confirmed experimentally: two particles can exchange information at a speed faster than the speed of light, as if reversing the flow of time in this way. Completely isolated from each other, beams of photons behave as if each particle "knows" in advance how the other will behave.
Bell himself, in popular lectures, illustrated this incredible fact with a simple example: suppose there is a man in Dublin who always wears red socks, and in Honolulu there is a man who always wears green.
Imagine that we somehow forced a man in Dublin to take off his red socks and put on green ones. Then the man in Honolulu must at that moment - without being able to know what happened in Dublin! Take off your green socks and put on your red ones. How is this possible?
Is the information transmitted between them at superluminal speed through some secret channels? Or do both receive it from some future, really knowing how and at what moment to act?
“Bell's theorem has presented physicists with an unpleasant dilemma. One of two things is assumed: either the world is not objectively real, or there are superluminal connections in it,” notes the founder of transpersonal psychology, Stanislav Grof.
But if so, then our usual ideas about linear time, calmly flowing from yesterday to tomorrow, become extremely doubtful. Of course, it is difficult to admit that the world does not work the way we used to think.
But here is what the outstanding physicist of the twentieth century, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman wrote about our problems with understanding the Universe and its laws:
“The difficulty here is purely psychological - we are constantly tormented by the question: “How can this be?”, Which reflects an uncontrollable, but completely unreasonable desire to imagine everything through something very familiar.
If you can, do not torture yourself with the question “But how can this be?”, because otherwise you will enter a dead end from which no one has yet got out. Nobody knows how it can be."
But if the structure of the world does not lend itself well - at least for the time being - to our usual, "left hemisphere" logic, then maybe the right hemisphere can come to the rescue? This is exactly what Vadim Rotenberg suggests.
“The complex network of real interconnections that determines the future does not fit into the rigid coordinates of logical thinking, slips out of them and creates the impression of indeterminacy.
But right hemispheric imaginative thinking simply does not use this grid of coordinates, and for it the real interweaving of connections does not look either unnecessarily complex or internally contradictory.
And therefore, the right hemisphere is able to capture these connections in their entirety in such breathtaking fullness that, as a result, it is possible to predict the future.
And in this case, prophetic dreams not only do not look like something surprising, but, on the contrary, become almost inevitable - after all, it is in a dream that our right hemisphere receives maximum freedom.
“Of course, this is just my point of view, it is by no means universally recognized, and, of course, I cannot prove it scientifically,” Vadim Rotenberg stipulates.
But perhaps science should pay more serious attention to the phenomenon of prophetic dreams? Who knows, suddenly it will not only not contradict physics, but on the contrary, it will push it to create a new model of the world.”
Prophecies without miracles
The founder of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, believed in the possibility of anticipating events in a dream that had not yet happened. He himself had dreams that can be called "prophetic".
But in his psychotherapeutic practice, Jung sought, above all, to find realistic explanations for the dreams of his patients.
“I remember one case with a man hopelessly entangled in some dark deeds. As a kind of outlet, he developed a passion for climbing. He tried thereby to "rise above himself."
Once he dreamed that from the top of a mountain he was taking a step into the void. When I heard his story, I immediately saw the danger that threatened him and tried to convey this warning to the patient. He didn't listen. Six months later, he "stepped into the void."
The guide-guide saw how he and a friend descended the rope. A friend found a foothold on the edge of a cliff, and my patient followed him down. Suddenly he let go of the rope, said the guide, and seemed to jump.
Another case concerns a woman whose self-satisfaction knew no bounds. However, her dreams reminded her of unseemly situations in the past.
When they were discovered by me, the patient indignantly refused to acknowledge any such thing. Then her dreams began to be filled with hints of the danger that lay in wait for her while walking through the forest. (Usually she walked there alone, reminiscing.)
I realized what was threatening her, and warned her repeatedly, but to no avail. Soon, during one of these walks, this woman was attacked by a sexual maniac. If it were not for the help of passers-by who heard her cry, she would not have survived.
There is no magic here. The woman's dreams told me that she was secretly yearning to experience something similar, just like the mountaineer, who was subconsciously looking for a final solution to his difficult problems.
Thus, dreams can sometimes anticipate certain situations long before they happen. It is not necessarily a miracle or some form of foreknowledge. Many crises in our lives have had a long, unconscious prehistory.
We are approaching them step by step, unaware of the accumulating dangers. However, what we overlook is often perceived by the subconscious, which can convey information through dreams.”
6 curious facts about dreams
Dreams frighten and excite us. We believe that images from our unconscious certainly carry an important meaning - you just need to find it. What does modern science say about dreams?
"The Secret of Survival -
From childhood, we are taught that it is not good to lie. And then they add that you need to be polite. Seems like one doesn't go well with the other? The unusual point of view of the writer Alexander Genis will help put everything in its place.
Last week, psychologists created a list of symbols that will help us decipher our dreams and understand ourselves. At the same time, dreams are often prophetic. We have selected 6 facts about prophetic dreams.
What are prophetic dreams from the point of view of science?
1. The topic of sleep and the characteristics of dreams remains a mystery, despite advances in biology and medicine. In this regard, since ancient times, in the human imagination, there has been a desire to interpret dreams from the point of view of their prophetic meaning. For scientists, the question of such dreams has no definite answer. The connection of dreams with the present is obvious - with our unconscious desires, feelings, problems, hopes, the state of the body and psyche. This in many ways sheds light on most types of dreams that are considered to be prophetic.
3. What other types of prophecy dreams are there? For example, there are coincidence dreams. It must be remembered that only those dreams that are repeated in the events of subsequent wakefulness are fixed and “replicated” in memory. In relation to other dreams, this is a very small proportion - according to research, only one of 1000 stories about what was seen in a dream. There are self-fulfilling predictions, when a person who has a dream and is impressed by it subconsciously behaves so that it comes true. After all, there are dreams about the content of which a person either consciously lies, or unconsciously fabricates or distorts facts in an effort to demonstrate his uniqueness.
4. There is an opinion that prophetic dreams are associated with information about a future event that a person has already received, but is not yet aware of it. This applies to dream-inferences. In them, a person intuitively compares information, often perceived subconsciously, and this then results in a dream in a correct assessment of future events. That is, he is able to build a correct forecast for the future in a dream, sometimes accurately anticipating the content and sequence of events.
5. Are there dreams that cannot be explained? There are few of them. Modern science cannot yet give a logical explanation to only a small proportion of dreams - for example, these are the dreams of Cicero, Lomonosov, Chaliapin and other famous personalities. Perhaps we simply do not know all the ways and means of obtaining information by a person about the world around us. That is why you need to be more careful about dream books and all kinds of dream interpreters. Only the person himself is able to comprehend the meaning of his dream, and this is possible only under the guidance of a specialist, whose role is to competently direct and control this process.
Politics
Society
Columnists
Kara-Murza-st.
Bykov
Belkovsky
Culture and TV
Show Business
Health
Tourism
Real estate
Read also
Subscribe to our publications
Only in Interlocutor
Zurab Tsereteli:
Azamat Musagaliev:
Elena Yakovleva:
Andrey Smolyakov:
Petr Aven:
Rostrud allowed to be late for work? Only in words
To your health. Who is at risk for thrombophlebitis?
Mortgages in 2018: to take or not to take?
Workaholism - why it's bad: signs, symptoms, psychologist's advice
Even one cigarette a day increases the risk of a heart attack
Contact Information
- founder - Sobesednik-Media LLC
- (105318, Moscow, Zverinetskaya st., 13)
- Chief editor - Zaritsky A.V.
- (General questions, communication with journalists)
- (Fax)
- (subscription, distribution)
- (Advertising)
Communication with departments
- News, politics:
- Investigations:
- Culture:
- General site mail:
- Advertising on the website
Our production
Sobesednik.ru
Prophetic dreams: true or not? Opinion of a somnologist
Sorcerers and ghosts, instantaneous movements in space and the transmigration of souls, abductions by aliens and encounters with the Loch Ness monster... How we would like to believe that in our everyday life there is a place for the inexplicable!
The less this or that phenomenon is studied, the more myths and fables surround it. For many hundreds of years, sleep has remained the object of absolutely fantastic conjectures. Recently, I came across information that up to 80% of the Russian population believes that prophetic dreams are true ... Being a somnologist, I cannot ignore this topic full of delusions. And, of course, I intend to argue with those who believe in the mysticism of prophetic dreams.
What are dreams?
First, let's figure out what dreams are. Dreams are called "shards of the day." It is believed that this is a kind of by-product of brain activity, which is formed at night during the processing of information received during the day. Separate fragments of this information flow add up, mix with each other, giving birth to our dreams. From this point of view, the origin of dreams was very well described by I.M. Sechenov, who described them as "unprecedented combinations of experienced impressions."
The content of dreams is determined not only by fresh, but also by earlier memories. For example, it happens that a sleeping person suddenly sees in a dream a person whom he has not met for several years. Why is this possible? The fact is that during sleep, the subcortical layer is disinhibited and chaotic excitation of neurons belonging to different parts of the brain is observed. For this reason, long-standing memories can be “embedded” in dreams, including even those that a person would seem to have long forgotten about.
Thus, there is no mysticism in the origin of dreams. Are there prophetic dreams that can predict the future? Most likely this is a hoax. Moreover, we can say with confidence: it is everyday reality that "predicts" our dreams, and not vice versa.
Why do dreams sometimes come true
Sometimes even the most inveterate skeptics suddenly begin to believe in miracles: there comes a moment in their life when, for some unknown reason, some dream comes true. How can this be explained?
The simplest answer to the question of why prophetic dreams are dreaming is a common coincidence. Every night a person sees several dozen separate dreams, their number reaches several thousand a year, so sooner or later one of them may quite accidentally repeat itself in reality.
Singer Irina Otieva, confident that prophetic dreams really exist, once said that at the age of 10 she saw herself in a dream, already an adult, singing in a huge concert hall. She realized that this dream was prophetic when, many years later, she performed in the Rossiya Concert Hall - in the very one from her dream.
However, after I started questioning her, we found out two things. Firstly, she dreamed of a singing career from early childhood, and secondly, even before her dream, she had already been to Russia with her parents. Impressions from the concert, dreams of creativity and fame - this is how, apparently, this “prophetic” dream turned out.
Even those dreams, the plot of which does not relate to everyday life at all, can be attributed to a coincidence. The reason for this is the information flows that fall on a person every day. Television, radio, the Internet… The information load from the outside is simply colossal, sometimes we don’t even record everything we see and hear, but information, regardless of our will, enters the brain, and in the process of its processing, the most unusual dreams arise. Some are interested in: what to do to have a prophetic dream? According to this logic, the answer to the question is simple: live an ordinary life, look around, pay attention and remember.
Once I spoke with a woman who claimed that a few days before the fire in the Ostankino tower she had a dream that the tower had already burned down. Was it a prophetic dream? On the eve of her dream, this lady could well walk past the TV tower on her way to work, then watch some story about a fire on TV, and then, quite naturally, see in a dream a “cocktail” of a tower and a fire.
Subconscious information analysis
Are you familiar with the concept of enlightenment? There is a problem in front of you, you do not know how to solve it, and at one moment the solution suddenly comes as if by itself. This is the result of the analytical abilities of our brain. We may not focus on thinking, but the brain still automatically “thinks for us” and sometimes delivers the results of its activities in such an unexpected and pleasant way.
Analysis and the search for solutions are processes that take place in our head all the time, and immersion in sleep does not stop them. That is why the intuitive, predictive guesses of the brain are sometimes reflected in our dreams. Unconscious analysis of information is another answer to the question of why prophetic dreams occur.
One man told the story of how a "prophetic dream" helped him find the missing value. During a business trip in a hotel, his watch disappeared. He left the room in the morning for the pool, and when he returned a couple of hours later, they were not on the bedside table near the bed, although he distinctly remembered that he had taken them off and put them there before leaving.
The man turned to the hotel security, he was assured that no one entered the room in his absence. Suspecting a universal conspiracy, he searched the entire room and did not find the loss. Tired of searching, he lay down on the bed and accidentally dozed off. He did not think how to see a prophetic dream - he just fell asleep. In a dream, he saw how he looked into the bag with swimming trunks and a towel, which he took with him, and saw a watch there. Waking up and doing the same thing in reality, he actually found his "treasure".
At the time of the story, this gentleman believed that he was faced with a double riddle: firstly, he did not understand how the watch could get into the package, and secondly, he allegedly saw a prophetic dream. However, by restoring the chain of events that happened on that mysterious morning, he had to debunk his belief in miracles.
It turns out that before leaving for the pool, the dreamer had a fleeting intention to look after swimming in a fitness bar, so he took his wallet with him. Or rather, I thought that I had taken it, but in reality, out of absent-mindedness, I grabbed a watch from the bedside table. He never went to the bar - he was tired of swimming and forgot. But during sleep, his brain “remembered” this, analyzed the information and provided him with a ready-made solution, telling him where the lost item was. Did this person see a prophetic dream? In a way, yes. But there was nothing mystical about it. Everything can be explained scientifically...
In the situation described above, the prophetic dream is, as it were, turned into the past, but still I would like to predict the future. Analysis and forecast are, in a certain sense, a prediction of the future based on past experience. We plan our lives, we expect that something will happen in the future, and in connection with this, we somehow prepare for this. This is precisely the uniqueness of the human brain, that it has abstract thinking, it can think and predict the future.
But for some reason, we absolutize such predictions in a dream. Therein lies the problem. Any forecast of events in the future is probabilistic. An event may or may not occur with a certain probability. For example, if you dreamed that you would go to work tomorrow (like all the previous weeks, months and years) - will it be a prophetic dream? 99% of people will say no. But how not? You dreamed about the future!
And here is another example. You dreamed that you were leaving the house and an icicle would fall on your head. You went out and she really fell! Most people will say that this is a prophetic dream. But in fact, this happened an event that could happen, albeit with an extremely low probability. The brain predicted it, as a person looked at the weather forecast the day before, which spoke of a thaw, icicles and black ice.
If you dream of some potential trouble in the future, then it is quite possible to analyze the situation and take some action to avoid it. For example, a month ago you crossed the road in the wrong place in front of rushing cars. And suddenly you dreamed that you were hit by a car. Think about it. Maybe you should walk the extra 100 meters and use the pedestrian crossing?
But it’s not worth bringing your behavior to the point of absurdity in connection with such “prophetic dreams”. Imagine the following situation. You didn't come to work today. And tomorrow write an explanatory note to the boss: “Dear Chief! I'm not sure if there are prophetic dreams, but since I dreamed that I was hit by a car, I decided not to leave the house all day. At best, you will be advised to see a psychiatrist, and at worst, you will simply be fired.
Here we can recall the saying of one Englishman: “If you dreamed that horse number 6 would win tomorrow at the races, then bet money on it, but do not mortgage your house.”
Please note: very often people realize that some of their dreams turned out to be prophetic only at the moment when it comes true. Until then, they may not even remember it! Probably, in such cases, prophetic dreams are imitated by such a well-known phenomenon as deja vu.
Sometimes a person has a spontaneous failure in the propagation of signals through the information channels of the brain. New information gets into the departments responsible for memories. This makes us perceive the current situation as something that has already happened in the past.
Deja vu is a very specific sensation that is accompanied by a feeling of "out of reality". For this reason, during deja vu, a person may think that he saw the event that just happened in a dream. Hence the photographic coincidence of reality and some "prophetic" dreams.
“Everyone lies,” said the main character of the famous television series (“Doctor House”). And this is true - a person, without noticing it, tells a lie or half-truth at least 20 times a day.
Are there prophetic dreams? Many are easily convinced that yes. Moreover, this topic is very mysterious. It gives the dreamer significance and arouses interest in relation to his person. This is used by people seeking to attract attention to themselves. Pay attention to those who allegedly see prophetic dreams. As a rule, these are teenagers, older people and women with problems in their personal lives - a typical list of people deprived of attention. Thus, it is worthwhile to perceive stories about prophetic dreams with a healthy distrust.
The idea of the existence of prophetic dreams is strongly supported by various interpreters, predictors and "magicians in the seventh generation." This is a very good tool for influencing people with unstable mentality. Figures of the occult sciences, as a rule, are very good psychologists who can convince an impressionable person of anything. And just prophetic dreams are a very fertile topic, providing a strong and long-term dependence of people who have fallen into their trap.
Several times I had to consult people with severe insomnia and depression, which developed against the background of constant expectation of some kind of trouble from supposedly prophetic dreams. It usually goes like this.
A person comes to the interpreter of dreams and tells his dream. Whatever he says, he will be told that everything is terrible, the chakras are closed, the biofield is damaged, the beloved will leave, there will be no money and diseases will fall ... Of course, this is followed by an offer to fix everything, but you need to come regularly and tell your prophetic dreams; Truth, the most honest word – this will help! And it is on this that healing rituals will depend.
Naturally, all this is not done for free. After some time, a person is told that the problem is even deeper, black magic is already involved here, enemies are poking his Voodoo doll with needles and, in general, the strongest evil eye ... Even more manipulations and money are needed. The unfortunate person develops severe chronic stress, a persistent reflex of expecting trouble is formed. All this leads to depression and severe insomnia, which has to be treated by psychiatrists and somnologists.
Prophetic dreams are true. Usually they dream from Thursday to Friday, and on Christmas time you can even guess at a dream. Special conspiracies and rituals will help you see a dream that will surely come true in reality. If on any given day you had a dream and you want it to come true, in no case do not tell it to anyone for three days. If you saw a bad dream, hold your crown, light a candle and look at its flame, knock on the window three times ...
Ladies and gentlemen! Don't turn a secret belief in miracles into deliberately cultivated madness. Today there is no reason to believe that prophetic dreams really exist. Of course, it would be fun to see your future spouse long before you meet or find out what will be listed on the stock exchange next year. But, alas, this is not possible.
Psychologists say that the tendency to believe in various kinds of predictions suggests that a person does not like to take responsibility. Do not look for clues and predictions in the chaotic images of night dreams. Manage your life yourself!
Cancel reply
thank you very much, you saved me!
Julia, thanks for your comment!
Hello, I am an ordinary person, I don’t go to magicians and fortune-tellers, I don’t believe in magic, but I have a problem. The problem with dreams that sometimes come true.
I determined a pattern - most often I have such dreams at the moments of the greatest emotional outburst, be it happiness, grief or stress. I try my best not to fall out of reality and I am skeptical about this, but how can I see people (their names and appearance) if I meet them only after half a year or a year? How can I see situations and problems that I have not yet encountered in real life?
If it is possible to explain a dream in which a neighbor's cat comes in a dream to say goodbye and says that it is "time to leave" and after 2 weeks she really unexpectedly dies, then how to explain the dream where you see the view from the window of some house, but in reality you move there after a year after the expiration of circumstances? A house that is located in another city and in which you have never been. How can you see in detail a road that you never traveled and all the bus stops to your friends house that will appear in 8 months? And I have many such examples. Life is already full of fears, especially in mine, but when there is such an unpleasant experience, it is very difficult to live fully. It's good when good dreams come true, but more often they are intertwined with my main life fears, which makes my life sometimes unbearable. Sensitive informational field in moments of emotional outburst? Mystic? Mysterious brain work that draws information from future memories. I have no idea, but I would like to one day agree with the author of this article.
Thank you for your comment!
Why didn’t all these magicians win the lottery or, for example, didn’t buy stocks for a fall ... Poor grandmothers and spiritualized girls carry the last money to find out what is there in the future ...
Thank you for your comment.
Thanks for your lectures! I always visit your sections at rhinology congresses with pleasure. Sincerely.
Thanks for the kind words!
Every day I predict the future and over 90% of the predictions come true. For 8 months made more than 600 predictions. I place bets and win - the account grows exponentially. The forecast does not come true only if you are sick (temperature), or terribly tired - personally for me it's like that.
You just didn't touch it, didn't try to figure it out. They believed the nonsense that the teachers and the government spun - yes, it is simply unprofitable for them that you know the truth!
Dear Petr Naumovich!
If 90% of your predictions come true, then your account should already be more than Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates combined. If so, then I'm sincerely happy for you.
Regarding the harshness of your statements - real masters never speak so disrespectfully about opponents. The use of the words "nonsense" and "nonsense" is the lot of very narrow-minded and uneducated comrades.
So, then you have to treat patients with anxiety states (and without money!) After talking with such magicians, sorcerers and soothsayers ....
Sometimes a dream is just an extension of our daily worries and thoughts. But it may not have anything to do with our lives: war in the distant past or in the future, unknown places, mysterious creatures, completely unreal events. Some dreams surprise us - and this is a sure sign that their plot hides some other meaning. How do our dreams come about?
(Not) live broadcast
Our dreams convey messages from the unconscious and help us enter into a dialogue with it. They symbolically reflect our forbidden desires, allowing us to experience what we cannot get or do in reality (as Freud believed), or maintain mental balance (as Jung believed). What are dreams made of? 40% - from the impressions of the day, and the rest - from the scenes associated with our fears, anxieties, worries, neurophysiologist and somnologist Michel Jouvet believes. There are dream plots common to all mankind. But the same story has its own unique meaning for each of us.
What do we dream about the most? Men see other men in their dreams, sex with strangers, cars, tools and weapons. The action takes place in an unfamiliar place or in an open space. But women are less likely to leave the premises; they often dream of food, clothes, work. In addition, women tend to be more attentive to their dreams than men and remember them better.
Dreams work for us, even if their images are frightening. They talk about our anxiety, dissatisfaction, point to unresolved tasks. But if we calmly think about what we saw in a dream, the fear will gradually decrease. “Frightening dreams, shocking us, make us think,” explains Jungian psychoanalyst Vsevolod Kalinenko. “We see nightmares if our “I” ignores what the unconscious is trying to communicate.” Our consciousness tends to "forget" everything that is incompatible with our beliefs, but in some circumstances we can no longer do without this "forgotten" thing.
paradoxical dream
We see dreams in a special phase of sleep, which was discovered by the French neurophysiologist Michel Jouvet in 1959. Such a dream was called paradoxical. “While studying conditioned reflexes in cats, we unexpectedly recorded an amazing phenomenon,” says Michel Jouvet. - The sleeping animal showed rapid eye movements, intense brain activity, almost like during wakefulness, but the muscles were completely relaxed. This discovery turned all our ideas about dreams upside down. The state we have discovered is not a classical dream and wakefulness. We called it “paradoxical sleep” because it paradoxically combines complete muscle relaxation and intense brain activity.”
On the verge of dream and wake
Some of us are convinced that they are not dreaming. “Illness, accident or injury can cause neurological changes that lead to the disappearance of dreams,” explains Michel Jouvet. “Dreams can also disappear if REM sleep phases become too short and frequent.” But there are many more who simply do not remember their dreams. This is possible in two cases: either the person woke up a few minutes after the end of the dream, and during this time it disappeared from memory, or the images that emerged from the unconscious were subjected to strict censorship by the “I”.
For those who do not remember their dreams and regret it, there is a method of "free waking dreams" developed by psychotherapist Georges Romey (Georges Romey)*. The patient, immersed in an intermediate state of consciousness (waking dream), describes to the psychotherapist the images that come to his mind, without looking for logic. Little by little, the script is taking shape. According to Georges Romey, “Past experiences of trauma or hardship have fixed neurons in certain positions. In a state of relaxation, nerve impulses flow better, identifying and releasing blockages and thus facilitating awareness of images, memories and emotions. And not only does waking dream change what is written in neurons, but its study reinforces these changes. By combining Freudian dream interpretation (deciphering fantasies and personal repressions) with Jungian analysis (dealing with the collective unconscious) and using Georges Romeuy's symbol typology, the therapist helps the patient understand the dream.
notice, remember, consider
So, we had a dream that surprised or alerted us. What can be done to sort it out? To begin with, to show interest and curiosity, since our forgetfulness is precisely the result of insufficient attention to the world of dreams. And vice versa, if we begin to take an interest in our inner world, if the dream touched us or seemed important, our memory improves.
“We can almost forget a dream, but if the most insignificant fragment of it or even the feeling of sleep, its aftertaste, is remembered, this is sometimes enough to penetrate the slightly ajar door into the unconscious with the help of fantasies and memories,” says psychoanalyst Andrey Rossokhin. Often we immediately try to explain our dream to ourselves ... but this should not be done: thinking is a function of consciousness, and dreaming is the result of the activity of the unconscious. “We can be sincerely sure that we understand a dream, but this is nothing more than an illusion: in reality, we hear only the voice of our own logic,” Andrey Rossokhin believes. “Therefore, take your time, let the dream “breathe”, allow different thoughts and feelings to come that will arise in connection with what you see.”
Words and thoughts may at first glance seem completely unrelated to the dream. The apparent meaning of sleep is only a screen behind which are hidden deeper "messages" of the unconscious. It is necessary to notice details, especially unusual ones - often it is in them that the main idea of \u200b\u200bthe dream is encrypted. By changing the appearance and shape of ordinary objects, by creating strange situations, the unconscious gives us a hint: we must look here.
* Georges Romeuil, somnologist and writer, author of Dictionnaire de la symbolique des reves (Albin Michel, 2005), Stairway to Heaven and Un escalier vers le ciel , "Une reve eveille libre", Devry, 2009, 2010).
It is a basic and unconditional need. In a dream, the average person spends a third of his life, that is, about 25 years. The duration of a night's rest is approximately 7-8 hours, however, there are people who need 4-5 hours of sleep to fully restore their strength and maintain working capacity. But science still cannot explain the nature of dreams, it is only known that this is most likely a projection of our thoughts, feelings and experiences. Let's look at some interesting facts about human sleep.
Sleep phases
To date, human sleep is usually divided into five phases, which during the night can be repeated several times.
The first phase is sleep. At this time, a person experiences drowsiness, slowly sinks into sleep. Sleepy dreams, ideas for overcoming life's problems are possible.
The second phase is shallow or light sleep. Muscle tone decreases, heart rate slows down, body temperature decreases.
The third and fourth phases are collectively referred to as non-REM sleep. At this time, a person is immersed in a calm, deep sleep, rest and restoration of the body takes place.
The fifth phase of sleep is considered "rapid". It is at this moment that the sleeping person can observe rapid movements of the eyeballs. During this period, breathing and heart rhythm become uneven and right now a person is able to dream.
In the process of normal full-fledged sleep, a person goes through all phases. The first phase - the transition from wakefulness to falling asleep - is the shortest, it lasts 5-10 minutes. Other phases last from 20 to 30 minutes.
From what phase of sleep a person wakes up, his well-being also depends. Thus, the rise in the fast phase is accompanied by weakness, a feeling of lack of sleep, and apathy. Therefore, daily rest should not exceed 40-60 minutes.
Dream Colors
Scientists in the course of experiments were able to establish that if a person’s dream has predominantly blue and green tones, then his life is stable, measured, and nothing bad happens in it. People whose dreams are colored in shades of red are likely to have a fever or develop some kind of disease. Black and all dark colors indicate nervous tension, overwork and, possibly, an imminent emotional breakdown.
Emotions during sleep
It has been proven that for the most part dreams leave negative emotions rather than positive ones. The most commonly experienced feeling in a dream is a feeling of anxiety. As a result, people who are the least stressed, mentally and emotionally stable, rarely remember their dreams. But a suspicious and restless person, most likely, will relive the feelings experienced at night for a long time to come.
Setting and people
Interesting facts about dreams concern both the places where they occur and the characters. So, only 20% of dreams include real people and places that are well known to the sleeper. The rest is a figment of fantasy, a unique picture peculiar to a particular dream and person. Some people are able to see what is happening in a dream as if from the outside, being not a participant, but an observer of events. This phenomenon has been named and is a big mystery to scientists.
prophetic dreams
Many people have often heard that there is a prophetic dream and dreams. Interesting facts about this phenomenon can be found in the specialized literature. However, this phenomenon has not yet been proven. It is believed that a single disturbing dream can be easily ignored. But if an unpleasant dream is repeated several times, has a negative meaning, awakens feelings in a person, then it is worth considering. Perhaps this is how the brain sends warning signals that a person simply does not pay attention to during daytime wakefulness.
"What are you dreaming of..."
Scientists have also noticed the following interesting facts about dreams: men see at least 70% of men in their dreams, and women see equally representatives of both sexes. Heavy smokers who have given up a bad habit see the most vivid dreams, even more colorful than people who have never smoked.
Accompanied by snoring only during the slow phase, however, during snoring, people do not dream.
Dreams are also influenced by external factors. So, if a person fell asleep in a cold room, most likely, he will feel cold in his sleep, perhaps the action of sleep will unfold at the North Pole. During thirst, a person may dream that he is getting a glass of water and cannot drink it, as a result of which he wakes up and really realizes in reality that he is thirsty.
A dream in reality
There are proven facts about a person's dream in reality. In order to experience a similar state, you must do the following. After a long hard day at work, lie down on the sofa. It is better to lie on your back, stretch your arms along the body, close your eyes. Next, you should be in a stationary state and try not to fall asleep, you can think about something or remember the past day. After some time (usually no more than half an hour), you will feel heaviness in your chest, you may hear sounds. This is the so-called sleep paralysis. If at this moment you open your eyes, you can see hallucinations, but the body will not be able to move, as it is already asleep. This is the daydream. If you close your eyes, you can fall asleep for real.
Dreams are only for intellectuals
A group of scientists from the United States of America has been studying sleep and dreams for several years. Interesting facts were discovered during these studies. It turns out that only smart people can see dreams. This conclusion was made on the basis of a survey of more than two thousand people. Most of them claimed that they do not remember their dreams at all and hardly ever see them. However, some people who passed a series of intellectual tests said that, on the contrary, they perfectly remember part of their dreams. Further surveys showed that the more mentally developed a person is, the more vivid and colorful dreams he sees.
These people can be explained as follows: it is known that during a night's rest, the information received during the day is ordered. Accordingly, the busier an individual is during the day, the more problems he solves and the more he thinks, the more information he receives. So, during sleep, the brain is working on its "processing". Conversely, the less active the brain is during the day, the less information it receives, which means that it rests at night.
What about animals?
No less interesting facts about dreams can be found among representatives of the animal world. So, for example, in dolphins, half of the brain remains active during sleep. This is necessary in order to remain alert all the time and monitor the attack of predators.
They hold on to each other's paws even during sleep, so as not to move away.
Snails can sleep for about three years in a row.
Cats spend 70% of their lives sleeping.
Conclusion
So, sleep is the most common and at the same time one of the most mysterious processes that occur with the human body. Interesting facts about dreams are being discovered more and more every year, but scientists may not always find an explanation for them. And while the best minds of the whole world are struggling to unravel these processes, we can only remember that a person can live only 11 days without sleep, and a full 8-hour nightly rest every day restores the physical and mental strength of the body, replenishes energy resources and makes it possible to live a long and a fulfilling life.
