Whether we like it or not, dreams can tell us a lot about ourselves. And our understanding of the world around us.
On Midday Edition Monday, we discuss all things peaceful and scary in the dream world.
We start with the link between dreams and health. Then, we take a journey through lucid dreaming, and learn about dream interpretations across religions and even political affiliations.
So sit back, relax and don’t fall asleep on us for this episode of “Dreamy Edition.”
Guests:
Rubin Naiman, psychologist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine
Kristen LaMarca, licensed clinical psychologist at Lucidity Sleep Psychiatry in Vista
Kelly Bulkeley, dream researcher and psychologist of religion
"S1: Can you talk about the connection between dreams , sleep and then your health outcomes ? Yeah.
S2: So another sort of hidden in plain view critical fact about dreaming is dreaming is the natural bridge between waking and sleep. And we’re all aware that that insomnia , difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep , which is also difficulty falling asleep later in the night , uh , is another epidemic. People don’t sleep well , and in fact , after 50 years of sleep medicine , things are not getting better. And the reason for that is there’s a failure to recognize the importance , the full function of dreaming. We can’t fall asleep normally without going through a dream at the beginning of the night. And it turns out that a lot of awakening in the middle of the night happens when dreaming , when REM sleep is starting to fire up. So we need a new respect , a new regard. We need a new relationship with the dream world for lots of reasons. And one of them is it really is the secret of getting back to sleep when you can’t sleep. I recommend to my patients who have insomnia when they’re trying to sleep. Simply remember a dream. Think about a dream you had yesterday or last year. Think about a dream you saw in a film or someone else told you. As soon as you go into that dreamy type of consciousness , you’ve positioned yourself right next to her to sleep."
“S5: Yeah , yeah. Well , the the wonderful thing about keeping a dream journal is that as much as we can learn from exploring a single dream , um , much more opens up when we have a series of dreams to explore and look at and analyze. And , um , people have been doing this for for centuries , uh , recording their dreams and tracking them and looking for patterns And and now , thanks to various kinds of technology , we have , uh , uh , some really wonderful tools to help in that process. And , uh , so , yeah , so it’s a way of , um , uh , seeing the patterns that , that we often sense in , in our dreams over time. But if you can’t keep really , you know , good track of them , it’s hard to be really sure about that and really appreciate them today. You know , we’re lucky. We’re really lucky today. We have great tools that can help us see these things that that other people , you know , have been dreaming of hoping for , you know , writing out an on graph paper or , you know , quill and parchment kind of kind of methods , you know , so these are really interesting times for dream research , where the combination of these tools and people willing to , um , keep track of their dreams over time , uh uh , I think it’s going to accelerate the science of dreaming and really exciting ways.”