Lux vs. Low: MakeupJul.19.2020
Do you remember your dreams when you wake up? Most of us don’t because you forget about 90% of your dreams. In fact, within 5 minutes of waking up half of your dream has already been forgotten. For years, dreams have been a topic of discussion – from why we dream, why we dream what we dream, what our dreams mean, and more – raising questions, as well as discovering many different things about the concept of dreaming. Keep reading to find out more cool facts about dreams that you may have never heard of.
Did you know you can only dream about people you know or face that you have seen? You cannot make up an image of a stranger or unknown person while dreaming. We see real faces of real people that we have seen during our life but may not know or remember. We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces throughout our lives, so we have an endless supply of characters for our brains to utilize during our dreams.
Dreams and their meanings heavily revolve around symbolism – but, whatever symbol your dream picks on is most unlikely or be a symbol for itself. For example, a scary but common dream that many people have experienced is dreaming about losing teeth or that their teeth have fallen out. This dream doesn’t actually mean that your teeth are going to fall out, but it may mean that you are losing personal power and your ability to be assertive, decisive, and self-protective, according to Penny Peirce, the author of Dream Dictionary for Dummies.
The manifestation of a particular emotion can have a great impact on what your dreams consist of if your intentions for attracting that feeling are pure. In another sense – you can also control your dreams by inducing a lucid dream – a dream in which you are aware that you are dreaming although you’re asleep. Approximately half of all people can remember experiencing at least one instance of lucid dreaming, and some individuals are able to have lucid dreams quite frequently.
REM sleep is characterized by paralysis of the voluntary muscles. The phenomenon is known as REM atonia and prevents you from acting out your dreams while you’re asleep. Basically, because motor neurons are not stimulated, your body does not move. This is completely normal and not to be confused with sleep paralysis, although – it does have something to do with it. Sleep paralysis happens when you cannot move your muscles as you are waking up or falling asleep. This is because you are in sleep mode – AKA REM atonia – but your brain is active.
Is it possible for you to have the same dream as somebody else in different places around the world? Yes, absolutely! While dreams are often heavily influenced by our personal experiences, researchers have found that certain dream themes are very common across different cultures. For example, people from all over the world frequently dream about being chased, being attacked, or falling. A weird phenomenon that has been researched and no one can seem to find an answer is that hundreds of thousands of people have had a dream of the man in the photo above – but no one can ever recall who he is.
