I used to think that I don’t dream, because it’s been years since I remembered a dream when I woke up. Then in my psychology class, I learned that everyone dreams, but remembering them depends on where in your NREM-REM cycle you happen to be in when you wake up.
I’m gonna be a geek for a second and explain NREM-REM for the non-psych majors out there. NREM-REM stands for Non-Rapid Eye Movement — Rapid Eye Movement. (Named such because during REM sleep, your eye will be rapidly moving… if you watch someone sleep, you can see it jerking around under their eyelid.) For people around my age, the cycle lasts for about ninety minutes. When you first go to sleep, you start with about eighty minutes of NREM sleep (split across four different stages, which vary in “depth”) , during which your body heals itself physically, and about ten minutes of REM sleep, in which you experience dreams. (It’s been suggested that REM sleep is for mental healing.) With every complete cycle you complete, the REM time increases, so you usually get thirty to forty-five minutes of dream sleep during your last cycle of the night.
You only remember your dreams if you wake up during REM sleep. Oh, and people who wake up at the end of a sleep cycle have shown to feel more rested than those who are interrupted in the middle of a cycle. So you should all try to sleep in ninety-minute increments!
Anyways, going back to what I was talking about… the last two nights, I’ve woken up in the middle of dream sleep, so I actually remembered them. I was so excited, I was going to write about both here, but yesterday, by the time I brushed my teeth and stuff, I forgot what it was I had dreamt about. And today, I tried to circumvent that by jumping on the computer as soon as I woke up, but alas, I was distracted by AIM.
Oh well, although I don’t remember the content anymore, they were both happy dreams. So that’s cool.
last night i had a weird dream. wanna hear about it? well too bad, whether you want to or not, i’m going to tell you!!! have you seen the movie “forgotten”? like.. the people just got randomly sucked out of earth and into the sky… well, that’s what happened in my dream. me and some of the aphio folks (i remember BAO in particular) were locked inside of this building. some of us were being controlled and some of us were on a rescue mission. the people that were not being locked up had to rescue the people that were… but for some reason, if we say something with emotion (like, “i hate you!” or even just say anything not monotone-y), the words will get sucked into space and you’ll never be able to tell what the person said. haha that was weird huh! i woke up and i was like… wow. and then i went back to bed.