Understanding Dreams Essay

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Understanding Dreams One can spend about one third of one’s life sleeping. While sleeping the brain is still working and creates a subconscious reality, a reality that wouldn’t be possible in the real world. One can call this world “a dream”. Some dreams are more memorable than others and often people can’t even remember them. Dreams can tell one a lot about one’s emotions and how they affect one’s spiritually. They can help one solve everyday problems or open one’s eyes to a new idea. Dreams are thoughts that linger in the subconscious part of the brain and they can reveal themselves in a dream. When trying to analyze one’s dreams one must first understand the different stages of sleeping, the different types of dreams one can have and what symbols to look for to help one understand them. To understand one’s dreams one must first learn about the different stages of sleeping. “Sleep is prompted by natural cycles of activity in the brain and consists of two basic states: rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid eye movement (NREM)” (WEB MD Para 1). Rapid eye movement sleep also referred to as REM sleep is a normal stage of sleep which is categorized by the random movements of one’s eyes. Dreams are most likely to happen during the REM stage of sleep and usually makes up about an hour and half of sleep a night. During REM sleep the brains activity is similar to the brains activity when one is awake. Non-rapid eye movement sleep also referred to as NREM is when there is little or no eye movement at all. Dreaming is usually very rare during NREM sleep. NREM is made up of three stages. Stage one of NREM sleep occurs during the beginning of sleep with slow eye movement. Stage two of NREM sleep has no eye movement, and dreaming is usually very uncommon. Stage three is a very deep sleep and dreaming is more common in this stage. Dreams during NREM are not as
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