Show of hands, who here knows alot about dreams? I’m not talkin about dream analysis and what it means if you dream of a giant pasta dish scolding you in public … I mean the mechanics of dreams.
I actually know enough to be dangerous. I did some light research on it once or twice. As most people know, dreaming happens during the REM (rapid eye movement) cycle of sleep. What many don’t know is that REM is not the deepest part of sleep (as far as brain waves and what not is concerned). Also, REM usually happens many times in a night. REM usually occurs in ninety minute cycles throughout the night, and as the night progresses, these intervals of REM increase in length until finally, the last two hours of slumber contain a high percentage of REM.
In between REM are various other mind-states that are equally normal parts of sleep … some even ‘deeper’ than REM.
Anyhow … lately I’ve been waking up every hour to hour and half from intense dreams. And, it’s not the typical mid-sleep-wakings that happen normally and which we as sleepers have no recall of … this is the kind of waking that leaves you very actively awake and wondering if you’ll get back to sleep.
Thirty minutes or so later, I do fall back asleep … and about an hour later I’ll wake up again - wide awake - from another vivid dream.
Not only is this making it rather difficult to get a full nights sleep … I have to wonder WTF is up with my sleep cycle that I can so quickly and consistently drop all the way back to REM … only to be slapped awake such a short amount of time later. The dreams themselves don’t seem any shorter than typical dreams. (And for those of you who think dreams take place in the brain at something far faster than real time - that has been disproven … dream time is very close to real time.)
I’m beginning to wonder when the last time I made it past REM into really really deep sleep was. I mean I usually aim for 5-6 hours of sleep … I don’t have alot of buffer time to be screwing around with waking up and starting the cycle all over again.
I had 4-5 of these intense dream / wakings last night (and several dreams which were otherwise normal). One of these dreams involved me and a large group of people in an open air observatory at the sears tower (no such observatory actually exists). Suddenly there was this wind storm … like tornado level winds. The whole building was waving (which normally happens some - and is noticeable - but this was REALLY bad). It was one of those certain-death and why-am-I-the-only-one-who-realizes-it type of dreams.
The most disconcerting part of the dream however was that I was wearing a cowboy hat … that would NEVER happen in reality.
*shudder*
