Live your dreams- Learn from it!

You are on a difficult mountain trek making steady progress. Close to the summit, you are getting

tired and lost. You see a hamlet but no people in it. Did you dream something like this?

Could be, this dream is about your project nearing completion. Possibly, you do everything sans

colleagues (Hamlet without people). May be, the dream is encouraging you to involve people.

We are discussing Dreamwork. For centuries, every faith & religion tried to study dreams. Researchers continue to study dreaming scientifically. It’s scientifically proven that dreams can be a crucial resource for self-knowledge, Problem solving and creativity. Dreamwork helps us work on dreams.

In Dreamwork, a structured process, a dream is shared and its meaning is gradually unfolded by raising specific questions. Images and emotions that a dream presents and evokes are explored. Dream may have a variety of meanings depending on the levels (e.g. subjective, objective) of exploration. Dreamwork believes each person has unique dream "language". Any given place, person, object or symbol can differ in its meaning depending upon the dreamer's ongoing life situation.

Dreamwork is different from classical dream interpretation, in technique developed by Montague Ullman, Stanley Krippner, and Jeremy Taylor and now, widely practiced, its usual to wait until all questions raised—and answers heard—before the dreamworker (or dreamworkers if in group setting) indicates what the dream might mean.

Dreaming fascinates because everybody dreams – it’s a pictorial statement of happenings in

dreamer’s life, vivid, mysterious, mesmerising, consisting verbal, visual and emotional stimuli into

a sometimes broken, nonsensical but often entertaining story line. A dream is a series of images

occurring involuntarily during sleep in the Rapid eye movement (REM) stage, first discovered in

1953.

The REM period occurs about every 90 minutes after sleep and lasts 10 minutes. In the period just

before awakening, it’s about 45 minutes to 60 minutes.

We go through five sleep stages. First: very light sleep, Second: slightly deeper sleep, and Third-

Fourth: our deepest sleep. Our brain activity throughout these stages gradually slows down and

by deep sleep, we experience only delta brain waves -- slowest brain waves. After the fourth sleep

stage, REM sleep begins fifth stage of sleep, REM sleep is characterized by movements of eyes.

Several physiological changes occur during REM sleep. The heart rate and breathing quickens, blood rises, we can't regulate our body temperature, and our brain activity increases to the same level (alpha) as when we are awake, or even higher. The rest of the body, is essentially paralyzed until we leave REM sleep. Because REM sleep is where most dreaming takes place. This paralysis is nature's way of ensuring we don't act out our dreams.

We go through these five stages during night several times. Each subsequent cycle, includes more REM sleep.

Experts disagree on the purpose of our dreams. Are they strictly random brain impulses, or are our brains actually working as a sort of coping mechanism through issues while we sleep --? Should we

interpret our dreams? Many researchers believe Problem-solving in dreams is feasible, we have lot to learn from our dreams.

Dreaming is innate repair mechanism and biologically important. Our dreams reflects our waking

concerns, they shed light on aspects of our past that emotionally connect to these concerns and

reflect back to us truths about ourselves that elude us. Dreams are guardians of our sleep and

critical to mental health. Understanding dreams help in coping with conflicts, solving problems and

in generating ideas. But we can recall few dreams.

For those who believe we have a lot to learn about ourselves from dreams, can increase dream recall by: telling to remember dreams, Keep a pad and pencil nearby to write and most important: wake up slowly remaining within the "mood" of dream and write down everything immediately after getting up.

Sigmund Freud's theory is unconscious does not only affect a person during the day, but also in dreams. According to Carl Jung's principle of compensation, the reason that there is latent content in dreams is because the unconscious is making up for the limitations of the conscious mind.

Dream incubation helps us reach to the deepest layer of wisdom and insights in dreams? It teaches us to plant a seed for a specific dream topic to occur. Believers in problem solving through dreams, use this technique to direct their dreams to the specific topic.

So go ahead, learn from your dreams and live it!