Dreams Blog

If you are interested in dream interpretations, you may want to take it another step higher by earning a doctorate degree out of it.

In Saudi Arabia, a school is offering an undergraduate and doctorate degrees for the aforementioned topic.

Dream interpreter Yusuf al-Harthy said that he’s planning to set up this course in his institute. He said that he will be offering bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees for those who want to explore the realms of dream interpretation and deciphering the images seen by the people in their sleep.

This development was announced by al-Harthy in a magazine interview last weekend.

The dream interpreter said that he’s been managing an instructional site in deciphering the meaning of dreams. He said that his academy will be linked with a known Arab university. He said that he won’t mention the name for now until final negotiations have been straightened out.

Dreams have certain importance to the person because it usually occurs when he or she sleeps deeply. The mysterious phenomenon still can’t be explained in full until now with experts still grasping the overall concept of such and why it happens to all of us.

A person tends to forget about ninety percent of his or her dreams within the span of five to ten minutes. Experts believe that in a night, about four or five dreams are being experienced by a person and could last up to two hours.

Creative people have claimed that their works have come to them through their dreams.

Researchers said that those who do not dream at all may have psychological problems and may also have personality disorders. If this occurs to a friend or loved one, refer them to a psychologist for consultation. In order to dream we need to sleep comfortably which includes a comfortable environment and apporpriate women’s nightwear.

There are common dreams but these images can have different meanings to each dreamer.

For those who study dreams, this report may be an important piece of information.

According to a recent research conducted by experts, catnaps or short term sleeps may help one’s memory or for one’s brain to function more effectively. In a way, it reboots one’s brain.

This development was explained by CBS News Medical Correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton during the “Early Show” program.

Thirty-nine respondents took part in the study and it has been discovered that short naps aid them in memory exercises. The respondents who napped performed 20 percent better than those who did not.

The researchers believed that a part of the brain called the hippocampus – storage of short-term memories – tends to be rebooted during these short naps. This leads to the brain making room for new information and learning.

This development may be good for students who are preparing for an exam, that sleep can actually improve their studying because more information relevant to the exam can be stored in their brains.

For those with severe sleep apnea, there’s a silver lining, there’s a lesser occurrence of bad dreams based on the research conducted by medical experts.

Dr. Jim Pagel, one of the lead researchers of a medical study that was published in the Feb. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, said that they discovered that patients with severe sleep apnea have fewer nightmares. He added that this is one of the first studies that clearly support the findings. This gives the medical experts more understanding of this condition.

Pagel is the director of the Sleep Disorders Center of Southern Colorado and he is optimistic that further studies and research will be made in the topic of sleep apnea.

He said that sleep apnea becomes more interesting now that it has tie-ins to dreams and nightmares and they will explore more on this aspect in their upcoming researches.

The author of the best selling children’s book “Pages, The Book-Maker Elf” revealed that she came across the book characters from her own dream. She added that it prompted her to continue with her dream research in order to polish the book.

Author Diana DelRusso said that she starts her dreams and it usually takes her to where she needs to be. She added that when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she immediately writes down what she just dreamt and go back to sleep. She then consolidates the information the next day.

DelRusso said that most of the images that she saw do not make sense at first but when she starts typing up her story, the characters suddenly appear and everything suddenly makes sense.

The book talks about an elf named Pages who inspires children to read. The characters of the book dates back 15 years according to the author.

We’ve heard it time and time again, dream experts have been telling us that we should write down our dreams and try to analyze them because it might give us incling as to how we are living our lives right now and the directions that we may need to take in order to have a fulfilling life.

Harvard Medical School Assistant Professor of Psychiatry Dr. Deirdre Barrett said that only the dreamer can interpret the types of dreams that he or she had encountered last night. At the end of the day, there’s no such thing as universal interpretations of such. The personal factor of the dreams means that the dreamer can have that insight and it is up to him or her to act on those insights that could change their lives.

Barrett said that dreams can help one “think outside the box,” which could mean that problems could be solved in many ways.

A dream research conducted by the European Science Foundation (ESF) revealed that there are similarities noted in the brain activity during psychosis and lucid dreaming which only strengthened the link between Psychiatry and dreams.

Lucid dreaming means that the person is aware that he is dreaming. Having such, according to the researchers, shows distinct electrical activity patterns in the brain. They noted that the patterns have similarities with psychotic conditions (like schizophrenia). Making this discovery is a big step in determining new ways of diagnosing neurological disorders.

Ursula Voss, a researcher from Germany’s University of Frankfurt, said that the brain is in a dissociated state during lucid dreaming. Having this dissociation means losing that conscious control over the mental processes (emotional reaction or logical thinking).

Some experts are now reconsidering the revival of dream therapy which was widely discredited in the past. In the past, people having nightmares are usually treated by having them trained to dream lucidly in order for them to wake up consciously.

Dream researcher and psychiatrist Allan Hobson said that a lot of dreams can play a role in the learning process and may not be threatening at all. It’s all about determining these factors before doing any treatment.