This is when you are both awake and asleep and it can happen up to 120 minutes each day. Daydreaming will happen when you are using your imagination and you let your mind wander. This can happen in different levels, and it can cause you to be less aware of what is going on in your life.

False Awakening Dreams

If you have ever thought that you were awake, but you are up doing things that you do on a daily basis such as brushing your teeth or eating breakfast, this can be false awakening. This can happen when you are thinking that you are doing something to realize that you are just dreaming.

Lucid Dreaming

These happen when you are sleeping but you are aware that you mind is awake. This can happen when you realize you are dreaming, and some people practice this as a skill so that they can influence the dream without waking up.

Nightmares

When you have a nightmare, this can be a scary dream that will cause you to be afraid or to wake up stressed. This can happen because of situations in your life that have been stressful. People can have PSN or Post Traumatic Stress Nightmare. This can happen when you refuse to accept things in life that are negative.

Some people have a history of nightmares, and some might even consider suicide to get rid of their nightmares.

Recurring Dreams

Recurring dreams are dreams that repeat themselves. The story can be different and most of the time the story line is positive, but it can cause you to have nightmare themes. The dreams can happen because of conflicts in your life that are being ignored. Once you figure out how to solve your problems the dream will probably stop happening.

Healing Dreams

These are dreams that come with your health in mind. These were labeled by the Ancient Greeks as prodrome which means having to do with health. Some believe that these dreams can help you not to have health problems and can heal you when you are sick in your mind or body.

Some people believe that if you have migraine or asthma that you will have dreams before an attack comes. Your body will help you to communicate with your mind and will let your body know when things are not right like they should be.

Some believe that healing dreams come as a warning to help advice you to get help.

Prophetic Dreams

Prophetic dreams are considered precognitive or psychic dreams because they help to tell the future. Your mind is dreaming and putting information together that you might normally overlook. This kind of dream works with your unconscious mind and helps you to know things before they happen.

Signal Dreams

Signal dreams happen so that you can make better decisions.

Epic Dreams

These dreams are also called Great Dreams or Numinous Dreams. These dreams are very interesting, and they are so vivid that they are hard to ignore. These dreams can have goodness and make you feel that you have found something that you were missing in your life. These are life-changing dreams.

Progressive Dreams

These kinds of dreams come in sequences in different nights. The dream will continue where it left off and these dreams help you to solve problems and figure out different situations.

Mutual Dreams

Mutual dreams happen when two people have the same dream. These can be planned such as two people working to have the same dream.

Mutual dreams can also be spontaneous, and you might have these dreams with a spouse, a friend or someone in your family. This can be a dream that happens the same night or it can happen at different times.

When you daydream, it is part of a dream that is just a thought that is wondering through your mind. People that do not have a lot of emphasis on dreaming might daydream more and this can mean that your dreams at night will give you symbols that you might even see during your daydreams. These types of dreams can help you to understand your real feelings and to reach your goals.

Awake and Asleep

When you daydream, you are part way awake, and you might have a vivid imagination that helps you to remember things that you have experienced in your past or things that you want to do in your future. Your imagination can get the best of you and when you daydream, this is access to your right brain. This is the creative part of your mind and can bring out the feminine parts of your personality.

Fun Personalities and Daydreaming

When you daydream, you are more than likely someone that is easy to get along with and fun to be around. You might wish a lot and have fantasies, and this can be part of daydreaming.

Daydreaming and Worry

When you are worried about something or you think something negative is going to happen, it can cause your mind to wander, and it can cause you to daydream about bad things. When you begin to worry, you can start thinking about a good thing or a good outcome and you can change the way your daydreams go.

When you have worried daydreams, they can come true because your mind will take advantage of what is going to happen. You can change this and visualize what you want to happen and then it can change your thought process.

The Help of Daydreaming

This is one thing that athletes and musicians do such as when golfing or when shooting a 3-pointer at a basketball game. One famous golfer, Tiger Woods, visualizes that he will make a hole in one each time that he plays a game. You can do this too and it can cause your daydreams to be better and help you along the way.

Positive Daydreaming

When you use positive daydreaming, you can have a healthy outlook on life. It can help you to get rid of your emotions and your frustrations and can help you not to act on them. When you worry or stress about things such as your career or your family, you will realize that you can change things and you do not need to worry about them.

Let the world be as it is and try to be more positive. Positive daydreaming can help you to get rid of stress and bring more creativity into your mind, body and emotions.

When you are pregnant you will realize that you are having strange dreams and sometimes your dreams seem so real that they can cause you to have a range of emotions. They can make you angry or they can make you upset. This happens because the hormones in your body can cause your brain to do strange things. You might dream of these things so that you can relieve some of your stress and it is said that dreaming can prepare you to be a good mother to your child.

When you get up throughout the night, like pregnant women do, to go to the bathroom or to try to get comfortable, you will have your sleep interrupted but it can help you to remember your dreams better. Chances are when you get up in the morning, you will remember your last dream but if you keep waking up throughout the night, you might remember more than one dream because you wake up in the middle of the dream cycle. It is no surprise that women that are pregnant will dream more and have stronger dreams.

When you are pregnant, your dreams can help you to reflect on your joy and your love that you have for the baby but it can also be dreams that show how stressed and concerned you are that the baby will be there soon. When your hormones are funning on high, you will know that your body is changing and as your fetus gets bigger, your body will change as you get closer to the birth of your baby. When this happens, it can also cause your dreams to change.

Any dream can happen when you are pregnant and it can be different themes in life such as happiness or sadness, even fear. Dreams can be more vivid during different trimesters.

First Trimester

In the first trimester, you will often dream about things such as giving birth to a child or an adult instead of a baby, you may dream of water, fertility and being on a journey.

Second Trimester

Second trimester dreams can include giving birth to an animal, giving birth to an alien, losing your teeth, getting rid of a lover, dreaming of sex or famous people.

Third Trimester

Third trimester dreams can include big or famous animals, being chased, large objects, something bad happening to you or the baby, cheating on your spouse, going into labor or even symbols of water.

One thing to remember that when you are going through your pregnancy, your dreams should be discussed with your partner. This can allow you to be able to let your feelings out and can help you to not be stressed or anxious about things. If you want to, keep a dream journal during your pregnancy so you can look back on it later.

Research that was done in Virginia found that children dream more about animals than adults do. This can be due to the fact that children are more interested in animals, and they spend a lot of time watching television and reading about animals in their life.

Scary Animals

Animals that are scary to children such as snakes or crocodiles are more often to be in children’s dreams than animals that are not scary such as cats, dogs or birds. Children use animals as a way to show what they wish for and a way to show what they are afraid of.

Aggressive Dreaming

Children that dream will sometimes dream more about aggressive things than adults do. This might happen because children have not yet learned to control the impulses that they have, and they might not know how to really live in our society because they are so young. They are trying to learn how to live and face the things around them.

Girls and Boys

Research shows that girls seem to have longer dreams than boys do and that their dreams have more people and clothes in them and that boys dream about things such as shapes, tools and other objects.

Nightmares

When a child has a nightmare, they are often dreamed because they have been disciplined by their parents and so it causes them to have bad dreams. They also might have nightmares if they have a bad family life or if they are sick.

Final Words

The dreams that adults and children have are important. If you have a child that dreams a lot, chances are that you need to listen to what is going on in your child’s life and listen to their dreams. Some dreams show their fears while other dreams can be their desires.

Some children will dream because they have a psychic gifting, and they are getting messages from the spirit world.

Research shows that babies spend more than 60% of their time sleeping and in REM sleep. That means that they can dream a lot because adults only average at around 20% of time sleeping in their day and in the dreaming stage.

Research has shown that there is a connection between the brain developing and REM sleep and that is why the fetus spends such as huge amount of time sleeping when it is in the womb. When a baby is at 30 weeks in the mother’s womb, the fetus spends almost 24 hours in the REM state.

Babies and REM Sleeping

Babies that are premature will spend up to 80% of their sleep in REM sleep. When the babies get older and mature, they stop spending so much time in the REM stage and by the time that they are one year old, it drops all the way down to around 35%.

REM and Brain Development

This shows that REM sleep has to be important for the brain development of babies and dreaming can be considered a way that the mind works and exercises to get strong. When a baby gets older, he or she will be able to get brain stimulation by their environment and by the people they live with and will not need to spend as much time in REM sleep.

Toddlers and Babies

Research has shown that most babies will have dreams but will not have vivid dreams until they are around two years of age. This is when the brain will keep developing and this is a time where the babies might start to have nightmares.

It will be even later before a baby is able to retain their dreams and to let someone know exactly what they are dreaming about.

Final Thoughts

It is hard to really know what a baby dreams about since they are not able to tell us. They probably have dreams that are about the people that they see and where they live. When babies get older, they will have more sounds and images in their dreams.

People sometimes ask the question, “Do you dream so you can sleep, or do you sleep so you can dream?” The truth is that this is a question that is often a debate. Some research shows that there is a real reason for dreaming.

REM Sleep Brings Happiness

Research shows that people that do not get into the REM stage will have symptoms of unhappiness. They can be anxious and will be stressed. People that do not get REM sleep will be full of trouble.

Waking in REM Sleep Can Cause Emotions

One dream study that was given was when volunteers were woken up while they were in their dream state, but they were allowed to fall back asleep. Right when they went back into REM sleep, they were woken up again. Even though they got the same amount of sleep that other people do, when they got up the next day, they were sad, disoriented, had a fowl temper and they were not able to do their daily activities.

Some of the volunteers were seen to eat more and become angry easier than those that were able to sleep through their REM. The study lasted for many nights and the volunteers became moodier and over sensitive. They had a problem concentrating and memory loss.

Why Dreaming is Important

The study showed that dreaming is important to your overall health, and some believe that dreams happen so that we can have less stress. Dreaming helps us to revitalize our life and to rest and have a strong body.

If you are having a hard time getting into REM sleep and getting the healthy amount of sleep that you need, you need to come up with a better sleeping schedule that can get you on track. Studies show that REM sleep is important for both your mental and physical health.

Find a way that you can get better sleep. Put away your electronics, turn out the lights, deep breathe, close your eyes and concentrate on something that will make you sleepy. If you are someone that has a sleeping disorder, talk to a professional.

When you are dreaming, you will notice that your body has many changes that happen. You will have an increased blood pressure and your adrenaline will rise. Your heart will beat faster, and you will have hyperactivity, and this is why some people die when they are sleeping. Sometimes the heart is not able to deal with the harsh changes that the body has during sleep.

Understanding REM Sleep

When you go into REM sleep, or Rapid Eye Movement, it is a time where your eyes will move back and forth very fast. This happens in the fourth sleep stage, and it accounts for around 20% of the time that you are asleep.

Four Stages of Sleep

When you fall asleep, it takes around 90 minutes for you to reach this stage and you will be able to go through the four stages of sleep from 4 to 7 times each night. Some people have a harder time reaching REM sleep and that is why it is important for people that want to achieve this to go on some kind of sleep schedule. Here is how you can help yourself to get into REM sleep:

• Go to bed earlier.
• Set a time to be in bed and don’t break the schedule.
• Put your electronics down an hour before bed.
• Get exercise throughout the day.
• Journal anything stressing you before you lay down.

What Does REM Sleep Do to the Body?

When you are in REM sleep, you will have an increased heart rate and blood pressure. Your body will go through a lot of things, but your muscles and your body cannot move and will stay completely relaxed. Even if you move a lot when you are sleeping, during REM sleep you do not move, and this is sometimes even called “REM Paralysis” because you are not able to move.

REM Sleep and Your Mind

With REM sleep, your mind is active just as if you are awake but the chemicals in your body are different. Your cholinergic neurons and your noradrenaline and serotonin chemicals change. The serotonin becomes missing while you are dreaming, and the chemicals allow the brain to do the tasks such as remembering things and solving problems. This is why it is hard to remember your dreams sometimes.

The sleep cycle has four different stages and will last up to 120 minutes. Even though most people agree that it is four stages, some people believe that there is a fifth stage but they consider the fifth stage as the first few minutes when you fall asleep, but we do not consider this a separate cycle but just a transition.

The four stages that we are going to look at repeat themselves throughout the night. Dreams can happen in any of these four stages, but they are most memorable during the REM sleep. Most of the cycles will repeat themselves around five times a night but it depends on who is sleeping and how well they sleep. It is known that the cycle can even repeat up to seven times if someone sleeps deeply.

Because the sleep cycle repeats over and over again, it is why people can have many dreams in one night. Most of the time though, people only remember the last dreams that they have right before they wake up. One important thing to note though is just because you don’t remember a dream does not mean that you are not dreaming. Everyone dreams.

Stages of Sleeping

There are different sleep changes that have to work with the activity of the brain.

• Stage 1

This is the sleep stage where you begin to have light sleep. This is considered Non-Rapid eye movement sleep or NREM. When your muscles begin to relax, your temperature gets lower and your heart rate will slow down. Your body is preparing you to go into a deep and relaxed sleep.

• Stage 2

NREM is the second stage of sleeping and this is when your body temperature continues to go down and your muscles before more relaxed. Your immune system starts to repair any damage to your body and your muscles are fixed. The endocrine glands and the hormones will go back to normal and blood is sent to the muscles. You are completely asleep in this stage.

• Stage 3

You are still in NREM sleep, but your sleep is deeper and your levels such as your metabolic levels become very slow.

• Stage 4

This is the stage of sleep where you go into REM sleep. This is when your eyes begin to move back and forth and is part of your sleep that happens around 100 minutes after you begin to sleep.

During this time, your blood pressure will increase, and your heart rate will get faster. You will have more brain activity and your muscles will stop moving.

This is the time of sleep where your emotions are tuned in and is part of the sleep that gives you the most restoration. Most of the dreams that you have will happen in this stage and if you wake up during this stage, you will most likely remember your dreams.

Conclusion

The sleep cycles will repeat themselves over and over again while you sleep. When it repeats, your body will spend less time in stages 1, 2 and 3 and more time in stage 4. This will happen faster, and you will get to stage 4 faster each time that the cycle repeats itself.

People have been interpreting dreams for thousands of years. Many dream interpretations have been found by archeologists on clay tablets and people have always seemed to be interested in understanding the meaning of their dreams.

In some societies, people were not able to figure out if they were dreaming or if they were actually awake and having things happen to them. Or chances are that they chose not to make a distinction between being awake and dreaming and they chose to see a dream as part of a reality in a world that was fascinating and powerful.

The Greek and Romans believed that dreams were part of their religious ideas. They felt that dreams would direct them and that they were dreaming so that they could get messages from the gods or from people that have already died.

People would take time to try to decide what their dreams meant and what kind of action they needed to take in their lives so that they could please the gods. They thought that dreams would warn them of bad things that were coming, and they also thought that dreams would tell the future.

Some cultures would build alters or shrines so that people could go there to sleep in order that they could dream and get messages that they needed. They had such strong believes in dreams that they would dictate people in high positions such as politicians or those that were military leaders to interpret dreams so that the dreams could help them to win battles.

Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, felt that dreams were centered around healing. There were temples that were built called Asclepios’s that were built so that people could sleep there and hopefully they could dream and be healed. The people believed that they would be able to dream cures and that medicine men would get information so that they could help to heal people.

Many believed that healers needed dreams from the interpreters so that they could find out what was wrong with the sick.

Priests in Egypt would often have a second job as interpreters. They would write their dreams in the form of hieroglyphics and they would bless those that dreamed special things. People who could interpret dreams were looked at with high admiration and they were thought to be very spiritual and gifted.

Dreaming is thought to be something that has to do with the soul and the spirit. Some believe that the soul and the spirit will leave the body and go into the world which was how dreams happened. The Chinese thought that when someone was quickly woken up while they were dreaming that the soul might not be able to return back to the body and so many Chinese would refuse to use alarm clocks so this would not happen.

Native Americans and Mexican tribes believed that dreams were from a different dimension. They thought that their ancestors would come to them with dreams and that they could come in forms of people, plants or animals. They believed that dreaming was a way that their ancestors could contact them and show them what they were supposed to do in their life.

In the 19^th Century, dreams were often fueled with stress and anxiety and so people did not believe that dreams needed to be interpreted but they were just part of an anxious thought that happened before bed. Freud believed that dreams were important, and he began to study dreams and seek for interpretations.

In the Middle Ages, people thought that dreams were evil, and they felt that it was temptation from the devil. They believed that while you were sleeping that you were vulnerable and that the thoughts that came would be bad for them and would cause you to go down the wrong path or make bad choices in life.

There are many different interpretations of dreams all the way from ancient times to now. People have always thought that interpreting dreams was important. Books all over the world talk about dreams and dream interpretation, including the Bible that makes more than seven hundred different references.

When you want to figure out what your subconscious is trying to tell you, dreams can help you with that. When we sleep, we have a strong unconscious mind that will try to battle with your conscious mind.

When your emotions are challenged, it is not by your logic so you can use your conscious mind to break through the barriers, but it is hard to understand what your mind is trying to tell you.

The messages that you get in the form of dreams and symbols can be crazy feeling and sometimes you feel that you are just an observer. Think about a dream that you and that is like a movie and realize that when you dream, it is a way for you to get attention to your mind.

Some people feel that their dreams can be a warning about an upcoming situation and some people feel that they never dream but even though they do, chances are they cannot remember their dreams.  Some people will dream, and they will have loved ones that are alive or those that have passed over make an appearance to say hi.

Recurring Dreams

There are two different types of dreams and one is recurring and the other is prophetic. A prophetic dream is when you get a view of the future and these dreams are there for you to interpret.

When you dream about meeting someone, chances are that you will meet someone in the future that you are meant to be with. You might even have a dream of something such as a storm that is coming or dream about something that seems silly but is still just as important.

Recurring dreams happen over and over again, and you can have the same dream play out in different ways.  There is likely an emotional reason for this to happen and you need to examine yourself and see what is going on and why it keeps happening.

Other Kinds of Dreams

There are other kinds of dreams and here are a few of them:

• Precognitive Dreams

These dreams can help you to tell the future. These can have details that are off, but they can alert you of things.

• Warning Dreams

A warning dream can warn you that danger is coming or that you are about to face problems. You might not realize a crisis is coming so pay attention.

• Fact Dreams

These kinds of dreams are ones where you will have facts and information that is helpful to you. This can be to help you with a job or to talk to a friend.

• Inspirational Dreams

An inspirational dream will help you to move on when you are having a hard time in life. They will encourage you and give you a good feeling.

• Visitation Dreams

This happens when loved ones come and visit you. This is a way that they can connect with you by your dreams and when you are sleeping and your subconscious is open to messages then you will experience these kinds of dreams.

Dreaming

When you dream, you can sometimes remember this right away and if you do not, it will probably fade over time. You can have a dream that is very vivid, and it can help you to remember it but still chances are as time goes on that you will remember less and less of it.

Journals

If you want to remember your dreams or compare them later, you should keep a dream journal. A dream journal will help you to be able to remember your dreams and to look back and see if your dreams come true.

Always date your dream journal and write down everything you can remember. Put in places and faces and numbers or anything that comes to mind. Even if it doesn’t seem meaningful, it still can be.

Dreams are made up of many things and not all dreams will stand out. Learn to interpret your dreams or go to a psychic and see if they can help you. Figure out what your dream means to you and then look up meanings from others that have dreamed the same things and maybe you can get some fresh insight to what you are seeing.