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.

Everyone has angels around them. The exact number is undefined, and it is almost certain there are more around some people than others, as some people are a lot more work to guide and protect!

However, every person born has at least one guardian angel that stays with them throughout their life. Your guardian angel’s job is to lead you along your path and protect you when necessary.

While your guardian angel will always do the work set for them, there are some things they can’t do without your permission. They can’t always guide you if you aren’t listening. They can’t make opportunities for you if you don’t ask them to do so. Sometimes, they can’t even protect you if you don’t allow them to do it or if you constantly put yourself at risk.

How to Keep Your Angel Working

There were a host of angels were created to serve us. They love you and want to be there for you but must operate within the spiritual laws of God. They can’t deter from that. That means you must also operate within those laws so they can serve you.

Knowing Your Angel’s Name

All angels have names. We know of the Archangel Michael and Gabriel. You’ve likely heard of Raphael. Those are just a few of the seven or so mentioned in the Bible. However, every angel has a name and that includes your guardian angel!

It isn’t that hard to find out the name of your guardian angel and it could prove to be helpful. After all, if you want to ask something of your angel, it would be easier if you knew their name, right?

To find out the name of your guardian angel, find a quiet place to meditate. Get in a comfortable position with no distractions. Close your eyes and take slow, deep breaths. Then, just ask. Wait on an answer. The first name you think of is likely the name of your angel. You can ask for confirmation with signs in your life throughout the week. Look for that name, or parts of it, to show up on street signs, in books, in ads, and other common ways.

Creating a Relationship with Your Angel

Angels are intelligent beings, so they are capable and willing to have a relationship with you. You should develop a connection with your guardian angel so that you feel comfortable asking for help when you need it.

Angels work on a higher vibration than humans. They have to work to lower their frequency for us to communicate them. You can help by increasing your vibrational frequency to hear them.

You can do that by becoming more attuned to spiritual things. This happens with prayer and meditation, fasting, and a renewed awareness of things around you. Showing the intention of connecting with your angel will also build a stronger bond between you.

It is like developing a friendship. You talk to them, share your thoughts and feelings, ask them for guidance or protection, and recognize they are in your life. After a while, you’ll know instinctively when they are around. You’ll be able to recognize their work in your life too.

Offending Your Angel

There are times when needs aren’t met because we have offended our angels. It’s not that they don’t want to help us. It’s that they can’t help us because God’s spiritual laws forbid them to do so.

An offense can come in several ways. It can be that you start worshipping your angel instead of God. Remember, they ultimately serve God and want you to worship Him alone. It could be that you delve into evil things that shouldn’t be in your life. Allowing darkness, whether its feelings of unforgiveness or an act like adultery, drugs, or drunkenness, in your life prohibits your angel from working. Holiness and darkness mix about as well as oil and vinegar. Those things also lower your vibration where you can’t communicate with your angel too.

A lack of prayer, meditation, or seeking a spiritual life will also prohibit your angels from working on your behalf. Angels do many things for us. They protect us from dark forces and attract wealth and success to us. Their power to do these things increases as we increase our spiritual life. So, a decrease in our spiritual life limits their power.

Communicating with Your Guardian Angel

You don’t need a medium or psychic to talk to your guardian angel. Our soul automatically connects with the spiritual world as we were created to be immortal in our spirits. It may seem odd to talk to a being you can’t see and, yes, some will think it crazy. However, it is important to talk to your angel to get to know them.

Start like you would as if you are meeting someone new. Say hello. Just talk about what you are thinking about. Ask for help when you need it. Be open to hearing them through inspiration, or even audible guidance. Most of the time, you will have a thought or idea pop into your head that will resolve your problem. That is your angel speaking and directing you. Tell them thanks.

Look for patterns in your life to show your answers also. God is a creator of patterns, so your guardian angel will also use patterns to communicate with you.

Once you allow your angels to be a part of your life, it will feel less supernatural and more normal. You will then wonder how you could have been living this whole time without noticing it.

Lucid dreaming means that you are conscious when you are dreaming, and this happens when you enter into REM sleep.  This type of dreaming happens during the Rapid Eye Movement, and it is said that more than 50% of people have had at least one or more lucid dreams in their life.

During their dream, they know where they are, and they are aware of what they are doing to a point where they can control what they are doing in their dream.

History of Lucid Dreaming

Many psychologists have studied and researched lucid dreams, and this is a subject that has helped people to be able to study useful treatments for sicknesses such as anxiety, nightmares and even PTSD.

When someone has a lucid dream, it is possible that lucid dreaming goes through different methods.

Lucid Dreaming

There are different techniques that a person notices when they are awake.  When you are sleeping, especially in REM sleep, you will have a space in your conscious that allows you to go into a dream and be in complete control.

Reality

Reality checking is a way that you can train your mind to be aware of your surroundings.

There is a level in your mind where you are awake and you are dreaming and if you have a higher metacognition while you are awake, this will lead to a higher chance of lucid dreaming.

This means that your brain, or the prefrontal cortex of your brain will lead you to lucid dreaming.  This means that there are tests that you can do while you are awake that can help you to be able to know if you are going to lucid dream and to guide you there.

You need to ask yourself questions such as, “Am I dreaming” and learn to notice your surroundings and how you feel.  You can even set an alarm throughout the day to practice the reality check.

There are things you can use to do reality checks so you can increase your chances of lucid dreaming such as:

• Objects-push against an object and see if your hand goes through it.
• Mirrors-look in the mirror and see if your reflection looks normal.
• Hands-do your hands look normal?
• Time-if you are dreaming the time will always change but if you are awake the time changes slowly.
• Breathing-See if you are breathing. Close your throat and your nose and see if you are still breathing.  If you are, you are lucid dreaming.

Wake Back to Bed

Wake Back to Bed means going into REM sleep while you are awake.  There are different techniques in order to do this including:

• Setting an alarm a few hours after you go to sleep.
• Sleep as normal.
• When the alarm goes off stay up for half an hour and read.
• Go back to sleep.

When you go back to sleep you will be more likely to have a lucid dream.  Choose what things to do while you are alert.  Lucid dreaming depends on how alert you are and what activities you do.

Mnemonic Induction

Mnemonic Induction means that you are using your memory and setting the intention to do something later.  In order to do this, you can:

• Fall asleep thinking of a dream.
• Use a strange dream to think about.
• See if you can fly.
• Think about going back to the dream.
• Tell yourself that you will remember your dream.

You can practice Mnemonic Induction when you are in the middle of a dream and think about it when you are awake immediately because it is easier to remember when you are awake.

Journaling

Keep a dream journal and write down anything strange that you dream and any dreams at all.  Log your dreams right when you wake up, so you don’t forget anything.

Wake Initiated

Wake Initiated dreaming means that you enter a dream when you are awake.  This mean your mind stays awake, but your body goes to sleep.

Lay down and relax and experience a hallucination that will come when you are almost asleep.  This is easy to do but is hard to learn.  Practice lucid dreaming techniques.

Waking Up

Sometimes, you might wake up from a dream and sometimes you might have to have different techniques.  Here are some that can help you wake up:

• Call for help. Yell out in your dream.
• Blink over and over again.
• Fall asleep in your dream and it will wake you up in real life.
• Read a sign in your dream and you will wake up.

Benefits of Lucid Dreaming

There are benefits of lucid dreaming and sometimes it can be therapeutic for people to do things such as getting rid of reoccurring nightmares.  Some people, even up to 85% of adults have bad dreams.  Some of these dreams can come from:

• PTSD
• Stress
• Anxiety
• Not sleeping well
• Medications
• Depression

Lucid dreaming can help the dreamer to control their dream. When the dreamer knows they are dreaming they can know their dream is not real and the nightmare is not real.

Lucid dreaming can be a part of therapy and help you to get rid of your nightmares.

Using cognitive behavioral therapy and lucid dreaming can increase the control of your dreams.

Anxiety

Scientists show that you can focus on your nightmares and learn to lucid dream so that you can get rid of anxiety.

People that control their dreams have less anxiety than others.

Motor Skills

Lucid dreaming is known to help people to have better motor skills.  Dreaming can increase these movements.

Cautions of Lucid Dreaming

There are dangers of many things and even in lucid dreaming.  Some negative aspects of lucid dreaming can be:

• Having sleep problems.
• Interrupting rest
• Making an irregular sleep schedule
• Derealization
• Feelings that things in the world are not real.
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Sleep paralysis

Seeing a Doctor

If you have these problems, see a doctor to help you:

• Nightmares all the time.
• Disruptive sleep
• Fear of going to sleep
• Traumatic thoughts
• Changes in your emotions
• Memory problems

These things can show that you have other conditions such as PTSD or mental health issues.  Your doctor can help you and give you therapy that will be right for you.

Conclusion

Lucid dreaming can happen when you are aware of what is going on in your dream.  Sometimes you can control what you are dreaming and the environment around you.

When you use lucid dreaming in therapy, you will be able to treat things like nightmares and PTSD.

If you like the idea of trying lucid dreaming, try the ideas above.  These methods can train your mind to be able to have these dreams while you are asleep.  See your doctor if you have a sleep disorder or other mental health issues.

Seeing your ex in a dream can mean different things such as that you are going to meet someone with different qualities, you are going to meet someone similar to your ex or that you are thinking of memories of times you shared together.

• Hooking Up

When you dream about having sex with your ex, you are about to find a new relationship.

• Being Ignored

When you dream that your ex is ignoring you, chances are your mind is telling you to move on and make new friends and meet a new love.

• Fighting

If you dream that you are fighting with your ex then this can mean that you are going to meet someone that makes you feel the way that your ex made you feel.

• Getting Back Together

When you dream of getting back together with your ex, it does not mean that you want to be back with them.  What it can mean is that you are about to go through some change in your life and you are going to get into a different type of relationship.  This can mean that you are ready to move on from your past and find happiness.

• Missing Them

If you dream that you miss your ex, chances are that you are carrying for them and that even though you care about them, you just want to meet a new partner and feel that they want you.

• They Are Missing You

If you dream that your ex misses you and wants to get back to you, it means that you have already moved on in your life.

• Getting Advice

If you are dreaming that your ex is giving you advice, chances are you are trying not to make the same mistakes in your relationship that you have in the past.

• Old Ex

Dreaming of a person that you dated a long time ago can mean that you are wanting to find new freedom and excitement in your life.

• Your Partners Ex

When you dream about your current partner’s ex, chances are that you are comparing yourself subconsciously to them to see if you are good enough.  You have to let your partner know your feelings and be real with them.

• Their Family

If you dream about your ex’s mom or dad, chances are you have unresolved things you need to talk over with your ex.

• Sickness

When you dream that you take care of your ex when they are sick, you are dealing with the breakup and are not over it yet.

• Death

Dreaming that someone that you used to love has died can be terrible.   When you dream about someone you are close to and they die in your dream, it can mean that you will never talk to them again or that you are thinking about when you broke up and are feeling guilty about it.

A dream does not mean that your ex is going to die, and it is most likely an idea in your mind that you are ready to move on and to find a new love.  It does not mean that your ex is going to die even if you have wished it on them when you were down.