Everybody dreams when they fall asleep even if others believe that they don't. But is there any way that we could control our dreams and finally get rid of nightmares? Science says yes.
The Huffington Post reports there are some techniques that we could use to be able to direct our dreams.
As per the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, our sleep consists four of the following stages: Stage 1 & 2 occur as our sleep progresses from light sleep to gradual slowing of brain waves; Stage 3 is when we're in total deep sleep; and Stage 4 --- the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is when our dreams usually come in.
According to experts, our waking environment could actually influence our dreams at night.
"Whatever people are exposed to during the daytime will have an impact on their dreaming at night," said Dr. Shalini Paruthi, director of the Pediatric Sleep and Research Center at SSM Cardinal Glennon Children's Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. "Even thinking about good things to dream as you're drifting off to sleep can impact [the] dreams that you have that night."
"So, you can have a negative impact on your dreams if you're surrounded or getting exposed to negative things throughout the day," Paruthi explained. "But, on the flip side, you can also have [a] positive impact on your dreams if the last things that you're thinking about are positive things."
Having good dreams is apparently good for our health, according to sleep and dream expert Rubin Naiman of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine clinical faculty. "Good dreaming contributes to our psychological well-being by supporting healthy memory, warding off depression, and expanding our ordinary limited consciousness into broader, spiritual realms," he explained.
This doesn't mean we could really have full control of our dreams, though. Nevertheless, we could still make sure we get better sleep by sleeping in a dark, quiet and cool room, eating healthy and maintaining a regular sleeping pattern.
