A nightmare is a very stressful dream which usually forces at least partial awakening. Nightmares are often a creation of our fears. You will tend not to have nightmares if you rid yourself of fears. So find out what your fears are, and try to conquer them. Nightmares, however, can also be an early symptom that a disease is developing or that an attack is about to occur.

What Causes Nightmares?

There are many possibilities. Some nightmares can be caused by drugs or medications or by rapid withdrawal from them, or by physical conditions such as illness and fever. The nightmares of early childhood likely reflect the struggle to learn to deal with normal childhood fears and problems. Many people experience nightmares after they have suffered a traumatic event, such as surgery, the loss of a loved one, an assault or a severe accident. The nightmares of combat veterans fall into this category. The content of these nightmares is typically directly related to the traumatic event and the nightmares often occur over and over. Other people experience nightmares when they are undergoing stress in their waking lives, such as difficulty or change on the job or with a loved one, moving, pregnancy, financial concerns, etc. Finally, some people experience frequent nightmares that seem unrelated to their waking lives. These people tend to be more creative, sensitive, trusting and emotional than average. Whenever you have a nightmare you should try to visualize a different ending on the dream. By doing this you may experience that it is a dream and we all know that dreams aren’t dangerous. Read The Full Story…

So what did you dream about last night? Any idea – or none at all? Supposedly there is a theory that everyone dreams something every night but not everyone can remember the details of the dream in the morning. Recalling snatches is quite usual, and being able to relate recurring dreams is also a common theme.

Frequently the subject matter of a dream will be easy to link to the realities of everyday life: a particular ornament that lives within eyesight of the bedroom furniture comes to life, or perhaps an episode from your work environment will replay itself with variations on the actual outcome. When this happens we can correlate the dream world to our waking world very simply and are usually not too disturbed by the experience. Other dreams, however, can be far more bizarre and difficult to interpret – although there are plenty of people out there who are willing to try!

When dreams become nightmares the consequences can be far reaching in terms of disturbing our sleep patterns, and at their most extreme a nightmare can become a night terror. Children sometimes suffer from nightmares more regularly than adults and they can find it harder to rationalise the experience and get back to sleep. Night terrors can actually be worse for the parent awoken by the noise than for the child who is unaware that anything is happening as they are still asleep. Sleep walking is linked too and fitted bedrooms with minimised slip and trip risks and a bell on the door may well be your final resort.

Whatever the disturbances that go on in your house at night the best advice is to stay calm when dealing with the problem. Additionally, if quality sleep becomes regularly compromised to the detriment of good health then seek professional help.

The term Lucid Dreams refers to those dreams which one sees with a certain amount of lucidity, that is, the dreamer is consciously aware of the fact that he is in a dream. In lucid dreams how to induce the lucidity condition, then how to maintain it once achieved, thereafter how to proceed to the well ahead stages for full dream control are some of the most common and pertinent questions.

Firstly, in case of Lucid Dreams, how to bring about the lucidity or induce the required mental state is the primary question. Always remember that your main objective is to let your body sleep while keeping your mind conscious and wakeful during your journey from the realm of consciousness to the dreams.

In bringing about lucid dreaming, the three main weapons in you hand are those of proper preparation, relaxation and meditation. Starting with the first point of preparation, wear loose and comfortable clothing and lie down in a cool and silent room. Banish all negative thoughts from your mind and also remember not to have any food item that generates heat and increases the number of thoughts in an individual’s mind.

In lucid dreams, how to attain the required level of relaxation is crucial. The best thing to do would be to tense your entire body and thereafter select each part by part and relax it completely. Top this with vital meditation techniques and you will be on your way to relaxing your mind at the same time keeping your mind focused to attain the required condition of deep trance.

Secondly, in case of lucid dreams, how to continue the condition of lucidity is one of the main concerns. The two best known techniques for maintaining lucidity and having increased dream control are those of dream spinning and verbal affirmations. These two tools are the most effective when it comes to getting back on track when you find yourself loosing your grip on your lucid dream. Read The Full Story…

REM sleep boosts memory, creativity, and more, experts announce.

In  a new study, people who took naps featuring REM sleep -in which dreams are most vivid – performed better on creativity-oriented word problems. That is, the REM, or rapid eye movement, sleep helped people combine ideas in new ways, according to psychiatrist Sara Mednick, who lead this study.

At midday, after the first round, the subjects were given a 90-minute rest period, during which they were monitored. Some participants took naps with REM sleep, which typically begins more than an hour after a person falls asleep. Others took an REM-less nap. A third group rested quietly but didn’t sleep.

There was a second round of tests in the afternoon. In a typical second-round test, participants were asked to guess what single word is associated with three seemingly unrelated words. For example, given “cookie,” “heart,” and “sixteen,” the answer would have been “sweet.” The correct answers to many of the second-round questions were the same as the solutions to analogy questions from round one.

On the second-round questions whose answers matched first-round answers—for example, “sweet” and “sweet”—the REM nappers improved their performances by 40 percent. Non-REM nappers and the non-nappers showed no improvement on these problems, said Mednick, of the University of California, San Diego, who presented her findings Friday in San Diego at the American Psychological Association’s annual convention.

That means that REM sleep improved participants’ ability to see connections among seemingly unrelated things: the answers from the first-round analogy problems and the three words in each round-two association test, she said. Read The Full Story…

Welcome to a mysterious and captivating world of dreams where the rules of reality do not apply. We hope that Dream Moods Online Dictionary collections will help you make sense of your dreams and achieve a better understanding of them. We’re dedicated to helping you find the key to unlocking and interpreting the meanings to your dreams. By understanding your dreams, you will gain a better perspective on your life.

Here are a few free online dictionaries to get started deciphering your dreams:

-  Dream Dictionary from Brilliant Dreams: This extensive dictionary is included on a sleep and dream supplement site. Although yourDictionary does not advocate taking any medications without consulting your doctor, you can use the site’s dictionary in order to help make sense of your dreams. If you dreamt about a pistol, the dictionary gives two meanings, one of working towards a goal and one of defending oneself. It also references you to the guns entry in order to get a more complete interpretation.

- Dream Dictionary at MSN Astrology: Brought to you in conjunction with astrocenter.com, this dictionary has a long listing of symbols and their various interpretations. Looking up snake gives two interpretations, one of inner changes and one of power or excitement. Also listed are the astrological and tarot parallels, helpful information for those interested in those fields. Read The Full Story…

Since very old times, some of the most famous quotations have dealt with the theme of sleep. Here are a few examples of good sleep quotes:

“Many things–such as loving, going to sleep, or behaving unaffectedly–are done worst when we try hardest to do them.” C.S. Lewis

“A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book” Irish proverb

“I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.” Mark Twain

“Sleep is the best meditation.” Dalai Lama

“Blessings on him who first invented sleep. It’s meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty,

heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. It makes the shepherd equal to the monarch, and

the fool to the wise.” Miguel de Cervantes

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
~William Shakespeare, Macbeth Read The Full Story…

Your dreams are many symbols and allegories. When you venture into the realm of dream interpretation you must try to decode your dream, you need to analyze it into the individual fragments and examine each for its particular meaning. Every one contains a small piece of the entire picture. Dreams are composed of a collection of little parts of your own life experience that are stored away in your brain symbolically.

What type of dream are you dealing with?

To interpret your dreams, you need to determine what type of dream you are dealing with. There are two categories that they fit into, those that are generated from within your physical body and mind and those that come from your spirit guides or tutors. They have different purposes and its necessary to recognize what these differences mean to you and how they interact in your waking and dreaming state.

Physical body dreams

Food: Did you ever notice that when you take a nap after you’ve eaten lunch that you can have some crazy images go through your mind. The same thing happens at night too, because food can trigger some wild and wacky dreams. If you enjoy these psychedelic excursions, then take note of what you had to eat before hand and repeat the process. On the other hand, if you’re not interested, then take note of what you ate and make certain to avoid eating whatever it was. Food is one of the generators of dreams, which are not worth interpreting.

Health Your subconscious knows a lot about you that you don’t, or maybe don’t care to know. Often times it will tell you something about your practices or lifestyle to tip you off about what its needs are. In dreams it tries to get the point across to you, sometimes politely, at other times not so.

Psychology: Stressful relationships and social situations can cause our mind to get out of kilter but our subconscious intervenes to straighten things out. Read The Full Story…