Entering the World of Dreams

A LITTLE HISTORY…

Throughout history, people have looked to their dreams for information about their waking lives & decisions, their physical health, and most particularly about “the unseen world” of spirit & psyche. Since the triumph of the Enlightenment in the 18^th century, when the materialist, (seemingly) rationalist worldview became culturally dominant in the West, there has been a steady assault on the value & importance of dreams.

In 1959, the sleep researchers, Nathaniel Kleitman & Eugene Aserinsky, working at the University of Chicago Sleep research laboratory, noted that their child research subjects showed “rapid eye motion” (later abbreviated into the term REM), under their closed eye-lids at various times during their sleep cycles, & that when they were awakened from their slumbers during these “REM” periods, they also reported having been in the midst of dreams with much greater frequency than when they were awakened from other non-REM periods of sleep.

These results were published in the journals & subsequently reproduced experimentally in independent studies at other sleep laboratories all over the world, and the current boom in dream research was off & running.

NON-REM DREAMING MATTERS TOO!

It is worth noting, I believe, that this correlation between REM & dreaming was noted by the ancient Chinese thousands of years earlier! We know this because the Chinese ideogram, (written character), for “dream(s)”, shen, has been understood to be a slightly abstracted representation of eyes jiggling around under closed eye-lids ever since the Chinese first began to record their thoughts in written form.

As of the moment, (November, 2009), dreams & dreaming are continuing to experience a resurgence of attention in the academic and laboratory research world, (see Ilana Simons' November 11^thPT blog, Why Do We Dream?), which in turn has given birth to a series of slightly different, fiercely competing theories about the evolutionary value & neuro-biology of dreaming, (which ILana's blog covers quite thoroughly).

One problem with this blossoming of intellectual interest in dreams & dreaming associated with REM sleep is that the many dreams that do NOT take place during REM sleep have been, & continue to be ignored and neglected by the vast majority of sleep & dream researchers - (to the point where many intelligent and reasonably well-informed “lay” people are under the impression that ALL dreams are experienced during REM sleep.

This is clearly not the case. In particular, the dreams that are associated with the so-called “parasomnias”, (that is: sleep-walking, sleep-talking, night terrors, and the like), do not appear to take place during the REM sleep periods, (when a neurological inhibitor is released into the dreamer's blood stream that isolates and neutralizes the dreamer's voluntary nervous system, and prevents the dreamer from acting out the dream experiences the dream events the way they are acted out during parasomniac activities.

THE NEW INTEREST IN DREAMS & DREAMING AMONG THE GENERAL PUBLIC

The increase in scientific interest in dreams has also tended to draw attention away from another major social phenomenon – namely that there is a swiftly growing world-wide movement of lay people interested in dreams for all the “old fashioned” reasons mentioned above. People are buying books, attending seminars, classes & workshops, and particularly gathering lay-led, shared leadership dream groups to look at their dreams seeking information about their waking lives & decisions, their physical health, and most particularly about “the unseen world” of spirit & psyche!

Two years ago, at the annual “all-South Christian dream work conference” held at Kanuga, (a venerable Episcopalian camp & conference center in western North Carolina), it was reported that that there are now more than 400 dream groups meeting in Christian congregations throughout the South, more then 350 of which are less than 2 years old!

This year, the International Association for the Study of Dreams, (IASD), will also hold its annual meeting in Asheville, North Carolina, and dreamers, dream workers, and academic and medical dream researchers from all over the world, from as far away as Turkey and South Korea will gather for a week to socialize and share their latest experiences & discoveries. (I have been invited to give a key-note address to this meeting, and – God willing and the crick don't rise - will be reporting on this always interesting and exciting event in this blog.)