A Chama da Ascensão

Terça-feira, 21 de Abril de 2020

Getting Weird Dreams Lately? Pandemic Dreaming is a Thing.

By Nikki Harper.

Staff Writer for Wake Up World

April 20, 2020.

If you’ve noticed that your dreams are getting weirder, more disturbing, more violent or simply stranger lately, you’re by no means alone. Multiple research institutions are currently studying the effect Covid-19 and the pandemic are having on our dreams, and there appears to be consistent evidence that people are recalling more dreams, and that those they are recalling appear to be stranger than normal [1].

The Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre in France has been studying pandemic dreams since March this year and has reported a 35% increase in dream recall, with people on average experiencing 15% more disturbing dreams than normal [1]. Meanwhile, the Italian Association of Sleep Medicine has been analyzing the dreams of Italians during lockdown and have reported nightmares at levels which would correspond with that expected of people experiencing PTSD [1].

There are a number of physiological reasons which could account for why people seem to be dreaming more. Because coronavirus has severely impacted people’s daily routines, it may be that many of us are simply sleeping for longer. If we don’t have to get up to go to work, for example, we’re more likely to sleep for longer, spending more time in REM sleep, and therefore more likely to have vivid dreams – and to remember them. Additionally, many people are under intense stress, which means we’re more likely to experience disturbed sleep. If you wake up restlessly during the night, you’re more likely to interrupt a period of REM sleep, which makes dream recall more likely. We all wake up multiple times a night, but often only for seconds, which we don’t remember. During stressful times, however, we wake up for longer periods. It takes a few moments after waking for the brain to start encoding memories, so the longer you remain awake in between bouts of sleep, the more likely you are to remember a dream.

However, even if we can explain the physiology behind increased dreaming and better dream recall during the pandemic, the science explaining why the content of the dreams may be different is less clear cut. Despite many decades of research, we still don’t really understand the purpose of dreams, the mechanisms behind them or the link between dream content and our emotional state.

Deirdre Barrett, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School and author of several books on dreaming has been running an online survey asking people to submit their dreams during the Covid-19 crisis. As she bluntly puts it, “they are way more anxious on average than a normal set of dreams.” We do know from previous studies that the dreams of world war II prisoners were often founded on trauma [2], and we also know that post 9-11, a study found that people’s dreams had been more intense and traumatic [3]. With coronavirus creating an intense level of stress around the world, it’s possible that we’re seeing a similar global dreaming response this time.

Past research has shown that the more anxious someone feels during the day, the more likely they are to experience unsettling dreams or nightmares [4]. Our best guess is that dreams during an anxious time are the brain’s way of trying to make sense of what’s going on. Because the virus itself is invisible, our dreams tend to represent it symbolically instead, hence the increase in dreams which involve monsters, murderous individuals, accidents and all-round trauma.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, some evidence suggests that frontline healthcare workers are experiencing some of the worst dream trauma – “really full on nightmares – like you see with a traumatised population” according to Barrett [2]. The good news, however, is that there are things you can do to help to minimize your sleep disturbance and to avoid traumatic dreams.

Pay Attention to Your Sleep Routine

Experts differ over whether it’s best to try to go to bed at the same time every night or whether instead you should simply sleep when you feel like it, but whichever you choose, try to stick to that approach rather than varying it.

Meditating before bed can be helpful, as can soothing yoga exercises or a warm bath. Try to avoid screen time for at least an hour before bed and ensure that your bedroom is not too hot.

During the day, get plenty of exercise. Although this is difficult during quarantine, there are thousands of online exercise videos you can workout to, or you can get your daily dose of fresh air on a good long walk. In order to get restful sleep, you need to be physically tired.

Consider Dream Scripting

Dream scripting is a method which can help in avoiding disturbing dreams, particularly if you suffer from recurrent dreams, or if you have been through a particularly traumatic experience which keeps coming up in your dreams.

Essentially, the technique involves writing down a very detailed step by step script of what would normally happen in your dream – if you don’t have recurrent dreams, imagine what might happen in a bad nightmare, or what did happen in a bad dream that you’ve remembered. Be very explicit, detailing everything you can remember up to the very worst moment of crisis, which is usually the point at which you woke up.

Now continue the script with a detailed resolution of some kind – how you escaped from or recovered from the real-life trauma if there was one, or how you could escape safely from the dream situation. If you’re dealing with a purely dream situation you can be as crazy and inventive as you like here – in dreams, anything goes! – all that matters is that you walk your dream, on paper, through to a happy and peaceful conclusion.

When you have finished, read the script to yourself over and over again, for ten minutes or so before you sleep. This helps your brain to confront the emotions of the frightening trauma while you are still awake, and also coaxes the brain into “remembering” that there is/was/can be a good resolution to the scare.

If you do suffer from very distressing dreams, remember too that it’s always good to talk these things through. Talk to your family about them or get them down on paper and submit them to a dream survey – anywhere but isolated in your own head.

Sources:

About the author:

Nikki Harper is a spiritualist writer, astrologer, and editor for Wake Up World.

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tags: dreams, nikki harper, pandemic dreaming, wake up world, weird dreams

publicado por achama às 00:46

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Quarta-feira, 15 de Abril de 2020

How to Wake Up to Who You Really Are

By Paul Lenda

Thanks to Wake Up World

April 14, 2020

Most people are sleepwalking through life. They either identify solely with this 3D reality or they believe in a vague sort of afterlife that is given to them if they behave well enough while they are alive. To wake up to who you really are, you need to go within and stop focusing so much on the external.

Even some “spiritual” people are not aware of what their true essence is. Enlightenment doesn’t come from reading books or chanting mantras…it comes from Self-realization.

What is Self-realization? It is the awakening of the awareness that you really are a Source fractal using a physical avatar as a way to interact with the densest plane of Reality. You are in a simulated universe that is a playground for experiential existence and soul evolution. While you definitely have a body, you are not your body.

Becoming Self-realized also makes you aware of the intimate interconnected wholeness of everything. As Swami Amar Jyoti said, “When you find yourself, who you really are, you will find that everybody and everything is One.” We are all inextricably linked to one another. What any one of us does affects every one of us.

Alan Watts said that, “waking up to who you are requires letting go of you who imagine yourself to be.” This means that you drop all the self-imposed labels, as well as the labels put on you by others, that attempted to define who you are.

That is all window dressing…layers of an onion obfuscating that true You.

Identifying with anything too strongly tethers you to it like a ball and chain. It hinders your evolution and makes it easier for you to fall into polarity consciousness. Us vs. them is a strong program that is difficult for anyone to break who has not awoken to who they really are.

Self-Realization: It’s as Easy as 1-2-3

You don’t have to run off to an ashram for several years in near-constant meditation to become Self-realized. It’s actually quite effortless, if you are open to it. What you are attempting to find is something that already exists within you…it’s the true You. It’s with you wherever you go and during whatever you do.

You can connect with your true Self by acknowledging it. At first, you can use meditation as your main tool to get in touch with it. Afterwards, you can simply connect with it in real-time without having to go through a visualization meditation. There’s many ways to go about it, but here’s one I like to teach, given its effectiveness for most people.

Sit with your spine straight, eyes closed, breathing long and deep.
Imagine a little glowing white version of you sitting in full lotus, right at your third eye center.
Put your awareness into First Person mode of the little version of you, moving down your central channel, which is aligned with the spine, until you reach your solar plexus.
Here, the little version of you lands on a spinning fire disc that spins continuously faster, lifting you back up through your central channel up out through your crown.
You see the little glowing you rising above your physical body, going up into the sky, past the Earth, farther and farther…moving faster and faster past the planets in the Solar System and far beyond. The fire disc is always continuously spinning under you.
Your inner GPS takes you to what looks like a star. This luminous ball of energy will begin “speaking” to you and you are able to have a conversation with it. You may even just feel strong emotions or see images of some kind. Connect with the star, as this is the visual symbol for your true Self. Ask it anything you want to know about yourself, life, and Reality.
When you are done, think to yourself that you want to go back to your body. You will see the little version of yourself travel at light speed through space, back into your body, into the third eye center. You can open your eyes when you are ready.

Your own Self-realization is the greatest gift you can give to yourself and the world. When you wake up to who you really are, your entire perception of Reality shifts in a way that can’t be understood by reading about it. This is something you have to experience for yourself. Whenever you are ready, say Hello to your true Self. You will be glad you did.