Our dream is an intimate terrain, whose only explorers are ourselves. Seen like this, dreaming is making, every night, a vital journey into the unknown: to the representations we make of the world, to what we experience, and sometimes to what we don’t even we knew we know and that only dreaming we can reveal.
For this reason, dreaming was seen by the fathers of psychoanalysis -Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung- as a moment in life as important as wakefulness, which is capable of revealing fundamental personality traits, which, by the way, he was passionate about studying Jung.
Thus, there is no doubt that dreams form a kind of fundamental balance. Furthermore: neuroscience has helped us to delve into the importance of dreaming to maintain healthin ways that had not been verified before.
According to the publisher of New ScientistRowan Hooper, not chronically dreaming has truly unsuspected consequences for our waking hours, which is related to sleep disorders that are beginning to be considered a threat to global public health.
Not dreaming chronically is related to the fact that at least 20% of the world population suffers from some sleep disorder.
sleep implies a repair cycle; if not fulfilled, this affects our entire metabolism, causing:
Not dreaming is a symptom that this cycle is breaking.because we can only dream once we have reached the REM stage (rapid eye movement sleep; rapid eye movementfor its acronym in English) while we sleep, which precedes three other cycles that last an average of 90 minutes.
Getting to the REM stage takes at least 3 and a half hours; if we don’t spend enough time in that stage, it’s hard to get its rest benefits, according to Hooper. Even, as has been pointed out some studiesnot dreaming (or not dreaming enough) affects memory, since it is during sleep that it is consolidated.
Added to all this, not getting enough sleep drains our energy: not dreaming can affect our perception of reality and how we functionand even diminish creativity, which we can only unlock (among other things) with due rest.
So don’t underestimate the importance of dreaming: It is a vital process both to idealize (dream in the metaphorical sense) and to be able to carry out what we propose, by having the necessary rest.
*Images: Oh Gigue
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