Last week the very same day I woke up in the morning feeling anxious. Though, it was not the first time I woke up this way, but at this time it was slightly more unusual because I felt the dream this time around was very vivid—so much that I literally felt as if I lived that dream in reality. For what makes me so intrigued about this dream is this story line: I am driving a car on a smooth road that transitions to a sea suddenly. A hurricane faces me now and my car some how manages to get through only to find many other pacing towards me. The only way I could escape them was to wake up in reality feeling simply anxious. Now for those situations I felt that feeling anxious was quite a bold thing as they were knee jerking giants. To conquer this quest for such an unlikely dream state, I dwelled a bit over the conditions which might have been responsible.
Technically, such a dream state is broadly referred to be in the Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep state. [No lecture this, please :)] In this situation what happens is that both our brain and eye movements experience tremendous amount of activity like in no other state while our rest of the body is fixated as if in paralysis!! In this state, the dream is so vivid that paralytic state of the body actually helps us to not enact the dream in real physical action as otherwise we may indeed happen to do those stuffs in reality. Imagine that you hit a homerun in your dream only to hit your neighbor besides who needs a medical attention immediately for the hard hit you have made. But that doesn’t happen because what is happening in the REM state is that our brain stops releasing monoamine neurotransmitters that are responsible for our motor activities we perform during the awaken state.
But what exactly is happening in such a vivid dream state? An analogy is that of rapid eye movements we make and experience every day and every second when we move our eyes even for one millimeter. Take your case at the moment, how your eyes are moving while reading every word or moved a bit towards right or left or top or down finding either the wall behind your laptop or may be the cup of coffee you are having there towards the side. The main idea is that our brain is seeing different imageries every nanosecond when in awaken state and a similar stuff is happening when we are in the REM state, which occupies around 20-25% part of our sleep of upto 6 to 8 hours.
Now if you were saying that you indeed happen to physically enact your dreams, then you are living a condition called REM behavior disorder. But do you care about this when your real aim is to outcast the person sleeping next or near you? I leave that up to you to decide!
Coming back to the vivid and unusual dream I had last week, as per experts an infection like a severe flu can cause such weird and vivid dreams and I indeed had a severe flu. My body in a way was on a slow sleep mode and was trying to fight the bug letting my REM cycle getting affected which in turn was responsible for the weired dream. I am content to reason that severe flu was the real cause as I dream the same next time, I am want to make sure that I have a car-cum-submarine instead of just a car that can only sail!!
And how can I do that!? Well, with numerous lucid dreaming apps rolling across on app stores (search for DreamOn app) it is possible. The app lets you control your dreams by sending certain soundscapes to your subconscious mind in REM state. I am trying one today to figure out whether it is possible or not for I have no clue whether I am writing in a dream over dream in a dream. Sounds like Inception, but a quest is a quest to get an answer. I got few but many are still unanswered.
