9 Things You Didn't Know About Dreams

WebMD Feature from Woman's Day

WebMD Feature Archive
By Sarah Jio

Discover what your nighttime visions mean,

how you can control them and more
Everyone dreamsevery single nightand yet we tend to know so little about our dreams.
Where do they come from? What do they mean? Can we control them and should we try to
interpret them? We spoke to the dream experts to bring you nine surprising facts about
dreams. Read before snoozing.
1. Dreaming can help you learn.
If youre studying for a test or trying to learn a new task, you might consider taking a nap or
heading to bed early rather than hovering over a textbook an hour longer. Heres why: When
the brain dreams, it helps you learn and solve problems, say researchers at Harvard Medical
School. In a study that appeared in a recent issue of Current Biology, researchers report that
dreams are the brains way of processing, integrating and understanding new information. To
improve the quality of your sleepand your brains ability to learnavoid noise in the
bedroom, such as the TV, which may negatively impact the length and quality of dreams.
2. Just like men, women can have orgasms during dreams.
Did you think only men experience this phenomenon? Not true, says Barbara Bartlik, MD,
a psychiatrist and sex therapist in New York. Warning, further reading may produce blushing:
Women have orgasms during their sleep, just as men do, she says. These orgasms often
accompany erotic dreams, but they also may occur during dreams of a nonerotic nature.
When women dream, she says, its not uncommon for their genitals to become engorged
and lubricated. This occurs during REM sleep, which happens several times during the
night, she says. A similar thing happens to men. Men get erections during REM sleep,
whether or not the man is having an erotic dream.
3. The most common dream? Your spouse is cheating.
If youve ever woken up in a cold sweat after dreaming about your husbands extramarital
escapade with your best friend, youre not alone, says Lauri Quinn Loewenberg, a dream
expert, author and media personality. The most commonly reported dream is the one where
your mate is cheating, she says. Loewenberg conducted a survey of more than 5,000
people, and found that the infidelity dream is the nightmare that haunts most people

sometimes on a recurring basis. It rarely has anything to do with an actual affair, she
explains, but rather the common and universal fear of being wronged or left alone.

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4. You can have severaleven a dozendreams in one night.
Its not just one dream per night, but rather dozens of them, say expertsyou just may not
remember them all. We dream every 90 minutes throughout the night, with each cycle of
dreaming being longer than the previous, explains Loewenberg. The first dream of the
night is about 5 minutes long and the last dream you have before awakening can be 45
minutes to an hour long. It is estimated that most people have more than 100,000 dreams in
a lifetime.
5. You can linger in a dream after waking.
Have you ever woken up from such a beautiful, perfect dream that you wished you could go
back to sleep to soak it all up (you know, the dream about George Clooney?)? You can! Just
lie stilldont move a muscleand you can remain in a semi-dreamlike state for a few
minutes. The best way to remember your dreams is to simply stay put when you wake up,
says Loewenberg. Remain in the position you woke up in, because that is the position you
were dreaming in. When you move your body, you disconnect yourself from the dream you
were just in seconds ago.
6. Even bizarre dreams can be interpreted.
While it can be hard to believe that an oddball dream about your mother, a circus and a
snowstorm can have any bearing on real life, there may be symbolism and potential
meaning to be mined in every dreamyou just have to look for it, says Harvard-trained
psychotherapist Jeffrey Sumber. "The meaning of our dreams oftentimes relates to things we
are needing to understand about ourselves and the world around us, he says. Instead of
shrugging off strange dreams, think about how they make you feel. We tend to dismiss
these dreams due to the strange components, yet it is the feeling we have in these dreams
that matters most, he explains. Sometimes the circus and the snowstorm are just fillers that
allow us to process the range of emotions we feel about our mother and give us the
necessary distraction so we can actually experience that spectrum of emotion.

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7. Recurring dreams may be your minds way of telling you something.
Do you have the same nightmare over and over again? Loewenberg suggests looking for
underlying messages in recurring dreams so that you can rid yourself of them. For example,
a common recurring nightmare people have involves losing or cracking their teeth. For this

dream, she recommends that people think about what your teeth and your mouth represent.
To the dreaming mind, your teeth, as well as any part of your mouth, are symbolic of your
words, she says. Paying attention to your teeth dreams helps you to monitor and improve
the way you communicate.
8. You can control your dreams.
The premise of the new movie Inception is that people can take the reins of their dreams and
make them what they want them to be. But it may not just be a Hollywood fantasy. According
to the results of a new survey of 3,000 people, dream control, or lucid dreaming may be a
real thing. In fact, 64.9 percent of participants reported being aware they were dreaming
within a dream, and 34 percent said they can sometimes control what happens in their
dreams. Taking charge of the content of your dreams isnt a skill everyone has, but it can be
developed, says Kelly Bulkeley, PhD, a dream researcher and visiting scholar at the
Graduate Theological Union in Berkley, California. The technique is particularly useful for
people who suffer from recurringnightmares, he says. Dr. Bulkeley suggests giving yourself a
pep talk of sorts before you go to sleep by saying: If I have that dream again, Im going to
try to remember thats its only a dream, and be aware of that. When you learn to be aware
that you are dreamingwithin a dreamyou not only have the power to steer yourself away
from the monster and into the arms of Brad Pitt, for instance, but you train your mind to
avoid nightmares in the first place. Lucid dreaming enhances your ability to learn from the
dream state, says Dr. Bulkeley.

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9. You dont have to be asleep to dream.
Turns out, you can dream at your desk at work, in the car, even at your kids soccer game.
Wakeful dreamingnot to be confused with daydreamingis real and somewhat easy to do,
says Dr. Bulkeley; it just involves tapping into your active imagination. The first step is to
think about a recent dream you had (preferably a good one!). Find a quiet contemplative
place and bring a dream that you remember back into your waking awareness and let it
unfold, he says. Let the dream re-energize. Wakeful dreaming can be used as a relaxation
tool, but Dr. Bulkeley says it can also help your mind process a puzzling dream. It creates a
more fluid interaction between unconscious parts of the mind and wakeful parts of the mind,
he says.
Sarah Jio is the health and fitness blogger for Glamour.com. Visit her blog, Vitamin G.