Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Easy English Podcast.
I'm your host Oliver, and today we are going to explore a
fascinating topic. Why do we dream?
Dreaming is something that we all experience at least once.
Some people say they never dream and others dream every single
night. But the truth is, we all do
dream, even if we remember them or not.
So have you ever wondered what's going on in your mind while you
sleep? Well in this episode, while
learning some English, we are going to dive into the science
of dreams and we're going to look at some of the theories
behind why we dream and how our dreams might even help us when
we are awake. Let's get started.
So what exactly are dreams? At their core, dreams are a
series of thoughts, images and sensations that occur in your
brain, in your mind during sleep.
Most of our dreams happen during a stage of sleep called R.E.M or
this stands for rapid eye movement when our brains are
very active, almost as if we are awake.
Interestingly enough, dreams can be so vivid and detailed just
like real life. They can feel very real or they
can be very vague, so very unclear and hard to remember.
Some dreams can feel joyful and happy, while others can be very
strange or even a bit scary or sad.
But why does our brain create these night time stories, these
night time dreams? And to be honest, even from
reading online, because it's something I'm interested in,
I've always thought that dreams are quite strange.
There is no single answer as to why we dream, but there are
several fascinating theories and let's take a little look at a
few of them. The number one or one popular
theory is the brain's processing system.
So 1 popular theory is that the dreams that we have help us to
process emotions and experiences.
In this case, you can think of your brain like a computer that
needs to sort and organize information.
Dreams could be a way for your mind to process the events of
your day. So really, dreams could be a way
for your mind, just like a computer, to process the events
of your day, to make sense of them and to store important
memories. For example, if you've been
learning English, practicing new vocabulary, your dreams might
include some strange scenes when you're speaking English or even
studying. This could be your brain's way
of reinforcing what you've learned.
And the next theory that we'll look at is problem solving.
So have you ever had perhaps a a situation where you've went to
bed with a problem and you've woken up with a solution?
Well, some scientists actually believe that dreams are a space
for creative problem solving. So while you sleep, your brain
can explore ideas and solutions without having to, like, think
about things, without having to direct your thoughts.
It's a way of your brain working things out with the information
that it has on its own. So maybe this is an option too.
But we still have two more interesting theories.
And the next is called emotional regulation.
So another idea that some scientists have put forward is
that dreams help us manage our emotions.
If you've had quite a stressful day, your dreams might act like
a therapy and that helps to process those feelings in a
Safeway. And this is an interesting one.
I think particularly people that maybe are not good at dealing
and expressing emotions, perhaps our dreams can be a good way of
working all of that stuff out. And the final theory is just
that it is random brain activity.
Some researchers or scientists actually think that dreams could
just be completely random. And during that R.E.M. sleep
that we talked about, your brain creates signals that create
images and sensations, and your mind tries to make sense of
them. It tries to understand these
signals and it creates a story. But whatever the reason, dreams
do appear to play an important role in keeping our minds
healthy. So now that we have talked about
these main theories, let's look at some fun facts about dreams.
So we actually forget most of our dreams.
And did you know that within 5 minutes of waking up, you've
forgotten about half of your dreams?
And after about 10 minutes, most people have likely forgotten
almost all of them. I have this quite often.
Sometimes I will wake up and think wow that was an intense
dream. I maybe have some strong
emotions from that dream, some very strong memories in my head
and after about 5 or 10 minutes I can't remember any of my
dream. And as the harder I try to
remember, the harder it is to recall or remember what actually
happened. And the next fun fact is that
not everyone actually dream in colour.
Some people dream in black and white while other people see
vivid colours. And scientists believe that this
could be influenced by the media that you consume, like black and
white TV shows for example. Our final fun fact is that
dreams can actually be universal.
So they can be all over the world, people have the same
dream or very similar dreams. For example, people all over the
World Report or record dreams about falling, about being
chased or turning up to an exam or to school without
preparation. And these dreams, in my opinion,
seem to reflect emotions or stress and different ways that
we try to express these in our dreams and experiences that
everyone have. For example, I often have a
dream about turning up for a mathematics exam.
So I go into school and I realize, oh, my goodness, I
haven't prepared for this. I haven't went to the classes
for a year. And I don't know what's going
on. And then I wake up in my bed and
I think, oh, thank goodness, it's been about 10 years since I
was at school. And I'm sure you have had a
similar dream to that. So the next part I want to talk
about how our dreams impact or affect our life so when we are
awake. But first, I just want to remind
you if you haven't checked it out already to check out the
Patreon. It's in the link in the
description below the episode. And on Patreon there is lots of
bonus content, podcasts, extra series transcripts as well.
So you can read along with the episodes and look at the
difficult words and higher quality audio episodes too.
And it helps support this channel, this project, and me as
well personally. So thank you very much if you
are a Patreon member. So how did dreams impact our
waking life? For one, they can inspire
creativity. Many ideas and works of art were
actually inspired by dreams. Can you believe that?
Did you know that, for example, the book I heard about this, So
the book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, it was actually
inspired by a dream that she had.
And there's lots of other famous things for history where great
scientists have said that the answer to their question came in
a dream. And dreams can also provide us
with useful insights into our emotions and our mental health.
If you're frequently dreaming about stress or anxiety, it can
be a great sign that we are dealing with that in our
everyday life. And perhaps then it can be a
good sign to take a much closer look at your daily life, what
you're doing and how you can reduce that stress, for example.
And finally, paying attention to your dreams can really help even
with language learning sometimes.
If you're dreaming in English, for example, it could mean that
your brain is working hard to process and work for what you're
learning. So with these random appearing
dreams, can we actually sometimes control our dreams?
And I think that this is a very interesting topic and concept
and it's called lucid dreaming. And this is when you're awake,
that or sorry, when you're aware that you're dreaming and can
even control what happens in your dream.
And some people practice techniques or methods to
actually achieve this condition or this type of dream.
And that can be like keeping a dream journal or performing
little checks during the day to see if you're awake or asleep.
And while it can take a lot of practice, lucid dreaming can be
an interesting way to explore your imagination.
Many people say this in the past I have actually went through a
little bit of a phase of trying to do this.
It was said that in the past some even great scientists and
other famous figures in history have used lucid dreams as a way
to explore their minds. And I thought that it is such an
interesting idea because we spend so much time sleeping.
And I tried some of these techniques myself, I even tried
specialties and other habits to try to help my dreams become
more vivid, more intense, more clear.
And I did a couple of times have lucid dreams, but it was very
hard to control them. So I think it must take a lot of
practice. Often when I became aware or I
realized that I was in a dream, I would kind of panic, maybe get
a little bit too excited and wake myself up.
So it seemed to me that they never really lasted for a very
long time. But in doing all of this, in
trying to write down my dreams and spend time focusing on my
dreams, one big thing that I did notice was that my dreams became
more clear and more intense the longer I did it.
But as a result of this, in the morning time especially, I felt
really tired. I felt like I had almost been
working during the night and I didn't like the feeling.
So after a while I went back to just going to sleep normally and
my dreams became less intense, less clear, and it felt like I
was asleep. And I fall asleep and wake up
and it's like a little black space.
And for some people, including me, I think it's nice and I feel
much more well rested. But it's up to everyone, and I
think that lucid dreaming can be a very interesting and exciting
experience. So I would be curious to hear
your thoughts. Do you lucid dream?
Have you ever tried it? What do you think about lucid
dreaming? I'm very interested to hear what
you think about that. But for me, it's not something I
am going to keep doing or trying to do.
I just want to get a better sleep routine, to have healthy
sleep and feel very well rested in the morning.
That's my number one goal. So in conclusion, I think that
dreams are probably one of the most mysterious aspects of our
lives. We spend so much time sleeping
and having these dreams, but no one really knows for sure what
they are for, why we have them. And I think that's pretty cool.
It's pretty interesting. Whether they're helping us
process emotions or solve our problems, or even just to
entertain us when we sleep, I think it really shows us the
incredible, amazing power of the human mind.
So tonight, when you are going to sleep, think about the dreams
that you might have. And who knows, maybe you could
wake up in the morning with a fantastic new idea or an insight
into your life. So thank you so much for
listening. I hope this was an interesting
episode. It was a very interesting topic
for me and if you enjoyed it, make sure to rate the podcast.
So give it a good five stars or a thumbs up on YouTube and
follow along for more. Follow or subscribe.
Thank you so much and have an amazing day.
Goodbye.