Where does the mind go when we sleep?
When the day is done and we lay our heads for a night of rest, many are left with the simple yet oddly complex question, “where does the mind go when we sleep?”, or sometimes “why do we have to sleep?”
To begin this conversation, we must understand the concept of the body and where we personally stand on grounds of having a “balanced sleep schedule” or a “healthy body”…
This topic can alter depending on the personal background, and shift individual perceptions on the question, but it can also answer a lot of things we haven’t thought to ask ourselves.
Before going to bed at night make sure you’re room is set to a comfortable temperature and that you’re in a good head space, you’ve eaten a decent meal an hour or two before laying down, haven’t had too much blue light exposure (typically through use of things like phones, watching television, using computers, etc.) within two hours of heading to bed, and haven’t had caffeine or alcohol. These little things will improve your sleep greatly! Be sure to keep a water bottle near the bed too just in case you wake up with an unrelenting thirst after deep diving through wild dreams.
With sleep, the body is trying to “reset” in a sense, entering a temporary hibernation-like state allowing for our internal systems to actively supply itself with the things it needs so it can keep going. Sleep breaks down into four stages but is actively classified under the main categories of Rapid-Eye-Movement (REM) sleep and non-REM. Each stage goes anywhere from an hour to two hours depending on your body and mind.
Non-REM sleep are the stages of preparation in a sense leading into what is known as REM sleep, this is the part of sleep where we have active and intense dreams, or our mind wanders and drifts to weird places, for some it’s the perfect chance to catch a lucid dream, but we’ll save that topic for later!
When we lay down and go to sleep we enter the beginning stages of sleep, categorized under non-REM sleep because the mind is just starting to slow down, enabling for the body to find comfort and relaxation, eventually settling into a deeper state of sleeping, which brings the sleeping to phase three, better known as deep sleep, which is still part of the non-REM stages of the cycle but is the most important before entering into REM sleep. Within deep sleep our bodies enter a slower state allowing for the internal systems to actively recover, also slowing brain activity to allow for the next stage of sleep to occur known as REM sleep, which is when the cool dreams/night terrors begin. In REM our brain activity is actively functioning as if we were awake, which is what allows for us to dream so vividly during this state of sleep. For some people this can be the best part of sleep or the worst part of sleep depending on mental health or personal background.
Dreams can occur during any stage of sleep but are often most intense during REM. One dream is never identical to the next, and can often hold some sort of meaning in an aspect that is meant to show us something about ourselves or our decisions in life. Sometimes the dreams could just be a memory or a foreshadow of a future event, providing moments of bewildering “nostalgia” that can never be quite thoroughly explained. They can also be better controlled if you know how to utilize something known as “lucid dreaming”, but with great power comes great responsibility. Dig into every dream and try to understand what they mean. If it means anything at all..
A personal tip for those searching, keep a dream journal or try to talk about your dreams if you wanna endeavor on their meanings. Anything is anything, perspective shifts with perception and is shaped by our conception of the reality we live.
Leave a Reply