The Dreaming Mind: Waking the Mysteries of Sleep | World Science Festival

I was paralyzed in a car accident when I was 17. I'm 35 now and still to this day I still walk in my dreams.

calculus was a nightmare at school until i figured it out in a dream. When I woke up and looked at my homework I discovered I could solve all the problems. that was 40 yrs ago and I've never forgotten that moment.

i remember loads of dreams ive had from being a child to now and ive always felt that some of my dreams are like windows into parallel universes. Its like im always myself in my dreams but in a completely different universe or reality.

My dreams are so realistic that I wake up exhausted from them.

I really love that this content about neuroscience, sleep, consciousness and psychedelics is discussed by a multitude of experts in their field in such an interesting format for free. I hope this keeps going and we can ever further enlighten ourselfs about ourselfs. A big thanks for that.

I have always been fascinated by dreams, perception and consciousness. I kept a dream journal nightly for 7 years. By the end of that time, i would remember 4-6 dreams most nights, and the detail of my dreams had pared down and become very direct and explicit. Several of my findings from this personal experiment shocked me, and frightened me, so much so i then spent quite some years trying to forget my dreaming!. One finding i will share, is that fully 1-2/3rds of those dreams turned out to be explicitly precognitive. Now that i am an elder person, i am preparing to record my dreams for the rest of my life. Its too much interesting time to just disregard. It makes zero sense that such an energy intensive and consciousness comprehensive activity would have no reason for existance.

My dreams are more exciting than my real life!!

One thing that always fascinated me about dreams was certain geometries inside the dream. Relating to Brian's renovated building dream, I often dream of huge buildings or landscapes also, with crazy geometry. Unique shapes that make perfect sense in the dream. But when I wake up my brain can't make sense of the shapes I saw. I can REMEMBER the dream in its entirety. But when I try to focus on the intricacies like specific shapes, my conscious brain can't picture or make sense of it.

I'm convinced the dream realm is a place. The scenery, settings, and locations in my dreams have been consistent, since I was a child.

Shared a dream with a roommate once. I dream almost every night, he almost never does. Still remember the dream and him asking me in the middle of the dream if it was a dream and I told him yeah. We woke up half hour or so later had a chat about it. Such a crazy thing

I meet people often who say they don't have dreams, or more accurately they don't remember them. A lot of these people don't even care!!! For some reason, this makes me sad. I would become unhappy if I stopped dreaming, and would certainly care. For me my dreams are like a friend, or like a huge part of me that no one has access to. A private world for me to learn about myself within, and look back on while I'm awake. This makes me feel like the ones who do not dream, are missing out on something major.

I shared a dream with my daughter! We were both able to describe the content of this dream we both had enjoyed.

Did you ever think that when you wake up all the people in your dreams might say." ,Hey where in the heck did they go ? They were just here a minute ago. "

I often Lucid dream, and most often during listening to Science podcasts like this one. I go to sleep listening to podcasts every night because I have tinitus and the podcast helps. I find I am listening to the podcast in my dream, looking at Brian and watching his lips move. I then ask Brian a question, but he never listens just keeps on talking. At this point I realise that I am dreaming. I find it interesting that his lips move and are in sync with what he is saying. This makes me believe that there is a time delay between what I am listening to and the lucid dream that enables the two to be in sync. Once I dreamed I was playing drums to a jazz big band. I played perfectly to all the saxophone, trombone and trumpet arrangements. Then I realise I was composing the complete big band arrangement in my imagination. I could hear all of the instruments in the band playing.

I have unique experience with lucid dreams, I learnt how to drive a car in my dreams, years later, I drove with no instructions or any help from anyone and it was so profound feeling about my ability.

As I got older, my sleepwalking turned into lucid dreaming, although I didn’t know that’s what they were called. The first lucid dream involved a drowning dream. I was not able to reach the surface of the water and then told myself this is just a dream, so just breathe in the water, so I did. Now a lot of dreams involve telling myself something to overcome a PROBLEM. Other lucid dreams I have had: the falling dream… involved telling myself I can bounce when I hit the ground so I did; I bounced when I hit like a bouncy ball all over the place. Hahaha! I have also had dreams so vivid and horrible that they would give Stephen King nightmares. Although I used to sleepwalk nightly I don’t have lucid dreams nightly. Lucid dreams usually occur on average once a month.

My conversations with people in my dreams feel more real and heartfelt then my shallow conversations in real life

I started lucid dreaming as a kid because I was determined my dreams should have the intro music like the cartoons on TV 😂 so I created my own as I went to sleep and found I could have further control into the dream … 🤩

Dream has always been part of my life, I always dream about things before they happen. Dream is the eye I use to view reality, without my dreams, I'm blind. I also discovered that no matter how complicated a dream seems, I could connect the dot together to make complete sense.

I'm 45 years old now and as far I can remember I always have had what is called Lucid dreams. I have never dreamt a nightmare. If dream was stupid, disturbing or simply boring I would said to myself (while dreaming): dream that good looking girl you saw yesterday or, most often, dream that gig you played that was good, because I was a drummer before. I hope they will talk deeply about lucid dreams. They are fantastic.