Can Dreams Solve a Tough Problem?

A growing number of researchers believe dreams are the best way to solve a tough problem.

At the University of Maryland, Clara Hill, Ph.D., a pioneer in dream interpretation, sees dreams as a key problem solving  tool. She believes that dreams provide the key to fundamental issues that standard therapy cannot unlock. People carry dreams around with them for years and years, but it’s only once they begin to work on the underlying problem that the dream breaks apart, she says. The dreams you need to pay attention to are those that haunt you.

HOW TO REMEMBER YOUR DREAMS
Try these tips to remember your dreams more vividly, and make the most of their problem-solving potential

Start on a weekend: Dreams are best remembered when you wake without an alarm — that way, you’ll likely wake from REM sleep, and your dream will be fresh in your mind, says psychologist and dream researcher Rosalind Cartwright, Ph.D. of Rush University Medical Center.

Enhance your recall: Before you nod off, tell yourself your dreams matter and you want to remember them. Stating your intention is the first step toward enhancing dream recall, says G. William Domhoff, Ph.D., a dream researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Stay on track: Make a question about your problem the last thing you think about before nodding off. As you drift to sleep, you’re very suggestible — it’s a bit like a hypnotic trance. Use this time to define your problem. Sum it up in one or two short sentences.

Write it down: Keep a pad of paper and a pen next to your bed. Upon waking, take a moment to lie quietly. Glance around the outskirts of your consciousness to see if a dream is lurking. If a fragment comes into your head, gently follow it backward, says Domhoff. We usually remember our dreams in reverse. So, like a loose piece of yarn, a dream may unravel if you tug gently on one end.

Keep still: If you wake up in the middle of a dream, mimic the body in REM sleep by staying still. During REM sleep, muscles are paralyzed. Use this time to think about the dream and trace its story line. Give the dream a title before you open your eyes, because when the mind is awake it’s more likely to remember a short catch-phrase than the visual images. Then write down as much as you can remember.

THE ULTIMATE DREAM EXPERIENCE
But there is yet another very powerful type of dream —  one that is renowned for creating remarkable personal experiences — LUCID DREAMING. Unlike normal dreams, during a lucid dream you are aware of the fact that you are dreaming. During a lucid dream you may have a bi-location experience, find yourself speaking and understanding a foreign language, totally understanding complex scientific problems, or having a conversation with an old friend … the type of experiences are endless. To learn more about lucid dreaming=> Learn to Lucid Dream…

Why Sleep is the Best Problem Solver

Research by  leading sleep expert Dr. S. Mednickat the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine suggests that Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep enhances creative problem solving more than any other sleep or waking state.

Dr. Mednickat found that for creative problems you’ve already been working on, the passage of time is often enough to find solutions. But for new problems, only REM sleep seems to enhance your creativity. Mednick feels REM sleep does this by stimulating the creation of the associative networks that allow your brain to make new and useful associations between unrelated ideas.

The study participants were shown several groups of three words (for example: cookie, heart, sixteen) and asked to find a fourth word that could be associated to all three words (sweet, in this instance). 

Participants were tested in the morning, and again in the afternoon after either a nap with REM sleep, one without REM sleep, or a quiet rest period. The importance of REM sleep to creative problem solving was obvious: Unlike the non-REM and quiet rest groups, the REM sleep group improved by almost 40 percent over their morning performances.

And REM sleep is apparently also connected to memory. Dr. Dennis McGinty of the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Administration Healthcare System has conducted research that has clearly established that REM sleep deprivation reduces cell proliferation in the part of the forebrain that contributes to long-term memory.

According to avid dream researcher Bradley Thompson, perhaps the most remarkable problem solving comes from what is called lucid dreaming – actually seeming to wake up during your REM sleep. During a lucid dream you can actually direct your dream experience, and recall it all when you awaken. The creative problem-solving results can be remarkable.

Quantum Physics and the Law of Attraction

Quantum physics has clearly established that everything is basically energy in motion. Your automobile, the walls of your office, your desk, the clothing on your body, your computer — it is all vibrating energy.

Thoughts also consist of this very same energy, and are a powerful force in terms of creating  reality (how we view and respond to the world inside and outside our own self).

Thought is an interesting phenomenon. By its very nature, it is forever trying to manifest itself into physical expression. You can compare your thoughts to the sparks that rise from a campfire. For although your thoughts contain the essence and potential power of the fire, they exist only briefly, then simply dissipate.

Because a thought lasts only a few seconds — you may think that a single thought has much inherent power. Enter the power of focus and repetition: A thought that is repeated with intense focus becomes concentrated mental power,  just as sunlight can create fire when focused through a magnifying glass.

The more often a focused thought is repeated, the more energy and power it generates. This is not theory —  it is based on the fact that each thought creates hundreds (or even thousands) of new neural connections in our brain.

The old theory of the power of attraction states that this is how we attract circumstances matching our thought images. There is a science-based way to interpret this same phenomenon. Here’s how it works: Any well-focused thought that is repeated often generates impressions of the desired reality in the subconscious mind.

And since the subconscious mind basically operates 24/7, and constantly scans our internal and external realities, it has been primed to notice anything that reminds it of the focused thought.

If you bought a new red Toyota RAV4, for example, you would suddenly notice every red RAV4 you pass on the highway. They were always there — it’s just that your excitement over your new RAV4 has primed your subconscious mind to note everything related to your new vehicle.

Are thoughts part of quantum reality?
Quantum physics tells us that you and I, as observers, have a direct and very real effect on the nature of reality. This is no exaggeration. Tiny sub-atomic particles (those you can’t see with your eyes) simply behave as unmanifested energy in accordance with what are called waves of probability. BUT the moment someone looks for the position of one of these particles, everything changes. At that moment they will suddenly convert from energy to observable matter.

So how does this apply to our day-to-day human realities? Try this: If focused observation can affect the outside world in such a radically powerful way, imagine what mastering that ability can do in your own life.

Engineered brainwave training encourages your mind to develop its power of focus — converting the 5-watts of electrical power of your brain into a 5-watt laser capable of burning through your so-called limitations.

In my clinical studies I discovered I could tell a lot just by observing someone’s brainwave patterns. Anxious people, for example, tend to produce too many high Beta waves. People suffering from ADD/ADHD, on the other hand, tend to produce an overabundance of low Alpha and high Theta brainwaves. Both of these conditions can be corrected using regular brainwave training.