The Art of Dreaming

Side Quest Only Available During Sleep

A. J. Li

“TRIPPING” IS A WORD THAT’S TAKEN ON VARIOUS MEANINGS IN OUR CULTURE, often associated with otherworldly and mind-bending experiences, as well as just doing weird, irrational things. And while you may feel like you’re dreaming during a period six maths class on a Friday afternoon, the body does have a natural way to trip during sleep, and that is dreaming. 

Unless you’re an NPC (in which case you should refer to “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”), you’ve probably dreamt thousands of times in your life about all sorts of weird and wacky things, many of which you can’t remember. Perhaps you’ve even had a lucid dream before, and most definitely a nightmare. What do these all mean and how can one learn the art of dreaming?

Your old regular dream is like a perfectly crafted cocktail which can happen at any time during sleep. In fact, it’s thought that everyone dreams between three to six times per night, with each one lasting between five to twenty minutes. It then makes sense that 95% of these dreams are forgotten when you wake up, leading to the universal experience of being unable to recall what seemed like a vivid dream. 

There is also a link between dreaming and mental health. They help us regulate our emotions and grapple with negative ones through the secretion of hormones, meaning that more frequent dreams may keep you more emotionally stable. This would also provide an interesting explanation for why people who sleep less and are sleep deprived are more likely to be depressed and have other mental health issues. What this all means is that now you can confidently say dreaming helps your mental health 💀. They may also represent your unconscious desires and other parts of your subconsciousness, leading to some dreams that aren’t completely random and sometimes make perfect sense. I would advise you though, not to dream too hard and think too much about that one girl who might make a regular appearance in your dreams. It’s not that deep.

Dreams may also have some benefits for the aspiring academic weapon. Given that dreams regulate and process emotions, there is also reason to believe that they process other types of information as well, including those random English quotes or math formulae. Now, I’m not saying that dreaming about yourself as Macbeth slaying the king, or being chased by the quadratic formula (which would certainly be a trip), will necessarily help you in your exams, but they probably do mean that your brain is processing this information and creating new connections, rationalising your thoughts, albeit through irrational means. This is yet another reason to sleep well before exams, or you might find yourself slipping into a dream during the exam itself.

Lucid dreams are a special type of dream. They’re like a signature cocktail, allowing you to stir up your dreams as you see fit. It happens when you’re aware that you’re dreaming and results in you having some control over your dream. 

There are countless “lucid dreaming gurus” out there on the internet for the true dream connoisseurs who want to have a go at this exotic activity, which has been linked to emotional benefits such as less anxiety, better motor skills, improved problem-solving, and heightened creativity. As you can imagine, there is a bit of a bucket list mainly of two things for most people in terms of what they want to do during a lucid dream, one of which is trying to fly. I’ll let you guess the other one. However, because you are pretty much conscious during lucid dreams, there are also some possible problems that arise including decreased sleep quality and a reduction of the benefits mentioned earlier that one gains from regular dreams.

Of course, no cocktail party is complete without a few uninvited guests. Enter, the dreaded nightmare. These distressing dreams can be caused by several triggers and are probably the ones that make you travel the hardest. Occurring in both adults and children, nightmares can result from stress, fear, trauma, emotional difficulties, and illness (the infamous fever dream). More so than the two other types of dreams already mentioned, nightmares probably reflect your current state of life the most, particularly if you’re in a little rough patch. They are also the ones that are the most cause for concern. If a certain nightmare happens over and over again, it may be a signal from your subconsciousness which you should probably listen to and perhaps even talk to a professional about. Whether it be monsters under the bed, falling off cliffs, or for some, “time’s up, pens down please boys”, nightmares aren’t real, no matter how scary they are, and they most likely won’t happen to you in real life.

Well there you have it, a crash course on the art of tripping. Dreams, as the ultimate bartenders of the mind, give us a natural way to stumble out of reality and have some surreal experiences. But they do also play a critical role in our emotional regulation and can help us in our daily lives. Just make sure you don’t skip out too hard and keep those experiences in the confines of your mind.