Dream, Meditate, Create, Sleep, Repeat
We can alter our mind daily to better remember, learn, exercise, shape the future, even self-repair to build an ageless brain.
Dr. Philip Maffetone
A healthy brain can flow into different states of consciousness offering the potential of a more accomplished human. We can all do this many ways by meditating, learning and problem-solving, creating, and enlisting nightdreams and daydreams.
For most people, dreams are intriguing experiences. Called sleep mentation, dreams are conscious events occurring during sleep. Appearing throughout the night in different brain areas, they are often characterized by varying degrees of emotional intensity, bizarreness, visual vividness, and narrative complexity.
We dream in all stages of sleep, more easily recalling those during REM (rapid eye movement) than non-REM. Dreams in REM are generally more emotional, strange, and intense, those in non-REM calmer and thought-provoking. Recalling them is a mental activity not unlike other memory capability, mirroring our waking reality and personality. What we see, smell, feel, and otherwise experience everyday influences our dreams through images, sensations, thoughts, emotions, speech, and muscle movements. So knowing ourselves by day helps recall and recognize nighttime experiences.
Dreams can open our mind, simulating a reality, and perhaps a coping strategy to better face life. They are expressions of not just our mental-emotional state, but overall brain health. This is another reason to avoid negativities such as the news, arguments, violent movies, bad people, especially in the evening: we may have to relive them in our dreams whether recalled or not. Garbage in garbage out.
Very similar to dreaming, meditation can more quietly open the mind. While we may enjoy a meditation class or practice it at home, this should serve merely as a stepping stone that trains us to meditate at will any time anywhere. It is accomplished by shifting our consciousness to a relaxed contemplative alpha state. This helps us escape from the active, hectic beta state, important for certain activities but too much can stress us—the talkative person during an exercise session, while driving, or our own internal chatter when trying to meditate or fall asleep. We get duped into living in beta from TV and radio, social media, and other market-driven propaganda that can spiral into an unhealthy brain and body. Beta can put music in the background, where we won’t reap its full benefits.
Alpha is easier to attain while quiet or with music, especially when daydreaming or mind wandering (similar to nightdreams but more guided). It can also help us drift deeper into a more powerful consciousness called theta, which further promotes creative potential. Vital for arts and science, creativity allows our mind to steer the future instead of being driven by the past. Theta also helps manage mental experiences, dispose of useless memories, and care for our inner self. (Children are often in theta, contributing to better brain development.)
While sleeping in a subconscious delta state, theta spikes occur during REM, with alpha waves appearing during non-REM. These promote dreaming, and dream recall upon awakening (or sometimes later in the day). Whether day or night, alpha is more thought-provoking, while theta a more emotionally vivid experience. (During lucid dreams we are aware of dreaming, yet asleep, another unique overlap of conscious and subconscious states, with the presence of gamma waves.)
We can enter alpha or theta during dancing, and also sports activities using mental imagery putting on our game face or experiencing a runner’s high. Likewise when driving: the alpha default mode network helps us drive safer (the reason texting, intense conversation, or other beta activity is risky like alcohol).
Ever-changing states of consciousness greatly enhance life’s improvisation.
We can sense different states of consciousness, represented by different measurable brain wave frequencies, and manipulate them at will. However, stress can interfere with alpha, theta, and delta. The daily mental stress of being imprisoned by beta is a common cause. So is the accumulation of metabolic or physical stressors such as low brain energy or neck or jaw muscle imbalance.
Overall, healthier brains dream, meditate, create, and age better. For example, dream recall is associated with cardiovascular health, while depression, anxiety, and burn out and PTSD represent unhealthy brains. Medications, including antidepressants, beta blockers, antihistamines, statins, antibiotics, and sleep aids (tobacco and alcohol beyond moderation, too) can impair the mind triggering nightmares and other dream abnormalities.
Most dangerous for brain health is the consumption of refined carbohydrates, including sugar. Like tobacco, there is no moderation.
Similarly, impaired sleep can injure the brain: most commonly, too little sleep (adults need 7-9 hours, children more) or poor sleep quality (waking up during the night). This can adversely affect alpha and theta during sleep and while wake. We cannot have our best brain without great sleep.
Here’s the good news: the brain can always improve given the right ingredients, enabling it to recover from stress, self-repair, even grow new neurons, and overall heal itself amazing well. The first step is eliminating the stress of refined carbohydrates—sugar and flour—and replacing it with healthy food for a full complement of brain-essential nutrients. (Removing refined carbs can also reduce excess body fat which, by itself, significantly impairs brain health.)
Since recorded history many wild and crazy notions about dreams have come and gone. Modern science is actually more holistic and amazing in better understanding consciousness and subconsciousness, dreams, and all related brain-mind function. In short, a healthy rested brain helps dreams and meditations act on a dynamic stage to reflect our life, regulate and manage the mental-emotional state, and resolve internal conflicts. It’s also ageless.
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