Enlarge the "efficiency" of your sleep/dreams + Dreamwalking

Over the past few months I have done some research on dreams, things like lucid dreaming, and even dream walking (observing and/or participate in someones dream).

When I tried to find out what use dreams are I found claims and theories like these (note: these are theories, there seems to me no one who knows exactly what dreams are for)

The other famous dream theorist of the modern era, Carl Jung, an early follower of Freud who broke away to develop a very different theory, claimed that the function of dreams is to compensate for those parts of the psyche (total personality) that are underdeveloped in waking life.

With the advent of computers, it became fashionable to say that dreams are "clearing out the software" from a busy day, or that they are a form of "off-line" processing to save the good stuff and get rid of the useless.

Reading this I wondered if it is possible to speed up and create a way to enlarge the efficiency of this process (if it actually works this way...), in order to need less sleep.
You could sleep for 8 hours and feel like you slept 10 or 12...

Secondly, I would like to know if anybody ever experieced dreamwalking. It appears that some people can enter other peoples dreams and observe and if highly trained, even participate.
I once tried to send someone a "dream topic", the first time worked, the second failed. So I'm not sure if it is coincidence or not.

Anyway, I would appreciate any thoughts and theories on these topics.

Chris

This may sound rather odd, but I tried something to this extent a few years back. Not necissarily participating but encouraging a dream. My friend and I had heard about something like it and figured we'd try it. She took the roll as the reciever. That night I explained to my sister what I was going to "send" my friend, as in thoughts or suggestions whatever you might call them for a certain dream. The next day I saw her and had her explain in detail what her dream was about, it was almost completely accurate. She and even my sister were shocked. Quite frankly so was I. Sadly I've yet to be able to do this again.

That is really nice, what techniques did you use?

Dreamwalking seems pretty interesting, but on the topic of more efficient sleep, Polyphasic Sleep

Polyphasic Sleep (also known as Uberman's Sleep Schedule) is an alternate sleep pattern. Instead of sleeping through the night in a big chunk of hours, polyphasic sleep spreads out the long night sleep into short naps of 20-40 minutes throughout the day. It is intended to increase REM sleep and reduce sleep time.

Postive effects such as Able to remember your dreams more efficiently, so that seems pretty cool. check it ouuut!.


[edit on 25-5-2007 by Spinsta]

[edit on 25-5-2007 by Spinsta]

What are dreams for? Many answers to that one. Most answers are valid too.
All systems of our body have and elimination system. The digestive system... well, you know. The repserationsystem is Co2 breathed out... you get the point. Our minds need the same kind of wind down. But that is only a small part of it!

It's an exciting and mysterious (and wonderfuly useful) thing.

Think of it like this. It's the unconscious mind and the conscious mind coming together and projecting information from the both into something you can see or hear or 'feel'.

Remember, the subconscious and uncounscious mind have alot more going on than we consciously realise duringour waking hours... but that don't mean the info isn't taken in and processed - often we call this the 'gut feelings' etc.

If a person were to be allowed to sleep non-stop but not allowed to dream (woke up just before dream time starts each sleep cycle)... the persons body goes through all kinds of mental/emotional and finaly physical changes. Dreaming is very important for this body (mental and emotionaly included).

The more spiritual side of the dream? Here's an area that some will agree with and others will refuse to acknoledge until they have theri own undeniable personal experience...

What are dreams? That s a tough one. The only thing i ve been able to conclude definately is that dreams are meant to be experienced, they may or may not have "messages", but they are experiential data relevant to "waking" data. I wonder does it makes sense to ask what "wakefulness" is? I have noticed in the past a tendency of dreams to not so much "waste eliminate", but rather seem to be more involved with a kind of radical integration of disparate information. Also, it seems likely that dreams are a definate form of probable experiencing - similar to virtual reality or "the holodeck" from STNG - we have an innate "holodeck". It also seems to help somtimes to view various parts of a dream as aspects of oneself (ala Fritz Perls), though frustratingly dreams tend to be holistically multi-leveled and are often nested - so that a "thing" can simultaneously "be" more than one "thing". Most psychologies have some one piece of the puzzle right, but none of them have it all, as alas a unified field theory of psychology seems far from actual at this point. On one level dreams seem almost entirely to exist at this point as an extreme alternate counterpoint (not necessarily compensation) to our experienced wakeful states. It is useful to consider dreaming as one more form of consciousness rather than as a state of unconsciousness, as no one could report from a state of true unconsciousness - perhaps non-focused or non-linear consciousness? I used to say infra-consciousness. Just some of my ramblings.