This morning on Today's Sleep From A to Z is the power of dreams. We all do it. Sometimes we dream up to 20 times a night. But what does it mean when we dream our teeth fall out or when we are being chased. Our dreams may appear to be abstract, but they’re often reflecting our concerns and emotions.
“Ohhhhhhhhh, you are all crazy.”
Who doesn’t remember the series finale of Newhart.
“Hi, wake up you. You won’t believe the dream I just had.”
That final episode made it one of the most memorable TV shows ever put to bed.
“But I, I was an innkeeper in this crazy little town in Vermont.”
And Newhart wasn’t the only show waking up from a dream.
“Good morning.”
Dreams have always captured our imagination. We are all curious about the messages and meanings these nocturnal wanderings may contain. Perhaps because we spend 112 of our lives in the land of dreams.
“Few nights ago I had this crazy dream.”
“There is a man hiding in my room.”
“I have dreams of flying."
“Not being able to find my locker.”
“It's just like soaring or floating around.”
Mark Sounds studies dreams at the University of London.
“I think the main reason people are fascinated with dreams is because they have no idea what they’re about. It’s a very vivid experience. It’s specific but real. But clearly, it’s not because when you wake up, you realize it was all in your imagination.”
Why we dream is an age-old question that researchers are still trying to answer. We don’t know the biological function of dreams. But we all tend to agree they do have significance.
“I think dreams are subconscious playing out it's own ideas --- wants, desires, fantasies and putting on a show for us while we are asleep. ”
“We dream because we need to have a release from all the tensions during the day.”
“It’s our subconscious, being released, coming alive.”
“I think it represents fragmental emotion basically that the mind needs to work through.”
“I think there is a good reason to believe that dreams involve the things that interest us, that matter to us, that mean something to us.”
So for now, sweet and meaningful dreams.
Gayle Delaney is the founding President of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and the author of All About Dreams.
Hi, Gayle, good morning, nice to see you.
Hi, Kitty.
So shall we be paying much closer attention to our dreams in terms of what they may be trying to tell us?
We work so hard every night trying to put two and two together about lives, trying to solve our problems, trying to understand ourselves, our relationships, our work issues. And then we wake up, and forget our dreams.
Do we really dream 20 times a night?
We dream certainly 4 or 5 times a night. We may dream many more times, if you count little dreams within dreams, and things like that. But all of these dreams whether or not, we recall our dreams. When we are working hard, we are dreaming.
I know that we conducted our own NBC news Zorgby poll, 69% of the people polled said they dream in color, so what is the deal? Because I always heard that most people dream in black and white. I think I dream in color too. Where does this whole black-and-white dreaming thing come from?
Most people who don’t remember their dreams well will not remember the color that was in their dreams.
I think people answer that before color TV, that’s what I decided, right?
You know, we get more insensitive to color, but ask artist, they’ll talk about vivid color dreams--- why color is more important than the action in the dream? So it's how sensitive you are to color, and how well you recall your dreams.
What’s the latest in dream research?
Oh, there’s so much…
That’s still such a mystery, isn’t it?
It’s a huge mystery. We can’t tell exactly. There’s a lot of argument about where the brains working hardest during dreams? What initiates it? So that’s going to have to keep going on, we had to get more and more money for sleep research. We have to deal with it. How come? Whatever it’s going on in our brains, how come our dreams help us to solve our problems? When we got to sleep with problems on our mind, we sometimes just wake up with a solution. What’s going on there? We don’t understand that.
I wish I did. I don’t seem to do that.
You don’t get enough sleep, Kitty.
A lot of people don’t remember their dreams. So you have an advice--keep a pen and paper at your bedside, before going to sleep, write down the date, when you wake up, take your time and write out your dream. I and my mom, we always say, we can’t tell it, before breakfast, or it will come true, or sometimes you want to, and repeat for the next few nights doing that, so you remember, and be able to discuss them and learn from them, right?
Even if you’ve never remembered your dream, and most of us had dreamt falling and flying and being naked in public.
And what does it mean when you dream your teeth fall out?
Depends. Most people who had that dream had pretty teeth for one thing. And if I ask them the way you interpreter the dream, let’s just say, how do you feel in the dream? What’s wrong with that problem? And most people say, if I will find I lose my teeth, I look bad. So you ask yourself the day before, was that something I did or feared that I was gonna look bad, lose face?
Is it true that when you dream you are falling that if you hit the ground, you are dead?
Luckily, that’s not true. Lots of people hit the ground, and then wake up…
Don’t you always heard that? I have heard about that. I’ve also heard lots of my dreamers who come in to tell me, ‘I hit the ground, and the dream continued.’
I know, I know, it’s an old wise tale, I think. And we are gonna come back a little bit later in the show answer some Email Questions. And you’re gonna, maybe, interpret the dream I have worked with…
Work some dreamers or work with your dream.
Alright. Thanks Gayle.

* 如果因您不良评论或重复评论导致评论被删，您将会被扣掉一定数额的金币。
* 您必须遵守《全国人大常委会关于维护互联网安全的决定》及中华人民共和国其他有关法律法规。
* 承担一切因您的行为而直接或间接导致的民事或刑事法律责任。
* 您发表的文章仅代表个人观点，与大耳朵网站无关。
* 大耳朵评论管理人员有权保留或删除其管辖评论中的任意内容。
* 您在大耳朵网评论系统发表的作品，大耳朵网有权在网站内转载或引用。
* 参与本评论即表明您已经阅读并接受上述条款。