dreaming during pandemic
16 Apr 2020yesterday, two friends dropped off two cases of birthday beer for me (thanks dave and sarah!) and we talked a little bit about dreams. i have definitely noticed my dreams be strange in the last few weeks and the keep hearing whispers of other people’s dreams being weird, too. sarah shared that she’d read one OBVIOUS reason people’s dreams are weird during pandemic is simply because people are sleeping more. it seemed the article’s point was just… duh! more sleep means longer REM cycles which means more dreaming.
on one hand, that definitely makes sense to me.
but stillllllll… even taking that into account, what comes up in people’s right now is infinitely interesting to me. what messages are our dreams delivering to us? what are our individual and collective subconsciouses illuminating?
i have been dream journaling since late nov 2019 and when i started learning about tibetan dream yoga from my new friend, josh. one of the general themes is to continually compare your waking life to your dreaming so that you can notice differences and increase lucidity in your dreams. lucidity in the dream state is just the beginning of the dream yoga practice but it seems you can’t really get anywhere without it so that’s where my journaling comes in.
but i digress. even if the dreams are just because we’re sleeping more, i’m still curious about them.
also, there are tons of articles talking about all the more tantalising reasons why dreams during pandemic might be weird. i have only skimmed a couple but my interest in piqued for sure.
so, guess what i’m trying to say here is: if you’re having weird dreams, talk to people around you about them! if it’s happening to a bunch of us, there’s something to be learned by individual and collective reflection about it (as there is with basically all things haha).
<3
articles
- https://www.shape.com/lifestyle/mind-and-body/weird-dreams-during-quarantine-coronavirus
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/04/coronavirus-pandemic-is-giving-people-vivid-unusual-dreams-here-is-why/
- https://time.com/5821896/coronavirus-nightmares-dreams/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/03/why-youre-having-pandemic-related-nightmares-and-how-to-sleep-better.html
words / writing / post-processing
336w / 13min / 5min