Dreams have always been an interesting part of our lives surrounded by several mysteries and bewilderment. There are many theories on dreams, and till today we are not sure about the exact reason behind dreaming. Sometimes dreams act as a motivation in life, they open our hearts and mind towards enlightenment whereas some dreams throw us into darkness and uncertainty.
Role of Dreams from The Mesolithic Era to Modern Civilization
Dreams played an important role in part of our lives from 3100 BC until today. During the Mesopotamian civilization, most of the governing decisions were taken based on the meaning of dreams. During the Roman Era, some dreams were even explained to the roman senate for dream interpretation and they were said to believe that dreams are messages from gods.
And even to this day, we seek answers about our dreams trying to find the real meaning behind them. Even though most of the facts about dreams are demystified in the name of psychology, few people believe that dreams are far beyond psychology to understand and interpret the real meaning behind them.
Here are 10 interesting and mind-blowing facts about dreams that are going to surprise you.

1. You Forget 90% Of Your Dreams
Within five minutes of waking up half of your dreams are forgotten, and within ten minutes, 90% of your dreams are completely forgotten. Remembering dreams can seem a difficult task but there are a few ways you can follow to remember them. Such as, you can maintain a journal and note down everything as soon as you wake up, trying to recall the dream whenever possible.
Maintaining a regular journal and recording your dreams improves your cognitive abilities and train your mind to remember your dreams better in the future.

2. Blind People Can See Images in Dreams
People who become blind after birth can see visual images in their dreams. And people born blind cannot see any images but dream equally vivid involving their other senses of smell, sound, touch, and emotion.

3. We Only See Faces in Dreams That Are Familiar in Waking Life
Our minds cannot show new faces in dreams. We only see people’s faces in dreams that we have seen at least once in our waking life but may not know or remember them. We all have seen hundreds to thousands of faces throughout our lives and our brains cannot remember each of them accurately. These unfamiliar faces are stored in our subconscious mind and our brain pictures this endless supply of characters through our dreams.

4. Animals Dream Too
Studies were conducted on different animals to know if animals can also dream as humans do. And surprisingly they all showed similar brain waves during dreaming sleep as humans. Researchers also believe that most mammals including birds, reptiles, and fishes also go through sleep stages including REM and non-REM. To understand this better watch your cat’s paw when they are sleeping you can notice that they are swatting their paw like they are trying to catch the fish and they also make yipping sounds. No one knows exactly what animals dream about.  But we reckon that they could be chasing some rats or enjoying a juicy fish in their dreams.

5. Men and Women Dream Differently
Men tend to dream more about men. Almost 70% of the characteristics men dream of are about other men. While women’s dream contains almost an equal number of women and men. On the other hand, men have more aggressive emotions in their dreams, while women dream more about exclusion and rejection.

6. You Can Experience Orgasm in Your Dreams
You not only experience sex as a pleasurable one in real life but you can also experience it as a pleasurable one in your dreams too. You can experience an orgasm as strong as the one you experience in waking life. The sensations such as touch and pleasure are felt while lucid dreaming. These can be pleasurable and strong as the sensations experienced in the real world.

7. You Can Control Your Dreams
You can control your dreams through lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is a dream in which you are aware of the fact that you are dreaming even though you are still sleeping. Lucid dreaming is the combination of both REM sleep and consciousness during which you can control or direct the dream content. Yes, you can visit those beautiful places, play with angels, dance on the ocean seashore with your soulmate, find hefty treasure and you can do even a lot more.

8. You Experience Body Paralysis That Feels Ghostly
Have you ever experienced being paralyzed in sleep? This might feel weird and supernatural but this is not the case. During REM sleep, our body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain. This is done to prevent the body from moving due to the moments that happen in the dream. People who experience a stronger form of this mechanism are said to have sleep paralysis which becomes normal as the brain awakens. In sleep paralysis, people report that they could not move while half awake and simultaneously in the dreaming state.

Conclusion
These are some of the interesting facts about dreams. Are you someone who is fascinated with the dream world? Here is the best place for you. At Dream Jumble, you can share your dream story and get a notification every time someone matches their dream story with yours. You can connect with your dream partner, discuss your dream stories and start a new friendship.