Dream Deprivation

Transcript

Welcome to Dream Auguries. Tonight we're taking a look at Our Current State of Dream Deprivation.

According to the World Health Organization, we are in the midst of a global “sleep loss epidemic.” Here in the US, the CDC estimates that 1/3 of Americans sleep less than the minimum of seven hours of sleep every night. They call it “a public health epidemic.”

Sleep? What are they so worked up about? Don’t we often pride ourselves on how little sleep we’ve gotten the night before – often (and often wrongly) thinking we’re getting more done?

The physical effects have been documented: after just one night of only 4 or 5 hours of sleep “resistance to cancer drops by 70 percent.” Sleep loss has been linked to bowel, prostate and breast cancer.

And the effects of dream deprivation? That’s a little harder to quantify since dreams themselves remain one of our great mysteries in neuroscience. But scientists have been able to track effects from lost REM sleep, the sleep in which we most often dream. Research shows a correlation between increased anxiety and insomnia. In an article entitled: “Dreamless: the Silent Epidemic of REM Sleep Loss”, provides some serious food for thought.

You’ll find links to these articles on our website.

Looking at the evidence one wonders about a correlation – heck, maybe even a causation? – between a lack of sleep and our epidemic of Fear. What IF by dreaming more we might all fear a little less?

My own thoroughly unscientific theory on dreams is that in REM sleep, we enter a mansion of the unconscious with a thousand different doors. Behind one door is an image from your afternoon at the river that is being turned into a memory, in another room a soprano is singing a song you’re struggling to remember, farther down the hall your grandfather is working a piece of sandpaper- Farther down the hall your grandfather is working a piece of sand paper over a wooden toy for you, in another, a man you’ve never met is standing with a loaded pistol: our minds are connecting a thousand images from our day, and calling forth images that we need to be reminded of to soothe our souls, and resolve concerns. There are a thousand different characters down the long corridors of the mansion of your mind working to remind you who you have been and provide glimpses of who you are becoming.

Without this interior work, without this time to walk the halls, open doors, perhaps even have tea with someone you’ve lost or warm ourselves before a roaring fire of some perceived personal slight, what are we losing when we lose our sleep? What do we lose when we lose our dreams?

As the man sings: Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.

Dream Auguries is a weekly reflection series for insomniacs, lucid dreamers, oracles and soothsayers, magicians and conjurors of all kinds. It's bonus content for the film, Dreaming Grand Avenue, now streaming on cable, written and directed by Hugh Schulze. Our theme music was composed and performed by Tony Scott-Green and sound design by Kevin O'Rourke.

Good night.