We all dream; some dreams we remember when we wake up in the morning, and some come and go as if we'd never had them. Dreaming occurs every time we sleep and enter a period known as the rapid eye movement(REM) stage. Many, if not most of us, cannot recall our dreams in their entirety, and some claim, because they have no memory of them, that they don't dream at all. But studies have proven that whether a person recalls them or not, we all dream - and dream a lot. .
When we fall asleep, we go through five different stages. The first is noted by a relatively light sleep, lasting only five minutes or so. In this stage, we experience slight physical jerks due to a subconscious feeling that we're falling. At this time, we may also have brief hallucinations, a precursor to dreaming (Myers, 2011). .
The second stage usually last around twenty minutes, and this is when we have sleep spindles, a burst of brain activity which can be clearly tracked on an electroencephalogram (EEG). It's in this period of sleep when our body temperature and heart rate decreases.
Stage three is transitional, leading us through a process of light sleep into a stage of deeper sleep. At this time, our brains begin to emit large and slow delta waves.
The next stage of sleep, stage four, lasts approximately thirty minutes. This stage is a healing stage, when our bodies recuperate themselves, doing necessary repair work on our bodies. When we go to sleep with a severe sore throat, and wake up in the morning feeling better, the physical improvement happens during this stage. Also at this time, children may experience bed-wetting, night terrors, or sleep walking.(Myers, 2011). .
The final phase of sleep is known as REM sleep (Myers, 2011), and it's here, in the midst of the rapid eye movement stage, that we dream.
Once we're finished with REM sleep, we begin to descend back down through all four stages until we are at back at light sleep.