More specifically, REM sleep helps to regulate circadian rhythms, body temperature, hormones, metabolism and immunity. This seeming dysregulation can actually be a process of re-regulation that restores the body to its original factory settings by shaking off tension accrued under the watch of the waking mind. Our voluntary muscles go offline, imposing a kind of neurological bondage on the body, which, independently of dream narratives, becomes sexually aroused. REM sleep is characterised by autonomic nervous system ‘storms’ – powerful waves of somatic dysregulation of EEG, cardiovascular activity, respiration, blood oxygen and body temperature. When the mind is away, the body gets wild, disorderly, even randy. From the perspective of the body, it’s an out-of-mind experience. From the perspective of the mind, REM/dreaming is an out-of-body experience. The body gets a break from the supervision of the authoritative, waking ego-driven mind, and the mind is liberated from the physical constraints of occupying a body. In essence, upper cortical executive functions become disengaged from lower limbic somatic functions. The body and mind go their separate ways during REM/dreaming. What might an integration of the science and subjectivity of REM sleep and dreaming reveal? The phenomenological study of dreams, however, which dates back millennia, has yielded a vast and intriguing literature of psychological, cultural and mythological observations. From Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams, REM/dreaming effectively morphs our fundamental sense of self.įrom a hard-nosed neuroscientific perspective, the subjective dream is merely an incidental, meaningless side-effect of REM sleep. Just as important, REM/dreaming stretches, expands and reshapes our very consciousness. We now know that, independently of sleep – that is, of non-REM sleep – REM/dreaming plays an essential role in learning and memory, mood and immunity, as well as in creativity and artistic expression.
Research about REM/dreaming began in the mid-1950s and accelerated sharply with advances in neuroimaging.
Part-waking and part-sleep, REM/dreaming is a hybrid state of consciousness, a borderland between the material and ethereal worlds, between the body and mind. To fully appreciate REM sleep and dreaming, our understanding of each must be triangulated into a new higher-order concept I will call REM/dreaming (I will continue to use the terms REM sleep and dreaming separately when referring to their distinct features). One occurs in the body and brain, the other in the mind. REM sleep and dreams represent two divergent takes on the same process: one is physiological the other, phenomenological.
And the movement of angels could symbolise the process of dreaming, an ongoing dialogue between the waking world and the world of dreams. Jacob’s ladder is a story about an archetypal passageway between a rock and a soft place: between earthly troubles and sacred transcendence waking and dreaming consciousness and the unconscious.įrom a sleep science perspective, Jacob’s ladder might represent the structure of REM sleep – a neural network linking the upper and lower regions of the brain.
With his head on a pillow of stone – symbolic of matter in its densest form – Jacob dreams of a structure linking the material and ethereal worlds. In the Old Testament, Jacob, on the run for his life from the twin brother he betrayed, beds down for the night in the wilderness and there dreams of a ladder stretching between heaven and Earth, of angels ascending and descending, and of God assuring him of an auspicious future.