Don't Run from the Stalkers: Chatting with the Nightmare

I'm quite confident that the absolute majority of you, dear nightseizers, will have experienced at least one nightmare in your life.

The statistics show that around 50% to 85% of adults occasionally have a nightmare [1], and 1 out of 20 people has nightmares every week [2].

Whether that nightmare is one of that terrifying kind that leaves you feeling uneasy even when you wake up safely in your bed, heart beating fast, eyes scanning the room for any suspicious shadows, or the plain annoying kind, such as being late for an important meeting or attending school 20 years after graduating, all nightmares have one thing in common: they are obviously quite unpleasant by their very definition.

And naturally, most people would like not to have them.

A sense of calmness → sweeter dreams

One of the main factors that cause nightmares is anxiety. So if you're someone who tends to stress a lot, try working on your mindset, implementing mind-calming techniques such as meditation, exercise, or brain-dumps in your life, and adopting a more peaceful lifestyle if possible. Reducing your stress levels will lead to a much more pleasant life during both wakefulness and sleep.

Don't stress about having nightmares, rather go to sleep with a calm confidence that you'll have sweet dreams. If you're still scared, pray before sleep.

Attention, though: if you suffer from frequent nightmares that seriously disturb your sleep, consult a sleep doctor (somnologist).

What to do when you are having a nightmare?

Whether you suffer from extremely terrifying dreams or just have to run from a couple of villains occasionally, you will most likely find knowledge of what to do when you're inside a nightmare useful.

So here are the various strategies that I have used in dealing with my nightmares (I'm a naturally zen person, so it's nothing horrendous, though disturbing at the moment), ranked according to the levels of lucidity (awareness that you're in a dream) that they require and what I think is best to do.

Let's start with the noob method (the least advanced and least effective one).

Level 0: Fight or Flight

Lucidity: none to low

Mindset: fear and avoidance

Deep down, I know they will always find me no matter where and how fast I go.

I can fight them but they often seem to have unlimited respawning capacities.

One star out of five. Do not recommend.

Level 0.5: Fight or Flight + Superpowers

Lucidity: from none to full

Mindset: fear and avoidance | anything is possible if I can imagine it

Even though I don't always know that I am dreaming, in most of my dreams, I have the sense that I can make anything happen, as long as I can imagine it or will it into the dream reality.

So usually, I would use the common, easy superpowers like flying, as well as superpowers of the latest fantasy novel I've been reading or thinking about, like a shitty version of Harry Potter magic, Red Queen silver or newblood abilities, or Brandon Sanderson's allomancy. One time I travelled through pipes or buckets, but they figured it out. Another time, I teleported. This worked but only because it produced in me the kind of thinking you'll see in level 2.

Fighting with superpowers is fun. However, it is only successful when you believe it will be. Because if you don't, you can fly over a whole block in seconds, and your chasers will be waiting for you there, sneering at you, even if they can only walk. Your expectations determine the result of your actions in a dream. If you know you cannot escape, you will not escape. If you are running away from dream villains or shooting bolts of lighnting at them but believe that you are too weak to win the fight, that will be true. If you believe that you can kill them with mere thought, that will be true.

That means I should just muster some confidence and blow them away with a giant fireball?

Well... Read on, because there are better ways to get out of a nightmare. Unless, of course, a firsthand action movie character's experience is your current dream goal, which is completely understandable.

Level 1: Hit the Exit Button ASAP

Lucidity: full but brief

Mindset: fear and avoidance | helplessness | haha, try catching me now

***

"I'm in a dream!!!" I realize in the middle of a nightmare.

This is not real. And I want out. All I would have to do is to open my eyes, and this would be over. Can I do that?

I think of my real eyes and try to force them open.

The landscape shifts. I'm standing and speaking to some people. I suppose this is the reality now. Yet the dream villain is still present. No, this can't be the reality, I think. I must still be sleeping.

I open my eyes, and this time I end up in my bed.

The next morning, I tell my parents about this cool nightmare-ending method I've just discovered. At that time, I have no idea what lucid dreaming means, and I probably barely know any English.

***

I seem to be in the old house of my sister. A man is trying to get into her fourth-story apartment through the window. I'm in the house. I have gotten rid of the previous dream villains but this time, when I attempt to push him back out, I feel powerless and am 100% sure I will not be able to take any kind of control over my dream surroundings...

Dream. This is a dream.

I feel mentally paralyzed, though. I need to get out before he gets to me.

I open my eyes. Then I close them again, drifting into a better dream.

***

Usually, it works like this: the unreal feeling of a nightmare transforms into awareness that I am dreaming. At that point, I'm technically in a lucid nightmare. I don't feel like the mood will get better, so I decide to get out.

I open my eyes. If I have a false awakening (one that's not even necessarily realistic, for example, I awake standing beside the bed, instead of lying in it) and realize that it's still a dream, I open my eyes another time, and this time, it works. Nevertheless, awake for real or not, this method shifts you out of the nightmare, into the waking world or at least into a much sweeter dream.

Level 2: My Dream, My Rules

Lucidity: medium-high to full

Mindset: fear and avoidance | anything is possible if I can imagine it | I am in charge of everything here

***

I run through the woods, chased by a gang of vampires. (Or perhaps by vampire slayers? I don't remember.) I reach the sea.

There's only one way to escape.

I climb into a boat, soaring up in the air with it and ducking so that they wouldn't see my head hovering over the vehicle. I fear that they will find me, as they always do.

They only find me because I believe they will, I realize. This means that if I don't, they won't.

I decide that I have escaped. They won't find me. They can't fly. And this boat is invisible. Focusing my attention forward, I will my foes out of my mind. And so I fly in my levitating boat. And I escape.

***

Little boys run down the path near my garden. A skeleton-like monster with yellow glowing eyes seems to be chasing them. It stops, eyeing me and my best friend.

I'm scared. I know this is a dream. But I'm still scared. I feel like thinking alone will not change a thing. But I have an idea that will work.

The skeleton watches us menacingly. At any moment, it will attack. My friend is scared as well.

I touch her shoulder to comfort her. 'This is not real,' I tell her. 'This is a dream, this is not the real life, and the real life is but a dream.' Wait what? What kind of bullshit poetic phrases did I just say? Life is not a dream. This is.

Nevertheless, saying it out loud makes me believe I'm in control. This is a dream. The skeleton doesn't matter. I'm safe. And so the dream improves.

Once I wake up, I feel stupid, though. I just willed the Phantom of the Opera out of existence.

***

This is the point where you really realize that since you're dreaming, what is happening is not real. So it doesn't matter. And now you've passed from being stuck in an unpleasant situation, trying to deal with it by engaging with the dream plot and the other dream characters (I say 'other' because you act just like one of them), to an ability to directly influence the storyline. In other words, you shift from a dream character mentality to a dream author mentality.

If the previous two levels could be likened to waking up in the Matrix and realising you could do basically anything that you can imagine, this one would be like discovering that you're the host of the whole simulation. So instead of fighting the agents, you just yawn and go do whatever it is that you want.

Now that you've realized that you're dreaming, there are many things that you can do. You can ignore the nightmare. You can have fun with it. You can will a villain out of existence. Whatever suits your situation best.

This is powerful and works best in the more annoying kind of nightmare.

***

It's my first medical Latin seminary, and my teacher is handing me a test. I'm not prepared, I'd been planning to go through the materials in the morning before, but it is morning now.

Hooold on. That doesn't make sense. Am I perhaps dreaming? I look around at the students surrounding me, my middle school classmates. Definitely dreaming.

So I tell the teacher that I don't have Latin now and that this is not reality. She starts crying and I have to comfort her but that's another story, and at least I'm not taking a stupid test before the time.

***

When you know you're dreaming, you can get out of those exasperating dreams of school during holidays or being late to work because 50 minutes passed in 50 seconds.

However, there is something I would suggest that can potentially be even better for the scary type of nightmares where you're being followed or attacked by some dream villain. While the level 2 dream strategy still stems from the fear that the dream horrors will carry on and you don't want to be stuck in such a dream, the next strategy takes a completely different approach, so keep reading.

Level 3: Actually ask what they want from you

Lucidity: medium to full

Mindset: negotiation, open-mindedness, and bravery

Have you ever thought about how in most situations, we never actually ask a creepy dream character following us around what they want from us?

Overwhelmed by fear, we just assume that they're doing it simply because they're creepy and malicious. But maybe there's something more?

***

Me and my parents are in the car, driving slowly through the parking lot of a store. A woman approaches us and somehow I know she's coming for us and that she doesn't have any good intentions in her mind.

I try to lock the door but there's something wrong with it, I can't even properly close it. The car is slow and unsafe, so I get out of it while I can and run in the direction of home.

I'm not fast enough. The woman is treading on my heels, and I know any effort to escape will be unsuccessful.

Some part of me recalls reading that I should ask nightmare figures what they want from me, so I turn around.

'What do you want from me?' I ask somewhat aggressively, out of fear and anger.

'Go do your history project!' she commands.

Oh.

There is a school history project waiting for me in real life, something I've been procrastinating on, as thinking about it made me feel overwhelmed and frankly a bit dead. (Don't get me wrong, history can be amazingly fascinating.)

I meet some other monsters on the way home, their unsettling, malicious eyes fixated on me. I promise I'll do my project when I wake up. They keep staring at me sternly.

When I woke up that morning, I was so impressed that I wrote a poem. Not my best work but here it is:

I promised a monster in my dream
Who required me to do my schoolwork
That I will do it today. But my ideas stream
And here I am - writing a poem instead of doing my work.

But I will do it. I swear I'll do it now.
I'll stop being a coward, I will do it!
No, I AM doing it right now- Oh no,
My parents say we're going out, I have not done a bit.

When will I finally stop pleasing
The stupid monkey inside me who's pleading
For instant gratification, fast and fleeting, 
Robbing me of time, productivity, and meaning?

For as long as my forgetful brain can remember,
Like a coward I have always been fleeing.
In all possible directions my mind likes to wander
And to become a superwoman when the deadline's approaching.

The madwoman knows it and I guess she cared 
Enough about me to try make me scared.
And when I asked my chaser what she wanted,
She said: "Go finish your history project!"

Of course, I did the project and did it well, as I would have either way, since I've always been a good student. This nightmare, though, gave me a push to start working on it before it was my last chance to do so.

There have been other such cases as well.

***

I'm exploring some part of the city I've never seen before. I'm alone.

A car stops nearby, and a couple climbs out, moving in my direction. Somehow I know they're coming for me, and I try to walk away. Feeling helpless, I turn and ask, 'What do you want from me?'

My voice barely makes a sound, despite the effort I put into it. Nevertheless, the couple, without speaking a word, hands me a slip of paper.

'Gada diena, dienas gads,' it is written. In my native language, Latvian, it means something like 'a day of a year, a year of the day' or 'a day in a year, a year in a day'. What is that supposed to mean, I wonder. The words kind of don't make sense; however, they prompt me to think about how every little day is important in the long run, how the individual, seemingly insignificant days make up a whole year and how I should give more importance to how I spend each day.

***

Determined to sleep-think about a relationship problem, I fall asleep.

A younger teenage girl is attacking me with an axe. Naturally, I fight back and overpower her, taking the axe from her.

'What do you want from me? Why are you attacking me?!' I ask with frustration.

'Where is [her friend's name]?' she demands.

Me and my friends, who are right beside me, answer her question. The girl sighs, venting about the somewhat possessive hopes she'd had for her friend. 'I feel you,' I acknowledge her feelings. This reaction of mine slightly disturbs me once I wake up.

Though the dream may have been somewhat wild, the implication is clear: if I want to improve my friendship, I need to let go of some unhealthy expectations and focus on loving the person.

***

This strategy has several benefits:

• instead of avoiding the nightmare or fighting it, you calmly confront your fear, becoming a more confident dreamer,
• by listening to the villain, you calm them down, thus ending the nightmare,
• oftentimes, you may discover that the villain isn't actually a villain but rather a truth you've been trying to avoid (or maybe they become it the moment you ask them what they want).

In the worst case, you can have a fun lucid fight. Either way, this strategy will improve your night. A dream character is a part of your own mind. They can't hurt you. But sometimes they will reveal things to you, problems you were trying to ignore.

Your sleeping mind may think in the most bizarre ways, yet I've found that it can give succinct answers to complex problems in just one or a few nights. Here's how to take advantage of that.

Further thoughts, level 4?

Is there something that can be potentially better than level 3 (except in the case of the annoying nightmare, when level 2 is more effective)?

Well, potentially, it may be possible to befriend a dream monster. Maybe it's a part of yourself that you need to pay attention to, or however dreaming works (I won't claim to have some unified woo-woo theory of dream spirituality). Maybe it would simply be fun to have a quirky dream villain as a friend. But I wouldn't know, I've never tried this. If you have, please, share your story in the comments.

For now, this is how I'd evaluate different nightmare management strategies from an inside-the-dream point of view, as summed up in the expanding brain meme format:

Sources:

1. https://sleepeducation.org/sleep-disorders/nightmares/
2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-red-light-district/201906/15-frightful-facts-about-nightmares?amp

The Circadian Rhythm and the Zeitgebers: Understanding Your Inner Clock

The human body is a wonderfully intricate mechanical feat, composed of countless systems and processes that somehow operate together in a finely tuned orchestra, a beautiful whole.

An engine so incredibly complex needs to have various organizational mechanisms that would keep all the systems working as one.

One such unifying system is the circadian rhythm, a biological clock that ensures that the human body functions in accordance with time, regulating various physiological processes throughout the day-night cycle.

In this article, we will take a look inside your inner clock, exploring its biological makeup, its effect on the body and mind, as well as the factors that influence it, focusing on the relation of the circadian rhythm with the sleep-wake cycle.

Understanding the Circadian Rhythm

Sleep and wakefulness are regulated by two categories of processes (processes S and C): a homeostatic process (S = sleep pressure), dependent on the duration of prior sleep and wakefulness, and a cyclic process (C = circadian rhythm).

Circadian rhythms are a type of biological clocks (natural timing devices of organisms) that tie physiological processes to the day-night cycle. The term 'circadian' comes from Latin 'circa diem', meaning, 'around a day'. According to the 1999 study by Czeisler et al. at Harvard, the precise length of the human circadian rhythm in healthy adults is 24 hours and 11 minutes ± 16 minutes. This internal timekeeper of ours ensures that vital bodily functions are optimally synchronized with the external environment, allowing us to adapt and thrive in a rhythmic world.

The most well-known circadian rhythm is the sleep-wake cycle, which regulates our alertness and energy levels, causing the [human] body to naturally fall asleep at night and awake during the day. However, this system is not the only one that has a circadian rhythm. Besides sleep, almost everything in our bodies has a rhythm, including

• eating habits, digestion, and energy expenditure, which in turn influence metabolism and weight;
• blood pressure and body temperature;
• cognitive performance and mood;
• hormonal regulation and fertility;
• the immune system (through cyclical recruitment of immune cells);
• DNA repair and cancer prevention.

Of course, circadian rhythms are not exclusive to humans. Chronobiological ('chrono-' = 'time') cycles, especially those that primarily respond to light and dark, are found in most living things, such as non-human animals, plants, fungi, and even fruit flies and bacteria. For example, certain flowers open and close at a certain time, and nocturnal animals are kept safe from daytime predators by sleep exactly due to their circadian rhythms.

How does that work?

I must apologize now. I may have been imprecise in stating the length of the circadian rhythm.

When light is available, the circadian rhythm is indeed around 24 hours.

However, if you were locked up in a dark and empty room with no way of knowing the time, your circadian rhythm would run free-run until it reached a more stable cycle that for most people, would slightly exceed 24 hours. However, we all live on the Earth with its stable 24-hour day-night cycle, so we need to adapt to that. How does the body do that?

Enter the Timekeepers

Since each individual has their own inherent circadian rhythm that deviates from the 24-hour day-night cycle of the Earth, we need external cues to synchronize it to the environment. These signals that adjust our circadian rhythm are called zeitgebers (German for literally time givers, but apparently anglophones like to adopt words from other languages simply like that).

The strongest zeitgeber for the human body is light. Your retina contains special non-visual light-sensitive cells that report straight to the master clock of your body, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). This master clock analyzes the information on light exposure, aligning your internal rhythms with the day-night cycle.

During the day, when you're exposed to light, this tiny cluster of 20 000 neurons (nerve cells) keeps you alert and active. As the evening arrives, though, dimming the lights, the SCN commands your pineal gland to secrete a neurohormone called melatonin, which relaxes your body and makes you sleepy. For this reason, it is highly advisable to go outside and receive sunlight in the first 2 hours after waking, or, ideally, in the first 30 minutes, and to watch the sunset in the evening, dimming artificial lights as your bedtime approaches. Since the light-sensitive cells are especially sensitive to blue light, light from your devices at night can confuse your biological clock, making falling asleep more difficult, so if you tend to have any sleep problems, avoid using your smartphone before you go to bed.

Image source: https://openbooks.lib.msu.edu/app/uploads/sites/87/2023/01/Pineal-gland-and-melatonin-1024x440.png

Unfortunately, nowadays people spend too much time inside (yep, I'm guilty of that, too), which results in exposure to low levels of light in the daytime and high light levels in the evening/night, obviously, the exact opposite of what is natural and beneficial for the human body. Besides, some people are blind, or they live in the polar zones with their year-long day-night cycle, which frequently results in circadian disorders. We're lucky then that, though light is the major zeitgeber, other factors play a role in biological timekeeping as well.

The main zeitgeber in the absence of light is nutrition. You see, as it turns out, your circadian system actually has a quirk which can potentially result in a mismatch between your central and peripheral clocks: your SCN doesn't directly control your peripheral clocks, nor do those directly influence the SCN. This is where nutrition comes in. Though meal times don't directly entrain the SCN, they act as a strong cue for peripheral clocks, and, for this reason, it does well to consciously synchronize nutrition with your circadian rhythm.

To keep your metabolism (and overall health) in order, it is advisable to restrict food intake to the light phase and refrain from snacks between meals. What is more, the same meal eaten at various times of the day can have different effects on the body. More specifically, evidence seems to confirm the validity of the advice of the Jewish philosopher and doctor Maimonides: "Eat like a king in the morning, a prince at noon, and a peasant at dinner.” Or, as I have heard people say here, eat your breakfast, share your lunch with a friend, and gift your dinner to an enemy. A meal schedule that is heavier towards the early part of your waketime appears to correlate with a decreased risk of obesity and metabolic diseases such as diabetes.

Another such factor, though weaker and in some ways dependent on meal timings, is physical activity. Regular exercise during specific phases helps maintain circadian rhythms. Studies with both humans and animals demonstrate that intense physical activity during the day and the early evening (before melatonin onset) causes a forward shift in the inner clock, triggering the subject to go to sleep and rise earlier. On the contrary, exercise at night can cause phase delays. One way this works may be by increasing your core body temperature (CBT). A higher body temperature (of course, as long as it's normal) is associated with greater alertness. As the time for sleep approaches, though, your body temperature should drop. Thus, exercise in the morning helps you wake up, while if you do it in the evening, your CBT rises, forming an obstacle to generating and sustaining quality sleep. Therefore, it's best to exercise either early in the morning or during the notorious afternoon crash, which occurs when your CBT dips a little.

Well, since we've touched on temperature, it is common knowledge that it tends to be higher during the day than at night, that's why it can serve as an excellent indicator of time. For this reason, instead of keeping a steady temperature in your room, cool it down at night, lowering the heat if possible and opening the window (don't freeze, though, of course, you still need to feel comfortable). As the temperature of your environment drops, so does that of your body, preparing you for sleep. Alternatively (or, ideally, in a complementary fashion), you could do almost the opposite - take a short warm shower or bath in the evening, as the heat would force your body to counteract, cooling itself down. By the same mechanism, splashing your face with cold water or taking a cold shower in the morning can help you wake up faster by rising your core body temperature. 

What else do we do during the day? Oh, right. Socialize. Extraverted or not (*wink*), you are most likely surrounded by other people daily at home, school, university, workplace, store, church, or whatever place you happen to attend or spend your days in. Even during the COVID-19 lockdown, you probably held somewhat regular Zoom calls with your colleagues. Consequently, social interactions contribute to adjusting your inner rhythms. Thus, such major life events as divorce, job loss... or a lockdown can not only create the obvious effect (emotional distress) but also disrupt your circadian clock. That's why it is crucial, especially in difficult times, to meet with your loved ones and have stable social interactions, ideally at roughly the same hours every day (of course, no need to get too rigid with this, though).

Besides these five major zeitgebers, there are, of course, many other factors that influence your circadian rhythm, for example, noise, napping, medication timing, and intake of stimulators, such as caffeine, or sleep supplements, as well as your age and physical and emotional health. Generally, it is good for your health to live a lifestyle that is as natural as possible, meaning,

• during the day: expose yourself to natural light, work and interact with people, adhere to a (somewhat) stable meal schedule, and be physically active;
• during the night: sleep in a dark, cool, comfortable place, falling asleep and waking up at a consistent, regular time.

Ok, now that you've gotten a gist of the various factors that regulate your circadian rhythm, let's move on to investigating to a deeper level what exactly happens to your body throughout the day-night cycle.

Phases of the Circadian Cycle

Morning

• Cortisol Release: Upon waking, the levels of a hormone called cortisol start to rise, increasing by 50% in the first 30 minutes after waking. Although cortisol is often referred to as " the stress hormone", it also plays a crucial role in promoting alertness and helping you wake up.
• CBT Rise: As you wake up, your core body temperature (CBT) gradually increases, aiding in alertness and cognitive function.
• Release of Various Neurotransmitters: Have you noticed that you feel happier when the sun is shining? Well, as it turns out, it's due to the consequent increase in serotonin levels. Serotonin, commonly known as the happiness chemical, not only makes you willing to get up in the morning but will also be necessary for the formation of melatonin in the evening. All kinds of other neurotransmitters besides serotonin are released after awaking, too, such as, for example, norepinephrine (aka noradrenaline), a mobilizing hormone that heightens blood pressure, and histamine, a neurotransmitter associated with activity of the immune and nervous systems.

The Circadian Rhythm of Cortisol Levels. Image source: https://www.zrtlab.com/landing-pages/diurnal-cortisol-curves/

Noon

• Peak Alertness: The mid-morning to early afternoon (roughly 10:00 to 14:00 for people who sleep from 23:00 to 07:00) is typically when people experience their highest levels of alertness, focus, and cognitive performance. One of the reasons behind this may be that the peak of noradrenaline occurs at noon. Thus, morning to noon is the best time for doing productive work.
• Digestion: In response to previous eating patterns, the circadian clock controls various factors associated with feeding, such as the levels of ghrelin, the hormone that makes you feel hungry, and digestive enzymes, as well as nutrient absorption and gut wall permeability. Most people are accustomed to eating lunch, usually their biggest meal, in the middle of the day, so this is when their digestive system is active the most.

Afternoon Slump

• CBT Dip: Body temperature slightly decreases in the afternoon, often stimulating a tiny melatonin release and contributing to feelings of drowsiness.
• Decrease in Cognitive Function: Many people experience a natural drop in alertness and energy levels about two hours after lunch. Even in cases where a person hasn't eaten lunch and has no idea about what time it is, they might still experience this afternoon crash in the early to mid-afternoon (frequently between 14:00 and 16:00).

Late Afternoon to Evening

• Cognitive Recovery: After a time that is for many a bit of a stagnating slump of sleepiness, your mind starts to work better again, improving problem-solving, decision-making, attention, and task execution abilities in the afternoon and early evening hours (approximately 16:00 to 22:00 h). Thus, this is the second best time for work.
• CBT Peak: After the slight dip, your core body temperature increases again, reaching its maximum in the late afternoon, at about 18:00.

Nighttime

• Dim Light Melatonin Onset (DLMO): As the sun sets and natural light decreases, your pineal gland starts releasing the previously discussed sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, signaling your body that it's time to wind down and prepare for sleep.
• CBT Drop: Having reached its peak at about 18:00, your body temperature begins to drop, promoting sleep and reaching its lowest point (nadir), as the end of your sleep phase approaches.
• Decrease in Attention: As you get sleepy, your task execution abilities decrease again, reaching their lowest level at dawn and early in the morning. This correlates with the drop in your norepinephrine and cortisol levels.
• Sleep: Well, duh.
  Your sleep consists of about 70 to 120-minute cycles starting with non-REM sleep (commonly known as deep sleep) and ending with REM sleep (REM stands for rapid eye movement sleep, often referred to as dream sleep). The beginning of the night is heavier in non-REM sleep, but with each cycle, the proportion between these two kinds of sleep shifts towards REM, providing you with the free virtual reality experience known as dreams. Each of these stages of sleep has its own purpose: while non-REM sleep is crucial for physical recovery and memory consolidation, REM sleep forms creative connections between data and restores your emotional health.

Early morning

• Cortisol Release: Before you wake up, your body's cortisol levels rise again, preparing you to get up.
• CBT Rise: After having hit the nadir at about 04:00 depending on your sleep schedule, your body temperature increases again, setting you up for the morning.
• Decrease in Melatonin: Once you reach the peak of melatonin somewhere between 02:00 and 04:00, the levels of this hormone gradually lower, reducing your sleepiness levels.

And repeat.

Variations in Individual Circadian Rhythms

Obviously, nobody has the same circadian rhythms as another person: each of us has an innate preference for a certain length and timing of sleep and going through our daily cycles. The natural inclination of your body to sleep at a particular type is called your chronotype. You may have heard of the morning bird or morning lark, which is a chronotype characterized by rising and going to sleep early, and the night owl, but the truth is that most people fall somewhere in between and are quite flexible and able to shift their chronotypes to adapt to their life situation. An important factor that plays into this is age: teens over the world experience a backward shift in their circadian rhythm, prompting them to fall asleep and wake up one or two hours later than their parents. Meanwhile, children and young people are more on the early bird side of the spectrum. In most cases, even though you do have a natural inclination that should ideally be honored, your habits are what ultimately shape your life. The variety and flexibility in individual circadian rhythms provide both humans and humanity as a whole with a greater ability to adapt and thrive in diverse environments.

When the Clock is Broken

When properly functional, the circadian rhythm synchronizes the body's functions and sustains consistent and healthy sleep-wake cycles. However, certain factors such as heredity or harmful lifestyle can disrupt the circadian rhythm, which can in turn lead not only to sleep disorders (e.g., insomnia or simply lower-quality sleep) but also to chronic health conditions, for example, obesity, diabetes, depression, bipolar disorder, and seasonal affective disorder.

Here are some examples of circadian sleep-wake disorders:

• Jet lag disorder: When you travel to a time zone very different from your own, chances are, some time would pass before you could adjust to the new day-night cycle. In the meantime, you might suffer from low-quality sleep and experience fatigue.
• Shift work disorder: Work is a major factor that influences your circadian rhythms. If you happen to work at night and sleep during the day, your sleep schedule contradicts the natural day-night cycle, confusing your circadian rhythms and causing desynchronization between the many biological clocks of your body.
• Advanced sleep phase disorder: This is like the extreme, radical version of the morning lark chronotype. People with this rare disruption get tired early in the evening and wake up very early in the morning, and they are unable to shift their rhythms backwards.
• Delayed sleep-wake phase syndrome: This disorder is at the other end of the chronotype spectrum, resembling an extreme night owl. A person with delayed sleep-wake phase syndrome stays up too late at night and sleeps in late in the morning.
• Non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder: People with this health condition find their sleep-wake rhythms drifting backwards and backwards, going to bed slightly later each day. More than half of blind people are reported to have N24SWD due to their inability to perceive cues from the main zeitgeber, light. In some rare cases, people with normal vision also get this disorder, though, if they live like vam- er, don't receive enough light stimulation.
• Irregular sleep-wake rhythm disorder: People with this rare disruption have very inconsistent or next to non-existent sleep-wake rhythms, for example, instead of normal ~8-hour night sleep, they may have multiple naps throughout the day-night cycle.

Concluding Thoughts

The circadian rhythm is truly a biological marvel, orchestrating a whole symphony of bodily processes to keep you in synchrony with the world around you. To make the most of it, embrace morning light, time your meals, exercise during the day, align your work times with your peaks of cognitive performance, chat with your loved ones, and, what is probably most relevant to this blog, sleep consistently. For those of you who are more go-with-the-flow people (like me), this is not some dystopian-style, externally imposed, robotic punctuality. This is your rhythm. By adjusting your habits and lifestyle and reconciling the life around you with your internal rhythms (or the other way around if your current sleep-wake cycle doesn't serve you), you can enjoy a stable cycle of restorative nights and days full of energy and live a life of improved wellbeing, productivity, and overall vitality.

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Sleep Thinking Inspiration: 7 Notable Sleep Thinkers Who Transformed Their Fields

Spontaneous Sleep Thinking: Unintentionally Problem-Solving?

As you delve deeper into sleep thinking and become more aware of your thoughts, both while awake and during sleep, you may notice that sometimes upon awaking, you realize that you've sleep-thought without having planned to.

You may remember a dream where you were thinking about a real-life issue and coming up with ideas (sometimes stupid, sometimes brilliant) or you may have dreamt of something that abstractly relates to a waking life situation that has been plaguing your mind (or sometimes even just been living somewhere in a corner of your brain). Or you may have just woken up with newfound clarity and innovative solutions to a problem. This can occur to people even before they are introduced to the concept of sleep thinking.

This just happened to me tonight, and not for the first time, and that's why I decided to write an article about the phenomenon of spontaneous sleep thinking.

My experience with spontaneous sleep thinking

Long before I discovered that one could use sleep intentionally for problem-solving purposes, I remember having that dream where I had to get to some kind of underground train station or something like that, I don't remember it clearly anymore, but the problem was that the place where I had to get was several meters underground and there was no other way to there than to jump or climb the wall. Obviously, that scared me, as heights have always made me feel uneasy (though excited and in awe as well). And then what happened was that there was suddenly a staircase that led down there, and I noticed that not only was it easier to get down there, but the height of the hole or whatever seemed less now than previously. It didn't take me a lot to come to the conclusion that knowing the steps to bringing a idea to fruition not only makes it easier to achieve but also makes the project feel less daunting. That was a very obvious but important message to me at that time as I was just working on embracing my unique nonlinear, bigger picture way of thinking, and this was a necessary call for finding a balance between relying on my strengths and integrating my weaker and less preferred cognitive functions to serve my creative goals. And that absolutely normal, yet significant dream had came to me out of nowhere.

Once I was procrastinating on doing a long and tedious history homework when a dream character that had been following me around and scaring me told me to go do it when I asked her what she wanted from me. It brought this issue that I didn't want to think about to my mind and gave me the necessary boost, putting me in a willing state of mind.

As a multipassionate, meaning, a person who has way to many passions and ideas to be able to reduce themselves to just one, forging a future plan for my life, especially deciding on what to study, is an issue that has been troubling me for years, and I've come a long way to the still quite unclear vision I have now. Yet in a relatively recent dream that I hadn't exactly prompted, I came up with a thought that supports my idea to study medicine. In the dream, I realized that medicine would help me develop all parts of me: strengthen my empathy, yet toughen me up, feed my curiousity, as well as force me to become more organized to get through it all, and, most importantly, whatever work I chose to do in this area would be meaningful (as long as it was ethical, of course). This dream didn't solve all my conundrums and didn't take away my uncertainty, but it for sure gave me a heads-up if I decided to follow this path.

Another time, I was dozing off during a massage as I dreamt of not being able to accomplish a task because I kept being distracted by shiny things until a dream character told me to stop chasing after every shiny thing. Well, duh. But if I had heard this message or thought of it in waking life, it would have barely helped me, after all, my inability to choose is the exact problem. However, in that period of juggling a thousand chores and ideas, it actually shifted my mindset, helping me refocus on what was most important and the projects I was already working on.

Another night, I added an element to my newly formed memory palace (an interesting mnemonic device, maybe I'll explore it on a deeper level and write an article afterwards). Basically, in that dream, I decided that I should sleep-think on the best path to learning a language from scratch and added the thought to the memory palace I had just created in the evening while still awake, and it surprised me a bit. No, I haven't sleep-thought about it yet, since it is not currently a priority.

And tonight, I was thinking about the personality type of a friend of mine, ruled out the other possibilities (although I didn't gave them much thought) and realized that I should look up a specific topic related to the issue.

I have for sure sleep-thought spontaneously at other instances, too, but these are the ones I remember the best at the moment.

So why does this happen?

We usually think of sleep as a pause on living, as this time of unconsciousness and absence of awareness and control over oneself, but it could not be further from the truth. During sleep, we're still thinking, only in a different "mode" if you will, whether we have decided to do that during moments of wakefulness or not.

While sleeping, our minds are free from distractions and external influences, allowing our brains to make new connections, process information, and explore different avenues of thought. During NREM (deep) sleep, memories are reviewed and consolidated in the brain. As we enter the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of sleep, our brains become highly active, and this is where the magic of spontaneous sleep thinking often takes place.

Most dreams occur during REM sleep. That's when the brain focuses on creative processing of ideas, exploring various perspectives, generating connections and piecing together fragments of information, as well as healing itself from emotional trauma. This is a time of extra-enhanced creativity, as the mind extracts the core ideas from seas of data and comes up with ideas and solutions. Sleep thinkers usually use this creative state to focus on specific issues, but even if the sleeper does not intentionally decide to sleep-think on a problem, they might adress this issue in sleep anyways.

Benefits of Spontaneous Sleep Thinking

Intentional sleep thinking is without doubt a wonderful tool for harnessing the "superpowers" of sleeping mind to improve the quality of one's life. However, a person may not even want to invest energy into solving all their life issues. Some issues might be associated with too much pain or discomfort, and no matter how honest we attempt to be, there are still truths we prefer to avoid. During sleep, meanwhile, our self-protective walls are lowered, allowing us to access fresh perspectives on a certain issue. Sleep thinking breaks through the defenses of the mind, connecting the dots and bringing our attention truths that we already know even though we don't realize we do. Or maybe we don't want to.

As I mentioned before, sleep thinking is normal thinking, just like wakeful thinking, except the thinking style is different. During sleep (and I'm bringing your attention particularly REM sleep, since that is the one we remember the best), the activity of our mind is very high, processing the events of the day, the information and skills that were learned, and the emotions that were experienced, connecting and combining all those elements in novel ways. This allows us to come up with, for example, solutions that we hadn't actively decided to search for or remember that we have to do the obligations that we want to escape (as it happened with my history project), just as we think without a predefined plan all the time during wakefulness.

Oftentimes, sleep thinking surprises you with a message that is way to obvious to be genius, yet it is a truth lying in a corner of your mind that you had overlooked or ignored, despite its importance. At other times, spontaneous sleep thinking connects the dots for you and provides you with a valuable insight. Yet at still other times, you may simply wake up with your mindset slightly shifted and the solution to a problem more accessible.

Wiring your mind for spontaneous sleep thinking

While we obviously cannot control when or how spontaneous sleep thinking occurs (that's why it is called spontaneous), there are some things we can do to create an environment conducive to fostering its occurrence:

1. Prioritize Quality Sleep: Ensure you have sufficient sleep duration and establish healthy sleep habits.
2. Cultivate the Right Mindset: Develop an attitude of self-examination, open-mindedness and a willingness to think about your life, including about aspects that make you uncomfortable, especially about those, and solve your problems; learn to let go of your defenses and submit to multi-perspective, whole-picture thinking, striving for constant growth.
3. Develop Awareness of Your Sleep Life: Remembering sleep thoughts is crucial to harnessing the power of sleep thinking, therefore I recommend keeping a dream journal where you record any dreams or insights immediately upon waking, or at least spend the first minute of your morning recalling your dreams, as paying attention to your sleeping life will send your brain the message that it is important and you want to remember it.
4. Reflect and Act: Review your sleep-inspired ideas (and those of your waking life), reflect on their meaning, and take actionable steps toward implementing them in your waking life.

Embracing the Unexpected

To fully access the power of spontaneous sleep thinking, it's essential to remain open-minded and receptive to unexpected insights. Sometimes, the most profound breakthroughs occur when we least expect them. You must trust the wisdom of your sleeping mind and be willing to explore new perspectives and unconventional solutions. Of course, you must examine an idea before you follow it but listen to it as if it were a member of an inner council. Remember, the path to problem-solving is not always linear, and embracing the unexpected can lead to remarkable discoveries. So, the next time you wake up with a brilliant idea, remember that your mind is a remarkable problem-solver even when you're not consciously aware of it.

How to Sleep-Think?

Welcome back to the world of sleep thinking! Now that you've been introduced to the fascinating possibilities of sleep-based problem-solving, it's time to dive deeper and discover the pathway to unlocking the full potential of your slumbering mind to make your life easier. Let's get right into it.

Step One: Taking Care of Your Sleep Hygiene

You really can't sleep-think without sleep. Thus, before you start sleep thinking, you've got to get your sleep life in order and create the ideal environment for sleep thinking. For this reason,

• make sure that you receive at least 8 hours of quality sleep every night,
• ensure that your sleep space is comfortable, quiet, and distraction-free,
• leave your worries aside and go to bed with a calm and relaxed mind,
• consider developing a relaxing pre-sleep routine that helps your mind transition into a dream-ready state (such as soothing music, meditation, or journaling before bedtime to calm your thoughts).

Step Two: Analyzing the Issue and Asking the Right Sleep Thinking Questions

Before you start sleep thinking on an issue, it is important to gather information on it and bring to your awareness the data points, ideas, gists, and desires you already have regarding this issue. Take the time to analyze the problem or question you seek to solve, breaking it down into its core components and identifying the key aspects that require attention.

Then formulate clear and concise sleep thinking questions that directly address these elements. To receive the right answers, it is important to master the art of asking the right questions. A good sleep thinking question

• is specific and to-the-point,
• is positively affirmative (for example, ask, 'How can I [do X]?', instead of 'Why can't I [do X]?'),
• is nautral and analytic (such as 'What's at the core of [issue X]?' or 'How to [do X]?', or 'What aspect of [e.g., my mindset/behaviour/etc] is [causing X]?),
• means exactly what it means,
• feels like a wonder, not a worry.

Most importantly, your sleep thinking question should feel right.

It's alright to ask many questions to get to the heart of the issue and find the right solution. You can even use sleep thinking to identify the right way to sleep-think on a question: you can sleep-think on sleep thinking matters. Treat your sleeping brain as a part of yourself and a normal component of your decision-making and problem-solving process.

Step Three: Preparing to Sleep Think

Now's the time to pose your sleep thinking question of the night. As you settle into bed, free your mind of all your worries and bring your attention to the sleep thinking issue at hand. Simply consider the problem as you drift off to sleep and ask the sleep thinking question calmly to yourself, wondering, not worrying about what the answer may be. Embrace a sense of openness and receptivity, letting go of any expectations and surrendering to the wisdom of your sleeping mind. The right mindset is essential to sleep thinking success.

Step Four: Sleeping on it

Yep, that's it. Once you've fallen asleep with the issue on your mind, your brain starts processing it, and all you have to do is sleep.

If you awake with an insight, write it down before you forget it. Really do write it down.

If you don't, then ask the question again serenely.

In the morning, spend a little bit of time before you get out of bed to recall your dreams and night thoughts and think if there's something of relevance, meaning, a dream or thought that involves the issue in a direct or associative manner.

If you forget something of relevance, don't worry! The thought is somewhere in your subconscious, and it will resurface again, or maybe it has already done its work by shifting your mindset. Just keep thinking, asleep and awake.

Depending on the issue, your state of mind, the effectivity of your questions. as well as a zilllion of factors outside your control, arriving at the right answer might take up several nights, or you might wake up with newfound clarity the morning after. Both are equally possible and completely fine, so be open-minded and patient with yourself!

Step Five: Deciphering Sleep Thoughts

Now that you've identified and preferably written down all the dreams relevant to the issue, it is time to get down to extracting the information from it.

Sometimes the message of the dream is pretty direct, but at other times, it comes hidden in obscure associations. So how do you understand it then? Do you go to a seer or analyse dream symbols explained on spirituality blogs?

Absolutely not. Consider

• the central theme/problem/essence of the dream,
• elements that bring memories/associations to your mind,
• surprising/peculiar elements, including your own reactions and characters that follow/attack you,
• the emotional impact of the dream.

Surely something of this will give you an idea. 

Always examine yourself to see whether a meaning/insight/answer/interpretation feels intuitively right and is actually the answer instead of a fulfilment of a wish or anxiety.

What if you analyse a relevant dream thoroughly and try to pick apart all its elements, yet its meaning is still unclear? That's alright. Consider the dream or sleep thought and decide to sleep-think on the meaning of the previous sleep insight with an open and wondering mind. You will get better with time.

Step Six: Implementing the Insights

Once you have the answers you need, we'll, you've got to do something with them, right?

Sum up the information gathered through the sleep thinking program and make an action plan for the future. If you feel the need to, you can sleep think anew on any step.

Congratulations, you've just unlocked the potential of your sleeping mind. Keep dreaming, and keep thinking!

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The CarpeNoctem Sleep Thinking Journal not only acts as your second nightly brain, giving you space for analysing the issue, preparing to sleep think, gathering and analysing insights, and forming conclusions, but also contains more in-depth guides on how to sleep-think. Composed of 9 categories covering every aspect of your life, this elegant matte paperback journal is the perfect tool for exploration and self-discovery. Dig deep into any issue relevant to you and harvest the insights your sleeping mind produces!

Find out more here.

Next in the series: Get Inspired

Unlock the Power of Sleep Thinking: Unleashing Your Dreamtime Genius