Physiology and Dreaming

Our bodies are twitching and turning throughout the night, as the body seeks comfort from long held positions of potential stress and so that sleep can be maintained for rejuvenation cycles to be completed. However, there are ninety minute cycles of rapid eye movement (R.E.M) for at least 4 periods of dreaming, where all the muscles are in paralysis mode, except for the eyes. If you notice the logo graphic [TradeMark] for this site, the eyes are moving only, without the rest of the body, clouds overhead and landscape perspective below. It is like the eyes have to follow where the person is "going" in their dream. The REM periods start off short, at about 10 minutes duration, and end up much longer (30 minutes or more) towards morning when the body will eventually wake.

I have experienced the paralysis many times, and have learned to remain calm, as this is a normal cycle that is necessary, otherwise there may be sleepwalking and acting out the dream, perhaps dangerously. A doctor can administer an appropriate dose of a particular substance to get the biochemistry correct an alleviate the condition. Once, while meditating in Perth while on tour, on a balcony, I became aware that I was paralysed and saw my subtle dream body arriving back from its travels horizontally at my feet, elevate itself parallel to my sitting body, and re-enter. Then my normal? body was able to move and wake as usual.

With men, there are associated penile erections, not necessarily linked with erotic content of dreams, but seeming to be a physiological response, suggesting a common area in the brain influencing both dreaming and sexual arousal. This is also apparently evident in women too, with the vagina dilating. Robert Monroe commented in his first book that he had to suppress the desire to orgasm or ejaculate, in order to be successful in his first out of body forays. He could see his wife down on the bed below him, and the natural thing for him was to go to her sexually? Tantra also suggests that this energy's use is major for accessing the multi-dimensionality of human potential.

Studies of newborn children have shown that they spend about 70% of their sleeping time in REM, while adults have but 20%, this going much smaller as old age approaches.

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