Some dreams are more vivid and memorable than others, and they seem to come in cycles, a burst of vivid dreams grabbing our attention every so often before we return to runs of the more mundane variety.
When do you dream most vividly? Have you noticed any patterns?
Last week I had a call from Pat Hession, presenter of the Afternoon Show on Radio ABC North Queensland, inviting me onto his show to comment on the possible effect of the full moon on dreams. Pat and several of his friends, family and colleagues had all had vivid dreams earlier that week and they wondered if it was due to the full moon.
We’re all familiar with anecdotal evidence about the effect of the full moon on our mental and emotional balance in waking life, and a quick Google revealed contradictory research results and opinions. My husband, Michael, was a London cop many hundreds of moons ago, and he remembers there was always an increase in ‘incidents’ on a full moon.
Arguments for the full moon affecting our waking lives range from a decrease in the Earth’s geomagnetic field (it’s at its quietest at full and new moons) to an increase in night light causing enough sleep deprivation to unhinge the susceptible (perhaps more relevant in the days before we had electricity to artificially light our evenings and disrupt our rhythms).
We are closest to waking at the end of a dream, rather than during the long deep sleep periods between dreams. So if you find yourself waking up more often on full moon nights because the light disturbs your sleep, you’re most likely to wake while a dream is fresh on your mind, and remember it in the morning. You may think that you’ve had more vivid dreams than usual, but what you’ve really done is remember more middle-of-the-night dreams than usual.
In the past, when I’ve researched the subject of full moons and vivid dreams, I’ve drawn a blank. There are so many other factors that influence our dreams, and I believe these are more powerful, but I was curious, so I researched some more.
I remembered that the full moon in question, on 26 June 2010, was also a partial lunar eclipse, and I wondered if that had affected Pat & Co’s dreams.
According to astrologer Carolyn Wilkinson, the partial lunar eclipse was in the early degrees of Capricorn, meaning it may affect those born in the early degrees of Capricorn. Hmm, is that me? My birth date is 22 December, and you don’t get much earlier in Capricorn than that. I did have vivid dreams that week, but a few days after the eclipse.
According to Carolyn, “Lunar eclipses naturally tend to ‘reveal’ things to us. I do believe that (just to add to the mix) the apogee/perigee cycle (ie when the moon is closest and farthermost from the earth) has a hand in dream activity as well as other matters of life on earth.”
Our dreams reflect our waking life, and many things influence our waking life including, perhaps, the full moon. Our dreams tend to be most vivid when we experience challenge, conflict or change in waking life, so I began to wonder what challenge, conflict or change Pat, his friends and colleagues, might have all experienced at the time of their vivid dreams. What experience did they have in common that might have resulted in vivid dreams?
It was the school holidays – so tick up challenge, conflict and change for working families – and there were big political changes happening here in Australia that week, causing radio producers to chase different stories and people to worry about their jobs and finances in light of a possible election … well, you know how it goes.
My guess is that Pat & Co’s vivid dreams were the stuff of shared experiences such as these rather than the full moon or the eclipse, and I think I detected an ‘aha’ in Pat’s voice when I mentioned this possibility.
What do you think?
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