Michelle Carr

That is a very common dream theme.

I have it all the time as well.

I think it's just related to our physical body not really receiving any sensation of the car pedal.

So the dream is going out of control.

Teeth falling out or flying or falling or finding new rooms in my house.

We know so much about how important sleep is for our health, but we're only just beginning to uncover whether dreaming and the way that we feel during sleep is significant in our health as well.

Sure.

Yeah.

When we first start to fall asleep, there's this stage where we're still a little bit awake and we just start entering a stage where our brainwaves start to slow down.

And that's pretty obviously called stage one sleep.

It's just a really brief period of sleep onset, a transition period.

And already in stage one sleep, we can start to have really bizarre thoughts or images that appear in our mind.

And stage two is when our brainwaves slow down a bit more.

It's a much more stable sleep state and we're really disconnected from the sensory environment.

And gradually we move into a deeper state, stage three, or slow wave sleep, where there are really a lot of very slow waves throughout the brain.

And this is the state with the least amount of dreams.

Our dreams are really short and brief and maybe thought-like when we're in stage three sleep, or we don't remember anything at all.

And then the fourth stage is REM sleep.

It's called REM because our eyes are moving, rapid eye movements.

And our body and our mind are actually quite active during REM.