Tag: #dreamyoga

Candle Vigil – Koyaanisqatsi – Jaguar Shaman – Strange Group Dream 25-07-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ 1 Comment

Here is last night’s dream, strangely out of context with our current life and way of living.

The dream starts in South America on the mainland, perhaps Western Caribbean, on the connective peninsula. I am walking along a path cleared into the jungle at dusk / early night. I come upon a sunken built structure which has downward going stepped stone seating, a bit like a Greek theatre

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The construction is totally circular and the “stage” area is of the same grey stone at the rest of the amphitheatre. The construction is ancient South American, Maya or Aztec or some such. The radius is about 50 metres and there are at least half a dozen seating rows. It seems very familiar to me. On each step / seat is spaced a circle of lit candles in tumbler size glasses of various shapes and colours. There are hundreds of them. On the stage there are concentric circles of similar candles around a central circle empty void. The candles flicker lightly in the wind. I know this place to be a reliquary of living souls, each candle a spark of life. They have gathered to meditate on the state of the world. Against the darkened backdrop of the surrounding noisy night time jungle, here is a sanctuary.

The scene changes and I start to see scenes like from the film Koyaanisqatsi where rushing images of “normal” hectic life with its chaos and destruction are playing out on a “screen” in the mind’s eye. I hear chanting of Koyaanisqatsi over and over in a deep low voice as per the film. I know beyond any doubt that the world is badly out of balance, out of whack and out of kilter. The madness of the human “dream” is in full flow, justified to itself and thoroughly destructive. Unaware and largely uncaring. Caught up in a ceaseless rhythm of hectic.

The scene changes and I am now in a large open native kayak. There are two boats. We are paddling along the shore past jungle and two large settlements. It could be the sea or it could be a wide part of the Amazon River. We are around twenty metres from the “beach” and the jungle behind. I know we are being tracked and I catch sight of a magnificent jaguar easily keeping pace with our boats, jogging slowly in the forest. She is watching and observing. I can feel her muscles and see through her eyes. She is a totem of THE jaguar shaman, a spirit of the jungle, free and untrammelled. I see back through time to a ritual in a clearing of the jungle where I am enacting the convergence of the jaguar shaman. I have a jaguar pelt on my shoulders. As I enact I become and am the jaguar.

The scene changes to an urban setting; there are a group of people seeking to join or affirm their membership in a wider group. People have been accepted but must now make their public telephone call with their “mentor”. The sense of people wanting to be a part of is strong. I see one black man roughly my age make his call which we can all hear. In that the mentor slowly gets him to submit verbally. I think that this is coercive. Others make their call to belong to the “wonderful” organisation. The do decamps to a large pub near Hampstead Heath. People are queuing out of the door to buy their drinks. The black man is there and his mentor is going to buy him a drink, in a wait your turn fashion. I walk straight up to the bar and buy two pints of beer from one of the bar staff who know me well. I usher to the black man to join me in the beer garden. He follows and I explain that this has been cult like behaviour and he had better get the out sharpish.

The scene changes and the images of and sounds of Koyaanisqatsi close out the dream in a repetitive sequence.

The dream ends.

Radiation – Dying Inside – Iridium – Radiant Dream 24-07-2025

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Here is last night’s dream, a night when I made it all the way through to 5:20 AM without being woken  by my body’s grumbles.

The dream starts in a shop / storage unit which is choc-a-block with scientific instrumentation of various ages and types. They are piled high  and it is difficult to walk down the aisles without tripping over some cable or other. There is a man in a light brown linen overall behind a service desk there. He is in charge of the store. He encourages me to explore and offers me an extension lead distribution box with four UK plug sockets. I can test any instrument that I want.

I find what looks like a seismograph with several needles and data tracks. There is some chart paper in it. I go to plug it in and the paper advance works. I lower one of the data write ink heads. At first there is no line drawn but then the pen starts to work and the needle moves back and forth a little with the channel noise. There is ink. The signal level starts to decrease and decay. In the dream I know this to be a toxic radiation within the heart of someone I thought I knew. I was acquainted with this person but we have not spoken for around twenty years. Something in his heart is decaying and eating him up from the inside. The radiation in his heart is slowly deadly and his inner beingness is dying and decaying because of it. He kind of knows it but is unwilling to do anything about it.

I continue my walk around the store and set off a radiation detector tube. It has some residual power. I take the detector and power supply to the front desk and plug it in. The radiation detector goes off at a high count rate. The man says that I am radioactive and that is why people don’t want anything to do with me. I literally glow and radiate. They do not understand that this is good, light, radiation. He says that it is because of a special isotope of Iridium which I have in me. This isotope was a part of an interstellar meteorite which I found as a young boy. I was out walking in the desert-bush and came upon the Iridium rock. I touched it and incorporated the Iridium. Ever since I have had a radiant radioactivity. I am made of stardust – interstellar Iridium. People are afraid of my radiance.

In my mind’s eye in the dream. I see a young boy finding a small shiny “rock” in a red-brown earthy cupped palm shaped depression in the land. He is wearing a light blue-white checked sleeveless shirt and dark navy-blue shorts. His socks are pulled up to the knee. He picks the rock up and examines it. I know that he too will incorporate the irradiance. As he starts to incorporate, I put my hand on his shoulder and say to him that he is not alone.

I am now back in the shop. The man behind the counter shows me a radiation trace of me versus time. The radiation instead of decaying over time is in fact growing. I am becoming ever more radiant.

The dream ends.

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From Wikipedia

Iridium is a chemical element; it has the symbol Ir and atomic number 77. This very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group, is considered the second-densest naturally occurring metal (after osmium) with a density of 22.56 g/cm3 (0.815 lb/cu in) as defined by experimental X-ray crystallography. 191Ir and 193Ir are the only two naturally occurring isotopes of iridium, as well as the only stable isotopes; the latter is the more abundant. It is one of the most corrosion-resistant metals, even at temperatures as high as 2,000 °C (3,630 °F).

Iridium was discovered in 1803 in the acid-insoluble residues of platinum ores by the English chemist Smithson Tennant. The name iridium, derived from the Greek word iris (rainbow), refers to the various colors of its compounds. Iridium is one of the rarest elements in Earth’s crust, with an estimated annual production of only 6,800 kilograms (15,000 lb) in 2023.

The dominant uses of iridium are the metal itself and its alloys, as in high-performance spark plugs, crucibles for recrystallization of semiconductors at high temperatures, and electrodes for the production of chlorine in the chloralkali process. Important compounds of iridium are chlorides and iodides in industrial catalysis. Iridium is a component of some OLEDs.

Iridium is found in meteorites in much higher abundance than in the Earth’s crust. For this reason, the unusually high abundance of iridium in the clay layer at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary gave rise to the Alvarez hypothesis that the impact of a massive extraterrestrial object caused the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and many other species 66 million years ago, now known to be produced by the impact that formed the Chicxulub crater. Similarly, an iridium anomaly in core samples from the Pacific Ocean suggested the Eltanin impact of about 2.5 million years ago.

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Pierro – Miscommunication – Light Through Darkness – Lost Car Dream – 23-07-2025

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Here is last night’s dream.

The dream starts in a very urban setting, next to a large river which is brackish and tidal. There is a very large pub on multiple levels which backs onto the river. It has a feel of a Dickensian smugglers’ pub on the banks of a foggy Thames. The wife and I meet Pierro there on the land side off a normal road. We go inside.

The scene changes and I am now entering the lower levels of the pub from the sea side through a rarely used entrance off the “beach”. I work my way up through the pub looking for Pierro and the wife. Some of the rooms are busy some are not. The pub is very big with many rooms and many bars. In one the barman hands me a half-pewter tankard filled with porter a type of dark beer. Carrying this I continue searching through the pub. I walk through an office drinks party in one bar and a pre-wedding piss up in another. I find them in a wooden bar with benched wooden seating.

I again greet Pierro. He says that he has someone he wants me to meet. They are his cousins from America. He introduces four men who are a bit like the “Deliverance” hill-billies. They are roughly dressed and with poor teeth. They are unwashed and smelly. One of them has fingernails like dog claws. Another has a lazy eye and is wearing a lopsided straw hat. They are all tall, well over six feet and on the skinny side. They look out of place in the urban setting.

I start to speak with them in English, but they respond in French with a very strong creole or patois accent, that is very thick and difficult to understand. It could be Canadian American Indian French or from the deep south of the USA. It is very hard to understand. I speak with them in my attempts at French. It is clear to see that we are having massive, huge, trouble communicating. Communication is very poor between us.

The scene changes to a different urban setting. There are tall dark red brick buildings a bit like those near Kensington High Street and a bit reminiscent of Manchester. There are thin several storey tall, terraced houses and office like accommodation. I am there for a rock concert. Perhaps by Oasis. There is on street car parking with old style parking meters. I pick up my key from reception and go to find the house which I have been allocated, which I am renting. I go inside and dump my bags. I then leave and lock up putting the keys in my pocket. I look at the number on the door so that I can find it amidst all the very similar looking buildings. I can see the number 1347 in large white screw-on numbering. In the dream I think it odd that the house has such a high number.

I then set off to look for my car having forgotten exactly where I parked it. I know that I parked it near here because I used intuition to find then ticket office. I am looking for my old navy-blue Ford Fiesta. I look up and down the streets, down back alleys, in car parks above and below ground. I cannot find the car but am not concerned because it is my old car which I sold many years ago.

The dream ends.

As I am coming to, I note that the dream is about 15 both because of the house number and Pierro. It is about light through or from darkness. I note that this dream is a dreaming symbol dream.

15 is the jewel of awareness light thorugh darkness.

Dog – Blood – Pine Marten – Putin Dream 21-07-2025

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Here is last night’s dream, of note is the marked vivid nature of the blood early on. I have not had one like this.

The dream starts in a very British holiday camp setting like a Butlins of old. It is dank and damp outside and I am in communal area with British holiday makers, mostly families. We are waiting for a break in the weather. A TV is playing in the corner high up on the wall. Some people are gathered around Formica tables playing cards. There are children and adolescents on their technology. It seems old-school, old-fashioned, 1970s even.

I go up some stairs to a common room area on the upper level. This leads to chalet rooms. People are sat around and I note a door which has a cardboard box placed in front of it holding it shut. I ask a woman why. She says that it is there to keep them in. I can take a look if I would like but she advises against it. If I do, I should close the door behind me.

I am like others slightly bored by the confinement indoors. I go over to the room and enter closing the door behind me. A medium sized black dog tries to get out as I go in. I shoe it with my foot and enter. I look down and notice that it is badly injured. There are lacerations and cuts. In the dream I know that it is dying and unwell.

Out of nowhere, it seems, a pine marten like animal starts to chase the dog around the room trying to kill it, to bite it on the back of the neck to administer a coup de grâce. The animals chase each other around the room at high speed. The pine marten bites the dog and the dog tries to bite it.

The dog runs into an open cupboard. The pine marten stops in front of me and stands up on its hind legs, it looks me quizzically in the eye. Both the pine marten and I know that it is best for the dog to die. The wounds it received when being hit by a car are not going to heal and will ultimately prove fatal. It is better that the marten quickly finishes the job. I can hear people outside saying that I should trap the marten and let the dog out. The marten knows me and trusts me.

The chase continues. By now the room is filled with vivid bright red blood sprayed everywhere. It comes mostly from the dog. There is more blood than makes sense and it has squirted across my face and arms. The dog gets cornered by the marten and bitten again. The chase continues helter-skelter. Finally the marten has the dog at the back of the neck and holds it until the dog is still. The marten is limping a little after it lets go.

I go out through the door and into a palatine Kremlin like room. Sat at a table in a meeting is Putin. There are Russian politburo members around the table. I go over and say, “Vladimir I need you to summon the vet. Your pine marten is injured next door.” Putin gets up from the table after making a call. We are joined by a vet in a white coat.  I open the door and the marten comes to me. I explain to both Putin and the vet, in Imperial French, that the marten has a problem with its his legs and a lump on its tail. The vet asks me to hold the marten which I do whilst it is examined. The vet find a boiled sweet lozenge entangled in the hair of the marten’s tail. During the process all the marten’s fur has become whiter more like a winter pelt. The vet cuts the lozenge out with some scissors. He shows it to me and throws it into a bin. The vet then wipes the fur of the marten with a cloth soaked in vodka. Putin is beaming with happiness. When I let go the clean marten climbs up my legs and into my arms. It is only slightly hurt. I know in the dream that the pine marten is more than a pine marten, some kind of rare totem.

The dream ends.

On writing this up I think of this…

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Venture Capital – UCL – Dream 20-07-2025.

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Here is last night’s dream, unusually had early in the night ~1 AM. It seems contextually out of the blue.

The dream starts outside a swish urban building similar in style to The Ritz or Berner Kantonalbank, with a partially covered walk way. The feel is European, Germanic or British not French. There is a sense of commerce and business. The building is like a TARDIS much more spacious on the inside than the outsides suggest. It is high rent, posh and opulent.

In the atrium on a meeting area to one side I am sat in an alcove with Mark. There are antique like chairs with coffee tables  arranged facing each other in a semi-circle. Mark is there with his team from the Venture Fund. They are all suited and well dressed. Mark is a bit younger than he would be now. We are discussing the funding opportunities for my project. He is quite enthusiastic. The event we are at is some kind of inventor-investor meet-up.

He stands up and ushers me to follow him. I note that I do not have a suit on simply a white collarless granddad shirt which is immaculately pressed. I cannot see my lower half. I can see the fine grain of the cloth.

He leads me up a grand staircase to the event dining room. In a wall-mirrored room sat around large round “Louis XIV” gilded tables are diners in groups of around a dozen. Mark ushers me to a table where Debbie and Sue are sat. Sue is the far end of the table next to the wall and Debbie is nearer the walkway. She stands up to greet me  and we hug. Sue is more reticent as if she is embarrassed to see me for some reason. Debbie is at the event to promote technology transfer from her university. She is keen to hear what I have been up to. She says that I can stay in her room overnight if I would like. There is a very faint sexual overtone. She is roughly as she was thirty years ago when I last saw her. She addresses me using the nickname “George” which was in use then. She says that if I stay with her, I can get one of the most excellent breakfasts put on by the event. The wanting to feed motif is much stronger than any faint sexual overtone.

I ask her if she recognises the dress I am wearing. In the dream I show her the material of an exquisitely patterned grey floral female dress which I am wearing on my top half. It is very expensive and high quality with petite floral designs interspersed with doves. I say that it used to be her dress. She does not recognise it. She hands me her technology transfer / business development card. I make my excuses and leave the posh event.

As I am leaving the lobby of the building, I see a news broadcast about a man who is promoting cross channel intellectual and business collaborations between France and England. His ‘phone number and email flash up on screen, which I write down on the back of the business card.

I continue out of the building and into a suburban train station car park. It is very dark and raining slightly. I walk over a partially covered bridge over the rails to the station on the other side of the tracks.

The dream ends and seems incongruous.

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  • Mark, Debbie and Sue were in my Chemistry degree class at UCL in the early eighties. I have spoken to Mark on Teams in the last year, before that not for forty years. I have not spoken in person to Debbie for thirty years and Sue for probably forty years.

Castaneda and Neuroscience

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Prompted by the dream the other day I have been having a little look into neuroscience. It seems that there is much interest in using hallucinogens to {perhaps} help with mental health. There is interest in the crossover between dreams and hallucinogenic activity. This from “Frontiers in Neuroscience”.

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In the books of Castaneda, don Juan introduces him to peyote (lophophora williamsii), jimson weed (datura) and magic mushrooms (psylocibin). Castaneda describes some of his outlandish experiences whilst off his trolly. Castaneda wrote a book on “The Art of Dreaming” which perhaps tacitly lies aback much of the Lucid Dreaming genre. One could suggest that Castaneda had an effect on neuroscience and the psychology of dreams. If you look at the graph below from the above article the similarity of psychoactive experience and dream lucidity is correlated with the don Juan substances of choice. Only LSD outperforms the “natural” substances. Cannabis comes close. {Man}

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When I was ill, I was prescribed the MAOI phenelzine which had no psychoactive effects, as far as I could tell. I had one hypertensive crisis at a business dinner in Japan, something iffy with tryamine in the seaweed. Those Nitrogen atoms look receptor ready…hydrogen bonding to the fore.

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“Phenelzine, sold under the brand name Nardil among others, is a non-selective and irreversible monoamine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI) of the hydrazine family which is primarily used as an antidepressant and anxiolytic to treat depression and anxiety. Along with tranylcypromine and isocarboxazid, phenelzine is one of the few non-selective and irreversible MAOIs still in widespread clinical use.”

I used this for probably one year. It is a MAOI to the right of the graph.

I have had limited exposure to magic mushrooms and LSD, over thirty years ago and I stopped smoking week in 1999.

Obviously if one is doing research, it must seem pukka and thoroughly scientific. I doubt anyone acknowledges Castaneda though some may have read him…

The Dreamers IN Time

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In his series of books on the Toltec Teachings Théun Mares suggests a model for understanding human nature in which people have various preferences or predilections. These can offer interpretations on behavioural traits, strengths and weaknesses. They could be seen as similar to MBTI types, at a push. At the risk of sounding like the last air-bender, these traits might have the description of earth, air, water and fire. Which are pragmatic grounded, cerebral thoughtful, nurturing watering and passionate fiery.  These are the directions North, East, South and West. We might say that people have a penchant for verbal inquiry {talking} or dream like reflection. We have extrovert (s)talker and introverted dreamer. It is difficult to dream whilst you are busy talking. It is difficult to converse when you are away with the fairies.

There are five types “assigned” to each direction with one “wild card”.

In this schema there are various techniques one of these is dreaming. Logic suggest that dreaming does not pertain to the known as it resists ordering, it flows like water. You dream in something unknown. Fire is ephemeral and not as well understood, so this too is of the unknown, it is unpredictable. Earth and wind are more predictable; these are the relatively well understood or known. We might further assign matter to the North, time to the East, energy to the South and space to the West.

Please note this does not correlate with the physics understanding in common use. Feel the qualities inherent.

Time then is observing the process of life, what happens. Space is understanding the purpose of life, why stuff happens.

In this arrangement the people assigned to the West are called “the dreamers in space”, because purpose is a feeling not a reason. Those in the East are called “the stalkers in time” because reason comes with words and chronology, a time line, a sequence of events, it is more cerebral.

My primary predilection, some would say obsession, is with dreams. I am also introverted. So I would be assigned to the South {dreams, water} an introverted dreamer in the “place” of dreaming.

My secondary predilection is cerebral, logical, thinking, cause & effect reasoning. I am keen on timing and a bit anal about being on time. I have a predilection for the East and eastern philosophy

One could say that I am a dreamer IN time.

I am picking up what may be a shift in that the dreamers of mankind are becoming dreamers in time and less in space. This suggests that dreams are acquiring a more time-oriented manifestation. They are timed to events. There is a shift to the East.

There are more dreamers IN time…

Dreaming during anaesthesia – selected abstracts

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Dreaming during anaesthesia is defined as any recalled experience (excluding awareness) that occurred between induction of anaesthesia and the first moment of consciousness upon emergence. Dreaming is a commonly-reported side-effect of anaesthesia. The incidence is higher in patients who are interviewed immediately after anaesthesia (≈22%) than in those who are interviewed later (≈6%). A minority of dreams, which include sensory perceptions obtained during anaesthesia, provide evidence of near-miss awareness. These patients may have risk factors for awareness and this type of dreaming may be prevented by depth of anaesthesia monitoring. Most dreaming however, occurs in younger, fitter patients, who have high home dream recall, who receive propofol-based anaesthesia and who emerge rapidly from anaesthesia. Their dreams are usually short and pleasant, are related to work, family and recreation, are not related to inadequate anaesthesia and probably occur during recovery. Dreaming is a common, fascinating, usually pleasant and harmless phenomenon.

Leslie et al.  “Dreaming during anaesthesia in adult patients”

Best Practice & Research Clinical Anaesthesiology

Volume 21, Issue 3, September 2007, Pages 403-414

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BMC Anesthesiol. 2016 Aug 2;16:53. doi: 10.1186/s12871-016-0214-1

“Dreaming under anesthesia: is it a real possiblity? Investigation of the effect of preoperative imagination on the quality of postoperative dream recalls”

Judit Gyulaházi et al.

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“The relationship between different bispectral index and the occurrence of dreams in elective surgery under general anesthesia: protocol for a randomized controlled clinical trial”

Yufei Zhang, Bijia Song & Junchao Zhu

Trials, volume 24, Article number: 205 (2023)

Abstract

Introduction

Dreaming reported after anesthesia remains a poorly understood phenomenon. At present, there is a hypothesis that dreaming occurs intraoperatively and is related to light or inadequate anesthesia; thus, in order to further verify the hypothesis, we choose elective surgery under general anesthesia to observe whether the generation of dreams is related to the dose of general anesthetics maintenance.

Introduction

Dreaming is a familiar and mysterious mode of cognitive function, and we involuntarily return to this mode every night. Dreaming during sleep is defined as “any type of cognitive activity that occurs during sleep” and is “a subjective experience that can only be obtained through the dreamer’s memories after waking up.” Despite more than a century of scientific exploration, dreams continue to arouse the interest of sleep scientists, but they are still not fully understood [1, 2]. Moreover, its rigorous scientific exploration is a recent development, dating back to the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep in the 1950s. When this stage of sleep was first described in humans, researchers quickly noticed that people who awakened from REM sleep often reported dreaming (in 74% of cases, only 17% of non-REM [NREM] sleep). Therefore, dreaming is equivalent to rapid eye movement sleep, and this concept seems to be consistent with the electrophysiological characteristics of this sleep stage: closing the eyeballs under the eyelids, as if the sleeper is watching an animated scene [3, 4]. General anesthesia causes a drug-induced state of unconsciousness and is a non-physiological process that is similar to natural sleep. Its purpose is to create a state of sensory deprivation wherein patients are unresponsive to stimuli and thus leads to explicit amnesia [5]. Dreaming is also a common, long-lasting, and fascinating part of the anesthesia experience, but its cause and timing are still elusive. Patients usually report that they dreamed during anesthesia, but the actual time of dreaming during anesthesia is unknown. Dreaming during anesthesia can be defined as “any experience (excluding awareness) that a patient is able to recall and which he or she thinks occurred between induction of anaesthesia and the first moment of consciousness after anaesthesia” [6]. Patients receiving propofol for general anesthesia often report a higher incidence of dreaming compared with patients maintained with volatile anesthetics [7]. One explanation is that propofol and volatile anesthetics have different pharmacological effects in the central nervous system [8, 9]. Another explanation is that propofol can wake up from anesthesia faster than the volatile anesthetics, allowing patients to report their dreams before they are forgotten [10]. Why is the investigation of dreams during anesthesia important? Dreaming is one of the most common side effects of anesthesia, but it is still puzzling and requires explanation [7, 11]. Dreaming can sometimes make patients feel distressed and may reduce satisfaction with care [12]. Some patients who report dreaming worry that their anesthetic is insufficient; their experience is actually consciousness. At present, there is a hypothesis that dreaming occurs intraoperatively and is related to light or inadequate anesthesia; thus, in order to further verify the hypothesis, we choose elective surgery under general anesthesia to observe whether the generation of dreams is related to the dose of general anesthetics maintenance.

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“Dreaming during gastrointestinal endoscopy under propofol, ciprofol, or remimazolam anesthesia: study protocol for a parallel-design double-blind, single-center trial”

    Le-Qiang Xia et al

Trials, volume 25, Article number: 2 (2024)

Abstract

Background

Dreaming sometimes occurs during sedation. It has been reported that factors such as different anesthetics, depth of anesthesia, age, sex, and preoperative psychological state may affect dreams. Ciprofol and remimazolam are novel choices for painless endoscopy. Herein, we aimed to investigate dreaming during gastrointestinal endoscopy under propofol, ciprofol, and remimazolam anesthesia respectively.

Methods

This is a prospective, parallel-design double-blind, single-center clinical trial. Three hundred and sixty subjects undergoing elective painless gastroscopy, colonoscopy, or gastroenteroscopy will be enrolled. Eligible subjects will undergo propofol-, ciprofol-, or remimazolam-induced anesthesia to finish the examination. Interviews about the modified Brice questionnaire will be conducted in the recovery room. Incidence of dreaming is set as the primary outcome. Secondary outcomes include type of dreams, improvement of sleep quality, evaluation of patients, incidence of insufficient anesthesia, and intraoperative awareness. Safety outcomes are the incidences of hypotension and hypoxia during examination and adverse events during recovery.

Discussion

This study may observe different incidences of dreaming and diverse types of dreams, which might lead to different evaluations to the anesthesia procedure. Based on the coming results, anesthesiologists can make a better medication plan for patients who are going to undergo painless diagnosis and treatment.

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Discussion

In recent years, the amount of painless gastrointestinal endoscopy has been increasing. It was reported that approximately one-fifth to one-quarter of them experienced dreams during painless gastrointestinal endoscopy [5, 19, 20]. Xu et al. [20] observed that among the dreamers, approximately one-third reported pleasant dreams. Studies have demonstrated that the main factors influencing dreams during anesthesia include the kind and dosage of anesthetics, depth of anesthesia, sex, and preoperative psychological pretreatment [4, 5, 20,21,22,23]. Furthermore, Yoshida et al. [24] found that a less than 11 depression score of the HADS was highly correlated with positive dreams.

In the present study, we intended to investigate dreaming during painless gastrointestinal endoscopy under propofol, ciprofol, and remimazolam anesthesia respectively. The primary aim of this study is to analyze the incidence of dreaming in the three groups. Since the duration of examination and recovery is short, we did not choose complicated scales. Instead, we selected the modified Brice questionnaire which has been widely applied by researchers to determine whether there is a dream or intraoperative awareness [3, 25, 26]. For those who have a dream, patients simply need to tell pleasant, unpleasant, or indifferent to evaluate the quality of the dreams.

To minimize the mentioned confounding factors, we plan to take some measures. First, we will test the HADS for the patients. In this way, some patients with severe undiagnosed anxiety and depression can be excluded. Second, the Narcotrend index will be monitored for its good consistency between sedation depth and propofol or benzodiazepines [27, 28]. Considering that the stimulus intensity of gastrointestinal endoscopy is relatively mild, sufficient anesthesia is defined as grade C of the Narcotrend index. This is similar to a previous study in which no intraoperative awareness was observed even though quite a few Narcotrand values were above 70 [29].

There are some limitations in the study. On the one hand, we do not prescribe a limit to the category of endoscopy. Gastroenteroscopy is more likely to take more time and drugs than gastroscopy. However, these two factors are not the outcome parameters. On the other hand, we do not administer the anesthetics in a continuous way, which may cause fluctuations in sedation. Since it is difficult for us to predict the duration of endoscopy, continuous administration may lead to explosive suppression of the brain. In addition, this is a single-center trial, and multicenter studies are still needed.

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Anaesthesia Dream Therapy

Link Here

Inside the emerging world of anesthesia “dream therapy”

“The amount of interest is enormous,” says anesthesiologist Boris Heifets. “People are dropping in and coming out of the woodwork, trying to understand how to do this.”

Key Takeaways

  • Anesthesia-induced dreams, once considered random side effects, are being studied for their therapeutic potential.
  • Stanford researchers Harrison Chow and Boris Heifets are exploring how these dreams, which often feature hyper-vivid and structured narratives uncharacteristic of “normal” dreaming, may help ease anxiety and trauma.
  • Big Think contributor Saga Briggs recently visited the Stanford team to explore the origins and future of this emerging field — and the curious parallels between anesthesia dreams and psychedelic experiences.

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American Journal of Psychiatry Volume 181, Issue 6 ,June 01, 2024

Pages 461-564

ARTICLE

“Reduction in Trauma-Related Symptoms After Anesthetic-Induced Intra-Operative Dreaming”

Laura M. Hack, Pilleriin Sikka, Kelly Zhou, Makoto Kawai, Harrison S. Chow and Boris Heifets

To the Editor: While dreaming during anesthesia is common (1), it is not known whether this phenomenon differs from normal dreaming or has post-surgical benefits. We present two cases of female patients who experienced rapid and sustained reduction of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms immediately following anesthetic-based EEG-guided intraoperative dream induction. Both patients underwent surgeries and received propofol/opioid-based anesthetics. Upon finishing the surgery but before emergence, we maintained a pre-emergent anesthetic state characterized by specific frontal cortical activity for several minutes: reduced alpha power and enhanced beta power (2). Based on previous findings showing that dreaming during anesthesia is associated with more high-frequency frontal power before emergence (3) or as compared to connected consciousness (1), we believe this cortical activity reflects dreaming while being sedated. Patients were interviewed immediately upon emergence, and both reported having had vivid dreams.

Both patients were identified as part of a quality-improvement program to enhance recovery after surgery, which includes informing patients of the possibility of dreaming without priming content, minimizing likelihood of emergence agitation through use of intravenous rather than inhalational anesthesia, minimal sensory input during gradual anesthetic emergence (4), and assessment for intraoperative awareness and dreaming immediately on emergence using a modified Brice Questionnaire (5). After identification, both patients provided informed consent for retrospective psychiatric diagnostic interviews. Patients were not identified preoperatively. Anesthetic adjustments, assessment, and diagnostic interviews adhere to established standards of care, received approval from the IRB, or fall under IRB exemption (IRB exempt protocols #54043, #59783, #65538, #67245; informed consent provided on IRB protocol #67399).

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Anaesthesia – Antwerp Dream 15-07-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

This afternoon I had a colonoscopy under general anaesthetic. In recovery I told the woman in charge that this was the first dream I have had and recalled under anaesthetic.

The dream is set in Antwerp something like two hundred years ago. I am as “pony-tail” man though now of a middle age. I am with a young man who is wearing a knitted sweater / jersey he has very light ginger curly hair and a sunny disposition. He is one of my relatives, a nephew perhaps, a younger generation. We are waiting on his friend who has a horse-donkey driven cart. It is very rudimentary. When he arrives, we all set of for the port.

A ship, galleon like in appearance, has just docked from its voyages down the West coast of Africa. On board someone has something for me by way of jewels in a pouch. At the port there is chaos as sailors get off and cargo is unloaded. There are hawkers and prostitutes. We park the cart. My “nephew” is ultra-excited as he knows the man onboard who works with me. My friend descends the gang plank he looks emaciated and very dirty. He sees us. My “nephew” runs towards him and hugs him. I get closer. It is summer so I have only my white blouson shirt on the top half. He has a coat because he now feels the cold of the North. We embrace and I can smell the stench of him. He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a velvet like purse drawn together with a red ribbon. In it I know are jewels, rubies and emeralds. He knows that I will knows who will buy these. He quickly puts the purse back into his jacket so that it is not seen.

I awake as I am being wheeled out of theatre into recovery and am surprised at the contrast to the Antwerp port and cool high technology hospital. The air is odourless. I do a double take.