The body
Teeth, hair, blood, breathing, and the sensations that turn out to have a physical explanation. Several of these ask the bodily question before the interpretive one, because that is where a wrong reading does the most harm.
21 records
- ActionBeing naked in publicOne of the small handful of dreams reported across every population studied, alongside falling and being chased. The consistent feature is not the nakedness but the indifference of everybody else, and the shame that persists anyway.
- SymbolPregnancyPregnancy dreams are extremely common during actual pregnancy and are reported by people who are not and cannot be pregnant. The two populations need separating before anything useful can be said, and most sites do not separate them.
- SymbolEyesEyes appear in two very different report types: eyes that will not open, which is a physical experience with a physical explanation, and eyes that are looking, which belongs with the being-watched material.
- SymbolHandsHands are the single most useful thing in a dream to look at, because they are the most unreliable thing dreams render. Extra fingers, missing fingers and hands that change on a second look are the classic reality check.
- SymbolFeetFeet and legs are reported almost entirely through failure to move: legs that will not run, feet that stick, and steps that produce no distance. All of it has one explanation, and it is physiological rather than symbolic.
- SymbolFaceFaces are the most attended thing in dream content and the least stable. A face that changes, that will not resolve, or that belongs to the wrong person is among the most reported and most unsettling experiences there is.
- SymbolSkinSkin reports are the ones most likely to have a real physical cause, and the physical question should be asked first. Itching, crawling and heat are all sensations a sleeping body can genuinely produce.
- SymbolBonesBones are reported without much fear, which is the surprising thing about them. Dreamers describe skeletons and skulls with curiosity or detachment far more often than with dread.
- SymbolHeartThe heart is the body part most likely to be reporting something real. Heart rate genuinely rises during REM and during nightmares, and a dream about a racing heart is frequently a dream about a racing heart.
- SymbolTongue and mouthThe commonest mouth dream is one of the most unpleasant in the database: a mouth full of something that cannot be got rid of. It sits directly beside the teeth dreams and shares their likely physical causes.
- SymbolIllnessDreams do not detect illness. That is the most important sentence here, and it needs saying because the opposite claim is common, is frightening, and has no evidence behind it.
- ActionVomitingOne of the small number of dreams where the physical explanation should be checked before anything else, and where being unable to complete the act is reported more than the act itself.
- SymbolWoundInjury in dreams is reported vividly and almost always without pain, which is the most consistent and most surprising finding about it. Dreamers see the wound and do not feel it.
- SymbolNailsNails behave in dreams exactly like teeth and hair: they come away, they grow wrongly, and they multiply. All three are keratin, all three are reported the same way, and that pattern is more interesting than any of them alone.
- SymbolNot being able to breatheThe one entry in this database most likely to be about your body rather than your mind. Suffocation dreams are frequently the sleeper actually struggling to breathe, and where they recur that is worth investigating medically rather than interpreting.
- SymbolThings changing sizeA specific and well-described experience: the dreamer or the room changes size, or proportions stop making sense. It has a name outside dream research and a documented association with migraine and with the edges of sleep.
- SymbolSweating and heatHeat in a dream is frequently heat in the room, and that is checkable in one night. Where it is not, night sweats have medical causes worth knowing about rather than interpreting.
- SymbolBack and shouldersTwo quite different things share this entry: carrying weight, which frequently tracks a real ache, and the sense of something behind you, which is the being-watched material approached from the body.
- SymbolStomachThe stomach is where dreams put dread, and the reports describe a physical sensation rather than an emotion. Dreamers say the feeling arrived in the body before anything happened, which fits what is known about how dream emotion works.
- SymbolEars and hearingHearing failures are reported more than hearing itself, which fits the general scarcity of sound in dreams: it is easier for a dream to produce the absence of hearing than the content of it.
- SymbolSmellSmell is the rarest sense in dream reports by a wide margin, which makes any dream containing one worth recording. Where a smell does appear, dreamers almost always recognise it, and it is almost always connected to a person or a place.