Jan Brehm of Portland woke up from a dream confused and shaken to her core. Lisa Espich of Tucson woke so deeply disturbed by a dream featuring her husband that she knew her marriage would never be the same. Jennifer Lambert of Virginia Beach felt such agitation over her dream that she cried for 30 minutes straight when she woke up — and then called her sister, from whom she'd long been estranged.
波特兰的简布阑从梦中惊醒，内心惶惑。图森的丽萨艾碧醒来后心烦意乱，她梦里的主角是丈夫，她知道自己的婚姻将要发生变化。弗吉尼亚海滩的詹妮芙兰波为梦所感，醒来后足足哭了30分钟——然后打电话给她疏远已久的妹妹。
Dreams can rock us, scare us, and in some cases, inspire us. But is listening to our dreams right up there with calling a psychic hotline? Not at all, say leading experts. People are now using their dreams as tools to make their lives better, comments Marcia Emery, PhD, a psychologist at Holos University.
梦境会使我们受到震撼、惊吓，有时是鼓舞。但是倾听我们的梦境仅止于象打一个灵媒热线吗？权威专家说并非如此。“现在人们把他们的梦作为工具，使生活变得更美好。”霍洛大学的心理学家玛莎艾默里博士评论道。
This is relatively newfound respect. Many researchers used to believe that dreams simply reflected the random firing of nerve signals while we sleep. The thinking was that the dreams were meaningless and didn't serve any function at all, says Harvard psychology professor Deirdre Barrett, PhD. But today, many scientists feel that dreams play the vital role of clarifying what truly matters to us. Dreaming is thinking — just in a different biochemical state, explains Dr. Barrett, author of The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem-Solving — and How You Can Too. It's a mode of contemplation that's much more visual, intuitive, and emotional, as opposed to the patterns of waking thought.
这是相对较新的发现。过去很多研究者相信梦仅仅反应了我们睡觉时神经信号的随机发射。“他们认为梦毫无意义，不起任何作用。”哈佛心理学教授戴隹巴瑞博士说。但现如今许多科学家认为梦在澄清什么是我们真正的问题上，扮演了一个重要角色。“做梦就是思考——只是不同生化状态而已。”《睡眠委员会——艺术家、科学家和运动员如何利用梦境创造性地解决问题——及你如何也能做到》一书的作者巴瑞博士解释道。“梦是沉思的一种形式，相对于清醒的思想模式，它更形象化，更直觉，也更情绪化。”
It's that intuitiveness that makes so-called epiphany dreams such a valuable resource. Dreams can provide inspiration or help you get unstuck from problems because your mind is working on things in this different way, Dr. Barrett says. Case in point: When she gave subjects instruction in a technique called dream incubation, half of them dreamed about a problem they had focused on prior to going to sleep, and a full 25 percent had a dream that provided an actionable solution.
直觉使得那些所谓“顿悟”的梦成为宝贵的资源。“梦可激发灵感或帮你摆脱问题，因为你的心智在以这种不同的方式工作。”巴瑞博士说。案例分析：她给受试者一项称为“孵化梦境”的技术指导，一半人梦到睡前苦思冥想的问题，而25%的梦提供了可行的解决方案。
Finding the meaning in your dreams is like growing a garden, the pros say: The more you do it, the greater the insights it yields. If you're regularly tending your dreams, once in a while you'll have a breakthrough that grabs you by the throat, Dr. Barrett says. Here are two women whose dreams provided just such a revelation.
发现梦的含义就象培育花园。韵律学云：多思多得。“如果你经常留意梦境，有时会有关键性突破。”巴瑞博士说。以下两位女士就从梦中得到了启示。 1/3 123下一页尾页