I had no idea Chuck Norris knew so much about dreams

Sometimes I remember that I remembered a dream but can’t actually remember the dream.

I have a recurring dream about my best friend who passed away. In my dream I can’t understand how he’s alive and I always say “but I thought you died” and he always responds with “nah… I’m definitely still here and tells me not to worry”. Always good to see him.

Hence the phrase "sleep on it " in relation to dreams as a mechanism for resolving and healing problems and painful experiences during dreams

Dreams are such a beautiful thing, lucid dreaming was a huge thing for me as a kid and I can remember soooo many good, bad, weird dreams I could talk for hours, a lot of which were very vivid and could physically feel all the surroundings I was in

The part about spending energy having a reason, makes a lot of sense

An aspect of dreaming I find significant (maybe) is that I am always in the present and fully involved in the scenario. no past or future

Studying Computer programming made me notice that each time I struggled with a concept, I seemed to dream about it just before achieving understanding. I remember trying to understand "lists" and dreamt of a giant train and each train compartment held something I needed, so I "iterated" my way down each train compartment taking out what I needed. When I was studying Pointers, I dreamt of being in the mail room of a large apartment complex.

This is so true.. I just went through a rough break up and I’ve been having the wildest dreams since then. As time is passing I wake up thinking WOW what a hell of a dream, related to the topic. But I can never put my finger on what I’m feeling, do I call it peace, healing, idk so strange but this video caught me at the right time with what I’m going through in life.

I absolutely love Matt Walker and his take on sleep. Helped me tremendously.

I been smoking weed for over 20 years and I tried to quit and I'd have 10 to 15 different dreams a night it was consistent and left me feeling extremely exhausted.

The idea that dreaming actually acts as a therapy- is such an amazing idea. Thank you for this. Learned an invaluable lesson today.

this is such an interesting conversation on the subject of dreams! a lot of knowledge to grasp! 😁

Matt is so clear and concise! I learned a lot thanks Lex 🙏👍

Excellent conversation!

Excellent! Investigating the dream with a desire to understand is deeply enriching. We should learn that from the beginning.

Sometimes I feel like I’m in a past lifetime when I dream, or another dimension or reality. It’s so amazing!! 😃✌🏻

Tell that to the vets with PTSD. Dreaming doesn’t seem to be a “soothing balm” for many of these people.

We need more Matt Walker content he’s brilliant

A dream is an alternate life. My pets literally sleep all day and dream so heavily making all sorts of noises. Sometimes I think they would rather dream than be awake. I'm often the same way. I dream a lot and almost never have bad dreams. To me it's just another form of reality we are able to slightly experience.

There's also the idea that sleep is used to forget things, and being able to forget things is really important to maintain the brain. What if there are memories that the brain can't figure out if it should forget them or not because of the way they're associated with other concepts, so during sleep it tries to re-categorise them. If it can, then the memories/concepts could be resolved and forgotten (compressed/categorised/archived), otherwise they remain unresolved and cause stress and inefficiency, a bit like fragmented disk space on a HDD, or a database that can't be normalised because of a few abberant bits of data.

About five times I’ve had dreams of myself dreaming. In them I wake up and realize I’ve just been dreaming and then there’s still a lingering strangeness and I question if I’m dreaming still and then I wake up for real. I always think of that Poe line “all we see or seem is but a dream within a dream,” when it happens.

Truly fascinating discussion.

I haven’t got the patience or words to describe how truly relieved I am to finally find a view I thought so obscure that I originated, omg thank you for confirming it! I’m 31, dreamt vividly and Murillo things a night and have always found a connection to my reality. I knew it!

Recently learned how to throw a frisbee in my dreams.went down to the park and I think both tee offs were pretty good for never doing throwing before

Fascinating indeed Lex! ;) I went through a period in my life where I was a practicing Lucid Dreamer. Keeping a dream journal (very necessary) and focusing my intent constantly on becoming lucid every night. It took constant determination to become lucid only two to three times a week. It's a fascinating practice, but actually a pretty exhaustive lifestyle. Needless to say, I gave it up, but always flirt with the idea of starting it up again. I'm surprised you guys didn't talk about lucid dreams. Maybe another entire segment on them? Lucid dreams are a phenomenon. So many interesting things happen, with such a rich history in many cultures regarding Lucid Dreaming. No feeling is like it on earth. The moment you become lucid, it's like Neo stepping out of the Matrix for the first time. And it's really interesting to feel the 'brain' fight this activity--we are not meant to be here, the brain says, and pulls you out. It takes legitimate practice to just remain lucid for more than a few moments...but when you can, it's unlike any feeling. I could go on and on. Stephen LaBerge has the best book on the subject. Thanks Lex and Matt!

i can verbally have a conversation very clear and remember everything in detail as if its real when i wake up, its extreme.

I need to start my dream journal again, it was actually quite fun because it helped me remember my dreams more frequently

What bothers me is that most of the time I have no control of the dream. Something else is creating the dream and I'm just watching it unfold or trying to survive it.

I’ve written songs from music I’ve heard in my dreams. It’s crazy. There’s definitely a major reason as to why we dream.

What they said about dreams helping with depression makes so much sense, one night I had a dream that I walked out into my backyard and saw money trees all over with beautiful heavenly bright light shining behind them, I was blown away by how beautiful it was but in that same moment felt a rush of anxiety take over my body and I ran back inside. At the time I was struggling with really bad anxiety and felt like I could never enjoy a fun or beautiful moment anymore, and after that dream things just seemed to get better.

Love the explanation.! Pls do add more clips Lex. So we can get more exposed in the limited time available .! Thanks.!

Could more REM sleep be a large part of how humans became so intelligent? As our ability to survive grew, our fears lessened and that lead the earliest of humans to develop more REM sleep, in turn dream deeper for longer periods of time, and that let us be more creative as human beings?

This is wild! When I was in my chemistry classes in post-secondary I really enjoyed it to the point where I would dream about chemistry calculations the nights before a big exam. I always ended up getting great grades and I wonder if there is a correlation between this like Matt mentions!

This was on point

When I’m not dealing with something during my awake time, I start dreaming about it. Exactly what Matt is describing. I understand it better now, TY

Dreaming feels like practicing living. I usually learn from my dreams, especially since I started keeping a detailed journal. I use lucid dreaming to sharpen skills which i would like to improve in.

Dreams are very powerful and can lead to some profound realizations... I once had a dream where I was in a classroom setting and the student sitting next to me asked "did you do the homework?". I sincerely replied "what homework?". As soon as I replied though, I suddenly had this awful feeling in my stomach because I suddenly"remembered" that we DID have homework and I forgot to do it. All these memories of course were false because I was only dreaming. The fact that we can't prove that we are not dreaming, and the very fact that false memories exist, illustrates that all of our waking memories could also be false, and therefore all the memories that we rely on to ascertain truth cannot be relied on with certainty. I've also had numerous dreams where I'm undergoing processes that seem totally real, natural and logical. To my dismay though, I soon as I wake up I realize that the processes were totally unreal, unnatural, and completely illogical. So not only can our "waking" memories be false, the very logic that we use and make up those dreams can also be wrong! This further shows how 100% certain knowledge is unattainable and is really, well, just a dream 🙂 In addition to that profound realization (just by analyzing dreams), notice that the very fact that it's ALREADY possible to have our OWN conciousness relocated from its "real" world, and placed in an entirely foreign, "unreal" setting (this is EXACTLY what happens in a dream) substantially raises the probability that we are in a simulation (and also the probability of an afterlife). After all, if fundamentally all we are is information, it is easy to imagine superior intelligent beings taking the information that makes up our conciousness and placing it in a different computing system to undergo a different experience. Now with that said, go have fun sleeping at night kids! 🙂😉

this guy always blows me away .

Ive been obsessed with dreams ever since i chose it as the topic of my first speech back in middle school. I still remember most of it to this day.

Last night I had a dream about a young Chuck Norris as Neo from The Matrix. Probably means nothing.

Great video❤️👍. I am a lucid dreamer. I have noticed the characters in my dreams are aspects of my subconscious and my physical body. Some of them are active and some of them are NPC’s. I have literally woken up a different personality a couple of times just by communicating with these different aspects of my subconscious mind. I mean like more patience than before, aspects like this in my personality. There is also an all knowing presence in this realm watching. (Maybe the all seeing eye?) I would say be loving and nice to everything in your dreams even the scary ones they are the most important. You change those guys. You change your life.

Fascinating!

Now this, I could get into!

You just blew my mind ……

I wouldn't describe many of my dreams as 'nocturnal soothing balms'! Why does there have to be only one purpose for dreaming? I strongly suspect it has multiple benefits and roles to play. I see a lot of my dreams as practice for difficulties I may encounter while awake - stress rehearsals. This fits in with an evo-psych interpretation - our ancestors would have been vulnerable to predators while asleep, and those more prepared and ready to react to dangers while sleeping would have had increased fitness.

I've literally built these worlds that I come back to time to time . It really is therapeutic but no control over it and seems I dream less and less as time goes on. Mostly just darkness but once in awhile I'll have a dream

I have had insane dreams since my deployment. That also brought back childhood trauma and some fears I have overcome.

This realm of creating archetypes is the realm of artists. As an artist I have long been fascinated with how our minds interpret pretty well the difference between male and female representations 🤯

Dreams are codes, like a puzzle or a mystery. You examine your dreams looking for clues (i.e. a clock, bird, oar, knife, flood, etc) then you play connect the dots as you translate each bold item in your dream. From there you then look for common elements to tell you an answer. Most often it's anxiety dreams, sometimes it's a possible future event other times it's a message your subconscious is trying to tell you. (i.e. stop drinking so much, or it's time to quit smoking, etc.)

About a year ago, for about a month, I suddenly started remembering lots of dreams that I had throughout my life. I’d be hit with these flashbacks throughout the day. I was actually daydreaming about past dreams. It was oddly satisfying remembering a dream that happened a long time ago.

My brain was working overtime on this one, xD fascinating!

There has been a few times that I was in a dream and new I was in a dream. I could control my dream through my thoughts for a short period of time and then i would wake up. I couldn't stay in the dream once I realized I was dreaming. Crazy

Most psychologists acknowledge that humans most of the time operate using our subconscious minds, in that its our subconscious that really controls the conscious. And so it makes sense that dreaming is a way for our subconscious to work through certain beliefs and emotional states we hold.

I hear people say you only dream during r.e.m. but I always start dreaming very quickly. Sometimes within minutes of closing my eyes I will be woken up with a clear dream started. Can anyone relate?

I’ve never heard it put so correct ! Wow 😯

During sleep, the spinal cord produces random impulses that travel UP to the brain. It impacts parts of the brain - many of them are well traveled pathways, so the common things you are thinking of when awake are retriggered. There are also random impacts that produce vintage or distant memories that mix with your dream state. Your mind tries to make a story out of these weirdly random pieces which is why dreams seem so normal and realistic yet surreal. This was from a European study a few years ago when they found the spinal cord producing random nerve impulses that travel into the brain. It's like a Rorschach test, it is random but the way you interpret it can give you clues to your way of thinking. But it's not a true story that your brain has produced during sleep.

What I love about dreams is you have no limits and no handcuffs holding you back, for example i suffer with anxiety and depression that constantly hold me back in real life, but when I dream I no longer feel depressed and anxious and I feel like I can just be me with nothing holding me back. Which is a feeling I wish I could have in real life.

Thank you.

I've started emdr therapy. It's basically working through those traumas like dreaming at night. It's amazing and swear by it

We dream because our minds are always working, even at rest or while sleeping. I dream almost every single day, usually REM sleep between 2AM and 7AM. It is interesting how I speak and interact in a dream with my deceased parents, my living friends and family, and complete strangers, holding conversations as if in real life. I dream about some of the dogs I once had as pets, and these events make me happy to see them again. In my dreams, sometimes I am lost in a strange city, or lost my car, not remembering where I had parked it. Once in awhile I have a nightmare, but seems seldom compare to when I was a child. The whole reason for dreams, and how the mind constructs them, is fascinating. I think it can represent our longings, fears, and subconscious desires. Only God knows why we dream.

I think dreaming also involves keeping electrical activity going in the brain...you never completely shut down a powerplant...starting things back up from zero is not good...bad for conductors....like keeping electrical impulses stable.....a lot of conflict resolution as well

Just watching this guy makes me sleepy not in a bad way

Lucid dream is something not many mange to achieve and not always all the time as in every night, I never heard of anyone who managed to do that but it is something very very interesting, I gotta watch this whole interview I only just caught the Clips at this point but I’m deffo watching the whole thing this evening. Thank you for sharing ❤️

Over they years I’ve noticed that I had the same dream like 5 times now(I still do not remember the dream) but it’s creeping me out every time it happens

This question is the epitome of Lex Fridman in a nutshell.

Chucks metaphor game is on point

This is interesting. I generally do not remember my dreams or at least they fade quickly after I wake up. The exceptions are when I'm grieving over the loss of a loved one. Weeks or months later I'll have a dream that seems like reality with the loved one setting my mind at ease and telling me that they are alright. I remember these dreams in detail. It's just weird because I don't know if I have some answers or if my brain is just using dreams to help me heal.

Freakiest thing, I wonce dreamed that I was sleeping and had a dream within my dream. When I woke up I just looked around the room silent and thoughtless not knowing that I was actually awake and not just dreaming that my dream ended. Once I properly woke up and knew I was concious I quickly ran to the wife to tell her, it was SO FREAKY!!!

Recurring dreams are extremely interesting, I had 2 recurring dreams when I was younger but have not have them in years. Also, what about dreaming about a person (woman) that does not exist in the real world (to your knowledge) or dreaming a "feeling", anybody has experienced that?

I wish I had fun experiences in the dream world. You must be a happy person Lex.

Dreams are past present and future information. Many times I have a dream before I meet someone or go into a new city that reveals information in regards to the spiritual or emotional issues in that city. My dreams are very different when I am in another country versus when I am in my home. The difficult thing is figuring out is the dream a metaphor or literal. Also over the years I write them all own and have been able to discern what the dreams were communicating which helps me when I have new ones.

Does anyone else here lucid dream almost every night? I can vividly recall large portions of hundreds and hundreds of dreams ive had over the last 15 years.

My question is "where does the light come from?" We don't have a projector in our heads so how the heck can we see images in there with no light. In dreams as well as psychedelic hallucinations, where is that light coming from that allows us to see the images and what is the image being projected on and what is seeing the image?

I subscribe to the Integrated information theory of consciousness, at the moment. Dreams are IMHO our memories of the day before being processed by the brain, while the experience we get is how would conscious mind slapped together a reality framework without inner year constantly shouting about inertia, blood circulation system screaming about gravity, etc. ..... but still connected to our physical reality because it takes some time to deconstruct a hormone flowing through a system throughout a day.

Does anyone know what the artwork on the thumbnail is called? It’s a very nice painting!

I live to dream! Every night is strangely a different experience, it’s incredible as a person who has never tried any psychedelics, my dreams at night give me the experience of something godly And a plus…you can’t fly or move shit with your mind on drugs in dreams you can lol lucid dreaming is therapeutic

“dreaming is more metabolically ....” I need Walker to elaborate much more. I need scientific study references presented to back up what Walker is saying. I dream like a freak the weirdest dreams that you could ever imagine. I believe that it is a way to help unravel the stresses and trauma in the past and in daily life. I’m only up to the first five minutes of the video, but I want to hear the basis for his conclusions.

I remember my dreams every night now for the past 8 months or so. not sure why all of s sudden but it's fascinating. lots of flying floating and saving people. Also have lucid dreamed a few times where I can create windows and doors, change my environment. its like being in VR

amazing - dreams help automatically figure out amazingly difficult problems

It's insane how dream state can make things seem so real. And while you are awake, you cannot create such real visions. I always wonder why? It can't be that our subconscious mind is so much more advanced than conscious mind.

I had an extremely lucid dream last night with Lex playing a huge role in the final portion (what felt like ~2 hrs in real time). And today, I see this video.

I realized at in my late teens I could start controlling what I was doing in my dreams ….I was first frustrated that I couldn’t control things well….so I started preparing so that next time I’d remember to try to take control….and so I was practicing. …and eventually I got very good at it . I still have Dreams and will realize I’m in a dream and take control to try and examine where I’m at,…or I’ve had times I’ve been flying,… it’s so cool.

The maze experiment is interesting as it's something I have seen happen as well for people that play chess. You start dreaming with patterns or positions and it's generally seen as a sign of improvement.

What about premonition type of dreaming? I’ve often dreamt about certain scenarios only to have them happen almost exactly to a tee sometime down the line.

Any one else ever had a dream and it happened to come reality? I guess you can call it dejavu?

Great, yes I also though dreaming is like simulating our thoughts

I truly believe that dreaming is almost a gateway to another dimension or reality that we have full access to and are able to do what we want. Since I started having lucid dreams I’ve realized this because sometimes my lucid dreams wake me up. And when my lucid dreams wake me up I’m still on REM state and I’m in sleep paralysis my body cannot move. Sometimes in Sleep Paralysis I’m able to experience what is called Astral Projection which is an out of body experience I literally can see my body there and move around it is so bizarre. Since experiencing this it has changed my life for the better I’m not longer afraid of death and I know for sure in my mind that the world is not what it seems. It’s very comforting . I believe that it is super super important that everyone learn to Lucid Dream and Astral project as it puts you in full control and is you can create anything you want and experience what it is that you want. I think that is something the brain has always been able to do however we have lost sight of this for whatever reason but it’s something we are supposed to do.

Dreams are your conscious mind tapping into your subconscious through remembering the dreams. Remembering these subconscious echoes from your conscious back into your conscious when you wake is wisdom learning. It provides mental therapy, solves problems, and wires the brain for constant creativity.

That's why when you dream it feels real. To learn, your brain needs it to feel like it has real world consequences.

Any cognitive activity that maps onto reality will fortify the corresponding circuits: conscious rehearsal or dreaming. Activate the circuit and it will get stronger and build more connections. Although, there may be a processing speed asymmetry between the two. Not sure... Interesting, I didn't know that the PFC was inactive during REM. So THAT's what's missing in regards to our control interface! Hmm, well, I suppose I should have deduced that...

Some of my vivid dreams I can go back to the following night, or I’ve dreamed of places and then been there later in life,

This guy knows as much about why we dream as the experts know about consciousness

I've seen the future 3 different times while dreaming. I think I'm on to something.

I've had dreams come true and dreams that are messages for situations people are facing.

Most aspects of life evolve to ensure its survival so dreaming therefore must act as a way of solidifying and working out waking experiences so that future experiences are more likely successful. Like nightly revision

"Dreaming is a virtual reality test-space that is largely consequence free. What an incredible gift to give a conscious mind each and every night" Beautiful!

I’ve always wondered if consciousness is just “heat” from our brain

Dreaming is an emotional experience......so, so true.

9:50 when the prefrontal cortex is shut down during REM, other parts of the brain are more active. Does this mean that if we could slow down/shut down during the awake prefrontal cortex, other parts will act the same, be more active and we can come with different outputs, cognitive processes? Or, people who have the prefrontal cortex/working memory less developed, as people with ADHD, ASD... do they other parts of the brain are more active during awake compared to "normal" people?