Yelling at Teachers

The dream last night was unsettling. There I was at some sort of elementary school presentation for my sister, which I only know for certain because there were other younger kids and their parent there. As far as I can remember I had just come there from a soccer game. The teacher kept doing things that agitated me: she sat at her computer while the kids ran wild, and she kept misusing popular phrases and slang in a way that made my ears just screech with pain. I finally snapped and launched into a tirade about how she was a terrible person, with little provocation directly toward me. Afterward I stormed out of the classroom with all the parents awkwardly watching. It certainly felt in no way good, and looking back on the dream I can still feel the anger and rage that I felt. It is strange that a dream would be composed of such a confined incident. As it as not a lucid dream, I did not recognize that I was dreaming, I barely remember how I arrived at the school, and have no idea where I was headed afterward. As far as I can tell, my subconscious placed this provocation there only to make me angry. But perhaps this is a sneaky attempt at temperament. If our dreams are lectures that our mind concocts on how to survive the waking world, then there might be some sort of reasoning here. Next time I am enraged and want to start chewing someone out, my mind will remind me of both how bad it feels afterward and how bad I am at doing it. Perhaps this dream somehow served the purpose of giving me an experience that is more geared toward how my subconscious would like me to act. As it is, sometimes the best teacher is experience.

Lucid Dreaming and Nightmares

After looking further into other practical applications of lucid dreaming, I found something that could be seen as a true life saver for many people.  One of the effects of war on soldiers can be PTSD, which leaves them with terrible nightmares.  These nightmares leave them shaken, and force them to relive the horrors that they have witnessed.  One study decided to look at lucid dreaming as possible cure for this. If the soldiers were able to redirect their dreams to be something more desirable, they could effectively end their nightmares.

PTSD and Lucid Dreaming
Reference
Spoormaker, V. I., & van, d. B. (2006). Lucid dreaming treatment for nightmares: A pilot study. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 75(6), 389-94. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/235469783?accountid=14503

I found this to be a very interesting concept and something I had never thought of.  If people are able to alter the paths of their dreams to improve the quality of their lives what other benefits can be found?

Can Dreaming Something Make You Better At It?

When first hearing about lucid dreaming everyone thinks, "Aw man I could fly, and shoot electricity out of my hands like that guy in Star Wars," or that could have just been me.  However, the more I thought about it, I began wondering what practical things could be gained while dreaming.  I remembered some words of advice given to me by my ski racing coach.  She told us the night before a race imagine running the course, and going through the gates while in bed before going to sleep.  She said that during this time our muscles would contract, though minutely, and give us some muscle memory to help in the race the next day.

Since then I've stopped racing but have begun snowboarding.  I started wondering if this same concept could apply for practicing snowboarding tricks, and then I began to wonder if practicing these skills while dreaming could have any effect.  It would give me a chance to run through motions for hours without having to go through physical exhaustion.  This article by Dr. Erlacher says it could be a possibility.
Reference 
Erlacher, D. (2012). Practicing in Dreams Can Improve Your Performance. Harvard Business Review, 90(4), 30-31.

Edit (12/11/2012):

When I first read this article all I could think about was how beneficial this would be for any activity as practice becomes almost effortless.  Its something you literally do in your sleep.  However, upon further review I found one may not got as much benefit from these activities as I first thought.  When thinking of the movie Inception dream time becomes slower (as this info-graph demonstrates) so I figured one could get more practice comparative to the time they put into it.  However, according to the study put Hamzelou, J. (2011). Reality gets a kick via dream control we actually move 50% slower in our dreams compared to reality.  So if we consider that one only gets a total of 90-120 minutes of REM sleep a night, they will only be able to practice a skill for 45 minutes to an hour.  Still pretty neat in my opinion though.