I have long had theories that how we physically sleep (sidedness) affects both how we fall asleep and our dreaming. For example, many nonordinary dreaming experiences seem to occur when people are on their backs, facing the ceiling (blood pooled equally in rear of skull).

I also suspect that the onset of dreaming involves a phase where we are swapping ‘priority’ (or something similar) back and forth between hemispheres, and this happens slightly differently depending on which side has gravity-precedence. There are many other little features to my speculations, for example, that the body/brain can use polarity… either polarity (of gravity/blood perfusion) to create a sort of leapfrog game where (something) is transiting back and forth between the hemispheres, but the starting position has properties worthy of exploring (i.e. left/right). This ‘pulsing’ is analogous to building thrust … in the sense of transiting the between of consciousness and dreaming.

This post from someone in an HSP (highly sensitive persons) group lends some credence to my suspicions… I was intrigued to find a report that, while it doesn’t validate my theories… moves in that direction… as left side = easier transition to waking, right side = more deep dreaming (note: dreaming is often about dreaming itself… not merely the dream one is having).

“I’m curious as to whether other HSPs experience this, so does anyone notice a difference in their sleeping/dreaming patterns depending on what side they sleep on? I always have vividly realistic dreams regardless but when sleeping on my right side they tend to be long, drawn-out feature-length dreams where I’m on a mission to work something out normally. And on my left side, the dreams tend to be shorter and more emotionally intense and I wake up much more often. I wonder if it’s to do with the more active side of the brain and the direction the blood flow gravitates to (just speculation of course, I’m not a scientist ). Just curious about other peoples experiences, and any advice on how to reduce the amount of dreams you have (if that’s even possible) is very welcome.”

— R(x)