Why your body jerks before you fall asleep

Do you know the feeling of hypnic jerks? Maybe you don’t know it, but you must have had this kind of feeling that you are falling or tumbling when you tend to sleep. And after that, you jerk and wake up from the feeling. That is a phenomenon of hypnosophy called ‘hypnic jerks’.

In this article, the author considered this phenomenon as a symmetrical phenomenon of dreaming. When we are dreaming, our body expresses an important sign to the world of external, which is rapid eye movement. Yet, hypnic jerks is a reaction that brings the external world into sleeping world. For example, the tick of clock, the drip of water and the sound of footstep, these kinds of tiny disturbs from outside-world intrude our mind so that our subconscious react as a jerk.

Connect with my life experience, I always have the feeling of falling and tumbling before I fall in asleep and wake up with the jerk. It likes a visible dream that I am walking or flying and suddenly with no cause falling. When I wake up from the “dream”, it seems no story, more likely to a kind of delusion. Sometimes I doubted that if the dream really had happened, but after jerks so many times, I am sure that it really happened. After that, I began to find the reason that I jerked when I was half asleep.

There were so many statements before I see this article. One statement is that children’s growing always following with calcium deficiency, hypnic jerks means they are growing up. I have deeply trusted this statement for a long time when I was in the period of growing, because I always had hypnic jerks and I grew so fast. But after I stopped growing, hypnic jerks did not stop, this statement was overturned. However, another statement sounds a little bit horrible and strange especially in the middle night. Some people said that our soul tends to go out from our body when we are clouding of consciousness. If we don’t jerk for haul back our soul, we will die. This statement sounds so strange and unbelievable, whereas no one knows what would happen if we don’t wake up from the strange dream. To compare with this statement, I’d better believe that calcium deficiency causes hypnic jerks.

After I read this passage, I think hypnic jerks is a kind of reaction like the movie ‘Inception’. Everyone has the subconscious, and when something external burst into our mind and enter into our dream, the subconscious will be on the alert. The subconscious attack to the external thing and react in the nerve cells. And leads to jerk for make us wake up.

But why our mind becomes so sensitive to these ordinary external influences? I think it might because of the nervous and tired in the daytime. Life is like a spring, it would lose elasticity if we always keep it in tension. And hypnic jerks maybe a good signal to warn you that you are really so nervous in the daytime and you need to have a rest.

  

connect： http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120522-suffer-from-sleep-shudders/2

Tom Stafford " Why your body jerks before you fall asleep" BBC(online) 22 May 2012. 28 May 2012.

Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay ‘Cure’

Since I was a junior school student, the people who were homosexual came to my real life. Until now, there are about 10 gays especially lesbians who are my friends. And from that time, I began to pay attention to the genders of society and read a lot of information about it. And I see this article. As Dr. Robert L. Spitzer apologized, I considered that homosexual will get increasingly identities from society. And homosexual is not a disease and shouldn’t be cured.

Dr. Robert L. Spitzer is considered to be the father of modern psychiatry. He has found 200 gay people for his Reparative Therapy experiment and delivered a controversial essay in the 2001’s APA meeting named "Partial gay men and women can change their sexual orientation?" and has been rejected by APA, for the reason "No published scientific evidence in support of repair therapy to change one's sexual orientation really has curative effect." Though he removed homosexuality from the manual of mental disorders, he still continued his experiment to prove that homosexual could be cured. Until a WHO report, released on Thursday, calls the therapy “a serious threat to the health and well-being — even the lives — of affected people.” He began to think that maybe the people of his experiment didn’t being honest or only become to bisexual. And finally, he fell in regret and apologized for his research with almost his whole life.

In my opinion, homosexual is not a mental disease. As I know from a lecture, there are 5 kind of sex in the society——born of man, born of woman, IS and psychological man, psychological woman. The inborn sex and the mental gender permutation and combination derive many kinds of sexual orientation. And homosexual is really a simple one than some other relationship.

There are amount of gays or lesbians whose mental is quite health, yet there are also some homosexual who falls into inquietude even crazy. I think it should be supposed that they are affected by the social environment and family. At the mention of my lesbian friends, they are in some quite different states. To pick up two of them for an example, A and B, they are quite different because of their different states. A fell in love with her senior school teacher and when she graduated from her university, she began to be in business and changed her nationality into American and got married with her teacher. After that, they have had a baby this year and after all, it is impossible without the support of her families. Whatever, B loves a girl who came to Japan for study abroad. She intended to come to Japan with us friends, but the relationship was perceived by her mother. Her mother said that if she didn’t change her sexual orientation, she would be out of the house and cut off economic source. Finally, she went to Australia for study and made a boy-friend just for not to be spurn, even if she is still a lesbian in her mental. As we all know, almost Chinese youth who are under-graduate don’t have the ability to live even to pay the high tuition.

According to the two cases, it is extremely possible that homosexual seems to change to straight but actually they are just afraid of the public opinion and try to disguise the pain of being straight. So that the therapy maybe cause some problems and even cause the suicide.  

There are also some of my lesbian friends who have changed to straight. I think the reason of their have-been homosexual is also obvious. Nowadays in China, the amount of homosexual teenagers increases quickly especially girls. I think some of them are just afraid of the regulations of schools that making relationship is forbidden even in mental. But most of the schools choose to ignore the students who are in homosexual relationship. It makes some girls afraid of punishment and just far away from boys and be with girls. When this kind of girls graduated from high-school, they find they are straight but not gay.

At last, even if the experts admit that homosexual is not a disease, it needs times for the whole society to accept the existing of homosexual. People should to be more tolerant for the variety of human not only homosexual. It is important to understand the people who are little difference from many would, because the differences don’t equal to wrong.

connect: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/19/health/dr-robert-l-spitzer-noted-psychiatrist-apologizes-for-study-on-gay-cure.html?pagewanted=1&ref=health

BENEDICT CAREY "Psychiatry Giant Sorry for Backing Gay ‘Cure’"New York Times(online) 18 May 2012. 20 May 2012.

   

Put Your Rage Into a Cartoon and Exit Laughing

 

Published: May 9, 2012  

 

Have you ever read Rage Comics? If you have a numerous community in some social net work site like ‘Face book’, you must be familiar with it! 

In my variety single living, Rage Comics became a part of my life. Frequently do I open my ‘renren’ homepage and read some Rage Comics just for fun. Since I have read this article, I began to think about the thought connotation of Rage Comics.

 

Ever since I considered it as a product of Chinese net citizens before I read this article. But actually, Rage Comics came from the U.S. and spread rapidly in China. The article pointed out the definition of American Rage Comics.——‘When you get angry, you can lash out or seethe inside. Many strips focus on some small moment, a true-life anecdote, that sent the author spinning into inexplicable fury or burrowing deep into resignation to keep from exploding. Or you can head to the Web to assemble and publish a cartoon to share some of that rage. Many people with little to no artistic ability — but with some pretty funny tales — do that in something called rage comics. ‘ The authors of Rage Comics who are always less of art ability and anonymous collect some rage from our normal life and express the embarrassment or bashfulness especially the unbearable burden of dealing with other people’s stupidity through the characters with some constant exaggerated but easy pained expressions. In addition of some daily and poignant words and the stricken face in the end or one story, Rage Comics pour out a lot of people’s heart. And now, the author recommended us a way to create a Rage Comic of ourselves by going to ‘ragemaker.net’. Why not to share your funny embarrassment for some same feelings in others!

 

However, there’s another style of Rage Comics in China. The first Chinese story of Rage Comics was created in 2008. It is Called of ‘BaoZou Manhua’ in China. The hero and heroine are called ‘Wang Nima’ and ‘Wang Nimei’. And in addition of American Rage Comics, there are more famous people’s images emerged into the stories. For example ‘Yao Ming’ ‘Sister Feng’ ‘Shuhao Lin’ etc.

 

In China, it refracts many problem of society. After the black humor of the stories of Rage Comics, there is also a lot of dissatisfied and compromises to the irrevocable reality from young people. To start with the most widespread site in the youth of China as I know, it had to be ‘renren.com’. ‘Renren.com’ is a site of China which is almost the same as ‘facebook.com’. But in China, sites like ‘facebook.com’ are screened,   for the users’ sayings of all over the world cannot be control by the government. Because of the words’ screening of Chinese internet, mass of internet words which could not be screened are created by the Rage Comics. And these alternative but specific words become more and more popular and essential in our daily life.

 

Considering with the reason of the popularity of Rage Comics in the youth of China, the most important thing is the common view through the youth. Some stories are reacting the anxious and helpless of the grown up of we only child. It sharply points out the serious problems of our daily life. To face with some social trends, someone may feel overwhelmed and panicky though it is unnecessary. However in my view of Rage Comics, I could find something really verity. It makes me more awake and remind me to be hard. Not only a forced smile but to change the reality to be happiness as possible as I can.

 

connect： http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/technology/personaltech/rage-comics-turn-everyday-stress-into-laughs.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=technology

PAUL BOUTIN "Put Your Rage Into a Cartoon and Exit Laughing"New York Times(online) 9 May 2012. 13 May 2012.