Articles by Dr. Naiman

In the Old Testament, Jacob, on the run for his life from the twin brother he betrayed, beds down for the night in the wilderness and there dreams of a ladder stretching between heaven and Earth, of angels ascending and descending, and of God assuring him of an auspicious future….

A recent review paper authored by Rubin Naiman of the Center for Integrative Medicine, University of Arizona, and published in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (August 2017), claims that “we are at least as dream-deprived as we are sleep-deprived” and suggests that a “silent epidemic of REM sleep deprivation” is contributing to our…

The following story is excerpted from TIME’s special edition, The Science of Sleep, which is available at Amazon.
The first time I dialed up my dream therapist, I didn’t realize how personal it would get. It’s just dreaming, I told myself. What could I learn that a dream dictionary couldn’t decode? Underestimating my own dreams was my first mistake. Underestimating Rubin Naiman was my second. I’d found him by asking Google a throw-away question: Can dreams improve emotional health? The query led to Rubin Naiman, Ph.D., his face framed in a cloud of white hair.

By Dr. Rubin Naiman When we think of dreaming, we typically think of being in a different place – another state of consciousness, a dream world or dreamscape – certainly not in Kansas anymore. In reality, however, it only looks like we’re not in Kansas. Dreaming is more about a…

In Evelyn De Morgan’s numinous painting, Night and Sleep (1878), Nyx, the mighty Greek goddess of night, hovers across a dusky sky with her beloved son Hypnos, the sweet-natured god of sleep. The painting and the Greek gods it captures depict a radically different way of understanding and relating to sleep. In…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Maybe you’ve heard this one: A woman goes to see a psychologist and tells him her husband thinks he’s a chicken. “Well,” says the psychologist, “we have effective treatments for that. Why don’t you bring him in?” “I don’t know,” responds the woman. “We really need…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Hans Christian Andersen’s classic fairy tale is about a young girl whose sleep is disrupted by a pea tucked beneath a stack of twenty mattresses. Her heightened sensitivity to the pea was understood to be a sign of royalty. Could it be that we all become…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Maybe you’ve just made love. Maybe you’ve stumbled into bed, exhausted. Or maybe you’ve been reading or watching television and find yourself nodding off. So, you turn to your partner, say goodnight, and go to sleep. I imagine this is the most common bedtime story for…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Typically undercover by day and out of awareness throughout the night, the bed is the most primordial of furnishings in our lives. We are conceived, born and die in a bed. We make love, sleep, dream, heal and are entertained in our bed. We burrow deeply…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Most everybody has experienced at least a night or two of poor sleep. And many millions of us do so on a regular basis. A bad night’s sleep can leave us feeling anxious about making it through the next day. Will we have the energy, the…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Despite dramatic increases in the number of sleep specialists, national sleep education initiatives and the use of sleep medications, healthy sleep continues to elude tens of millions of us each night. In fact, there are indications that the insomnia epidemic is worsening. Consequently, millions of us…

By Arianna Huffington   Dr. Rubin Naiman doesn’t want to just raise awareness about the importance of sleep. He wants to change the way we think about it, by blasting through the assumptions and misunderstandings that have for so long defined — and limited — the conversation. A clinical assistant…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman My dog, Isaac, was a handsome, blue-eyed Siberian husky who loved playing Frisbee. And I loved witnessing his wild passion for the game. He would seem dreamlike, almost defying gravity in slow-motion flight while twisting and lunging to capture his prize. But if ever I paused…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Given all the concern about insomnia and sleep deprivation, it’s too easy to overlook the fact that there are exceptionally good sleepers among us. They tend not to get much media attention. In fact, I’ve found they are rather reticent to boast about their joyous relationship…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Most of us typically think about getting dressed as preparation for our day. We dress to accommodate waking life activities and events. We dress for work or play, for celebrations, chores or to hang out with friends. But because we see sleep as a kind of…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Whether as a biblical icon or a secular notion, the image of the lion lying down with the lamb is one familiar to most of us. For some, it symbolizes an unattainable utopian state. For others, it holds the promise of a miracle in which opposite…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman “What’s the best thing in the world?” asked my mother. When I was a little boy, she played this curious game with me. It didn’t matter that we had done it countless times before, that I already knew the right answer, and that I would once…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman A new, peculiar hybrid form of waking consciousness has been emerging in recent years. Because so many of us struggle nightly with inadequate sleep and dreams, we become chronically tired. At the same time, the excessive stimulation and hyperbole emblematic of modern life drives us to…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman I’ve never been much of a cat person. I’ll confess that until recently I couldn’t understand the lure these mysterious creatures had for so many. Beyond their penchant for catching the occasional rodent, it seemed they were little more than hypersomnolent stoics who couldn’t distinguish a…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Tips are ubiquitous in modern life. We are offered cooking tips, golf tips and gardening tips. There are an abundance of management, childrearing, automotive and tax tips available. And tips for weight loss, high fashion, exercise, skin care and of course, sleep, abound. My recent Google…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman I just bought a new sporty car. Well, it’s not really a sports car; it’s a hybrid. My first. I’ve owned real sports cars in the past and thoroughly enjoyed their agility and power. OK, it won’t break any records, but I was delighted to learn…

by: Rubin Naiman    Published:   Network, Ireland, Monday, May 27, 2013 Our main problem with sleep stems from our definition of it. Most of us don’t get sleep because we don’t ‘get’ sleep. This is not just a philosophical statement, I believe that Western culture at large – including…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman This past year, I watched my daughter-in-law, Adriana, proceed through her second pregnancy, childbirth and the care of our family’s lovely newborn, Eva. I watched her struggle with some of the most common challenges of motherhood, including of course, disrupted sleep. As Mother’s Day draws near,…

By Dr. Rubin Naiman Narcolepsy. Though many recognize the word, relatively few of us know what it really means. And why should we? As far as sleep disorders go, it’s not nearly as common as insomnia or apnea. And let’s face it, it doesn’t sound very sexy either. (As one…

1. We begin today with a willingness to consider the possibility that we don’t get sleep because we don’t ‘get’ sleep. We begin this conversation with a “beginner’s mind” — a willingness to consider that our basic beliefs about sleep may be misinformed and undermining. We begin with patience and…

Recovering Night: Alcohol, Substances and Sleep A few years ago I found myself at an AA meeting in a small community in Southern California. It had been some time since I had accompanied a friend in recovery to a meeting. Having periodically attended various 12-step meetings around the country over…

Our current, conventional, highly mechanistic approach to understanding and healing sleep and dream problems is failing.  My work is meant to lay a foundation for a new approach, one that is, in the broadest sense of the term, integrative. Although it wholeheartedly supports the integration of conventional medical treatments with…

Narcolepsy is a complex condition with biomedical, psychological, social and, I believe, important spiritual dimensions. An integrative approach invites us to reconsider narcolepsy from a broader perspective. It encourages us incorporate key biomedical knowledge into a larger psychosocial and even mythic framework. Since narcolepsy is a lifelong condition, it also…

When we dream, we believe we are awake. That is, while we’re actively engaged in a compelling dream, we truly believe we are awake. The only other time we believe we’re awake is– well, when we are actually awake. Dreams mock our very sacred sense of reality. Perhaps, it is…

Picture a serene, dimly lit bedroom. Curtains flap in a gentle breeze as an angelic night moth glides gracefully across the room, bestowing sweet slumber upon some lucky soul. Leave the rest to Lunesta says the tagline. Anyone who has flipped through a popular magazine or turned on a television…

An Interview with Dr. Naiman Dr. Naiman, How did you become interested in sleep health? Dr. Rubin Naiman: Actually, I became interested in the connection between dreams and health early in my college years. As I came to understand how critical sleep was to general health, I gradually expanded my…