Very intersting.  I used to have the naked in public dream until I started taking classes where I had to often get in front of people and speak.  As I got more experienced, the dreams went away, so I guess that it makes sense that is a confidence issue.

Getting hurt.  Hmm.  I have had dreams where I fight and will actually feel pain in my dreams.  I once even had the falling dream, but I actually landed and was OK.  Still hurt in the dream though.  The hurt areas are not in recurring area, so don't know how to interpret that.

Ah, the sleep mask.  I also had a sleep study done, and I was into the upper moderate range.  I actually sleep better with the mask, but it makes falling asleep harder for me.  I'm already a borderline insomniac (I get by on like 4-6 hours of sleep a night no problem), so I need to be really tired to use the mask without being annoyed.  I use it mostly becuase the wife gets concerned when I stop breathing for 30-60 seconds at a time.  Plus I apparently snore loudly.

One thing the article sort of touched on was episodic dreams (they recounted recurring dreams).  I often have episodic dream 'series', both scary and non-scary.  They can occur for me in consecutive nights or with spaces in between up to weeks.  The fun part is the more I have the same dream 'series', the more I can control.  Not quite to the lucid level of dreaming, but enough to influence events a bit.  Fun!  I think the best was where I was a knight (armor and all) defending a castle from demons, dragons, and Nazis.  The inside of the castle was shaped like my old middle school building, and all I had was a sword.  No, I have no idea why or how that dream series came to be.

The other strange thing is I always dream in color.

To Nosfer- I've also done some of that mental sleep processing.  Think about a problem long enough, and my brain keeps going even whem I'm sleeping.  Next morning, I don't have a "eureka!" moment, but the problem is suddenly easier.  Also, when I get into playing a game, or fall asleep watching a show, I often incorporate those into my dreams.  The best one was when I was playing Lego Star Wars for around 6 hours until I was exhausted (gotta love free weekends) and I felll asleep to NCIS.  I dreampt that I was part of the NCIS team and we had to solve a mystery by using Lego bricks in a Lego house.  Luckily, Zeva was not a block figure!  Gibbs did smack me, though.

Oh, by the way, this is my first post.  I like the tone of the site, as I used to be a big TV paranormal fan and started finding it dumber and more sensational over time.  GH is getting to the point of "why do I bother?"  GA is still fun because those 3 are just maniacs.  My new favorite is "The Haunted" on Animal Planet, mainly because doggies show up a lot, and I like the doggies.  I watched Extreme Paranormal with the wife, well for 20 some minutes until she said something along the lines of "this is a bunch of poo", and got a real kick out of that.  I was waiting for them to pull out some C4 and bazookas to REALLY crank up the "energy".  I went between staring at the TV in horror and almost falling off the chair from laughing so hard.

Anyway, hi.  Nice place you have here, and I look forward to hanging around, if everyone is OK with that.