Why Most Dreams End in Obscurity
For decades, I was enamored by dreams and faithfully recorded them, hoping for insight into what they were attempting to tell me. But, most of my dreams remained elusive in meaning.This changed at age 39, long after I had earned my Ph.D. in psychology. I was fortunate to find a gifted dreamworker who opened the astonishing world of dreaming to me. Here I share a few insights that have rescued my dreams from falling into obscurity.
Do We Benefit from Dreams?
There are varying schools of thought from, at one end of the spectrum, the notion that dreams don’t do anything for us at all to the idea that dreams are a piece of unfinished process that moves us forward only when we revisit the dream and allow it to complete. The middle road is the notion that dreams are useful in and of themselves but are more beneficial if you work with them in some way.
Experience What is Implicit
In any good crossing, the cumulative effect is always greater than the sum of its constituent parts, and I have found this to be the case in combining Jungian and Focusing-oriented therapy. The methods complement, enrich and deepen each other: Gendlin brings experiential depth and ‘life-forward’ movement with his focus on the body, while Jung brings imaginative richness and numinosity with his deep fascination with the image.
Focusing, Dreamwork and Zebra-Striped Shoes
Imagine you have just awakened from a delicious dream. Before you get up and start your day, might you be tempted to linger in the dreamscape a little longer? This may be exactly what the dream is asking of you – to savor the embodied experience the dream brings as it envelopes you in the felt sense of its world.’ What happens when we attend to this felt sense? Read more.
Creating Art out of Your Dreams
Your dream journal can help you to heal your relationships with your families, your community, your world and your Self. It can guide you to see the mythic dimensions of your life and show you that your stories are vastly larger than you ever thought.’ How does the simple act of recording & engaging with your dreams through writing, help tap into the immense wisdom and creative power that your nighttime visions hold?
Spooky Dreams Café – A Special India Edition
Why bother with the dreams of the night when our day is a nightmare? Stricken with grief we feel not only loss and sadness, but also rage. When risk increases so does outrage. This is a disorienting mixture of emotions. We drown as the ground quakes under us and solid ground becomes quicksand. Spontaneously we enter the world of metaphor, by day and by night. Jungian analyst and world famous dream worker Robert Bosnak, who has worked professionally with dreams for fifty years, believes that people vividly remember the pandemic dreams because they are strikingly powerful.
How to Stay Lucid
Why, after finally getting lucid in a dream, are we sometimes unable to stay lucid?
It’s a question of mental focus: if we get too sucked into the dream action we forget that we’re dreaming. And if we get too excited by the fact of being lucid in a dream, that can wake us up in a shot. Lucidity is about striking the right balance between alert detachment and engagement with the dream.
Nightmares as Healing and Spiritual Gifts
Taken together, the nightmare studies presented at the recent (June 2019) conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) offer compelling reasons for those who suffer from nightmares to seek any kind of treatment, and as soon as possible. The studies suggest that virtually all nightmare treatments are effective.
How to Work with Traumatic Nightmares
Taken together, the nightmare studies presented at the recent (June 2019) conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) offer compelling reasons for those who suffer from nightmares to seek any kind of treatment, and as soon as possible. The studies suggest that virtually all nightmare treatments are effective.
Nightmares Are Treatable
Taken together, the nightmare studies presented at the recent (June 2019) conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) offer compelling reasons for those who suffer from nightmares to seek any kind of treatment, and as soon as possible. The studies suggest that virtually all nightmare treatments are effective.
The Practice of Dreamwork Has Changed
If you are like most therapists, you may dabble in dreamwork but without much confidence. Most often, it is your clients, not you, who initiate dream discussions. You may even dread the moment a client brings you a dream, worried you will have no way to help your client figure out what this nonsensical, nocturnal vignette actually means.
Why Work with Dreams?
I will begin with a personal example that demonstrates how dreams can facilitate more efficient therapy by bringing the conversation right to the heart of matters that concern us most deeply. This story will show how dreams can reach far back into our personal history and weave together experiences that have important features in common.