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.
Do We Benefit from 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.
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.
Animation: Experiencing Images as Alive
In Hillmans way of looking at dreams, you go beyond association and amplification to a new process called animation. In animation, you look for ways of experiencing dream images in their living, embodied reality.
Amplification: Discovering the Archetypal Depth
Amplification opens you to the great teachings that are alive and active in dream images. These stories tell about the perils of your situation, the potential positive outcomes, strategic teachings, and the collective wisdom of generations past.
Mindfulness By Day, Lucidity By Night
Today, there’s a lot of buzz about mindfulness, which is wonderful. But we often neglect our sleep and dreams. Imagine how much more your life could transform if you brought mindfulness into the third of your life that you spend asleep! Our dreams are like a movie reel of our own deep unconscious imagery.
Association: Finding the Hidden Connections
Freud’s “classical” approach, and the dreamworkers who followed in this tradition, associated dream images back to events occurring in the dreamer’s past. In this context, “To associate means to find hidden connections between a dream image and past experience.”
The Nocturnal Therapist: Turning Toward Our Dreams
Dreaming is therapeutic. Is there a way to make it more so? Unequivocally, yes. Much like therapy, the more we invest our time and energy into our dreams, the more helpful they will be. This is not a new idea, but one that is gaining a broader spectrum of supportive evidence, moving beyond clinical case studies to include the realms of neuroscience and traumatology.
Nightmares as Healing and Spiritual Gifts: Transformative Lucid Dreaming
Nightmares are healing gifts. They may come in nasty wrapping paper but when we unwrap them with lucid awareness, wonderful transformations can occur.
