We all have watery dreams from time to time, like facing a looming tsunami, drowning, discovering we can breathe underwater, swimming, floating, or being lashed by a heavy storm. What can these, and other watery dreams, teach us?
When we dream, we’re processing our experiences of the last 1-2 days, both our conscious and our unconscious experiences. Our dreaming mind pictures our experiences, our beliefs, and our feelings, in a symbolic but highly individual way. For many of us, our dreaming minds come up with water to represent our emotions because we tend to describe water in emotional terms: a stormy sea, an overwhelming tsunami, ‘drowning in grief’, going with the flow, calm still waters, or a raging rainstorm.
So if you dream of water, what are the first steps you can take to begin to interpret your unique dream?
Ask yourself these four questions:
Q1. What kind of energy did the water have?
For example: calm, raging, overwhelming, buoyant, agitated, flowing, relaxed. (Describe the energy of the water in emotional terms.)
Let’s say you said, “Overwhelming”.
Q2. How did I respond in the dream?
For example: “I ran away from the overwhelming wave”
OR
“I jumped in and went with the flow”.
Q3. How does this relate to my life?
For example: “I have been trying to escape from a feeling of being overwhelmed at work”
OR
“I gave up struggling with trying to keep on top of things and went with the flow”.
Q4. Is there a better way to respond in my life?
For example: “I could face what feels overwhelming and deal with it instead of running away and the overwhelm just growing”
OR
“I’m happy with what I’ve decided, to give up struggling and go with the flow”
OR
“I don’t want to struggle, and I don’t want to go with the flow, but perhaps I can flow long enough to gather my energy and then decide on my priorities so there’s not so much to stay on top with.”
But is this easier said than done?
It’s easy to say, “Just face what’s overwhelming” but it can be very hard to change the way you respond to an emotional situation, especially if it’s an on-going issue.
Can your dream add insight into how to do this?
Yes, in two ways. The first way is to look at all the other elements of your dream. Once you know how to fully interpret dreams, you’ll be able to discover your unconscious resistance to the change. You’ll discover what holds you in the emotional trap and why. As soon as you identify the unconscious side of the issue, you are in a powerful position to reprogram that unconscious belief or beliefs, to transform them into positive, supportive beliefs that empower you to resolve the emotional issue and make your desired change.
Reprogramming is achieved using Dream Alchemy techniques. There’s an art and a science to creating these (as each dream alchemy practice must be specific to the dream and the dreamer), but here’s an example to give you the idea:
If you dreamed of running from a huge (overwhelming) tsunami, an appropriate Dream Alchemy practice might be this visualisation:
Close your eyes and imagine you’re back in the dream then turn and face the tsunami. (You can do this safely because you’re in control of this visualisation, and you’re awake.) When you face the tsunami notice it begin to subside under your steady gaze, and feel yourself getting calmer and calmer as the wave gets calmer and calmer until you’re peacefully looking at a beautiful sea with gently lapping waves. Feel a sense of calm, of taking things one gentle wave at a time. Take three deep breaths and open your eyes.
This Dream Alchemy practice (repeated over a set period of time) reprograms the part of your mind that believes that the only way to deal with overwhelm is to run away from it, to not deal with it. In its place it creates a belief in the ability to safely and calmly face what feels overwhelming and deal with it in little gentle steps.
What about those really angry or grief-filled dreams, no symbolic water in sight?
Many of us have scary dreams, from time to time, where we let our raw emotions rip, like being REALLY angry with someone in the dream, or waking up crying in grief. That anger can be violent or leave you struggling for breath. That intense grief can spill over into waking, tears soaking your sheets and your morning.
These are ‘pressure cooker’ dreams where emotions you have held back reach a point where they get expressed REALLY big in your dream, expressed in ways you would never dream of allowing in waking life. Scary though they are, these dreams are generally quite positive, being an actual real release, but they should alert us to finding ways to acknowledge and talk about our emotions in life rather than wait for them to build to that point. Other details in these dreams, when interpreted, help us to understand the emotional situation and why we may be holding back.
In this clip from this week’s Today Extra show (Nine, national television Australia), I’m talking about watery dreams, including David and Sonia, the presenters’, watery dreams.
(Post script: this video clip is no longer accessible, as Today Extra only keeps its video clips for a few months.)
If you want to learn more about how to interpret your dreams and create and do dream alchemy practices, enrol for my online courses: you can begin any time and go at your own pace. Enjoy.
