“Oh yes,” you might say, “I love the way you interpreted my dream. I can totally relate to that!”
But what do you do next? What action do you take? Do you share it with friends? “Look, this weird dream turns out to be about my self-doubt. See? The way I’m holding that horse back in my dream is the way I hold my energy back in my life because I doubt myself. See? I make myself small like the cramped stable I’m trying to push the horse into in my dream. See? Isn’t it fascinating how dreams aren’t what they seem? How they show you a different perspective on your life? Wow! I had no idea that my unconscious self-doubt has been having such a dramatic effect on my life. Makes sense of why I’ve been feeling so blocked!”
Then what? Do you leave it at that?
Take a side-step with me for a moment and imagine you have just asked a health practitioner to interpret your blood test results. She points out that a lack of nutrients has impacted your energy. “Yes,” you say, “that explains a lot! I can relate to that!” What happens next? Do you get excited about the accuracy of her interpretation of your blood tests and tell everyone how good she is, and leave it at that? Or do you ask her what you need to do to remedy the situation? Do you need to change your diet, take supplements, get more sleep, or have more tests to discover why your body is not absorbing the nutrients properly?
And the right answer is, of course, you ask for her professional advice, based on her interpretation, and then you take an action. Your situation is not going to magically improve based solely on the interpretation. You need to do something.
Does the same apply to a dream interpretation? Do you need to take action to experience positive change, or is there something inherently magical about simply seeing your life through new eyes: through the symbolic nature of a dream?
Let’s take the example of the dream about the horse.
Our dreamer might start by asking herself how she holds her energy back, or how she keeps herself small. She might become more aware of these tendencies. She might tentatively begin to address them, perhaps give herself permission to express her energy more and allow herself and her ideas to take up more space.
But such approaches generally fail. She’ll still experience that inner resistance, that self-doubt, because nothing has been done to release the unconscious beliefs that keep that self-doubt in place.
If our dreamer explored her dream deeply with a professional dream analyst or dream therapist, she would discover the deeper nature of the self-doubt: the earlier experience in her life that created the self-doubt and the exact way it manifests in her life today. Sometimes this information is contained in the dream (the symbols, the dream drama), and sometimes it is unearthed by the questions the dream professional poses, the connections she intuits, and other tools and techniques she employs.
AI cannot work with dreams at this level.
The next action step is to apply dream alchemy.
Dream alchemy is a process designed to communicate directly with the dreamer’s unconscious mind using the language of the dream, to reprogram a core belief (or, put another way, rewire the brain).
How might this look with our simple example of the horse dream?
The dream expresses the dreamer’s unconscious self-doubt as being like pushing a horse into a cramped stable. One dream alchemy approach might be to get the dreamer to visualise the cramped stable transforming into a magnificently spacious landscape where the horse holds its head and heart high and beams its energy into the world. Another dream alchemy approach might be to capture this in art (especially if the dreamer is not good with visualisation). There are other dream alchemy approaches including story writing, and embodiment (embodying the sense of the freed horse).
I have over-simplified this. There are specific rules to follow when creating dream alchemy, which you can learn here.
This two-step formula: explore the dream deeply to discover the source of the unconscious mindset, and then apply dream alchemy, is the formula for creating successful positive change.
Your next best step?
Book a consultation with me OR take your training at The Dream Academy to the next level. Begin with ‘How to interpret a dream step-by -step’, follow through with ‘Dream alchemy’, then – if you wish to train to work with clients – follow with Dream Therapy Professional Level 1.
