What’s your recurring dream theme? When you look back over a lifetime of dreams, how many recurring underlying themes spring to mind? At first you may think about some of the common dream themes that many of us experience from time to time – teeth falling out, flying, being chased, being late, being unprepared to give a speech, and so on. Write those down and then close your eyes and relax and see what else …
What is dream therapy? What is dream therapy, and what does a dream therapist do? If you are skilled in understanding and working with dreams, you might consider offering your services as a dream interpreter, a dream analyst, a dream alchemist, or a dream therapist. Or you might choose to facilitate a dream group, or to introduce dream exploration as an adjunct to your work with clients in a related field. So, let’s distinguish between …
Video: a dream interview. I was interviewed by Blake Gardiner, a self-confessed sceptic when it comes to dreams, and his partner, Erica Mann, a passionate dreamer, back in May. The video podcast has just been released and I think you’ll enjoy the ground we cover. Erica asked questions about dreams and dreaming, while Blake focussed more on questions about my career path. They ask about my background, how I work with clients (I include some …
The feel or fear question. “Where do you feel or fear this in your life?” It’s a simple question you can use when interpreting a dream, and one that can yield deeply rewarding insight, but at first glance it looks a bit odd. After all, isn’t fear a feeling? Let’s start with an example. If you dreamed of driving a car and reaching a block on the road, you might ask, “Where do I feel …
Unconscious wealth. I woke up this morning shortly after meeting a man, in my dreams, who told me about his website: ‘Unconsciouswealth.com.blog’. Actually, all he told me was the name of the site, and he was quite specific about the ‘dot com dot blog’ part. It was an isolated dream, just the brief meeting, the mention of the website, and then I was awake, grinning from ear to ear. I had gone to sleep knowing …
A better world. Two weeks ago, I was sitting here at my desk writing when I noticed billowing smoke outside my window. Seconds later, flames burst from the abandoned house two doors down. A neighbour was already outside, calling emergency services, and within minutes three fire engines had arrived. No-one was hurt, but the already dilapidated house was a goner. The view from my window had changed in a single afternoon. Although the house had …
Dreaming about your ex. Does dreaming about your ex mean you should get in contact, or get back together? No! So, what do these confusing dreams mean? If you’re dreaming about an ex in the very early days of the breakup, your dreams are likely to be processing your feelings about it all. Take the feelings you experienced in your dream – anger, regret, betrayal, shame, loss, grief, missing out, taunted, dismissed, not good enough, …
Sleep paralysis and scary awakenings. “When you wake up feeling a dead weight pressing on your chest and you can’t breathe and there’s a haunted feeling in the room, is there a ghost around?” I was asked this question on a radio show this morning, and I realised, in what’s been a run of media interviews about dreams during Covid-19, that variations of this question keep coming up. There are no ghosts in the room, …
Dreams in the time of Covid-19. It’s during times of uncertainty, when we perhaps struggle with how to respond when the ground continuously shifts and shakes beneath our feet, when our survival feels threatened, that working with our dreams offers us opportunities to see our best way forward. Provided we can sleep! I write this blog at a time when most of us in the world are in varying degrees of lockdown, quarantine, self-isolation, and …
Can dreams sometimes be straightforward? Are dreams always symbolic, or are some dreams straightforward and obvious in their meaning? It’s easy to acknowledge that our weird and surreal dreams are symbolic, but what about those dreams that seem very much like our day to day life, give or take a few differences? If you dream about going to work and having an altercation with your boss, might this be a straightforward dream about your differences …