This dreaming business. Whenever I’m asked what I do for a living, my answer seems to surprise, or confuse. “I’m a dream analyst,” I might say, or “I’m a dream therapist”, or sometimes, to keep things easy, “I’m an author”, but that only invites the question, “What do you write about?” Then curiosity kicks in, and keenness to share, because everyone dreams – at least five dreams a night – and while we may not …
Watery dreams. 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 …
Dream therapy Ancient Greek style. How well do you think you would sleep if there were snakes slithering around the floor of your room? Even if they were assuredly non-venomous, would you sleep enough to dream? If you lived in Ancient Greece around the fourth and fifth centuries BC, and felt in need of healing, physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually, you might have booked yourself in for dream therapy at one of the many healing …
The Dream Reader and the Dream Therapist. Now, there’s a job title, Dream Reader. There’s also Dream Interpreter, Dream Analyst, Dream Alchemist, and Dream Therapist. I’m often asked about the differences between these job descriptions, and while the boundaries may overlap or blur, let’s get down to some definitions. People who choose to be in the business of helping people with their dreams operate under a range of job titles, a far bigger range than …
Past, present, and future. “Why dig up the past? Isn’t that what you do when you explore your unconscious mind through your dreams?” It’s a common perception that the unconscious mind is a minefield of explosive repressed emotions and bad memories buried in a vault of trash and long discarded mental clutter. To some extent it is, but it’s also a treasure trove, a gold mine. While you may think of your unconscious mind as …
Why do you do that? I was sitting in ‘hair and makeup’ at the television studios earlier this week, being made up to go on Today Extra. In everyday life the only make up I wear is red lipstick. In television life much more is required to survive and look alive in the bright lights, and although I have occasionally fronted up to the camera in just my lipstick and got away with it, I …
From little things. The Dream Academy is about to launch with its first course, the first of many, and we’re currently checking that everything’s shipshape and ready for our first visitors and students to come on board. Last night, my dream took up the theme. I was on board a brand new ferry, having a look around, supposedly still in harbour, when I felt a slight rocking sensation, and suddenly there we were, underway on …
The train. I had a recurring dream when I was a university student back in the early seventies in Glasgow, Scotland. In my dream, I would arrive at the train station to see my train leaving, or I would miss my train because I was on the wrong platform, or because the stairs to the correct platform formed some kind of endless Mobius strip, or because I was at the wrong station altogether. I never …
A life in dreams. When I look back over my life so far, I see a path of dreams. I think of my early childhood, and there it is, my dream of snakes nesting at the foot of my bed. I think of being six or seven, and there it is, in full colour and vivid heart-pounding emotion, my dream of being a shepherd boy encountering a pack of wolves gazing down at me from …