Can lucid dreaming quicken physical healing? Can you use your dreams to scan for illness in the body? And what are the best ways to apply the skill of self-awareness in dreams for facing your fears and revitalizing your spirit?

These are the questions we’ll be addressing next Wednesday, March 16, during a free teleseminar with guest Robert Waggoner, author of Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the inner self.  I’ll be joining dreamworker Amy Brucker to co-host the discussion, as part of a special event for The Dream Tribe.

My own lucid healings

The topic of healing in lucid dreams has a powerful pull for me. My own lucid dreams began as nightmares where I learned to literally stand my ground and find my voice. Later, as an adult, I went through another period of intense lucid dreams that resulted in recovering lost vitality after I faced some ancient sorrows. Lucid dreaming has also allowed me to say goodbye to loved ones and find real closure.

Physical healing through lucid energy

But psychological healing or healing “spirit loss” is only aspect of the conversation. Robert Waggoner has amassed a fabulous array of accounts from people who have applied their lucid dreams to assist in physical healing. We’ll also discuss the possibility of lucid dreaming as a foundation for seeking out unknown illness. Some of these stories can be found in his book Lucid Dreaming, but others are never-before-told accounts that will soon be published in the Spring edition of the Lucid Dream Exchange, which Waggoner co-edits with Lucy Gillis.

Beyond the Placebo Effect

These topics are cutting edge applications for lucid dreaming, especially as we come to grips with the realization that self-healing is so much more than a “placebo effect” but may actually be the secret behind shamanic healing and the miraculous remissions of cancer and other “intractable” diseases, as documented by Larry Dossey, MD.

Indeed, lucid dreaming embodies the role of focused will, spontaneous mental imagery, and the application of spirituality and prayer in healing — all of which are currently hot topics in medical, psychiatric, nursing and hospice communities.

So how to we harness our own lucid healing? What are the best approaches and possible pitfalls? We’ll discuss this too.

I hope you can join me for this fun and revitalizing conversation next Wednesday at 8pm EDT (that’s Midnight GMT). If the timing is all wrong, don’t worry, we’re recording the call and you can listen to it at your convenience.

Click here for the link to sign up for the teleseminar on Wednesday, March 16th.

Imabe by ~diP

In my last article about dreams of the dead, I gave short shrift to dreams of bereavement, which is a subset of dreams where we are visited by the deceased.  Often, all visitation dreams are interpreted to be grief dreams, despite the wide range of characteristics shown in these bizarre experiences.   So, now let’s take a look at dreams of the recently departed that do seem to be part of bereavement, offering up healing, closure and emotional release that aids the grief process.

Like visitation dreams, bereavement dreams center around a face-to-face with the deceased, with a steady narrative of meeting, exchange, and dissolution of the dream.  Unlike all visitation dreams, however, bereavement dreams tend to come more or less promptly after the death of a loved one.  Sometimes the night afterward, sometimes a week or month, or even three months later.  Bereavement dreams indicate that grieving is still doing its slow digestive work. In waking reality, the loved one is very much a part of the dreamer’s daily thoughts.

Some bereavement dreams do not have the cognitive clarity or lucidity that other visitation dreams have; instead they can be highly emotional, resulting in waking up in grief and tears, sometimes mixed with elation. These dreams are not always positive on the onset, and they can actually be quite disturbing and confrontational.

Because these dreams begin with symbolic and visual representation (the contact with the deceased) and often end with strong emotions, some psychologists refer to these experiences as transformative dreams. Here is a dream published in Joseph Hart’s book the Functional Theory of Dreaming:

I was walking somewhere outside and I saw my father.  I don’t remember whether I clearly knew if I was dreaming, but I knew he was dead, or was dying, that I wouldn’t see him anymore. (Patient’s father has died that year).  I was sad for him, then for myself.  I cried –the feeling was stronger the more I cried.  I felt very sad that we didn’t have more contact, that I had wanted to feel more with him than I had.  Then I was very sad that I would die and all feeling would stop.  I cried openly, deeply, and in my dream I couldn’t see anything anymore.   I was inside my body.  My father’s image disappeared, there was just my feeling, a deep sobbing feeling in my chest.  That was the most deeply that I had ever cried.

Note how the dream proceeds from image to feeling, leading to a remarkably deep heart opening.

Not all bereavement dreams are so plainly cathartic.  Sometimes they bring up other emotions and realizations.  Here is a touching example of a bereavement dream that was provided by one of my readers in a public comment:

my beautiful 19 year old step daughter died in a gymnastics accident on the 19/6/09, it was devastating and really hard to come to terms with.  My nights became blank until the 22/7/09 when I had a dream.  I was sitting on the lounge looking down at the coffee table and for some reason I looked up to see M. standing on the other side of the table looking down so her long blonde hair was covering her face.  I said “M. that’s you,” (then she lifted her head and shook the hair out of her face and smiled) “you’re here.”  At that point I remember feeling so relieved that all the other stuff was a dream.  I got up and walked around the table and grabbed M. and kissed her. then I sat back down on the lounge with M. on my lap just hugging her.  She was solid in my arms and was happy. I thought it was reality and after that I woke up and had sinking feeling when I realized it wasn’t.

What strikes me about this dream is how real it seems to the dreamer at the time, so real that in the dream he knows that his daughter is still alive and “all the other stuff was a dream.”   When he awakens, this reality does not hold up to the harsh morning light, but this cognitive dissonance does not mean that the dream is merely a wish fulfillment.  First, the dream’s effect is a forced acknowledgment of this painful loss.  Also, the dream illustrates how his daughter is still alive in the dreamworld, and he still can connect with her there.  We often say that our dearly departed lives in our heart;  this dream shows that this can more than a metaphor.

The Unfinished Business of Grief

Because dreaming is as real as waking life to our minds and hearts, experiences like this allow for many possibilities of completing the “unfinished business” that comes with loss.  Psychologist Patricia Garfield has studied bereavement dreams in her private practice, and she writes in her powerful book The Dream Messenger: how dreams of the departed being healing gifts that:

“Our relationship with the dead endures. In our dreams, the dead have messages for the living.  The living also have messages for the dead that can be delivered in dreams.  Conflicts left pending when the death occurred can sometimes find resolution in the dream world.”

Sometimes these conflicts can be pretty ugly.  Dreams of anger, fighting, and reliving past hurts is possible after a loved one has passed on.  There is no shame in these dreams; they are reminders of the complexity of our relationships and the emotional burdens that come with being close to another.  These moments offer reconciliation, or letting go of bitterness and old grudges.

Grief work is messy and painful.  After all, love brings with it a willingness to be hurt. As Rumi writes, “the heart breaks…. open.”

Other times, like the father’s dream for his daughter above, the conflict can be about accepting the death.  This can included unsettling imagery.  It is not uncommon to have a dream where the deceased looks undead, or ailing from some horrible affliction.   Patricia Garfield suggests that this kind of dream, while unpleasant, helps the dreamer remember that the person has passed on.  This too is a call for acknowledgment, which may be more of an issue if your loved one passed suddenly and tragically.

Bereavement dreams stir up our grief as much as they comfort us.  In this way, dreaming sometimes offers a balance to waking life thought, where we like to stay in control and our “window” for emotional healing is often small.  The dreams prod us on to acknowledge our loss at the beginning of the day, and remind us that our love is still very much alive.

These dreams are gifts.  Let them sit with you; let them show you the way to your heart and your grief.   Sometimes the way in is the way out.

Dali, Birth of the New man, 1943

This is the sixth post on ways to work with dreams, continuing the discussion about the role of the body in dream formation.  One of the most important reasons to invite dreams back into your life is their role in warning of illness and sickness.  The accounts of this phenomenon have been documented for thousands of years.  Aristotle wrote that the “beginnings of diseases and other distempers which are about to visit the body… must be more evident in the sleeping than the waking state.”

Known as prodromal dreams, these warnings come insistently and with increasing nightmarish levels of intensity when not paid attention to.  It’s as if the body is saying “Listen up!”

Some Prodromal Dream Case Studies

A famous account retold in van DeCastle’s Our Dreaming Mind is a woman who had:

“Recurrent nightmares of dogs tearing at her stomach a few months before she was diagnosed with stomach cancer.  She died three months after the diagnosis was made.” (p. 366)

Dreamworker Wanda Burch has a more hopeful story.  She listened to the insistent nightmares that plagued her nights and went to the doctor office, only to be turned away several times.  The nightmares continued and one pointed out to her a specific spot on her breast.  She went back to the lab and asked again for a test.  A lump was found that the earlier scanning had missed — breast cancer.

Wanda continued to practice dreamwork throughout her healing and is now cancer-free for over 17 years after that initial diagnosis.  Watch the video below as she describes how her dreams literally saved her life.

Neurologist Daniel Schneider has also published some warning dreams in his book Forewarning Cancer Dreams and the Bioplasma Concept.  In one account, a man has repetitive dreams about being shot at by a machine gun, the bullets hitting the left side of his lower chest.  As Van de Castle reports, “A check up revealed a small tumor on the left lover lobe of his lung, but it had not yet metastasized.” (p. 366).

Vampire Dreams – Not Just About Watching Twilight Before Bed

cc Vampire Weekend by Taylor Wish*

A month ago in Chicago, I saw famed author Patricia Garfield give a presentation about health-warning dreams.  As a psychologist and a dreamer, Garfield has decades of experience about the connections between dreams and illness.

She pointed out to the psychologists in the audience that vampire dreams — dreams of getting bit on the neck — can turn out to be warnings about thyroid conditions or other throat ailments.

Garfield took some time to give examples because dream workers and psychologists tend to  interpret mythological creatures without taking into account the possible body signal.

5  tips for Recognizing Health Warning Dreams

Listening to warning dreams can save your life, so it’s important to know what to look for. Unfortunately, we often notice these warnings long after the dream sounds its alarm.   And the last thing I want to promote is a sense of paranoia about our dreams.  So here are my tips for recognizing possible prodromal dreams.

1.    Keep a dream journal.  This is the practice that is essential to remembering more dreams, as well as tracking similar dreams over time.
2.    Watch out for repetitive dreams, especially unpleasant ones.  Nightmares are dreams that are screaming for attention.  Often, the imagery of repetitive nightmare will become more clear as the emotional intensity increases, practically demanding that you, the dream ego, acknowledge something that you really don’t want to look at.
3.    Prodromal dreams can speak in metaphors and symbols.  The most common symbol for the body is a house or structure.  Where does the action of the dream take place — on the top floor (the head), or in the bathroom (the bowels or kidneys).   In modern society, the car also can be a common sign for the body.  Engine trouble?  Difficulty accelerating?  Blown tires?  The metaphors for prodromal dreams are usually very simple, but may be peculiar to you alone; after all the dream is speaking your imaginal language! Again, repetition and journaling are key.
4.    Vampires bite your throat, and dogs tear at your intestines.  Any time a series of dreams repeatedly exposes, claws at, hurts, or bites a part of your body, that is a sign for attention.   Also, be aware of when animals bite at your hands; I have found that this is often a sign to be aware about what comes next.
5.    If you have a repetitive nightmare like these, and someone close to you reveals that they just had a similar dream, pay attention.  Friends, co-workers and our intimate partners may have unconsciously picked up on an early illness and their dreams can communicate this.  Is it micro-behaviors that they notice or telepathy?  I don’t know, and I don’t really care, to be honest.  Getting the message is what matters most.

As dreams come through our bodies, so do our illnesses come into our dreams.  Noticing this level of interpretation is crucial to a holistic view of dreams, because the body is often disregarded by both the dream nihilists (“random defragging information of the brain”) and by dream enthusiasts (“a message from my Higher Self about my purpose in the universe”).  Sometimes, a dream is just trying to lower our cholesterol so we can get on with the business of life on this planet.

Do you have a story about a dream that warned you of an illness?  I’d love to hear your story — make a comment below.

The next post in the series digs into dreams and nature.

Cited:

Burch, Wanda (2003). She who dreams: a journey into healing through dreamwork. New World Library.

Van de Castle, Robert (1994). Our dreaming mind. New York: Ballantine Books.