Life lessons
“Are we meant to learn lessons from our dreams?” asked Cheryl, in an email I received this week. It’s a good question, both simple and complex, and one many people ask. So, are we meant to learn lessons from our dreams? I’ve been watching Isobel, my eight month old granddaughter, learning to crawl. You might think crawling is innate, an instinct, but not all babies crawl before they can walk. Some progress directly from sitting
Dream catcher machine
Imagine downloading movie clips of your dreams each morning. “What did you dream last night?” “No idea. Hang on a minute, I’ll have a look.” Research published this month in the journal Current Biology has led to speculation that this may be possible in decades to come. While no-one has yet captured footage of dreams, what they have captured is computerised reconstructions of what’s going on in the visual area of the brains of people
Painful emotions in dreams
“I dreamed that my wife married another man. It was such a vivid dream and I felt very devastated, felt the pain of losing her in that way. What does it mean?” This plea for help arrived on my desk this week, and as it is such a common and worrying dream theme, I decided to share some guidelines for those of you who know the deep emotional pain this kind of dream can
Best excuses
“Sorry I’m late, Miss. The budgie died.” That’s the second best excuse I remember a student giving me when I was a high school teacher many years ago. I taught biology and general science for two years, which makes the best excuse I ever received quite interesting: “Please excuse Mark for missing his lesson this week. He sprained his tendril.” It was hard to keep a straight face when I read Mark’s Mum’s note, but
When you wake up crying
When you wake up crying real tears, or simply feeling profoundly sad for no apparent reason, it’s because you have finally touched upon some buried grief through a dream. You may have released all the grief, or there may be more to come. Either way, when you wake up crying, it is good and healing. (Don’t you always feel much better after a cry?) Even if you don’t remember the dream, rest assured that tears
Rosewood laptop
It was one of those moments when an unusual symbol from my dream popped up in waking life the next day. What does it mean when this happens? On Wednesday night I dreamed I untangled and unplugged a heap of electrical wiring to get to my very ordinary looking Acer laptop. As I smoothed the palm of my hand across the lid of the freed laptop I saw that it was no longer the standard
Spot the belief
Had a tough day? Ready for a spot of light relief, a bit of fun, a dream interpretation game that’s easy to do yet powerfully insightful? You may never look at your dreams in the same way ever again. It’s called Spot the Belief. This is what to do: For each of the following dreams, see if you can spot the belief affecting the outcome. Let’s start with a simple example. Jim’s dream “I
Love your bad dreams
Here’s a simple formula to apply when you have an unsettling or frightening dream and you want to reduce the chances of having it again. Actually, it’s far more powerful than this. Not only does this formula ease your dreams, it also creates deep and lasting positive change in your waking life by subtly reprogramming your unconscious mind to solve the issue causing the bad dreams. Here’s what to do. Love your bad dreams into
Alchemy and dream interpretation
In mediaeval times, alchemy was the quest to understand and master the elements of nature and to demonstrate this mastery by turning base metal into gold. In its study of elements and substances, real and conjectured, it is often seen as being the forerunner of chemistry and perhaps quantum physics. But it was far more than a pre-scientific or material quest. The mental and physical discipline required to dedicate years towards the seemingly impossible task
I Can Can
Picture the Moulin Rouge dancers, arms linked, high-kicking the Can-can – daaa, da-da-da-da-daa-daa. Can you hear the music? Does it make you feel like getting up from your chair and kicking up your heels? The tune’s been on my mind all day since Belinda, a long time devotee of dream alchemy, posted a blog yesterday about how she solved a nagging problem. The problem – as she saw it – was that she couldn’t continue