I love dreams.  Not only the aspiration kinds of dreams, but night dreams.  When I was a little girl I used to tell myself stories as I fell asleep at night, which led to dreams of grand mansions and princes charming.  I had the ability to dream fairly lucidly as a small child, to explore and invent magical worlds through my dreams – incredible animals, the ability to fly, to talk with angels - all were part of my childhood slumber.  I believe that my capacity to dream led to the development of my vivid imagination.   Yet dreams also allowed me to process things in my day that were overwhelming for a child – the loss of my childhood dog, moving to a new city and the fears of nuclear war that I picked up from the evening news.  Somehow through my dreams, I felt that my subconscious was able to put everything in its place and I was able to wake up in the morning restored with a sense of place in my world.

When I was 12, I had a near drowning accident while swimming in the ocean with my mother after which I had recurrent nightmares of being attacked by the huge ocean waves and being unable to run away.  These dreams disturbed the magical nightscape of my youth and eventually led me to explore lucid dreaming more deliberately.  I was able to recognize the ocean in my dreams as my unconscious and to gain control over the waves, to soothe the tsunamis of my own mind, and to turn churning oceans in to soft azure waters in which I could frolic safely and happily.  

Later, when I was in art school I was fortunate to study under Barbara Drucker, who used an Jungian approach to art making wherein we used dream journals to identify symbols and meanings to use in our paintings, creating art from the language of our subconscious.

Recently a coaching client of mine told me that he has difficulty sleeping because of bad nightmares and a sense of feeling psychically attacked in his sleep.   For someone who loves dreaming as much as I do, I felt compelled to explore visualizations and practices to help.  I do believe that dreams are our opportunity to commune with our own unconscious minds and to receive messages from a place of deep knowledge.   So I did a little bit of research.  Now, here's my little disclaimer.  I am not a dream expert - all of this is subjective, but I offer it to you for your own discretion, and hope it's helpful.

What exactly are nightmares?  How do we dream?  What are methods for protecting ourselves from bad dreams? And what can we do to dream in ways that contribute to our body’s renewal and rejuvenation as we sleep?

The causes of nightmares vary according to different perspectives.  The modern medical and psychoanalytic take is that nightmares often relate to stressful and traumatic events or worries.  Traumatic events such as surgery, the loss of a loved one, an assault or accident can all cause bad dreams.  The content of these dreams is generally easy to interpret as the symbology generally relates directly to the traumatic event.   This is considered a normal part of a psychic healing process and the dreams naturally diminish in frequency and intensity as a person heals.  Other causes of bad dreams can relate to stresses, such as changes in life such as relocation, career changes, pregnancy, or financial worries. Other considerations can be physical, such as illness, diet or medications. 

The work of Jung asserted that nightmares offer the same opportunity as other dreams for self-exploration and insight.  By using dream journals, talking about the dream, or replaying it in one’s own mind, the dreamer can learn to decode the dream to see relationships between the symbolic and visual languages of dreams and waking life.

Yet some people experience frequent nightmares that seem unrelated to their waking lives.  These people are often creative, sensitive and emotional in nature.   It may benefit these people to consider less mainstream thoughts about nightmares, such as psychic attack.  Previous generations thought that bad dreams were the work of monsters or disembodied souls.   I honestly have no idea whether that’s true, but I do believe there’s more to the world than what we can see, and I do believe that sensitive people can pick up energy from the space or people around them.  I also have direct personal experience being visited by deceased loved ones, and can imagine that some people ancestors may not always speak in the most pleasant of voices. 

I also have a number of friends whose takes on dream life is that they are doing spiritual work on other dimensions.  I’m not sure what these dimensions are, but I do believe that what happens in our sleep is important and deserves our respect and attention.   It does seem that the more  sensitive a person is by nature, the more likely a person is to have these sorts of dreams.   My take is that this can be a good thing, because the potential rewards are high in terms of increased insight, creativity, and yes, capacity to communicate with others (I’ll post my story about this soon) – but that this also requires attention because if the dreams are dark and nightmarish, nocturnal disturbances can weaken a person.  While nightmares rarely cause any direct physical harm, interrupted sleep has a negative effect on one’s body and psyche - negative emotions could undermine a person’s sense of well-being, leaving one moody, irritable or depressed, and less equipped to engage fully in the physical world.  That said, I don't believe nightmares are bad.  I don't believe they're pleasant, but I agree with the Jungian perspective that they do offer something of value, by pointing us in a direction of inner exploration.

As a coach I help people get in to touch with their deepest longings and also to look within themselves to see what they need in order to grow stronger and happier - and more fully alive.  I believe that dreams are a powerful tool for this. Yet,  if a person is overwhelmed by nightmares, then let’s engage a practice to make dreaming more palpable.  If one doesn’t have a strong connection to dreams – either not dreaming or not remembering, and if a person is interested, then let’s explore practices for amplifying one’s dreams.  I’ve created a dream visualization to help a person handle and learn from bad dreams.  This visualization drifts you down into dreamland  gently and kindly.  There are three stages to this visualization:  psychic cleansing and chakra balancing, invoking the divine for psychic protection, then dream programming.  You can use the first two parts any time, especially before you meditate.  The third part is especially for before you go to sleep.

These visualizations may take practice and the results of how your psyche and spirit process it may vary.  Try it at your own comfort level, perhaps once a week to start, to see how you respond. The next few dreams you have may be entirely unexpected, giving you a chance to explore what’s going on from different perspectives.    I believe this is a mechanism of your subconscious revealing things about yourself slowly and gently, so that you can look in to your shadows without strong internal reactions.  You may find that the nightmares allow you to confront a part of your history that you’ve shied away from, a whole unexplored area of life begging for your attention.  This callows you to reclaim parts of yourself.  Yet, this can be unpredictable.  Ease in to this process gently and take time during this discovery to write down your dreams, and to talk with someone about it.

Ultimately dreams are illusions that you can play with creatively, becoming present to the possibility of your imagination as your spirit integrates the lessons your subconscious is teaching you.   I believe that if you can imagine it, you can transcend it.