Articles > Balanced Living > Dreamwork

Dream reading and divination based on dreams can be traced back to the earliest records, and I am sure that the beginning of the practice is lost in the dawn of prehistory.

Recent history of dream study is usually traced back to psychologists Freud and Jung. Most people will know that Freud became convinced that all dreams were about sex, and that he therefore latched on to any symbol or image as representative of sexuality and the act of intercourse. Jung did not share Freud’s single mindedness. He neither believed that all dreams are about sex, nor that a single image or symbol is always going to mean the same thing for all people.

Modern ideas of working with dreams tend to trace their evolution from Jungian thought, and therapists and dream workers encourage each person to find their own interpretation for their dream.

Most accept the idea that any symbol used in our dreams might have more than one possible meaning. This is because each of us is aware of the conventions and beliefs of our own society and common universal ideas.

So that if I dreamed of a cat it might relate to one of three meanings. My personal meaning for a cat is some part of myself or life that requires nurturing. Common or societal meaning for a cat would be feminine qualities or independence. Whilst a universal or traditional meaning for a cat could be magic or mysticism or mystery because many ancient cultures (including our own) associated cats with power and the occult.

Why work with Dreams?

• To encourage your creative potential

• To heal old wounds

• To release yourself from bad habits

• To handle nightmares and recurring dreams

• To understand yourself better

• To identify and to help yourself follow your life path

• To create a balance in your life that comes when your conscious and subconscious selves are working together

• And to improve your relationships.

One of the certain things about dreaming is that if we are prevented from experiencing dream sleep, we will make up for the loss of dreams by dreaming more at the earliest opportunity.

Sleep deprivation is known to be dangerous and possibly the lack of dreaming is part of the cause. At any rate, dreaming seems to be a necessary function of our minds.

Whether all dreams have something of use to tell us may not be important, however we can learn to listen, and so make use of a part of mind and self that is seldom heard. At any rate, the only way that we will be able to decide whether a dream is trying to tell us anything is first if we remember it and then if we translate it into terms that are meaningful to our waking mind.

1 Remembering our dreams - It helps to have a regular sleep pattern, and the more relaxed you are when you go to sleep (and regarding the issue of remembering your dreams) the better. Be patient with yourself, especially if you normally don’t remember your dreams. You need to gently allow yourself quiet time and space to access them. It can help to tell yourself to remember you dreams. And I found it very helpful to tell myself to wake up before the alarm goes, because the sound of that tends to be jarring and I often was thrust into what I expected to do in the day rather than thinking back on the night.

2 Keeping a dream Diary - It is a good idea to keep a pen and paper by the bed so you can jot things down immediately upon waking. Write everything you remember down, don’t edit - include every detail you can remember - colours, objects, people, feelings, movement.

3 Finding the meaning - Once you have it all down on paper, you can start analysing what your dream means to you