CoastZone Newsletter May 1, 2013 Harnessing Your Dreams:
On Tuesday's show, hypnotherapist, speaker, and founder of Dream-Life Coach Training, Kelly Sullivan Walden, discussed various approaches to dreamwork, and how they can be utilized for benefits in one's waking life. The limbic system in the brain wakes up during dreaming, and tries to work out unresolved matters and events that happened during the day, she explained. There are several misconceptions about dreams-- some people don't dream (it's clinically proven that everyone dreams 3 to 9 dreams every night), that there are bad dreams (even the scariest dreams come in the service of health and healing, she believes), and that dreams are meaningless (many innovations and inventions were instigated from dreams).
During the evening, she featured a number of special guests who presented their unusual and powerful dreams. The first was Claire, a 16-year old, who told of a series of dreams in which she picked a magical vine and was transported to the universe at large. She learned in the dreams that she was a "bridge angel," chosen to help deceased spirits make the transition to the Other Side. Other guests included Kathy, whose dreams saved her life by cluing her in that she had cancer that tests weren't picking up, and Ellin, who had a bizarre dream of alien hybrids taking over the world. Jenny shared a nightmare in which she was asked by a council of elders to kill a young woman, and was able to subsequently reenact the events in a cathartic "dream theatre" where group members played the different dream roles.
Walden suggested that all the different characters in dreams could be looked at as various aspects of ourselves, and this kind of view can be a way to interpret a dream's significance. She outlined a set of steps she called the D.R.E.A.M. Code as a way to get started in working with dreams: Declaration-- of what you want to create in your life; Remembrance-- techniques for remembering dreams (such as not moving your body position when you first wake up), and recording your dreams on paper or with an app like Dreams Cloud; Embodiment-- such as retaining the energy of positive dreams; Activation-- taking some form of action in the waking world based on dream realizations; and Masterminding-- connecting with a group of people to share dreams with.