understanding your dreams

Getting Questions Answered in Your Sleep

Dream Incubation | True Radiance Healing Arts

Wouldn’t it be great if you had your own personal adviser who could offer you valuable guidance on your most pressing questions? Well, you do!

Your wise self is available to counsel you each night in your dreams. You can ask for guidance in a particular area through a process called “dream incubation.”

The idea of asking for particular assistance or for healing in a dream is not new; it dates back to at least 6 century BCE in Ancient Greece and Rome. Those seeking a healing, diagnosis, or other guidance would sleep in the shrines at Ephesus or Pergamon in order to receive a dream from Asclepius or one of the other healing gods.

Since at least the 1930s scientists have been intrigued enough by dream incubation to conduct research studies on problem-solving in our sleep. Some of these studies involved giving subjects puzzles, brain-teasers, or even crossword puzzles to look at just before bed. About half of the 76 college student subjects in a study by Deirdre Barrett felt they succeeded at dreaming the solution. In this same study, asking a question of personal relevance was found to be more likely to get a dream reply than academic or puzzle questions.

You can incubate a dream for:

  • Solutions to a problem: Scientific breakthroughs have come through dreams, such as chemist August Kekule’s dream of a snake biting its own tail prompting his discovery of the structure of the benzene ring.
  • Inspiration on a creative project: The Surrealists are one example of a group of artists who used dreams as creative fodder for their art. The Bureau for Surrealist Research even started an archive for dream imagery. I’ve worked with clients who received entire songs in their sleep and I myself have received ideas for jewelry designs, other artwork, and writing.
  • Visiting a loved one who has died: I have had several dreams visits from friends and family who I missed and asked to see.
  • Guidance in a particular area of your life: Once while on a retreat where I was engaged in personal growth work, I asked for a dream to give me a status report: What had I accomplished? What was the next most important thing to focus on? I had 8 dreams that night!
  • Direct healing: On one occasion when I had a nasty headache I asked for healing in my sleep. I dreamt of a ninja shooting me in the temple (the location of my headache) with an acupuncture needle that had a little wire with mild electrical current running through it. When I awoke the headache was gone.

Ready to try it for yourself? The instructions are simple:

  1. Before going to bed, you may want to place a visual reminder of your question on the nightstand beside the bed. This will help to remind you of your question when you wake up, increasing the chances of recalling any dreams.
  2. As you are falling asleep, repeat the question or request over and over to yourself.
  3. Upon waking, make note of any dreams, dream fragments, images, phrases, or a song in your head that you can remember from the night in your dream journal. Even if it doesn’t appear related at first, write it down anyway.
  4. Look over your dreams (or dream fragments, songs, memories, etc) from your dream journal to see what they might be saying in response to your question. You might want to talk over your dreams with a friend or professional to get a different perspective. You could also take your dream to a dream group or send it in to our radio show to be interpreted.
  5. The answer to your question may not come right away. Sometimes there are other subjects of greater importance for your dreams to address, or you may not remember any.
  6. Be on the lookout for the answer showing up in waking life, too. There can be a synchronicity or sign that stands out to you, such as overhearing a comment by someone else in line at the grocery store that’s relevant to the very question you asked.

You can on occasion incubate a dream without fully intending to, simply by thinking a lot about or speaking about a topic that’s on your mind. You can also incubate a dream to receive guidance for someone else.

I have found it quite empowering to be able to receive guidance on the questions that are close to my heart. Your own wise self is ready and willing to offer assistance with any area of your life. I hope you enjoy getting to know this part of yourself better.

With love,
Susan

Animals in Dreams: Could it Be Your Animal Spirit Guide?

Animal Spirit Guides | True Radiance Healing ArtsShamanism is a tens-of-thousands of years old form of accessing guidance and impacting health and well-being for individuals and the community. It arose with a similar philosophy and techniques all over the globe – from Australia to Asia, Africa to North America, Europe to South America.

One of the core aspects of shamanism is a belief that everything has a spirit, including the plants, animals, elements, and even the land itself. Shamans and shamanic practitioners develop relationships with these spirits so that they can work together for the good of a community or an individual who comes to the shaman for help.

This working relationship with a spirit often begins with that spirit appearing to the shaman in a vision, a dream or even in waking life. In some cultures animal helpers could be inherited or exchanged, but more often the animal will volunteer itself such as in a dream.

From a shamanic perspective, animals or even plants who come into our dreams may be offering their wisdom or assistance. We in the United States do not currently live in a predominantly shamanic culture (though shamanic traditions in this area go back much further than our country’s existence and many of the people now living in the US have come from shamanic cultures), so animals in our dreams can have other associations and other meanings, too, but for now I want to focus on the shamanic perspective.

An animal may appear in your dream to offer you their help or to invite you into a working relationship. Some animal allies come to work with us in a particular way, for example, to assist with certain kinds of healing work. Other animals may appear to us because they are allies of a longer-term nature, voluntarily walking with us for many years or even our entire life to keep us physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy. Sometimes called totem animals, power animals, or animal spirit guides, these are the animal equivalent of our guardian angels.

In some traditions a shaman would have just one primary animal ally their whole life; in other traditions they might have a number of them and they might change over the course of their lifetime. The animal spirit is understood to be not simply the spirit of one specific animal, but the spirit of the species – for example, not one particular eagle, but all eagles. It is also common for animal spirits to shape-shift into human forms and vice versa.

A shaman might call on an animal ally to protect them, to assist with healing work, or to give them information such as where to find food for the community, how to resolve an issue, or to show them the cause of someone’s illness.

These animal helpers also become guides for the shaman when they journey into the world behind the world. A journey is like a meditation, where a shaman sends their consciousness into non-ordinary reality, or what the Australian Aboriginals called “The Dreamtime.” On these excursions the animal ally assists the shaman in navigating these realms, helping them to find what they seek.

Animal spirits, along with ancestors, teachers, and others, may appear to us in dreams to let us know we are being called to develop ourselves spiritually – either to shamanic work specifically or to remind us that we are connected to all of creation. Traditionally, the calling or initiation into shamanic work would often come with a dream visitation by these helping spirits.

If you were to dream of an animal ally, it might be because they are acting in their role as tour guide and navigator. They might also be inviting you into a working relationship or offering their support. You might want to get to know the particular wisdom of that animal. Sometimes the animal’s strengths or traits are highlighted in the dream for you, at other times you may want to seek out a deeper understanding of the animal.

An animal may come to your dream to help answer a question you are pondering in your life. In this case, there may be a particular habit or ability of this animal that holds the key to the guidance you are seeking.

You can get to know the animal better by going into meditation and asking them to teach you about their nature. You can read about the symbolism of animals in books about animal spirit guides, but you will get more personally relevant information if you work with the animal spirit directly.

Many shamanic cultures believe it is possible to get separated from your animal guardian. Since our animal ally is believed to be an integral part of protecting us from illness, a low immune system is considered a sign that you may be in need of a power animal retrieval. Depression and fatigue can also be signs that one has lost power or would benefit from a power animal retrieval.

From this perspective, you may want to pay particular attention to the condition of animals in your dreams: are they sick, dying, or missing? If so, you may want to go back into the dream through meditation or shamanic journeying to tend to them.

In addition to meditation or journeying, developing and maintaining a relationship with animal spirits can be done through getting to know the animal’s habits, qualities, and strengths in waking life. You might want to do something to honor an animal who comes to you, such as putting up a picture of them or eating their favorite food.

You don’t have to practice shamanism to benefit from having an animal ally. You can call on your animal helpers in times of need, such as when you would like protection or if you’re not feeling well. It adds depth and spice to our lives to have a personal connection with the natural world and with the world of spirit that is often trying to assist us. I hope you enjoy getting to know your own animal allies better.

With love,

Susan

Dreams Point the Way Toward Your Life Purpose

Dreams Guide Us to Our Life Purpose | True Radiance Healing ArtsWhen I tell people that my dreams have been a guiding light in finding my life purpose, I get some strange looks.

I’ve always had a strong sense that our lives are not accidents, that we come to this life for a reason. By the time I was in my 30s, I knew the general direction to which I felt drawn…creative arts, supporting other people, spiritual exploration…but I couldn’t seem to get any clarity on what I had to offer the world that was uniquely mine.

I took every class or workshop that I could afford on an array of topics from personal productivity to shamanic healing and everything in between. I developed a great breadth of understanding about how we as human beings can thrive in our work and personal lives.

My strategy was a kind of shot-gun approach: if I learned everything then I would cover all the bases. Surely one of those things would be my life’s work.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this feeling…that there is something you’re meant to be doing, but you just can’t pin it down. For me, it was deeply frustrating. I felt like I was hitting my head against a wall – and wasting precious time.

A clear sense of my life purpose finally came to me when I stopped running around, looking for signs of my life path out there and started looking inward, at my dreams.

Our dreams are messages from our Higher Self and they include guidance on everything from health to relationships to our life purpose.

When I began to take the time to understand my dreams and actually make decisions based on their input, my entire life changed. My life vision became clearer; I quit my “day job” and started my full-time practice supporting people in removing obstacles, changing patterns, and healing wounds using my own blend of life coaching and energy healing.

Over time, I’ve learned I can trust the information I get from my dreams. I’ve also found that if there’s a decision I’m pondering, or a choice I’ve just made, I can get feedback the very next night.

This guidance is available to you as well. It’s comforting to know that we, with our limited human perspective, are not alone on this journey. We aren’t meant to stumble through our lives haphazardly, hopefully bumping into the right path for us; we are meant to have help.

In my years as a student, I’ve also learned how to have a “dream” while fully awake. The technique some call “journeying” is one you can learn. I teach it in my workshops and private sessions with clients. It’s very powerful and comes in handy when you don’t usually remember your dreams or when you don’t want to wait until you fall asleep!

If you are ready to get your questions about your life path answered, sign up for my upcoming workshop on Living Your Life Purpose on May 14 & 15 in Edmonds, WA. I hope to see you there.

Wishing you great fulfillment,
Susan

Life Purpose in Dreams

Because our life purpose is so central to our lives, our dreams often contain information about it.

While the entire dream would have to be looked at to understand the full message, here are a few symbols to look for in dreams that comment on our life purpose:

1. A dream character in a position of authority or with a title, such as a police officer, waitress, doctor, or shop owner. Whatever gifts these character possess are yours as well.

2. Special powers you have in a dream are often a reflection of or symbolic of skills you have in waking life, such as the ability to see spirits.

3. Parties, birthday parties, or celebrating Christmas in a dream can be about your birth and the gifts you brought with you.

4. Receiving a gift in a dream often shows us the gifts we are to use as part of our life purpose.

5. Ships in a harbor can be a pun on birth (berth) and thus alert us that the dream is addressing our birth.

6. Dreams that symbolically show the birth imprint, such as leaving a building (often through a narrow opening such as a window) or coming down from a high place also typically comment on our gifts. Other examples would be landing on earth from a space ship or coming down in an elevator.

If you want to know more about how dreams show our life purpose, you can listen to the archived episode of my radio show about dreams, healing and guidance, “So You Think You’re Awake,” where we focus on dreams about life purpose.