A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming (32 page)

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b
Olly olly oxen free!
Use your intuition and look for dream

characters who may be symbols of your emotional difficulties

or repressed experiences. They may come in the form of sad or

injured people, children (your lost inner child?), or a less obvi-

ous symbol created by your imagination.

b
Let’s get together.
You find a person or thing that may be a

hidden aspect of yourself. Great! Try reuniting with it some-

how. It may be as easy as a passionate intention: “I want to

become whole.” For example, maybe your problem is lack of

energy.

If you come across a dream character who’s bursting with

energy, maybe you’ve found your lost energetic self. Try draw-

ing out its energy and absorb it through the pores of your skin.

b
Create experiences.
Create a visual to heal yourself. If you’re anxious, use dream incubation or a transportation technique

and journey to a pristine jungle waterfall. Before you bathe in

the water, tell yourself that the water heals anxiety. Find an

ex-boyfriend (your projection of him) and find closure to your

relationship. Think of the images and experiences that may

jolt you out of your emotional funk.

b
Use caution.
If you’ve gone through traumatic events in the

past, and addressing these problems alone is too much to han-

dle, seek out a therapist or professional. You can still use the

tool of lucid dreaming in conjunction with therapy. Don’t be

shy, tell your doc about lucid dreaming and what you plan to do.

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Physical Healing

and the Power of Images

Not infrequently the dreams show that there is

a remarkable inner symbolic connection between

an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem.

—Carl Jung

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If our minds are powerful enough to make ourselves sick, we’re pow-

erful enough to make ourselves well. Healing the body through a

lucid dream may sound like magic, but if we see the body and mind

as one connected entity, then of course the mind can influence the

body, and vice versa. Let’s pause here before you get the wrong idea.

Lucid dreaming is not a replacement for Western medicine, but it

can be used in conjunction with physical treatments or procedures.

In fact, many cancer centers offer guided imagery in conjunction

with chemotherapy. Guided imagery is similar to dream healing.

Patients are lead through waking world exercises in which they day-

dream intricate images, such as Pac Man wandering through the

body and eating all the cancer cells. These images are self-designed

to promote health. The American Cancer Association notes that, “A

review of forty-six studies that were conducted from 1966 to 1998

suggested that guided imagery may be helpful in managing stress,

anxiety, and depression and in lowering blood pressure, reducing

pain, and reducing some side effects of chemotherapy.” In addition

to cancer treatment, guided imagery has been proven to help patients

with allergies, diabetes, heart disease, and carpal tunnel.

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Daytime imagery is great, but lucid dreaming could have an

even bigger impact. As we’ve learned, the mind does not distin-

guish between a thought and a real life event. And a dream is

not just a thought or an image; it’s a tapestry woven from all five

senses—a full-fledged experience.

An Image is Worth a Thousand Words

The old cliché describes it perfectly. All you need to help heal

yourself in a lucid dream are a few specific images that you

can use to affect the body through the mind. In the end it’s up to

you to create the images and experiences that are personal to you,

that will help you heal. There are, however, some common visu-

alizations and techniques. While it’s effective to daydream these

experiences, we suggest trying them in a lucid dream.

The Colored Light

Light is a common archetype that dreamers experience when

healing themselves. Try feeling your specific intent to heal,

really feel it. Then imagine a healing glow emanating from your

hands or finger (think of E.T. phoning home). Most dreamers find

that the image of this light is all they need to heal, a powerful

punch from their subconscious.

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The Voodoo Doll

Try imagining your illness or obstacle as an object or group of

objects. You can either think up this metaphor yourself or ask

the dream to do it for you. For example, if your goal is to eradicate

a pain in your thigh, perhaps you want to dream of the pain as a

small fire burning down a pile of dry leaves. Find a nearby bucket

of water, douse the fire, and imagine extinguishing your waking

body’s pain at the same time.

The Healer

In your lucid dream, try

seeking out an animal or

I had been stressed because of school

human to do the healing for

and I was physically sick with the flu. I

you. This can be done with

fell asleep and became lucid. A man

intention or by calling out

approached me. He had these bright blue

eyes. He looked at me and said, “You’re

to the dream itself, “Bring

sick.” I suddenly felt very good. The feel-

me to someone who can

ing traveled through my body. It was like

help heal me.” Most likely,

nothing I have experienced. I was healed

someone will appear. This

by him. He grabbed my shoulders, and his

entity is a strong symbol:

eyes were becoming even more blue . . . I

your subconscious has sum-

was healed, I know that. I’m not sure if it

moned it and given it the

was me healing myself or maybe it was a

guide helping me. —GeORGe G.

strength and authority to

heal you.

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The Balancing Act

Your health is much more than just your physical well-being.

Your emotions, beliefs, and underlying view of the world

come into play. Your physical symptoms are often a result of an

emotional or spiritual imbalance. As our good friend Carl Jung

notes, “a definite connection does exist between physical and psy-

chic disturbances and . . . its significance is generally underrated.”

With dreaming, you can tap into your subconscious’s power to

heal. But don’t ignore your doctor’s orders. In conjunction with

physical treatments, dream healing can alleviate physical ailments

and can bring balance to your emotional, spiritual, and mental

well-being.

�

Summary

Images have a powerful influence over the mind and body.

• You can create specific, creative, visual experiences with lucid

dreaming in order to heal yourself.

• It seems to be possible to improve physical health with a dream.

• Use dreams to become mentally whole by reuniting with lost

parts of yourself.

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17

Dream Incubation

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Every one of us has in him

a continent of undiscovered character.

Blessed is he who acts the Columbus to his own soul.

—Theodore Ledyard Cuyler,

religious writer, liked flowers more than statues

Anna Kingsford was one of the very first English women

to boast a medical degree. A vegetarian, she was the only

student of her time to obtain a medical degree without

experimenting on animals. It was the late nineteenth century,

and as a strong-willed feminist, animal activist, and student of

Buddhism, life was an uphill battle for Kingsford. One morning,

in 1877, she recorded this dream:

Having fallen asleep last night while in a state of great

perplexity about the care and education of my daughter,

I dreamt as follows. I was walking with the child along the

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border of a high cliff, at the foot of which was the sea.

The path was exceedingly narrow, and on the inner side

was flanked by a line of rocks and stones. A voice of

someone close at hand suddenly addressed me; and on

turning my head I found standing before me a man in

the garb of a fisherman . . . He stretched out his hand to

take the child, saying he had come to fetch her, for that

in the path I was following there was room only for one.

“Let her come to us,” he added; “she will do very well

as a fisherman’s daughter.”

—Anna Kingsford, November 3, 1877

Sleep on it.

That’s the advice we often get when pondering over a big life

change. Of course, what is meant by the phrase is more along the

lines of “give it some time.” However, once you’ve mastered the

simple art of dream incubation, “sleeping on it” will mean some-

thing totally new.

Nowadays our society tends to see dreaming as something that

is happening to us. Dreams are inflicted upon us like a case of

the measles. We lie down, conk out, and maybe remember some

fragments in the morning. You’ve started to learn how to wake

up in your dreams, but what if you could decide what dream you

were going to have before you dreamed it? As you prepare for bed,

you can decide upon a dream location, a theme, or even a person

you want to meet. Instead of letting your subconscious call all the

shots, you can have some say in the matter, incubating a dream just

like a hen incubates her egg.

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