Finding Self-Awareness & Hidden Answers Through Dreamwork

This episode will discuss the impact our dreams have on what thoughts are occurring in our subconscious.  Learn how paying attention to the meanings and signs in them can help us better live our lives with greater self-awareness.  I will be joined by Debbie Spector Weisman, a Dream Coach, author & podcast host, who will discuss many of the most common symbols and meanings of our dreams.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, it's Penny Meginson from the Megansen Method, and welcome to Penny for Your Thoughts, where we discuss how our thoughts and mindset affect our life, our health, our happiness, and our performance. I'm so excited for this episode on finding self-awareness and hidden answers through dream work. And I'm joined by Debbie Specter Wiseman, who's a dream life coach, and she's the host of the Dream Power Radio. And we are going to be discussing the science behind our dreams, whether it's our subconscious trying to tell us something or show us something, and what we can actually learn through our dreams. So let's get started. Hello, Debbie. Welcome. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Oh, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

So, Debbie, tell me what led you to the work that you're doing now, working with dream life coaching.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

Okay, well, um, dreams and dream life coaching is actually my third career. I like to call it my third career. Uh, and what was my second career? Uh, my husband and I have a film and video post-production company. And God, I can't believe it's like over 20 years now. We were hired to be the post-production supervisors on a movie called What the Bleep Do We Know. Now, uh, if you don't know that movie, it was one of the most successful uh mind, body, spirit movies and movies about spirituality ever created. Uh, at the time we did it, though, I was just, you know, the hired hand doing the film part of it, knew nothing at all about the subject matter, and had up to that time been the ultimate fatalist. You know, my life was just the way it was, and that's how it went and everything. So it totally opened up my eyes to the realization that I could actually have some control over my life. And it started me on a search for self-exploration, which led me to dream work. I met a dream worker who re-igned my interest in dreams, uh, started doing dream circles, realized that my dreams were telling me things, uh, started studying with her to become a dream life coach. And I went into the study not so much to be a coach, but just because I wanted to learn more about dreaming. During that time, I had what I call the dream that changed my life. Uh a very, very short description. Uh I had always been very, very shy, very, very quiet uh for most of my life. And I had this dream, it was literally one word. The word was codpiece, because it was such an unusual word, I had to figure out what it meant. And I finally came to realize codpiece, if you don't know, it was a garment worn in the Middle Ages by men to protect their genital area, and was later rediscovered by 80s heavy metal rockers as a costume they used on them. Uh so I had to figure out, you know, why was I having this dream about a cod piece? What did it mean? And the long story short was I realized that a cod piece was something very strong, very hard that was used to protect something very precious. And I said, How does that relate to me? Well, I was using this shield of you know being quiet, shut, you know, shutting myself off from the world as a way of protecting myself. I was afraid that if people got to know me, they would hate me or wouldn't like me. And you'll be, and I realized that I didn't I realized I didn't want to be that way anymore. And I said, the way to do this is to break out of the cod piece. And when I realized that, it was like a light bulb went off in my head. And I realized, yeah, this is how I can start to move to be more self-expressive. And as if to confirm that, the following night I had another dream. This dream is again one word. The word was almond. And when I realized that I woke up, I laughed because I realized what is an almond? It is something that has a shell that's protecting something precious, you know, the almond, but it's a not as hard of a shell. So I said, that showed me I was on the right track. Uh so that since then, you know, I finished my studies, you know, went on to coach and said that if I if I if a dream can mean this much to me and I can get so much out of it, I have to show other people how their dreams can provide them with so much more information about themselves that they may not have realized.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Okay. And so what's the science behind a dream? I know you're not a scientist, but I know you've studied a lot of this.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

So speaking as a non-scientist, I will speak in non-scientific terms. Uh, but basically, during the day, uh, we live in our everyday life, our prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain that is active, it's the part that controls just our being like we are now. That's because we have to give thanks to our prefrontal cortex working properly for us. Well, at nighttime, the prefrontal cortex sort of shuts down, and what awakens the part of our tree, the part of our brain that awakens is the hippocampus, which is toward the back of our head, and the visual cortex, which is why we can see things when dreaming. Uh, and a lot of people say that, you know, the we we are still discovering where is the subconscious, you know, is it actually a part of us? Is it some outside being? You know, it's being studied all the time. But uh forces of dream work, you know, we like to say that, you know, the hippocampus will wake up, and that's where our subconscious lies in terms of dream work. Um, we go through several stages when we sleep. You know, we start out, it's the uh hypagogic stage. That's where you're sort of, you know, that wheezy, you're kind of half awake, half not. You know, then we go into several stages of sleep. One stage, the rem stage, which is rapid eye movement stage, uh, is where most of our dreams take place. Uh, and they're still studying this all all the time. Used to used to be said only dreams took place in only in the REM state, but it's now being shown, no, they can go through all phases, but most dreams are in the REM state. And uh that state can be, you know, 90 minutes, depends on our sleep cycle. Everybody's sleep cycle is a little bit different. Uh, but what that means is we are dreaming all the time, you know, depending, you know, six to nine dreams, depending on our sleep cycle at night, whether we remember them or not. And one of my uh favorite sayings is from uh the late dreammaker Jeremy Taylor, who said, all dreams are in the service to uh open our up open up ourselves to uh dreaming, learning, and discovering who we really are. And I kind of messed up that that's sort of a paraphrase of what he said. But I really follow that belief in that we can learn so much about ourselves by paying attention to our dreams.

SPEAKER_01 7:16

So, how is it that sometimes we remember our dreams and most of the time we don't? Well, how can you remember the dreams more? Um, what's behind that?

SPEAKER_00 7:26

Well, first of all, you will remember your dreams only if you believe they're important to remember. And unfortunately, most people don't. You know, we kind of live in a society that that for generations has kind of discounted the role of dreams, even though throughout history, dreams have played an enormous part in world history. You know, the first dream was recorded 7,000 years ago in China, and uh since then people have been remembering their dreams. Societies base their uh communities on dream work. Uh, the Iroquois Indian, for example, would get up every morning and have dream circles where they would share their dreams with each other and they plan their days based on their dreams. Um, people have been using dreams, you know, for creativity. I mean, can't tell you all the books and music and everything that's been created from people remembering their dreams. So if you don't think it's important, you're not going to remember your dreams. Uh, and then it's a matter of some people remember them naturally, they don't have to be prompted, they could just do it, they do it all the time. Other people have to be prompted, they have to tell themselves uh to remember their dream. I like to say, make a dream declaration before you go to bed, simply saying, tonight I'm gonna remember my dreams. And when you do that, it's kind of like exercising a muscle. You know, the first time you do it, maybe you'll remember your dream, maybe you won't. But the more you do it, you're building up that dreaming muscle. You're you're prompting your brain, because your brain is very smart, you're prompting your brain, okay, now I want to start paying attention. So help me pay attention.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Okay, okay. And so over time you'll find that you remember more and more of them. Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

And then once you do remember your dreams, uh, you could even go a step further. You can do what's called dream incubation, which means you can prompt yourself to to dream about something specific. You know, let's say, for example, you had a job offer and you're really not sure whether you want to take it or not. You could say, okay, tonight I wanted to do I dream, tell me if I should take this job. And you'll get a dream that will give you, you know, your answer, what your subconscious says. And I just want to talk a second about the difference between our subconscious mind and our conscious mind. Here we are talking the normal conversation. Uh, without even realizing it, we're having a thousand other conversations going on in our mind at the same time. I mean, we dream some, we talk, we not dream during the daytime, we think about 90,000 thoughts a day, going in and out, in and out. We're not even aware of them. It's just so frequent. It's like anybody watching me right now is probably saying, Oh, look, look at her curly hair. How how interesting, or, you know, I like her jacket, or what about that green background? That's kind of strange, or whatever. There are questions going on, even as you're watching and listening to this, your mind is just going a million miles a second with all kinds of random thoughts. During the nighttime, again, when our prefrontal cortex shuts down, all of those thoughts go away. So the thoughts, the ideas, the dreams you get in your subconscious are your true beliefs, your true thoughts, without all these filters that are going on during the day. So that's another reason why to pay attention to your dreams because they're giving you advice that you like in the daytime. If you were contemplating should I take this job or not? You might come up with a lot of reasons, yes or no, but they may be clouded by other clouded by other beliefs that are self-sabotaging you. So that's another reason.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Interesting, yeah. Um, what are some typical dreams that come up frequently for people and what what are the meanings behind them?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Okay, well, there are somebody figured out like 53 common dream categories uh that come up. I think one of the most common is uh the chase dream. Either you're chasing something or you're being chased by something. And these dreams are generally end up being called nightmares because if you're having a dream or you're being chased, you probably don't like it. It's probably not a very happy dream for you. Uh but they're very interesting because uh, like all nightmares, they really are giving you information. It's very helpful to yourself. So if you're having a chase dream, um, you know, you look, you ask yourself, you know, what are you what are you afraid of? You know, basically you're running away from something because you don't want to face it. Uh, it's something that a problem or an instance or even an aspect of yourself you don't want to come to grips with. So the easiest thing when you're having a dream is if you can turn around in your dream, if you if you're lucid enough to do it, turn around in your dream and just look at what's chasing you. And 99 times out of a hundred, it'll either run away or it'll be something and you'll look at it and say, Hey, there's no reason to be afraid of you. Why am I why am I running away? You know, let's be friends. Um, there are so many different solutions you could have from the chase dream. And if you're chasing something, uh you know you're aspiring to something, you're you're you're look trying to get at something that's just out of your grasp. And again, ask yourself, what is that? You know, and then and in in your daytime life, you can figure out what is it that I'm looking for.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Okay. What about dreams where you feel like you're going off a cliff or um on a roller coaster or something? I have clients that have talked about things like that. Right.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

Almost all dreams relate to what is going on in your life at that particular point. So if you're dreaming about a roller coaster, you're feeling uneasy, you're feeling like your world is unstable uh for some reason. So you could ask yourself, you know, what is it in my life that is making me feel unstable? Um, or making me feel like I'm a roller coaster goes around and around too, you know, like I'm not getting anywhere. I'm going up and down, but really not getting anywhere. And uh, you know, and you can explore that deeper, but that's giving you that clue. You know, it's telling you, this is what I need to pay attention to. Maybe I've been avoiding it, but the dream is telling you, stop avoiding it. It's time to really pay attention to it and dig deep and get a solution.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

And you talked about uh falling off a cliff. And the other part of dream work that's very important in terms of trying to understand the dream is the emotion behind the dream. If you're falling off a cliff and you're just going into some kind of abyss, um, you're feeling it generally means you're feeling lost um and out of control. And uh again, you know, the question is that the dream is telling you, you know, find out why this is happening and see if you can get a solution to it. Uh if you have the dream and you're falling off, but it's a happy dream, then that's almost like a flying dream where you're you're off into space, you're you're you're fearless, you're ready to just go explore the unknown. You're you're you're you're anxious to do that. So the emotion has a very powerful uh meaning in what had tell you telling you what the dream means.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

Okay, okay, so it's almost more about how you feel about what's happening than what's actually happening, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Well, it's right, it's it's always a component. I mean, as an example, uh again, one of the common uh symbols is uh being in a car. And let's say you're having a happy dream where you're driving the car and you're going in a straight line. Well, that means that you're pretty happy of where you're going in your life, you're you're headed in the right direction, and the dream is just giving you uh confirmation of this, so it can help boost your confidence because it's giving you the you know, yes, feel confident because you are going in the right direction. Well, let's say that you're having the same dream where you're actually in the driver's seat, but um you're feeling very fearful. Well, that dream is telling you that, well, maybe the direction direction you're going is not really the way you you should be going because your dream is telling you there's a reason to be wary of this direction. So maybe you want to uh take another look at it. And it's the same dream, same circumstances, but the emotion makes it a totally different outcome.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

Okay. Wow, that's really interesting. Can you think of an example of a client that you've worked with and how this dream life coaching helped this client?

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Sure. I had I had a client who came to me with a dream. Uh she was uh outside of a house and was trying to unlock the door and tried like a big key ring, lots of different keys on it, and kept trying to unlock the door and tried different keys and unlocked the door, couldn't get any of the keys to open. And then she realized that you know she was on the lower level, and she realized there's a there's you know, a set of stairs that go up to another level. She went up that set of stairs and took out a key, opened up the door, and it opened. I mean, look put the key and lock, and it opened. And she went in, and this house was filled with beautiful furnishings. It was it was really like unlike any house that she had. It wasn't her house. She didn't feel like it was her house, but she loved being in it and you know, woke up feeling happy that she was there, but was kind of confused. You know, what's this going on with, you know, these other things? Well, we talked a bit about again, you know, what was going on in her life, and she was having a relationship trouble, and it was uh she was getting very angry, and it was causing a lot of trouble because she was getting into fights. And we talked about it, and and again, one of the things I do when when I talk to a client about dreams, I don't tell them what the dream means. I try very hard not to tell them what the dream means. We talk until the client gets an understanding of, oh, what does this dream mean to me? And so we're talking, you know, and I said, Well, you know, tell me about you know this relationship. You know, what it was, how does it make you feel? You know, and she says, Yeah, I've been very, very angry. Well, a house in in dream symbolism tends to represent ourselves, our body. And the first floor of a house is more of our gut response, our animalistic response to things. So, and anger is symbol, is symbolic of that um emotion being in the bottom level where you just rant out, you're not in control, you don't feel like you're in control. When she got up to the second level, that was more of you know, her the center, her her being, her better self. And she opened up the door and she said, you know, you said that the anger was the lower part of my body, uh but but this could this possibly be my heart? And I said, Well, you know, let's let's explore that. And she said, you know, she realized that when I come from a place of loving as opposed to a place of anger, things are so much better. And the relationship was so much better when I wasn't raging out like I was, and I realized that you know when we have this loving relationship, it works out so much better. And she came to that conclusion. I said, okay, what are we going to do about the anger? And that's where the coaching part of what I do comes in, because then I have techniques to help my clients, you know, deal with emotions like anger or fear or lack of self-confidence, um, you know, although being unsure about themselves. Um, that's where the coaching part. So we worked on dealing with her anger at that point, and then she was able to work things out after that.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Okay. And how did her dreams change over time? I I I assume you were still following the dreams as you were working with her.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

Well, uh, yeah, we you know, we had a couple of sessions and then you know she was satisfied, so she went away. Um, but yeah, she felt much better. I mean, she was able to come back and say, yes, her her relationship was on a much better level now that she was able to control those anger issues. So that dream really did did help her.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

Great. Now, do you have any tips for our listeners? What could they, if they want to try to start paying attention to their uh dreams? First, you said uh you need to really recognize that it's important so that you your brain starts to try to remember them.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Um yeah, well, yeah. Well, I have I have a a um steps on how to remember your dreams blog on on my website. And basically, um, without going into the huge detail of it, obviously the first step is to realize that dreams are important. Uh, the second step is to prepare your sleep space as a place of honor. You know, tell it's it's like setting, giving your brain that information that dreams are important, and I am honoring the dream by making my sleep space as comfortable, as pleasurable, as wonderful as it could be. And it's everything from you know, having the best linen. You could have um using aromatherapy, you know, having you know nice scents around that that also stimulate your your dreaming mind. Um you can play pleasant music. I mean the one thing about dreams is you don't want to have any electronics around you um when you're before you go to bed, uh either you know, watching TV or looking at your Kindle or anything like that. You know, keep that away from your bed space. Uh and then once you sleep, once you're once you are dreaming in bed, have a dream journal, something by your bedside, so that as soon as you wake up, you can write your dream down. Or if you're technologically inclined, they they actually have dream apps where you can just press the button, it will automatically record your dream, uh, which makes it very easy. Uh, I'm old school, I like the journal. Um, but the important thing that when you first wake up, when you're in the hypnagogic state of dreaming, um you want to just lie still and think about the dream before you move, because even the act of moving can just knock that dream out of your your consciousness. So as soon as you have an idea of what that dream means, or not have you the details of the dream, as soon as you can remember it by repeating it to yourself over and over, then write it down or push on that dream app and record it. Uh, then later on, when you wake up and look at the dream, you may uh um remember more things about it. And then you can look down and look at it and say, okay, what is this dream trying to tell me? And sometimes dreams are very self-obvious. You know, you can look at and say, Oh, yeah, that's exactly what the dream. I understand this. A lot of times they're just symbols that don't make sense to you, or situations that don't make sense to you, or you're in strange places that don't make sense to you. And if you're troubled, then you come to somebody like me. I can help you understand your dream and deal with it. Okay, and how can our listeners find you? Okay, well, my website is thedreach.net. Not com.net, the dreamcoach.net, all one word. And uh my email is Debbie at the dreamcoach.net. Uh on my website, I have uh there's a little button at the top you can click to schedule a complimentary uh dream discovery session. So if you're curious about dreams and not sure if you know you really want to start remembering them, or or if you have a dream that you need a quick understanding of or want to know more about dreams, just click that on. I'm very happy to talk to everyone because uh you know my mission is to empower people to realize the power of their dreams and see what they really can do for you.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

That's great. Thank you so much, Debbie, for your time. And that was so interesting. And I can't wait to start remembering some of my dreams and getting in touch with you. And of course, if anyone reaches out to me, um, you guys know where to find me at Meganson Method across all social media, and um I will get you in touch with Debbie. So thank you so much, and uh till next time.