Category: Course information

Too Much Mindfulness? Try Dreaming While Awake Instead

By Dr. Leslie EllisJanuary 30, 2021 2

In a way, we are always dreaming… and this is a good thing.

Proponents of mindfulness meditation call it our monkey mind: the crazy, undisciplined way our thoughts jump around when we allow our mind to wander freely. It used to be thought that when we were not focusing our minds on something specific, our brains simply idled there, switched off. Similarly, it used to be thought that, with the exception of the occasional dream, our minds were largely silent while we slept. In fact, we are always dreaming.

Under the surface of waking thought, and throughout the entire night (not just in REM sleep), our brains are dreaming… and this is a good thing. There is a common misconception that dreaming is a nonsensical activity that serves no useful purpose. But as we discover more about the nature of our brains, we find that dreaming is implicated in the crucial tasks of sorting through the massive onslaught of information we take in each day, making meaning of it, recording what’s important in such a way that we can access it when needed, and at the same time, softening the emotional charge associated with life’s most impactful events. And if that’s not enough, dreams do all this with creativity and economy.

What might be even more surprising is that these dream-like activities happen during the day as well as at night. Neuroimaging now enables us to watch the brain in action, and in doing so, brain researchers discovered a surprising thing. For their experiments, brain researchers generally ask their participants to perform a task or think about something specific, and then see which areas of the brain light up. What researchers began to notice is that in between specific tasks, the brain does not go dark and silent – a grouping of other areas of the brain light up in a fairly predictable pattern. This has become known as the default mode network (DMN).

For proponents of mindfulness, the DMN is to be avoided in favor of present moment attention. The DMN can be associated with rumination and depression so we best not let our mind wander unchecked. In modern times, many of us curtail the neural wanderlust by keeping our minds very busy. Much of the time we might historically have spent mind-wandering is now taken up with screen time. Even while walking in the forest or going on a long drive, many of us will plug into a podcast rather than allow our minds to roam as freely as our bodies. In this quest for constant productivity and focus, however, much is lost.

In their recent book, When Brains Dream, Tony Zadra and Robert Stickgold suggest the activities of the DMN are important for priming the brain for dreaming. When our brains get a break, our thoughts wander along loosely associative paths scanning thoughts, experiences and memories; they seem to be queuing up what we will dream about later. When awake and busy, we are taking information in at such a rate that we don’t have the mind space to sort and make meaning of it all. We need to do this when we have down time, so our dreams can then do their job of integrating important new information into our associative memory networks. If we don’t allow our mind enough time to wander, it will do so as soon as we lay down to sleep at night. Zadra and Stickgold suggest that this might explain those times when our minds can’t shut down for the night, and instead zigzag their away through a wide array of loosely connected thoughts before finally allowing us to drift off to sleep.

We can catch hold of these pre-dreaming processes during the day. In many ways they are indistinguishable from nocturnal dreams. In one experiment, people were shown texts from dreams and from daydreams, and if the latter were emotionally-toned, they were indistinguishable from regular dreams. The Jungian analyst Arnold Mindell espoused the idea that we are always dreaming, and that we can catch hold of the dreaming through indirect little clues he charmingly called flirts. He developed process work as a way to become aware of the flow of dreaming while awake. We receive subtle cues all the time, often through our bodies, in the form of sensations, hunches, flickers of visions and intuition. Mindell does not view the dreams in sleep and waking as distinct from each other, except with respect to the ego, which is much more in charge during waking hours. During dreaming, all figures seem to have equal importance, leading Mindell to call our dreammaker “deeply democratic.”

In a recent (December 2020) edition of the online journal Aeon, Rubin Naiman wrote a beautiful essay lamenting the loss in our modern world of REM/dreamtime. He also believes that we are always dreaming, and offers a perfect celestial metaphor for this: “Although we believe dreams are like stars that emerge only at night, we know that stars are always present, even when occluded by daylight. Likewise, dreams are always present as an undercurrent in consciousness, even when obscured by ordinary waking. Jung referred to this undercurrent as the waking dream. In contrast to daydreams, which are about escaping current experiences, the waking dream calls us more deeply into those experiences and undercurrents.”

Naiman suggests we can access the waking dream world through many avenues, including art, spiritual practices, by lingering at the border of waking and sleep, and via active imagination in Jungian therapy. Naiman concludes his essay with the beautiful notion that dreaming can infuse the way we live our lives and lead us to our authentic selves. “Dreaming, if you’re so minded, can become a way of life, or at least a regular practice. The waking dream is about using our dream eyes, the ones we see with in REM/dreams, in broad daylight. It can loosen the grip of wake centrism, and offer glimpses of the world behind the world. In this way, it reveals a deeper sense of who we are, tapping into the mythic backstory of our lives.”

So next time you settle onto your cushion to become mindful, try cultivating a little mindlessness instead. Allow the mind’s default mode to take over, and let it gambol and play as it naturally will. Sink down below the shiny surface of things and dive into the undercurrent that enriches and underlies your life. Be sure to slip below the regular level of thought where, let loose, the inner critic will want to take over and berate you for being lazy and unproductive. Rest assured that doing ‘nothing’ may be the most important thing for your mind and body in that moment.

Jungian dreamwork basics from John van Eenwyck at the Jung Platform Summit

By Dr. Leslie EllisJanuary 15, 2021

Jung wrote vast amounts of material about dreams, so much that to approach the topic can be intimidating. In the first lecture for the free dream summit now taking place on The Jung Platform, John van Eenwyck pares this enormous topic down to a few helpful ideas about how to work with your dreams.

The first thing van Eenwyck says is that we don’t really know what dreams are. This echoes Jung’s idea that we should approach each dream as if it were a totally unknown object. In particular, we cannot assume we know anything about the meaning of the dream images of someone else. That said, Jung saw dreams as complementing waking consciousness by presenting the opposite of our day-world view. For example, a priest who lives an exemplary life dreams of dark, sinful behaviors at night. Our dreams often pick up on our shadow, or our unlived life.

To engage with your dreams, you need to record not only your dreams, but also their context. We all know that keeping a dream journal involves writing down our dreams, ideally as quickly as possible after dreaming them, and in as much detail as you can recall, because otherwise dreams often slip away. Van Eewyck also suggests that before going to sleep, we jot down a few lines about the main events or what occupied our thoughts during that day. This way, we can relate the dream content to the events of the previous day, the so-called ‘day residue.’

He also suggests we avoid editing our dream material. Write down everything that you can about your dreams upon waking – from having no dreams that you can recall, to recording vague sensations or emotions, and from small dream snippets all the way to epic dream stories. When we do this over time, we build an archive of our dream life, something we can refer back to.

To work with another’s dream, we might first look at the setting: who or what is in the dream, and where does the dream take place? Then we can ask into the dreamer’s associations; what the dream elements mean to the dreamer is far more relevant than what we, as the dreamwork, may think a dream image means. After this, we can engage in amplification of the dream, looking at what stories and myths might relate to the dream, and then checking with the dreamer to see if anything resonates for them.

Lastly, the biggest takeaway for van Eenwyck is Jung’s suggestion that we dream the dream onward. This is particularly true for nightmares because by definition, we wake from them in the middle of the action, before the dream has reached a resolution. He provides a poignant example of Ruby, a client who had severe Lupus and was given six months to live. In her frequent nightmares of a pursuer who planned to rape and kill her, Ruby would work with van Eenwyck to dream the dream on to a better place. The last time she had this dream, she turned toward her would-be killer and it was a 9-year-old boy looking for help to find the way home. She did help the boy, and not only did the nightmares cease, but she also experienced a lifting of the severity of the disease, and lived for many years beyond what her doctors predicted.

Was this spontaneous remission due to the dreamwork? Or did the dream reflect the unexpected turn for the better in her health? Like so many things about dreams, we can’t know for sure. Van Eenwyck concludes that we don’t waste too much energy looking for definitive ideas about dreams, but instead to enjoy them. He concludes, “The essence of dream analysis is play.”

Join me and 11 other dreamworkers Jan. 14-17 for a free dream summit exploring the fascinating world of dreaming. Look for my talk on why and how to use dreams in clinical practice on Jan. 16 at 11am PDT.

The nocturnal therapist: An argument for turning toward our dreams

By Dr. Leslie EllisDecember 27, 2020 1

Dreams have inherent therapeutic value. Why don’t we tap into them more?

By Dr. Leslie Ellis

Dreaming is therapeutic. Is there a way to make it more so? Unequivocally, yes. Much like therapy, the more we invest our time and energy into our dreams, the more helpful they will be. This is not a new idea, but one that is gaining a broader spectrum of supportive evidence, moving beyond clinical case studies to include the realms of neuroscience and traumatology. Our brains and bodies have a natural tendency towards health and wholeness, and dreams, even the so-called bad ones, are implicated in the process of maintaining our emotional and spiritual health.

There are the obvious cases. For example, a few years back, a client was having a particularly difficult time in her life and feeling wholly unsupported by those closest to her. She dreamt that a large bear of a woman gathered her up in her lap and held her close, rocking her and telling her everything was going to be just fine. This dream was vivid and visceral, and she woke from it feeling soothed and hopeful.

Most dreams are not quite so obviously helpful. For example, this summer, my beloved cat Shadow disappeared and I have not seen him since. Shortly after his disappearance, he came to me often in my dreams, at first so realistic I felt I could reach out and touch his silky fur. Later, his dream presence was more distant, his image starting to break up. These dreams are more like how therapy really is – helpful but painful too because it brings us face to face with what we are up against. Therapy is typically a process that allows us to consider, feel deeply into, and ultimately accept and move through aspects of life that we find challenging. Therapy includes many supportive moments, akin to the bear hug woman, but it is rarely as simple as that.

I have spent more than 20 years as a clinical therapist who welcomes and explores client dreams as an intrinsic part of the process. I have also paid attention to my own dreams. I understand first-hand the tremendous value dreams have in alerting us to what we need to attend to. I have been astounded at times by their wonderfully creative way of offering us new perspectives on tired old situations. But rarely are they clear and simple like the bear hug woman dream. Instead, their helpfulness usually comes in two ways. One is an automatic sorting and emotional processing that goes on in the background while we sleep. The other is via active engagement with dream images, a relational process that takes time and effort on our part. We can do this dreamwork on our own or in the company of a dream partner, group or therapist, or do both: begin exploring on our own, and then with the help of others. I recommend both.

My point is that while dreams are naturally therapeutic, we can greatly enhance the help they bring us if we spend a little time and make an effort to engage with them. And yet so many people ignore this nocturnal resource. Why is that?

I can offer several possible reasons. First, dreams often feel too mysterious and unapproachable. For example, recently I had a dream where there was a clear felt sense that I had been searching the world and had finally found what I was looking for. The rest of the dream is more vague, and only partially recalled… but my holy grail seemed to be in the clear turquoise waters of a shallow lagoon in some faraway place, and maybe was a school of fish. Then I was a disembodied watcher floating above the dream scene looking down on a white car with strange gull-wing doors flung wide open. This image has a spiritual feel to it, the white car reminding me of snow angels.

The dream also brings to mind my very first and most vivid lucid dream — I was swimming underwater and the realization that I didn’t seem to need to air sparked my lucid awareness of dreaming. To process this dream, I had a meandering conversation with my dream partner, and gained a better sense of how this dream might be “just what I was looking for.” Some helpful pointers: the car was floating, a vehicle, a mediator of sorts between the air above and the water below. I made plans to draw the image to engage with it further. Rarely do dreams offer up clear and easy answers.

Then again, this is also similar to therapy, at least in the way I practice it. I do not see myself as in the business of providing opinions, solutions or answers. I am an active, empathic listener, and a supportive advocate for my clients. But this support comes in a way that ideally enables them to hear their own voices more clearly, to plumb their depths, to face their demons and if needed, to metabolize embodied trauma and memories that may be holding them back. But I don’t view therapy as an excavation project in which we search the past for sources of pain. I believe the best working material for therapy comes from the present, and attending to what arises now that needs attention (which of course will include the past). Dreams very often bring up what’s most salient, emotionally-charged and related to current challenges. They can also point the way forward.

This brings me to another reason I believe many people turn away from their dreams despite their inherent therapeutic value. It’s the same reason clients often arrive in therapy only after they’ve reached a point of desperation, their inner demons shouting too loudly to be ignored any longer. We tend to dream of what we repress, those aspects of our lives that can be difficult to face. When we wake from a dream, I expect there is some level of awareness that the dream is telling us something we need to hear but don’t want to hear. Dreams are like homeopathic medicine – a small dose of what is ailing us, a direct experience of our problem. They are an irritant that has the potential to begin the process of response, and ultimately of understanding, metabolization and healing. But first we need to turn toward them and have the courage to let them in.

Dr. Leslie Ellis offers dream exploration courses online to clinicians and anyone interested in engaging with their own dreams. She is author of A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy, and many articles and book chapters on embodied experiential dreamwork and focusing. Join her for a free talk on dreams and therapy Jan. 16, on the Jung Platform’s Dream Summit.

Getting answers while you sleep: How incubation seeds helpful dreams

By Dr. Leslie EllisNovember 28, 2020

If you are wrestling with a particularly challenging issue and no amount of effort yields an answer, sometimes ‘sleeping on it’ can bring insight that eluded you during the day. If you deliberately ask your dream-self to help you solve problems, the help that comes from such inquiry offers multiple and surprising benefits.

Some notes on the history of dream incubation

Dream incubation has a long history, far beyond the scope of this blog. But there is some wisdom to be gleaned from the past. According to Patton (2004), the dream incubation rituals of the Ancient Near East and Greece had three main elements: intentionality, locality and epiphany. Without at least two of these elements, a dream can’t be considered incubated.

Intentionality is the understanding that the dream incubation was entered into deliberately and for a specific purpose, most often healing. There was often a ritual preparation, cleansing, possibly supplication to the gods for a therapeutic dream. It was understood that such dreams were coming from the gods and not the person dreaming them. Patton wrote that “incubation is a process one enters deliberately, intentionally, on one’s own behalf, with an eye to hatching dreams of power” (p. 203).

Locality speaks to the fact that dreams were considered to be in relationship with the place one dreams them. Dreams were originally seen as “place events… the dream’s setting is radically connected to the place where the dream is dreamed” (p. 204). Dreamers attending the ancient temple of Asklepios, for example, would sleep in the abaton with all the other people hoping to have a healing dream. The places chosen for such rituals were understood to be where the veil between the material and spiritual world was more permeable.

Epiphany involved the realization of a dream incubation and subsequent sharing of the dream encounter. Successfully-incubated dreams were seen by the Ancient Near East and Greeks as visitations from the gods, marked by the appearance of the actual god in the dream, or another form which the god often assumed, i.e. Asklepios as serpent. The process was often completed with some kind of offering or artwork commemorating the dream and offering thanks. After a dream in which the gods paid a visit, they were understood to inhabit the dreamer for a time, or for a lifetime, bringing about fusion of the larger and smaller self.

Patton writes eloquently of the relationship between the dreamer and the gods:

“Although incubated dreams certainly do not “belong” to human beings any more than any other dreams do, they are far from impersonal. For our part, we are far from passive receptacles for the self-expression of the gods through dreaming. We contribute to the incubation a delicate yet powerful web of experience, memory, will, fear, awe, and desire where the divine dream can take place. When the spirit of place hatches dreams through mortals, it also dreams about us and for us as individuals, as a tribe, and as a race.

Thus the process of incubation, viewed through this phenomenology— or constructive historical theology—emerges neither as conjuring magic (whereby the dreamer is all powerful) nor as a kind of slavery to the night terrors sent by a celestial despot (whereby the visiting dreamed god is all powerful), but instead as a delicate relationship, as paradoxical and symbiotic as any other two-sided affair.”

Dream Incubation Goes Beyond Problem-Solving

Whether or not you ascribe to the view that dreams are messages from the gods, it does appear that dreams bring us many gifts, especially if we make a point of deliberately asking them. Dream incubation research shows that the resulting dreams go beyond problem-solving and can bring insight, lift mood and point to health concerns. In a controlled experiment by White and Taytroe (2003), 96 frequent dreamers rated waking and dream moods over ten days and recorded their most vivid dream for each night. Half incubated a dream before sleeping and half upon waking. Night dream incubation participants were more likely to report that their distress around their problem was reduced, and that it felt both more solvable and improved in some way. Night dream incubation also improved mood, reducing both anxiety and depression over ten days relative to the control group.

The researchers used Delaney’s (1996) simple dream incubation technique:

“Write down a one-line question, phrase, or request that expresses something you think is important for you to know or do in order to help you solve your personal problem. It is not a wish that something would happen to another person or to circumstances beyond your control that are part of your focus problem. Examples are:

Help me understand my friend _____,” “What is really going on between _____ and me?,” “Give me an idea for my physics project,” “How can I get motivated to do _____?,” and “How can I improve my study habits?”

You might think of several phrases before you find one that seems most direct and appropriate. Be as specific as you can to your focus problem.”

An Embodied Dream Incubation Practice

If you would prefer a more embodied method, here is one I developed based on focusing. While it doesn’t work for me all the time, on occasion it has produced profound dreams in direct response to my inquiry. Here’s a script to guide your incubation process:

Start by allowing your body to choose a particular topic or issue that you would like your dream to respond to. Check inside for what seems to most want your attention. Get a sense of how it lives in your body – where it is located, and how you would describe it. See if you can also get a sense of what it might be about. Spend a couple of minutes with this – an example might be: a knot in my stomach that seems to contain some anger to do with my relationship. Or a fluttery sensation in my throat that feels like anxiety about the pandemic. As you attend to this felt sense, ask your dream to offer something relevant, a way forward. Stay with the embodied question, and the actual felt sense in your body for a few minutes, ideally not too long before sleeping, and then let it go. You can do this for several nights in a row if your dreams don’t respond immediately. Treat all the dreams that come within the next few days as if they are responding to your query.

Dreams and the body: Early warning signs

In another dream incubation study, Harvard psychologist Dierdre Barrett (1993) examined the effects of dream incubation for creative problem solving. She found that among the 76 participants, roughly half of their dreams were deemed relevant to the question posed in the incubation process. Of those, about 70% of the dreams were rated, both by the dreamer and by independent raters, as offering a solution to the problem. Barrett found that incubation is most successful with queries of a personal nature, and that medical and body-related questions can also generate helpful dream responses.

There is strong support for the notion that the early warning signs for some medical conditions come to us first in our dreams. According to neurologist Oliver Sacks (1996), dreams are, “directly or distortedly, reflections of current states of body and mind.” Neurological disorders can alter dreaming processes in quite specific ways, and these can vary from person to person. Sacks gives the example of a patient with an occipital angioma who knew that if his dreams turned from their usual black and white to red, he was about to have a seizure. In other examples: the loss of visual imagery in dreams is a possible precursor to Alzheimer’s, and recovery dreams can presage remission from multiple sclerosis. Sacks hypothesized that the dreaming mind is more sensitive than the waking mind to small changes in the body, and so appears prescient because it picks up subtle early cues.

In some cases, this early warning provided by dreaming can be lifesaving. Dreamworker Jeremy Taylor (1992) offered the example of a woman who dreamt of a purse of rotting meat. The dream was so disturbing to her and her dream group members, the woman sought a diagnostic pap smear which turned out to be negative. She insisted on further testing which revealed she had a particularly aggressive form of uterine cancer that would have killed her had she not caught it in time. At the time of the dream, she had no symptoms and was about to go on a trip – she credits the dream and the dreamwork for saving her life.

Taylor said that all dreams can be read on many levels, but that every dream contains some reference to the body that is dreaming it. In some dreams, houses can be seen as analogies for the body – for example, the wiring is our nervous system, the plumbing our digestive system, windows are eyes and so on. This embodied level of the dream is always worth considering, especially if the images seem particularly ominous or insistent, like the purse of rotting meat.

However, dreams are not always so serious, and only very rarely are they warnings of something deadly. I am hoping that when you try these dream incubation practices, you bring a spirit of curiosity and play. Love and enjoy your dreams and they will often respond in kind, bringing new insights to old problems and lifting up your mood along the way.

Dr. Leslie Ellis is author of A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy. She offers clinical dreamwork courses online.

References

Barrett, D. (1993). The “Committee of Sleep”: A Study of Dream Incubation for Problem Solving. Dreaming, 3(2), 115-122.

Delaney, G. (1996). Living your dreams. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Patton, K. C. (2004). “A great and strange correction”: Intentionality, locality and eipiphany in the category of dream incubation. University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from: 075.080.230.207 on March 03, 2018.

Sacks, O. (1996). Neurological dreams. In Barrett (Ed.), Trauma and dreams, p. 212-216. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

White, G. L. & Taytroe, L. (2003). Personal Problem-Solving Using Dream Incubation: Dreaming, Relaxation, or Waking Cognition? Dreaming, 13(4).

Dreams of Bereavement: How Your Dreams Help You Grieve

By October 25, 2020 5

Bereavement dreams are common and they help us through the grief process. Surprisingly, dreams following the loss of a beloved person or pet are mostly positive.

Earlier this summer, already made more cruel by the distress and dislocation brought on by the pandemic, I lost my beloved cat Shadow, a massive Maine Coon that was so majestic he seemed almost mythical. He was an outdoor cat who made the rounds of the neighborhood and had many admirers. He left one day never to return…. except in my dreams.

While I still help out hope that he was just holed up in someone else’s home being showered with affection, I was also very concerned, especially when I was shown that a prowling cougar crossed the path of my neighbor’s security camera. In my dreams, Shadow came every night at first, sleeping in the crook of my knees as was his habit. But this dream-Shadow was a glossier, shinier version, the picture of radiant health.

As the summer wore on with no sign of him, I began taking down the posters and admitting to myself that I may never see him again. He still returned in my dreams, but he was increasingly distant and a more faded, tattered version of himself. It was as though he was moving on, and I guess, so was I. Admitting to myself that it was highly unlikely I would see him again, I even got another cat (who is never allowed out except on a leash). It feels as though the dreams helped me, especially the early ones – as though my cat was coming back to reassure me.

Dreams following the death of a loved one, be it a pet or a person, are quite common. They are not always comforting, but they do seem to move the grief process forward. A woman who I did some dreamwork with told me of her dreams after the death of her father, which was a shock made more difficult by the fact that because of her family religious tradition, she was not allowed to see the body and pay her final respects. She told me her father would come often in dreams, with no apparent idea that he was deceased. He would talk to her in these dreams as though all was well, and she would have to live through the fact of his death over and over again every night. Was this helpful? Her feelings about this are decidedly mixed. But she did feel that the dreams helped her overcome the shock of the loss, and to accept its reality.

Dr. Joshua Black studies dreams of grief and loss. He recently investigated the question: “Why are some dreams of the deceased experienced as comforting, while others are distressing?” In his study (2020) with 216 participants whose partner had died, he and his colleagues found that bereavement dreams appear to serve at least three distinct functions: they can assist with processing trauma; they can serve to maintain a bond with the deceased; and/or they can help regulate emotion. Taken together, these functions may “actively facilitate adjustment to bereavement.”

Black became interested in grief when he had a visitation from his father 3 months after his death. His dad had died suddenly, plunging Black into grief he described as numbness, as if all the color had drained from the world. In the dream, his dad had an uncharacteristic lightness about him. In an interview, Black (Bell, 2020) said, “It was the first time I saw him peaceful.” In the dream, he got to tell his dad he missed and loved him and after that, all the color in his world returned. This ultimately led to Black’s decision to research grief dreams rather than follow his plan to teach elementary school. In his dissertation (2018), he studied who dreams of the deceased and why, and found that the desire to maintain continuing bonds is a factor that was not previously considered, and that attachment styles may play a role in who dreams of lost loved ones.

Among Black’s other findings, one of the most surprising is that dreams following loss are not only common, but overwhelmingly positive. After the loss of a spouse, 86% will dream about them over the following year, while 78% will dream of their lost pet within 6 months of their death. More surprising is that 92% of those dreaming of deceased partners will have positive dreams, compared with 44% negative dream content. With pets, fully 91% will have positive dream content.

Black said initial grief dreams tend to offer reassurance, just as Shadow did with me. He was glossy and felt so alive and present it was as if I could reach out and touch him. When these dream figures keep returning, it brings a sense of continuity of connection. And toward the end of life, lost loved ones often come to help ease the life-death transition. So while grief dreams can be painful, most often they help us through the pain of loss.

Some further resources:

Help for nightmare sufferers: CLICK HERE

A short focused course on nightmare treatment for clinicians. CLICK HERE

References

Bell, K. (2020). The Dream Journal Podcast, Sept. 26, 2020 episode with Dr. Joshua Black. Retrieved from ksqd.org/grief-dreams-with-dr-joshua-black

Black, J. (2018). Dreams of the deceased: Who has them and why. Dissertation, Brock University.

Black, J., Belicki, K., & Emberley-Ralph, J. (2019). Who dreams of the deceased? The roles of dream recall, grief intensity and openness to experience. Dreaming, 29 (1), 57-78.

Black, J., Belicki, K., Piro, R., & Hughes, H. (2020). Comforting Versus Distressing Dreams of the Deceased: Relations to Grief, Trauma, Attachment, Continuing Bonds, and Post-Dream Reactions. OMEGA – Journal of Death and Dying.

New Study Examines Complex Relationship Between Nightmares, Suicide and Depression

By Dr. Leslie EllisAugust 5, 2020

A recent study refutes the research which shows nightmares are indicators of increased risk of suicide. A group of Swedish researchers (Hedström et al., 2020) studied a group of more than 40,000 participants with an average follow-up of 19 years and found the rate of suicide linked to depression was not worsened by nightmares. Their study “revealed no significant effects of nightmares on suicide incidence,” but rather that depression was more prevalent among those who suffer from nightmares.

The conclusion the authors reach regarding the nightmare-suicide link is so at odds with what has been reported in several studies, I asked Dr. Michael Nadorff, an expert in this area, to comment. He wrote:

The study, in my opinion, was clearly underpowered which is why they are saying there was no effect despite nightmares more than doubling suicide risk even after controlling for depression, anxiety, hypnotic use, and a bunch of other factors. Uncontrolled frequent nightmares put participants at more than five times greater risk.

Despite some methodological flaws, Nadorff and other reviewers noted that this paper offered much that was worthy of note. For example, Hedström and colleagues found that treatment of both depression and nightmares is warranted when these conditions co-occur. The researchers concluded that nightmare treatment “may provide additional therapeutic benefit.”

Other findings of interest related to suicide and depression: women are overrepresented among those who report depressive symptoms, and are more often smokers with lower levels of physical activity, and they suffer more insomnia symptoms. However, in the large sample, it is men who were more likely to commit suicide. Of the 69 suicide deaths reported in the sample over the 19-year follow-up period, 64 percent were men and 36 percent were women. There was a 12-fold increase in suicide risk associated with depression, and the researchers found that the presence of nightmares did not increase that risk.

Still, increasing nightmare frequency predicts greater likelihood of depression: “The odds of depression during follow-up was higher among those who suffered from nightmares than among those who did not.” Therefore, while nightmares do not appear to directly increase suicide risk, the study finds that “nightmares may reflect pre-existing depression.”

The researchers recommend nightmare treatment for several reasons: The distress caused by nightmares, especially when this is severe enough to compromise functioning and well-being, is linked to anxiety and depression. The effectiveness of nightmare treatment has been well documented. So as part of treatment for those with both nightmares and other diagnoses, the direct treatment of nightmares can help reduce some of the distressing symptoms.

Another interesting note is that a recent study shows that the propensity for nightmares may be genetic, but that nightmares in and of themselves do not indicate a predisposition for mental illness. The recent study by Ollila and colleagues (2019) on the genetics of nightmares showed that psychiatric illness predicts nightmares, but that nightmares do not predispose a person to psychiatric problems.

Hedström AK, Bellocco R, Hössjer O, Ye W, Lagerros YT, Åkerstedt T. (2020). The relationship between nightmares, depression and suicide, Sleep Medicine: X, https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.sleepx.2020.100016.

Ollila HM, Sinnott-Armstrong N, Kantojärvi K, et al. (2019). Nightmares share strong genetic risk with sleep and psychiatric disorders. BioRxiv 836452; doi:https://doi.org/10.1101/836452.

No need to fear the Old Hag: Sleep Paralysis briefly explained

By Dr. Leslie EllisJuly 5, 2020

Locals will warn you never to sleep on your back in Newfoundland, or risk a visit from the Old Hag. She steals in on the night fog just as you are falling asleep. She is an apparition that crawls up from the foot of your bed and sits on your chest so heavily you can’t breathe or move. Sometimes she may try to seduce you, other times, to kill you. These terrifying experiences are so common in Newfoundland, they have become the subject of a tv series aptly called Hag. They are also the subject of research into the relationship between sleep paralysis and folklore.

There is a physiological explanation for sleep paralysis. And there are good reasons these peculiar events feel like visitations by the Old Hag or some other kind of apparition. Sleep paralysis episodes are not limited to Newfoundland and in fact, are fairly common worldwide and throughout human history: roughly 8 percent of us will experience one in our lifetime, and some will have recurrent episodes. Students and psychiatric patients have a much higher prevalence of about 30 percent, likely because it is more common in people who are sleep-deprived and stressed. Sleep paralysis is not a nightmare, but rather a form of sleep disturbance, a parasomnia.

Sleep Paralysis is normal: terrifying but harmless

The most important thing to know is that sleep paralysis is normal. Having an episode doesn’t mean you are losing touch with reality or being visited by the ghost of an old sea witch. These legends, in various guises, have been around since Sumerian times as a way to make sense of those frightening occasions when we wake up paralyzed, unable to move from the neck down. What you may not realize is that we all experience sleep paralysis every night, but for the most part we dream our way right through it.

During the REM sleep cycle most rich in dreaming, our body releases a chemical that makes our voluntary muscles go limp. It’s our body’s way of protecting us from thrashing around as we fight our dream dragons. In fact, it’s more of a problem if the paralysis doesn’t happen – this leads to REM sleep behaviour disorder, the dangerous propensity to physically act out one’s dreams, and it can be a precursor to Parkinson’s disease.

If you suffer from sleep paralysis, it helps to know that this is just your mind waking up from the state of dreaming before your body, when it should be the other way around. Or your body drifting right into REM sleep, and your muscles going lax before your mind has truly shut down for the night. This can happen for various reasons, mostly to do with insufficient or irregular sleep, and most often it is a benign physiological event. Terrifying but harmless.

It also helps to know that sleep paralysis episodes are short, typically lasting about 20 seconds. It may feel like much longer if you are frozen in fear as the Old Hag bears down on your chest. If something like this happens again, try to take some long deep breaths and wait for the images and sensations to subside. Remind yourself that it won’t take long. If you also experience banging noises or flashes of light, this is another parasomnia with the colorful name of exploding head syndrome. This is equally harmless and tends to last just a few seconds, so wait it out and try not to be alarmed!

Not everyone experiences sleep paralysis as an evil old hag. There are many variations of experience, and these fall into three main categories. First is the experience of an intruder, a malevolent felt presence that is sometimes visible and/or audible, but not always. The second type is called incubus, and this is experienced as a supernatural assault, a sense of being smothered, or of a great weight on the chest. These two types are well-known and often combined.

A third kind of sleep paralysis involves unusual bodily experiences (or vestibulo-motor phenomena) such as flying, out-of-body experiences or false awakenings, and some of these can be experienced as blissful. However, the vast majority of reported episodes of all three types of sleep paralysis are terrifying. Understandably, most people who wake up unable to move, and with a sensation of being trapped in their own body, react with fear. The fear itself may exacerbate the sensations of shortness of breath and chest pressure, as these are common features of panic.

What can you do about sleep paralysis

This is an area that has not been studied very well; there have been no formal clinical trials testing treatment. However, since sleep paralysis is correlated with disrupted or insufficient sleep, an obvious step is to observe good sleep hygiene: go to sleep and wake up at consistent times, no caffeine before bed, and avoid sleeping on your back. Sleep paralysis is also associated with hypertension, hypersomnia, sleep apnea and alcohol use. Not surprisingly, it is common in shift workers and others with disrupted sleep schedules.

Therapeutic interventions may be warranted if sleep paralysis is frequent and distressing enough to warrant the diagnosis of recurrent isolated sleep paralysis (RISP). Some anti-depressant medications can help, as can psychotherapy and psychoeducation, especially if it is underlying anxiety or depression that is contributing to the condition. Having a basic understanding of sleep paralysis can help; the knowledge that such episodes are normal and will end soon can make the event itself less scary.

Taking control

During an episode, you might be able to take charge of the dream state as one would in lucid dreaming. It is possible to realize that while you may not be in control of your body at the moment, you do have some control over your subjective experience. Try to remain calm and as curious as you can – this is a chance to observe yourself in the dream state. After an episode, or as a way to lessen the intensity of a future episode, you can try a version of imagery rescripting. This can set you up for a better experience should the Old Hag revisit. The idea is simply to re-imagine the experience, letting it become a different story, possibly with a different character or ending, and this may seed a more benign future encounter.

A caveat: much of the above is based on clinical literature. There are many other ways that people make sense of ‘Old Hag’ experiences that differ from this view. Some are culturally determined, and others are based on the beliefs formed through direct experience. There are those who welcome this altered state of consciousness. My desire in writing this is simply to help and inform, so use what you find valuable and leave the rest.

If you are interested in learning more about nightmares and their treatment, sign up for my short, focused online course. Because I feel this material is important to disseminate, the course is always open, is self-paced, and currently discounted during the virus crisis. Please ask your clients if they have nightmares, and let them know they are treatable. CLICK HERE for a free PDF for clients: What You Can Do About Your Nightmares. Or check out our Short Focused Course on Nightmare Treatment using THIS LINK.

References

Cheyne, J.A. (2005), Sleep paralysis episode frequency and number, types, and structure of associated hallucinations. Journal of Sleep Research, 14: 319-324. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2869.2005.00477.x

Cox A. M. (2015). Sleep paralysis and folklore. JRSM open, 6(7), 2054270415598091. https://doi.org/10.1177/2054270415598091

Sharpless B. A. (2016). A clinician’s guide to recurrent isolated sleep paralysis. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 12, 1761–1767. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S100307

Solomonova, E. (2018). Sleep Paralysis: phenomenology, neurophysiology and treatment. In: Fox, K & Christoff, K. (Eds). The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought: Mind-Wandering, Creativity, Dreaming, and Clinical Conditions. New York: Oxford University Press.

Are you a parent concerned about the frequency and intensity of your child’s bad dreams? Should you be concerned?
Learn more about Nightmare Relief for Everyone designed by nightmare expert Dr. Leslie Ellis, this self-paced user-friendly and accessible online course covers the very latest in science and research about what nightmares are, and what they’re not. Leslie offers some simple steps you can take to get some relief from nightmares and other nocturnal disturbances – both for yourself and for others, including your children.

Turning Toward Our Nightmares: How This Paradoxical Move Helps Us

By Dr. Leslie EllisJune 12, 2020

The surprising thing about nightmares is that there is nothing to fear. This is not to dismiss them. They feel absolutely real, and our heart-pounding response to them is also very real. But as frightening as the characters and situations nightmares depict may be, the dreams themselves are like paper tigers, playing out on the screen of our imagination. Believe it or not, they are trying to help us, not hurt us. The broad consensus among nightmare therapists and researchers alike is that dreams help us regulate our challenging emotions, and that nightmares are part of the natural recovery process from trauma. So rather than avoid them — the understandable response to something that scares us — we need to turn and face them.

Curiosity, an alternative to fight or flight

How we turn and face the fears represented in our dreams truly matters. For inspiration, consider the example of black blues musician Daryl Davis who spent 30 years befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan. Person by person, through one-on-one conversations, Davis changed a relationship of hate and fear to one of mutual understanding. The more we know about the so-called ‘other’ the harder it is to hate and fear them. In the process befriending the ‘enemy’, Davis convinced more than 200 KKK members to give up their robes. This same act of turning toward the other with respect and open-mindedness is what I advocate doing with our dreams.

I suggest taking particular interest in the dreams that scare us because they hold the greatest potential for expanding our personal capacity and understanding. When I invite my dreamwork clients to explore their dreams in experiential ways, they are often surprised at what they find. They begin to understand, via direct experience that the monsters in their dreams are represented in such a way because the image is colored by their own perception of it. We tend to fear what we don’t know. As soon as we enter into relationship with something, the dynamic begins to change.

Consider Mary’s dream. In it she is standing on a beach and sees a tsunami coming. She tries to run and there is a sense that she is never going to make it up the slope in time. The wave is coming too fast, and will certainly bury her in its mountain of water. So she decides instead to turn toward it. When she does that, turns toward the powerful ocean and calmly holds her ground, it becomes a harmless wave that dissipates at her feet.

Also consider the dream of ‘Flora,’ a refugee who fled her native Congo due to political persecution. She had a recurring dream that a group of men with guns circled her and were going to kill her because they thought she possessed incriminating information. Like the classic dreams of post-traumatic stress injury, this dream was almost an exact replay of what actually happened to her. She was confronted and froze in terror, unable to speak. In therapy, she was invited to dream the dream forward; she stood and faced her attackers and found her voice. This empowering action changed her relationship to the dream, took away the charge. The nightmares that had been plaguing her for years simply stopped.

This idea of changing the ending of our nightmares is not a new one. Carl Jung was the first to suggest we engage with our dreams by ‘dreaming the dream on.’ Nightmare rescripting has now become the main method for clinical work with traumatic nightmares, and while it doesn’t always work as well as it did for Flora, it has been shown mostly to help and even when it doesn’t, it causes no harm.

Working with childrens’ dreams

The same technique can be used for helping children with nightmares, which is a good thing because kids have much more frequent nightmares than adults. You might offer a child this example from the movie Shrek: Donkey was initially terrified of the dragon, but when he turned and looked at her more carefully, and noticed her long, fluttering eyelashes, his feelings changed from fear to love. Cue the voice of Eddie Murphy saying, ‘Oh! I didn’t you were a girl dragon.’ And in that moment, everything changed.

Children are still immersed in the world of their imagination, so dream rescripting comes quite naturally to them. They can readily imagine their bed turns into a magic carpet that takes them up and away from danger. Or even better, like Donkey, they can turn toward their dream dragons and make friends with them. This is far more effective than telling them their dream is not real, because as we all know, the amazing thing about dreams is how very real they feel when we are in them. Telling them it’s ‘just a dream’ dismisses their experience without mending it.

A caveat. The underlying feelings need attention and this can take time.

While it is true that turning toward our dream dragons with curiosity and as much friendliness as we can muster is very often helpful, it is not a panacea. Dreams are a part of our emotional regulation process. Nightmares that we turn toward will help us understand and face our fears, and when we come to terms with the intense feelings they represent, our dreams will reflect a calmer landscape. This can happen immediately, but more often over weeks or months. It will take longer if the effects of trauma are ongoing, or the dream reflects a major loss and the grieving process is current.

The point is, no matter how long it takes, it is better to turn toward your dreams and the emotions that ride in on their waves than to ignore or dismiss them. In dreams, as in life, it is the things that we engage with actively and with open curiosity that can evolve and change. Ultimately, the message is a hopeful one. If turning toward the ‘other’ can transform the hate of hundreds of former KKK members, then surely we all can tame our dream dragons. Maybe, like Donkey, we can even fall in love.

A Brief Introduction to Experiential Dreamwork

By Dr. Leslie EllisMay 27, 2020

Have you noticed that your dreams are more dynamic and intense during these uncertain times? You are not alone. Many people are reporting increased nightmares and disturbed dreaming, and want to know what this means and what to do with their dreams.

This introductory course in experiential dreamwork will give participants several simple yet powerful ideas about how to engage with dreams in a way that helps regulate emotion and constructively process the difficult feelings arising in the world right now. The course will include self-help exercises you can try on your own, and methods that will help inform your dreamwork with clients. It will include live demonstrations of the experiential dreamwork methods discussed, including finding and embodying help in a dream, entering into the subjective experience of dream characters and elements, and dreaming the dream onward.

Clinically relevant. There will also be information about how to use dreams as diagnostic, as indicators of clinical progress, and as a safe way to work with trauma. 4.5 CE credits offered.

Join dream expert Dr. Leslie Ellis for 3 Tuesday afternoon dreamwork sessions in July. During these 90-minute zoom sessions, she will introduce some fun and fascinating information about dreams, answer your questions and show you how to engage with your dreams in an experiential way. Sessions will include a brief talk about dreams, a chance to ask questions, and a live dreamwork demonstration.

This course will be of interest to mental health professionals who want to incorporate dreamwork in their practice, and to anyone interested in deepening their relationship with dreams. It is also an opportunity to try out a short version of Dr. Ellis’ courses. For those who want to continue on to the year-long Embodied Experiential Dreamwork Certification program starting in Fall 2020, this course fee will be credited.

Dates: July 7, 14 and 21, 2:00 pm to 3:30 PDT (5:00-6:30 PM EDT)

Location: Zoom

Cost: $127 USD (or $87 for those needing a discount, no questions asked!)

Recordings: Available to registrants

Questions? Ask Leslie lae2317@gmail.com

Dr. Leslie Ellis is an author, teacher, speaker and clinical dreamworker. Her book, A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy (Routledge, 2019) offers therapists a primer in modern, experiential dreamwork. She has written numerous book chapters and articles on experiential focusing and dreamwork. Her award-winning PhD research developed a nightmare treatment process for refugees. She developed her somatic, experiential focus through extensive study of focusing. She is currently president of The International Focusing Institute. She studied depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute and her practice is a hybrid of Jungian and focusing-oriented approaches. She is also an expert in treatment of complex trauma and post-traumatic stress injury and developed and taught trauma theory at Adler University in Vancouver.

What former dreams students say about Leslie’s online dreamwork courses:

Leslie presents in a well-modulated, soothing voice that carries the recorded commentary sessions and the live interaction sessions very well. She is a calmly-confident and organized teacher who is clear and concise in her outlining of concepts. She demonstrates an excellent grasp of the broad swathe of dream literature her clinical training and work has taken her through…from Carl Jung to contemporary neuroscience. Leslie is skillful in her facilitation of the live dream-work sessions, ensuring a sense of participant safety while encouraging and containing the group’s participation with an attitude of openness and respect.

I can highly recommend both Leslie’s book and this online course. I have come away enriched and expanded by this learning opportunity.”

Catherine Johnson, Clinical Psychologist, Trauma and Focusing Oriented therapist; Cape Town, South Africa

“Dreaming is a fascinating but hard field to explore. Leslie is an enthusiastic and experienced pioneer. Her book and course help me find a torch and a map. As a therapist, I use these tools to help my clients go into their experiences and hearts. Highly recommended.” – Sicong Cao, psychotherapist, Wuhan, China

Dreamwork for Yourself, a guided, leisurely journey

By Dr. Leslie EllisMarch 4, 2020

Dreamwork for Yourself: Syllabus, March/April 2020

This pilot course will take you on a journey, via your dreams, deep into your inner world. As a cohort, we will explore various personal practices aimed at recalling, recording and then deeply experiencing our own dreams. We will learn what works best for each of us as methods to glean insight and meaning from our dreams, and offer these back to others in the class. By the end of the course, you will have clear, established method for personal dream exploration, and as part of the process, you will have taken a journey into the depths of your inner world.

Instructor: Dr. Leslie Ellis

Dr. Ellis is a world expert in the clinical use of dreams, with a specialty in working with PTSD nightmares. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology and a Masters in Counselling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is vice president of The International Focusing Institute and has more than 20 years’ experience in clinical practice. She has taught a focusing certification program to therapists for more than 10 years, and is now offering online instruction in dreamwork to therapists and anyone interested in cultivating inner life through dreamwork, focusing and active imagination. She is the author of A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy (Routledge, 2019), as well as numerous papers and book chapters on focusing and embodied, experiential dreamwork. She has also taught and delivered talks worldwide and is a keynote speaker at the 2020 conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

Format:

Each month, Dr. Ellis will offer a new self-dreamwork practice, with examples and invite you to explore the technique using your own dreams. The course will be offered via several formats, including video presentations, live sessions, and both written and podcast format. All material will be recorded so you can revisit it, or catch up on any live material you miss. There will be a venue for sharing your experiences of each practice, and learning from the experience of others.

Timing:

Monthly live sessions, third Wednesday of each month, beginning March 4, 2020 from 3:00-4:30 PM PDT Second session April 1. All sessions recorded and available to all course participants whether you attend live or not. Enrolment open until April 15, 2020.

The course will be delivered over 8 sessions beginning in March 2020. Because the course is leisurely and self-paced, it is fine to join in after the class has started. You can watch the recorded live sessions, and take the material at whatever pace suits you.

Topics will include:

Recalling and recording your dreams

Why are dreams so important to attend to?

Working with associations: writing your dreams

Art and creativity: representing and experiencing your dreams

Focusing and active imagination: dialogue with your dreams

Re-entering the dream: being your dream elements, and dreaming forward

Follow the feeling: dreams as picture metaphors of emotion

Bias control: trying on opposites, illuminating blind spots

Co-creative dreamwork: attending to inner and outer relational dynamics

Waking up in your dreams: cultivating lucid awareness

Talking about your dreams: telling others

Dreamwork with others: collective dreamwork practices for everyone

Special topics: available upon request

Reading and assignments:

There will be many optional resources available to you including short pieces I will write specifically on the topic of the month, book recommendations and articles. But this is meant to be more of an experiential than an academic journey, so the emphasis will be on time for your own dream exploration and sharing of what you discover. You will also be encouraged to read and comment on the experiences of your classmates.

Dates, details, pricing

The course opens in March, with enrolment open until April 15 (and you are welcome to join us as a self-paced course after that).

It will run over 8 sessions, ending October 2020. You have the choice to stay in step with the group or go through the modules at your own pace.

Cost for the course will be $297 USD. Scholarships available, please inquire. Questions, contact lae2317@gmail.com Register at www.drleslieellis.com/dreamwork-course