The Dream Journal

Are you a narcissist? How would you know? Or maybe you are in a relationship with one.

We talk to Jungian analyst Dr Susan Schwartz about dreams related to narcissism and about how to be in relationship with those everyday narcissists in our life.

Dr Schwartz starts by defining narcissism as outer bravado and inner fragility. She lists some of the typical dreams narcissists have including dreams of being trapped or in a prison.

We talk about the myth of Narcissus and Echo and about how we can avoid becoming Echo who loses...

Animals in dreams always seem to have a special meaningfulness. Today we talk about how dreams of certain animals were viewed at the Asklepian Temple in ancient Greece where people could go to be healed by their dreams. Learn about a modern interpretation of this ancient technique from our guest psychotherapist, mindfulness teacher, and Dream Boat podcast host Laura Payne of the Dream Research Institute in London.

A short clip from the show can be found here:

After the break we hear from Steve Popp from Santa Cruz with a dream about a series of a...

Learn how dreams help us process trauma with our guest Gdansk Professor Wojciech Owczarski​ who studies the dreams of Auschwitz survivors, modern Ukrainian refugees, and nursing home residents. He finds that dreams help us cope with trauma, adapt to new life situations, and feel optimistic for a better future. Nightmares help us deal with unresolved waking life issues and to integrate past traumas.

A short clip from our conversation can be found here:

After the break we take two calls. One from Kathy from Corona CA who is wondering about how best to introduce new me...

There are many ways to open the door to the unseen world:​ sound or singing​, stillness​,  or movement​, nature immersion. We speak to Rachel Schafer about dreaming into love. Rachel speaks about body centered awareness and the value in turning toward what is uncomfortable in our lives.

Video short from this show: https://youtu.be/QjkTV5d94II

She talks about her journey with sleep paralysis and how she used the expression of sound to get out of it. She speaks of the Toltec practice of Dreaming Awake and of her difficult experiences with abusive male teac...

Aging through the lens of night dreams, living dreams, and earth dreams. Dr. Illana Berger guides seekers through life’s initiations through Zen practice, Indigenous wisdom, dreams, and soul-centered transformation. Dr Berger starts out by speaking about koans and how dreams are like them: things to ponder not riddles to solve. We talk about the art of becoming present and how this is true enlightenment. We then shift to talking about the difference between elderhood and simply being old and how we can learn to turn toward our lives with curiosity.

VIDEO short: https://youtu.be/3MtXWOAj6qc...

Dreams are crazy, but aren’t they also guidance? Our guest, Sandi Madison, helps us find sense in the nonsense of our dreams and argues that the best self-help book we can ever read is our own dream journal! We talk about the importance of keeping and reviewing a dream journal, and Sandi shares some of her recurring themes that show how she has matured over the 38 years she has been journaling. Sandi suggests we try to remember dreams as we wake up by focusing on the feelings we have when we wake up. We also talk about precognitive dr...

Meet Jesse Lyon, a clinical hypnotherapist with an extensive background in trauma, anxiety, dissociative disorders, and the neurodivergent community. He’s a viral social media influencer with over two million followers, captivating hearts worldwide. We talk start by talking about how dreams speak in the language of the subconscious mind and often reflect what he calls our core struggle. We then talk about neurodivergence and how dreaming shows up in people with ADHD, who are on the autism spectrum, or who have aphantasia.

After the break, we take three calls. The first is from Jacob in Florida wh...

Every night our dreams invite us to enter the mystery that is our soul, and they guide us toward wholeness, purpose, and destiny. Today we talk with Sara Saidy about the power of dream groups which she describes as alchemical containers. She calls dreams love letters from the soul.

Sara starts out by defining the imaginal realm and how we access it through dreaming or active imagination. She shares the results of her research showing that dream groups can provide places where people experience not just personal transformation, but also interconnectedness, enhanced empathy, and compassion. She gives...

​​AI dream interpretation platforms are getting ever more popular. ​We talk today with Harry de Bont, the developer of AUT-Dream,​ about how best to approach these tools and why his platform is an improvement over Chat GPT. We talk about what he calls the Anthropic Universe Theory (AUT) and argues that the primary purpose of dreams is to comment on what surprises us and then to help us shift our world model to something closer to reality. We also talk about how AI relates to an emerging collective awareness, and he shares some of his hopes for future ways AI might...

Today’s guest composes music to his patient’s dreams, capturing feelings and moods and deepening the psychotherapeutic process. In this replay from two years ago, we meet Dr. Michael Mollura who is a PhD licensed clinical psychologist and also an award-winning music composer for TV and movies. Michael started by scoring music to his own dreams and later found out how valuable the practice was in deepening the healing for his psychotherapy clients.

We play a clip of one such piece called Scary Path Dream. Michael describes the process of scoring the piece including using cello to r...

Why just manifest your dreams when you can dreamifest them? Harness the power of your nighttime dreams to make your daytime dreams come true! Eleven-time author and popular podcaster Kelly Sullivan Walden, aka Doctor Dream, joins us for a magical romp through her ideas around why it’s so hard to create the lives we want, and how dreams will help us finally do it!

Kelly talks about how to be clear in how we ask for help from our dream world and about the difference between soul goals and ego goals. She also describes how to se...

Our guest has hosted hundreds of patients on ketamine-assisted psychedelic trips and has gone on a few of his own, yet his experience is that dreamwork can be even more profound. In this show, a replay of a popular show from August 2024 Katherine talks to Dr. Darren Jakubec, an emergency-room anesthetist who runs a pain clinic in northern British Columbia.

Jake talks about his history with dreaming and inner work and then gives an example of working a dream with a pain clinic patient. He describes his experience with a ketamine clinic which he ran for several...

​How does a near death experience affect your life’s path? Hear one man’s story about ​how death before death can be a spiritual rebirth. So too, in dreams, death can be a gateway to awakening. Our guest ​this week is Nirakara Vani of the ​Philosophical ​Entertainment podcast. It’s another deep dive into the realms of dreaming, ​death, birth, ​and rebirth!

After the break, we take a call from Ellen from Santa Cruz who talks about her mother’s experience of almost drowning as a child and about the own “near death” experience while using plant medicine. We also ta...

Does your dream have only correct interpretation? No! I believe that there are many valuable ways to explore a dream and many layers of meaning. This week the Dream Journal hosts four dream guest experts who offer a range of ways to explore dreams to get you thinking about how to expand your thinking about dreaming. Join me, Katherine Bell, with my guests Linda Mastrangelo, Lauren Schneider, Victoria Rabinowe, and Marilyn Manzi as we take a wide-ranging ramble into the world of the dream.

Linda speaks about finding community as a dreamer. Victoria speaks about the value...

Do sunspots, solar flares, and geomagnetic activity affect our dreams? Our guest, Annani Kelly, is finishing her PhD research on a study involving 92 participants and over 4700 dream reports. Annani talks about some of the effects of solar activity on health which has been well studied over the years. Hers is the first study which investigates such effects on dreaming. Annani’s study includes the effects on quality of sleep, nightmare frequency, non nightmare aggressive dreams, dream bizarreness, and extraordinary dreams.

After the break we take a call from Kelley from Santa Cruz who asks about central sleep ap...

Today we speak with Akinke Lucas about dreaming ourselves whole. We start by talking about Akinke’s travels in Africa and Indonesia, then about how to tell the difference between helpful tricksters and not-so-helpful demons. Akinke describes masculine vs feminine, conscious vs unconscious, mind vs soul, and speaks about how the birth of humanity was through Africa and also about the importance of knowing who we are in this moment.

We take a call from Sahlah Dubel of DivinebyDesign.org from Virginia who asks about bringing healing to communities. As she has recently given birth to her se...

Can’t see your way through a difficult situation? Try asking all Souls concerned to discuss issues until they understand why things happened, because once the Soul understands, forgiveness takes place. Today we speak with Amy Jo Ellis, founder of the Court of Atonement. Amy Jo describes herself as a reluctant spiritual medium who was thrust into the world of mediumship when her boss was murdered and she found herself seeing visions of what had happened. Amy Jo describes how her mother’s visions helped her develop her Court of Atonement process.

After the break, we talk abou...

Can dreaming help us integrate psychedelic experiences? How dreams and visions can both take us to the boundaries of consciousness. Today’s guest Adam Miezio talks about how dreams and psychedelics both access the unconscious and that taking powerful psychedelics can be like tilling the soil of consciousness. He describes what he calls divine influx or a cosmic download in which we have insights that seem to be from outside of ourselves and about the pros and cons of setting intentions. Also the hypnagogic state, mysticism, and the collective unconscious.

After the break, we take a question fr...

Katherine speaks with poet Renzo Del Castillo about building connections and empathy through creation, art, integrity, and love in a replay of a popular show from a year ago. Renzo is the author of the award-winning, best-selling debut poetry book “Still” (available in Kindle version for 99 cents). The poems that make up the book were conceived during a time of many losses including the death of his father. We talk about how we are each made up of pieces of the people we love, and so they still live in us.

After the break, Max asks about the...

Light, truth, and direct experience. Today we will talk about angel healing with local poet, author, and mystic Jenny D’Angelo. Amidst a shower of poetry, Jenny shares about her history with Dorrie D’Angelo, the Angel Lady of Carmel and about how she hopes to model vibrant elderhood for those around her. She talks about how to tune into the angels around each of us which she describes as our teams of unseen helpers. After the break, we take a call from Ray of Santa Cruz who describes his mom’s experience seeing angels. We end by talking about...

Holistic sleep transformation expert Leah Ann Bolen talks about how dreams show us our true desires. Also dream symbolism, recurring themes, and dreams during times of transition or burnout.

Leah starts out by talking about her suggestions for getting a better night’s sleep and the role of mindfulness and meditation. She then talks about how she she sees that dreams are a nightly feedback system: they reflect inner shifts, and reveal the self-protective strategies and deeper desires we may not consciously recognize during the day. We can turbo charge the work dreams do by bringing conscious at...

We all know that dreams can galvanize your creativity. Today in this replay of a popular show from almost two years ago, we speak with Donna Glee Williams, PhD, who has published three dream-inspired fantasy novels which seek to reimagine the hero’s journey. Her latest book is called The Night Field. We also play music by Lynn Morgan Rosser.

Donna Glee describes her 17 year mentorship with Jeremy Taylor which began as an exploration of an ongoing dream theme of difficulty getting to water. She also speaks of dreams that are gifts for others and shares that sh...

How can we meet our dreams on their own terms and use them as liturgy for sacred gatherings? A conversation about Natural Spirituality with Haden Institute’s Darby Christopher. We talk about what makes gatherings sacred including the idea of going slow and leaving room for silence. Darby goes into some of her ideas on what she calls the dream Roundabout which includes many ways to meet the dream on its own terms. She encourages us to not take our dreams too literally but to use them as starting off points for inner exploration.

BIO: Darby Christopher is...

Expand your dreaming awareness by utilizing energetic and shamanic movements, breath work, guided recapitulation, and shadow reflection. Our guest is Shamanic Dreaming Arts teacher, Joel Schafer. Joel talks about the shamanic practices of the Toltecs which are described in novel form in the Carlos Castenda books and describes how movements called magical passes can be used to induce trance states. We talk about the value of recapitulation and gazing and how we can enter alternate realities both from both the lucid dreaming and awake states. After the break, we take a call from Kelly from Santa Cruz who initiates...

Decode your dreams and heal your life! Today’s guest is author and dream decoder Theresa Cheung, dubbed by Women’s Health “the British Grande Dame of psychic and spiritual studies.” We talk about precognitive dreams, visitation dreams, and how we can “live our dreams” by looking in waking life for the symbols we dream about. She describes dreaming as “all night poetry.”

After the break we talk about afterlife dreams, dreamscaping, lucid dreaming, and the value of the “inside out approach to life.”

BIO: Theresa Cheung (United Kingdom) is a Sunday Times bestselling author and dream decoder. She...

Our dream self is different in many ways from our waking self. They are often much more beleaguered and can behave differently than we imagine that our waking self would. We discuss why this is important, and how we can help them. In this replay show from December, our guest is David Jenkins, PhD, clinical psychologist and author of “Dream RePlay: How to Transform Your Dream Life.”

David shares an example of a dream of someone whose car is stuck in the mud and compares working with the image symbolically vs exploring the feelings of the dream self...

Dreams are mirrors of the soul. Our guest, award-winning author and podcaster, Megan Mary, talks about dreams as sacred portals that help us unlock the path to spiritual awakening. She also talks about visitation dreams, spirit guide encounters, and  her four part Dream Mirror method. After the break, we take a call from Ellen from Soquel who shares a dream that brings up a discussion about the imposter syndrome.

BIO: Megan Mary, international bestselling metaphysical author of the metaphysical fiction trilogy, Witches of Maple Hollow, is founder of Inner Realms Publishing and host of the Women’s Dre...

Can dreams help you write your first book? They did for our guest, women’s empowerment coach, Megan Walrod. Learn about how dreams help us make those big decisions in life and how they pave the way for our creativity. We talk about how Megan works with her dreams and how they have been guiding her throughout her life including providing the idea for her debut novel, “It’s Always Been Me.”

After the break, we introduce Bridget Lyons, an author in her own right, and the developmental editor who worked with both Megan and me. You can find...

What is lucid surrender? Can dreams facilitate psycho-spiritual transformation? Can we be in contact with those who have died and what does this suggest about the afterlife? We speak today with Melinda Powell from the Dream Research Institute in London. Melinda starts by talking about how she has been a lucid dreamer since a child, and she shares a powerful snake dream and how working with that dream in waking life was transformational. We talk about lucid surrender, both dreaming and awake, and how dreams are a kind of angel that is out ahead of us.

After...

Yes, the dreamer is the only one who knows what their dream means, and yet the dreamer also has profound blind spots about their own dreams. This is what I call the Dreamer’s Paradox.​ I talk about this idea and about my Treasure Hunt approach to dreamwork in this solo show which was originally released last summer. After the break, we take a comment from engineer Rick Kleffel saying that his favorite author Alan Moore often gets inspiration from his dreams. We are then joined by Steven E. Popp, host of KSQD’s “In The Garden” show, who comes on th...

Join us for a conversation with author and poet Dr. Edward Bruce Bynum as we talk about dreams and meditation as portals to the deep self. We start with the ideas that most of our big decisions are arrived at intuitively rather than logically and that consciousness predates language. Bruce argues that meditation and dreaming (and meditating while dreaming) can take us to a timeless place which is a way of accessing the deep self. Bruce then says there is recent evidence that death is not the end of conscious experience. 

After the break, we take a c...

Has a movie ever changed your life? Meet Tyffany Howard who creates award-winning documentaries with the express purpose of elevating the consciousness of those who watch them. A criminal trial attorney for 16 years, Tyffany followed the whispers of a dream and stepped into the world of film-making. We have a wide-ranging conversation including precognitive dreams, levitation, feminine archetypes, and dreams that are wishes of the soul.

BIO: Tyffany Howard, J.D., MATP, a former criminal trial attorney, is a personal and spiritual growth educator, award-winning independent documentary filmmaker, and author. Tyffany earned her second master’s degree in...

Do your dreams alone tell the story of your life? Wendy Ortiz presents “Bruja: A Dreamoir,” a book which consists of a series of dreams from a challenging few years. A glimpse into her subconscious, the book is mesmerizing and playful. Wendy talks about the process of creating this book and about how dreams inform her waking life. 

BIO: Wendy C. Ortiz is a writer of creative nonfiction who works in hybrid forms, essays, and memoir. She is the author of Excavation: A Memoir, Hollywood Notebook: Essays, and Bruja: A Dreamoir, all published by Northwestern University Press. Ortiz...

Have you ever woken up with a song in your head? Whether it was a golden oldie or a brand new original, these can be powerful moments! Craig Webb, author of “The Dreams Behind the Music“ shares stories about dream-inspired music including by Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger, and he shares with us some of his own dream songs. This show is a conversation about the song-writers who get inspiration from their dreams. It was recorded April 2020, in the midst of the Covid crisis and includes several original dream-inspired songs. We take a call from Christine from Nevada who asks a...

Humanity balances between two paths: self-destruction or self-revelation. In this rebroadcast from a popular episode from April 2024, Christine Barrington describes this critical inflection point and argues that dreams awaken us to the realm of purpose and meaning, arguing that every one of us has much to contribute to the path of humanity.

Christine begins with James Braid then outlines the complicated history of science and consciousness including how they got separated in the first place, culminating with the philosophy of positivism which is the belief nothing exists that cannot be verified. She notes in contrast that most...

What kind of dream adventure do you want? Our “People of the Dream” guests, Bill St. Cyr and Sue Scavo, talk about how you can have a conversation with your dreams instead of trying to figure them out. Trauma puts us in a place where we feel trapped, and the dreams restore choice. You get to work with your dreams any way you want to, sharing only the dreams you choose. Every one’s journey is different.

Find our guests at: PeopleoftheDream.com FB, IG, YT @PeopleoftheDream

This show, episode number 306, was recorded during a live br...

Dreams bridge the ordinary and the mystical world. Working with them can be alchemical. Today we welcome special guest poet, dream priestess, and counselor-in-training Alyssa Spungen. Alyssa starts by describing a lucid dream that opened to her the mystery of dreaming in which she was ritually presented with red and black squares. She talks about how difficult it is to express dreams in words and says that’s why she started expressing them in poetry. She talks about the alchemy of dreams and how they hep us recognize our inner mystic. She then talks about how writing poetry helped he...

People’s dreams change before their behavior does. Our guests, Codreaming founders Emily Cook and Kyle Napierkowski share evidence from their research including how large databases show that dreams about Donald Trump shifted long before his favorability ratings did. They also talk about how dreams reveal that the concerns of people in their 20s and 30s are foundationally different from older people and the evidence that this is not merely because of their age, but because of generationally changing priorities.

After the break, we take a call from Lee from New York who talks about his 50 years of...

Dreams and death: Do dreams show us what it’ll be like to be dead? Our guest this week is Jenna Farr Ludwig. Jenna starts by describing two death dreams from childhood in one of which she dreamed of her mom falling off a cliff shortly before her mom died in a waking-life car wreck. We talk about pre-diagnosis dreams, dreams before death, visitation dreams, and about how to distinguish death dreams that are related to physical death vs death dreams that signal transformation and growth. We also talk about what dreams may have to say about what it wi...

What big-picture stuff do we miss out on as we work on our dreams one by one? Today’s guest, Laura Hileman, talks about long term dream journaling and how we can use our dream journals to help us review the passing seasons of our lives. She share examples of how she recognized from her dreams that she had cancer long before the doctors diagnosed it. She encourages us to ask our dreams what they are longing for and says she finds it helpful to think of her day and night lives as being all one thing, like the “two”...

“Dreams are a doorway to the vast, inclusive world of unconscious images and connections.” So says today’s guest, Dr. Apela Colorado of the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network. Truly a “Woman between the Worlds”, Dr. Colorado promotes an understanding between indigenous and modern world perspectives.

Dr. Colorado starts by setting a ceremonial space using cedar and sacred music and offering an invocation. She describes the way she discovered the Circle of Listening she developed after a chance side trip to the Chartres Cathedral in France. This involves drawing the dreams that are shared, a process called glyphing which is o...

In this special 300th episode of the Dream Journal, meet Toko-Pa Turner, a woman who has a wealth of experience helping people learn to court the wisdom of their dreams. She speaks about how “The Dreaming Way” is our natural heritage and provides inner guidance. She emphasizes that dreams and the imagination are as real as waking life and encourages us to live in the magic of not-knowing.

BIO: Toko-pa Turner is a Canadian author and internationally celebrated dreamworker. Her first book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, has been translated into ten languages and won awards in 2017 and 2018. Her...

As we approach the 300th episode of the Dream Journal, I invite five dream experts to talk about their various approaches to dreamwork. All six will be presenters at the all-day in person IASD regional conference on March 1, 2025 in Whittier, California.

Guests are conference host Geoff Nelson who talks about the spirituality of dreaming, Lauren Schneider (dreamsandtarotpy.com) who describes her collective approach and her process of using tarot cards which she calls Tarotpy, Kelly Sullivan Walden (dreamifesting.com) who speaks about her experience of being evacuated during the recent LA fires and also about her process...

Founder of the Radical Resistance Institute, our guest today is Victor Lee Lewis. He brings a unique, socially progressive vision to the work of personal growth, personal empowerment, and emotional health. An early advocate of Jeremey Taylor, he is also profoundly influenced by his dreams. Victor starts by telling how a dream he had in the early 1980s woke him up to the need to radically remake his life. He sees dreams as a realm of oneness and says that dream groups are an ideal forum for bringing people together. We talk about about the idea of imaginal cells...

Colors. Dreams are full of them, and the chakra system is one way to explore their meanings. Today we speak to energy medicine specialist and chiropractor Dr. Mary Sanders about the chakra system and how it supports our health. We also speak about how we are anchored to our body during astral travel through one or more of our chakras. Dr. Mary goes through all seven chakras describing what characteristics each color might suggest as well as the organs that each chakra is associated with. We also speak about the kundalini and meditation, and Dr. Mary shares some of...

Can doing your personal dreamwork really improve the world? In this popular replay, our guest, Christian Gerike, believes that the more people pay attention to their dreams, the better they will be, and thus the better the world will be. Christian considers himself a dream generalist and is committed to spreading enthusiasm for dreamwork. He argues that working with your dreams helps you learn to look beneath appearances in the world both dreaming and awake. He shares a dream of his in which a mouse needs his help because it is wrapped up in an electronic cord. Throughout this...

Do we have soul mates? Are there people in our lives today who we​ know from previous lives? Our guest today is lucid coach, Chris Cunniffe, and he describes his story. Chris starts by defining what he calls counterparts which are people we know from waking life who may be simultaneous incarnations of ourselves. He lists dream features to look for that suggest that the person you are dreaming about might be a soul counterpart. We talk about the idea that to the soul, time is an illusion and also have a discussion of what to do with this in...

This show is about YOU!! No guests, just callers. What have you been dreaming about? What are your hopes for this coming year? This the first All Caller show in three years, and we take calls from four people, and together look for treasures in their dreams.

Charlene from the CA Bay Area started us off with a dream about stepping away from a man who put his arm around her waist. This ultimately reminded her of her childhood experiences of a ghost on the Connecticut farm where she grew up. The second caller was from Elizabeth...

Steven E Popp is an avid dream enthusiast, dedicated to his inner world. Since he is also a gardener and a semi-retired horticulturist, perhaps it’s inevitable that he is especially sensitive to the landscapes of his dreams, something most of us ignore. We talk about his sand table creations which he calls Dreamscapes (photos below). Plus we get into his Tibetan Dream yoga practice and meditation. After the break, we talk about lucid dreaming with Max, and then Steve tells us about his earliest dreams, some of which seem to date from before birth. Near the end of th...

Our guest is author and lucid dreaming expert Dr. Clare Johnson. We talk about her new book The Elixir of Sleep, a deep dive into how to make the most of your nighttime voyages. We start by talking about the different kinds of sleepers and what keeps people from getting a good night’s sleep. Clare then offers many ways to encourage sleep including the magic of sound, deep belly breaths, yoga in bed, and using the time to incubate a dream or encourage lucidity. We also talk about dream guides, the hypnagogic stage of sleep, yoga nidra, and dr...

Our guest today is Lisa Rigge, IASD regional rep for the Bay Area and also Haden Institute graduate. We talk about collaging and also about IASD vs Haden dreamwork approaches. We start with ideas around collaging to find meaning from our dreams and in particular, the idea of using negative space. Lisa brings an intuitive and contemplative approach to collaging and also to our next topic: dream groups. We discuss some of the differences between how Jeremey Taylor and Bob Haden approach projective dream groups. The Haden approach emphasizes the idea of a safe container, personal boundaries, and privacy...

Nightmares! We all have them, and some of us have more than a few. Are nightmares caused by trauma? How can we work past our nightmares and start to look forward to sleeping again? Our guest today is trauma specialist, Linda Schiller. She defines nightmares by the feeling tone in the dream and whether the dream situation improves or gets worse. We talk about the idea that we might not ever know the source of our nightmares especially if they were caused by trauma before we developed language including birth trauma and pre-birth trauma. She talks about the importance...

The Covid pandemic turned the world upside down, but it paved the way for humanity’s spiritual rebirth. Our guest, author Forrest Rivers, describes how shared experience during difficult times helps us to find greater meaning, understanding, and purpose. He says, if we are tuned in and paying attention, difficult times can help us find meaning and shares stories about how the pandemic empowered people to better themselves. He describes meditation as stilling the mind and opening the heart and tells about his own story of how an alcohol problem led him to exactly the teacher he needed at th...

Dreaming on certain days like birthdays and anniversaries can have special significance. For centuries,​ it has been thought that dreams between the Christian holidays of Christmas and Epiphany ​were especially propitious. Our guest, Susanne van Doorn, talks about what to look for in these Holy Night Dreams. She starts out by telling us of a nightmare that got her started with the idea that Holy Night dreams can help us prepare for the year to come. She talks about incubations and ancient healing temples that were centered around dreaming. After the break we take a call from Christian from Chico...

Our dream self is different in many ways from our waking self. They are often much more beleaguered and can behave differently than we imagine that our waking self would. Why is this important, and how can we help them? Our guest today is David Jenkins, PhD, clinical psychologist and author of “Dream RePlay: How to Transform Your Dream Life.”

David shares an example of a dream of someone whose car is stuck in the mud and compares working with the image symbolically vs exploring the feelings of the dream self in their situation and giving them empa...

Have you ever wondered if some of your current issues might be rooted in your genes? Using Systemic Constellation work and DNA testing to understand ancient familial patterns, our guest, Judy Wilkins-Smith, explains how you can plumb your ancestral past to transform your present life. She starts by saying that how we are stuck is the key to our possibilities and describes how looking into our ancestry can help you pinpoint some of the big events that might have impacted your family’s emotional DNA.

After the break, we take a call from Elizabeth from Bellingham who sh...

Metaphors: they’re not just for dreaming anymore! Evidence shows that we think in them too. Our guest Dr. Alwin Wagener explains his embodied cognition theory of dreaming which explains how dreaming helps us update our metaphors to reflect our changing ideas about what matters to us most. We also talk about why exploring dreams in therapy is helpful and why therapists are often reluctant to do so. He offers the acronym SAFE which reminds therapists to explore dreams by encouraging clients to Share a dream, Appreciate the details of the dream, Find its significance to the client, and Ed...

Dreamwork can be a useful tool to get to the root of subconscious limiting beliefs that negatively influence our experience of life. Our guest today is Jason Althaver, a life coach, and a dreamworker. Limiting beliefs, like self doubt, perfectionism, or imposter syndrome, can lead to anxiety and stress. Jason shares some of his dreams that demonstrate his limiting beliefs and have helped him break their hold over him. We talk about nervous system regulation, and Jason leads us through a breathwork technique which reduces anxiety.

After the break, Briana from North Carolina asks about using lucid...

Dreams from the Other Side: Visitations, Dreaming with the Dead, and Scary Creatures from Unseen Realms. In this Day of the Dead special, our guest this week is Marta Aarli, a psychotherapist and dream guide in Colorado.

This is the time of year when our ability to dream through the veil that separates this world from other realms increases. We may receive visits from loved ones who have crossed over or scary beings from unknown places, bringing terrifying messages or beautiful offerings, like a mystical version of trick or treat. How can we work with these in...

Our guest, Alaya Dannu, shares an important message for humanity which showed up in a dream she calls The Eternal Return in which the three ancient mothers (also called Ammas) made specific requests for how we can bring the world back into balance. Among their requests, they suggest that we can make our lives sacred starting by connecting with the body. 

After the break we take a call from Kimberly from Gilbert, Arizona about how to heal enough to get to the point of being able to access the sacred. Alaya recommends that we investigate our lineages a...

Dreamwork will help you “become the shaman of your own transformational process.” Today’s guest, artist Victoria Rabinowe, talks about mining dreams as a source for creativity. Victoria offers specific suggestions for recording your dreams and for different kinds of poetry and art that can be done with them, and she shares thoughts about spirituality and what to do about angels in your dreams. She encourages listeners to consider joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams which can be found at ASDreams.org. After the break, we explore one of my pivotal dreams which is about being part of...

The Vivid Dreaming method with artist Margot Wilson, which consists of breath inductions twice daily for three minutes each time. This process can create bursts of short, intense dream fragments that help us shift our holding patterns. These dream fragments provide windows into how we are stuck in life and compensating visualizations allow us to develop more healthy responses. We also talk about the kundalini and the vagal nervous system and how grounding meditations induce feelings of security, stability, and confidence.

BIO: Margot Wilson is an artist and independent researcher in meditation, dreaming and hypnagogic visualization and...

What is shadow work and how do dreams help? Our guest this week, Nicole K. Miller, PhD, explains about the art of Unstorying™, saying that noticing big reactions is key in identifying and releasing the stories we carry about our lives. She describes several ways to work with these stories.

After the break, we take a call from Sandra about how shadow shows up in dreams. She shares a recurring dream about forgetting to feed a small creature. Nicole talks about using lucid dreaming to rescript dreams and then shares a series of her own big dreams.

Katherine speaks about her ideas about approaching dreams as a kind of treasure hunt and what she calls the Dreamer’s Paradox. After the break we take a comment from engineer Rick Kleffel saying that his favorite author Alan Moore often gets inspiration from his dreams. We are then joined by Steven E. Popp, host of KSQD’s “In The Garden” show, who comes on the air and tells us about a dream in which a huge feline, a cross between a lion and tiger, wreaks great havoc.

BIO: Katherine Bell, PhD is from Santa Cruz. She has host...

Can dream interpretation be manipulative? You bet! Our guest Gerette Buglion, of Living Cult Free, shares her experiences with 18 years in a dream cult. Gerette is passionate about reclaiming her own life and helping others to reclaim theirs.

I start by reading a short passage from my book in progress about the vulnerability of dreamers when they ask for support around their dreams. Gerette tells two of her dreams and how they were interpreted by her ex-teacher in a way that belittled her tender nature. She goes on to tell a new dream in which someone negates...

Our guest, Sahlah Dubel of Divine by Design, talks about BIPOC-centered dreamwork, authenticity, and trust-building. Sahlah shares a powerful dream about learning to breathe water which leads us into a conversation about trust and how spaces are made safe through action and time. She talks about historic trauma and how that means that BIPOC communities may have different needs than other communities.

After the break, we take a call from her brother and partner with Divine by Design, Andrusa Lawson. Andrusa continues the conversation about how to make spaces safe and says that he has come to...

Treating dissociation with dreamwork. Today, meet psychotherapist Marilyn Manzi who treats women with acute stress disorder using what she calls dream psychotherapy. We start by defining acute stress disorder Then talk about the timeline by which trauma develops into PTSD and how dream psychotherapy can prevent and even reverse the long-term after effects of trauma. She describes her work which begins with co-regulation between therapist and client. She uses techniques such as rescripting of difficult dreams, looking for transcendent dream moments, and incubating solutions to waking life issues. We answer an email question from Rissa about individuation.

...

What is projective dreamwork? Meet the hosts of the Healing Dream Project podcast, Billie Ortiz, Royce Fitts, and Viviana Guzman. We talk about projective dreamwork and then, in the second half, we do it! We start by talking about what projective dreamwork is and who developed it and what projections are. After the break, we use projective dreamwork on a dream from Julie from Denver in which a bobcat mysteriously comes out from a crowd.

Here is a link to the video that Billie mentions which shows an octopus changing colors during its sleep, evidence that it...

Could doing yoga while on psychedelics improve insight? What about yoga while lucid dreaming? Our guest, Henry Kandel, teaches what he calls “Ketamine-State Yoga” which he says improves healing outcomes, stokes creative flow, and cultivates spiritual experience. While ingesting an unintentionally large amount of ketamine while meditating, our guest discovered the value of doing spiritual practices while using psychedelics, and now he teaches it to others. When it comes to breaking patterns of depression or addiction, Henry says that the key to getting a healing effect is to have a spiritual or mystical experience whether meditating, having a lucid drea...

When should you do the opposite of what you usually do?  Today we share a popular replay about lucid dreaming, shadow work, and dream yoga with Chris Cunniffe. Chris had been a lawyer for 8 years when he had a dream which nudged him onto a more spiritual path. In the dream, Chris was at a Milli Vanilli conference which led him to wonder about what part of his life was a false front.

Chris urges us to consider “doing the opposite”. For example: dreaming is meaningless; consider that it might be meaningful. Nightmares are bad and should  be avo...

Professor Bargdill argues that every time we dream, our soul gets schooled! He says dreams prepare us for the future and reflect back to us our past, giving us a chance to make different choices in the future. We talk about what he calls dream inversions in which dreams turn the tables on us and let us know what others feel about how we behave with them. Also he argues that positive dreams are not wish fulfillment but are encouragements for us to keep going. He describes what he calls nightmirths, which are pleasant dreams that we wake up...

Our guest has hosted hundreds of patients on ketamine-assisted psychedelic trips and has gone on a few of his own, yet his experience is that dreamwork can be even more profound. Dr. Darren Jakubec is an emergency-room anesthetist and runs a pain clinic in northern British Columbia.

Jake talks about his history with dreaming and inner work and then gives an example of working a dream with a pain clinic patient. He describes his experience with a ketamine clinic which he ran for several years, describing psychedelics as an inner work accelerant which uses much of the...

We speak with poet Renzo Del Castillo about building connections and empathy through creation, art, integrity, and love. Renzo is the author of the award-winning, best-selling debut poetry book “Still” (available in Kindle version for 99 cents). The poems that make up the book were conceived during a time of many losses including the death of his father. We talk about how we are each made up of pieces of the people we love and so they still live in us.

After the break, Max asks about the idea that we can see things in our dreams that we h...

Are you ready for a dream revolution? If our guest Dr. Catherine Shainberg reads it right, this could be as big as the 16th century reformation. In this replay from 2022, Catherine starts by describing how she was told as a child to stop “dreaming her life away”, and yet here she is now with a full-time career of teaching people through the School of Images to bring more imagination into their lives. Dr. Shainberg offers to explore Katherine’s recent dream of a mysterious and apparently unstable stone edifice. She associates the wall with my recent feelings of anxiety and en...

Can doing your personal dreamwork really improve the world? Our guest this week, Christian Gerike, believes that the more people pay attention to their dreams, the better they will be, and thus the better the world will be. Christian considers himself a dream generalist and is committed to spreading enthusiasm for dreamwork. He argues that working with your dreams helps you learn to look beneath appearances in the world both dreaming and awake. He shares a dream of his in which a mouse needs his help because it is wrapped up in an electronic cord. Throughout this episode, we...

When your mind doesn’t generate images, how does that affect your dreaming? Aphantasia affects as much as 5% of the population. Are you an aphant? Our guest is Paulina Trevena, PhD. Picture an apple. What do you see? Paulina starts out by taking us through a few tests to gauge our ability to visualize. People fall onto a spectrum of ability to make images in their minds. Often aphants can create other sensations in their minds but some think primarily in words only.

Interestingly, this neuro-divergence (sometimes called image-free thinking) is often linked to SDAM, a severely de...

Enoughness. Do you have it? Don’t you want it? How to feel like you are enough by changing your feelings about your past with Regenerating Images in Memory. Our guest this week is the Enoughness Guy, Michael J Kline who argues that you don’t build your enoughness, you uncover it.

Regenerating Images in Memory (RIM) is a facilitated process developed by Deborah Sandella, PhD, which dips beneath the logical mind to leverage awareness of the body for emotional healing. Described as psychedelics without the psychedelics, RIM is a client-led process akin to a waking lucid drea...

Guiding spirits home. Our guest shares some of her experiences of psychopompic dreaming in this mind-blowing replay show. Starting when she was 9 or 10 she would dream of being in a classroom where she learned how to change the dream. Several years later she describes her first experience of helping a dying person happened several years later when she found herself in a dream falling together with a woman who was terrified. She was able to slow their fall by dreaming up first n umbrella then a parachute letting the woman land softly in a place where friends were waiting...

How can you dream well if you’re not sleeping well? Our guest in this popular replay is neurologist, sleep specialist, and podcaster Dr. Chris Winter. Chris starts out talking about how he has always enjoyed sleeping and how that ultimately led him to a career as a sleep specialist. 

We sleep a third of our life and sleep affects all aspects of our waking life. We talk about “eight hours a night, every night”. Is that a myth or do sleep needs really fall on more of a bell curve? You might think you need less sleep t...

Dreams and mental health. Our guest is IASD president, Michelle Carr, PhD, and is a replay of a special episode from 2022. We talk about Michelle’s research in which cognitive methods are used to induce lucid dreaming in the sleep laboratory and about using lucid dreams to treat nightmares. Michelle describes some of the new dream engineering tools that are available including devices to induce lucid dreams or to deepen sleep.

Michelle describes her keynote speech which she was about to give at the 2022 July Tucson IASD conference entitled “From Nightmares to Lucid Dreams: How Dreams Impact Our...

Nana Fofie Amina Bashir was trained in the Akom tradition of West Africa and is a multi-modal artist. Nana Fofie shares her ideas around decolonization and restorative integration of ancestral wisdoms. She starts by describing her training in Ghana, Cameroon, and Togo and reminds us that Carl Jung got many of his ideas around dreamwork through his visits with African tribes. We speak about working with dream themes and watching them evolve and about making spirit connections through dreams.

After the break we get a call from Jenny from Santa Cruz who asks about shamanic drumming. Nana...

Exploring consciousness through lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, meditation, and more. Today, we speak with Amina Mara of the Dream World Podcast. We start out by talking about asking dream characters for guidance and whether some characters might not be external forces or higher powers. We also talk about death in dreams and dreaming as preparation for dying.

After the break we talk about consciousness then Amina gets into specific advice to enhance your lucid dreaming. Max asks a question about lucid daydreaming. We then talk about video games and meditation. We end by talking about...

A common dream theme is one of moving to a new home. We talk with author, literary agent, and life coach, Devra Jacobs. Also her conversations with Archangel Michael and… dragons! Devra has moved 29 times in 40 years and has learned to trust the universe about where and when to move. She recommends that you develop your own spiritual intuition by practicing by starting to talk to your own angels and by dreaming with intention and by following your own interests. She ends by giving some practical tips about moving.

BIO: Devra Jacobs has been an Intuitive Life Co...

Our guest today, Stephanie Trager, describes herself as a repurposed lawyer and was a tree activist until a serious head injury put her on the path of healing. We talk about the idea that psyche can’t distinguish between real and not real including psychedelic visions, memories, dreams, and the her and now. She talks about reframing the past and healing our lineage, which allows us to change our present and thus the future. She then shares her story of the head trauma that upended her life and led her to the South American rain forests where she spent ti...

Holistic trauma therapist Edit B. Kiss talks about how meditation can help to release long-lasting blockages so you can live a more fulfilled and joyful life. Meditations allow you to get into the unconscious mind where you can honor the current situation and see what memories come up. This process leads to releasing long-lasting pains, blockages, ancestor defects and emotional traumas.

Edit talks about some of her dreams about dirty water and about buildings. In the second half, she gives specific recommendations about meditation and leads us on a short grounding chakra meditation.

BIO: Edit...

Will we make it to a safer age? Humanity balances between two paths: self-destruction or self-revelation. Our guest, Christine Barrington describes this critical inflection point and argues that dreams awaken us to the realm of purpose and meaning arguing that every one of us has much to contribute to the path of humanity.

Christine begins with James Braid then outlines the complicated history of science and consciousness including how they got separated in the first place, culminating with the philosophy of positivism which is the belief nothing exists that cannot be verified. She notes in contrast that...

We speak with Bill St. Cyr starting with how common shame is and how the mean voices that we carry around make it hard for us to let in the love that’s all around us. Test taking in a dream is often about shame. Bill shares a dream in which he felt a deep sense acceptance when a dear friend tenderly put their forehead up against his. We talk about something called the entropic theory of the brain which draws parallels between the dreaming brain state and the brain on psychedelics and how they both can throw our br...

How dreaming corrects weaving errors in our internal world models. Also, nightmares, the collective unconscious, and does artificial intelligence have one too? A discussion about what dreams have to say about the nature of reality. Harry de Bont speaks with Katherine about the many facets of what he calls cybernetic dreaming.

BIO: With a background in both Electrical Engineering and Psychology, Harry de Bont’s approach to dreams lies at the nexus of technology and psychology, what he calls the cybernetic perspective on dreams. Today, Harry would like to explore how our dreams reflect and are shaped by...

Connecting with our ancestors. Our guest Stephanie R. Burns starts by describing her all-inclusive view of ancestors which is far vaster than our biological lineage, including the most ancient ancestor of them all, the Earth.

In this replay of a popular episode from September, Stephanie says that we can choose to communicate only with benevolent ancestors and are also able to heal the less healthy ancestors and not let ourselves be controlled by them. She suggests using the four elements as part of our rituals around working with these dreams and focusing on intentionality and gratitude. She...

The Myth Slayer, Scott Mason shares revelations from a transformative, mythic-level psychedelic journey which he frames as a quest to find his own light. He tells of the challenges he had in his journey and how the gifts he received ultimately helped heal some of his wounds around growing up in the backwoods of Kansas in an abusive fundamentalist family.

BIO: Recovering attorney and former C-Suite exec. Master of the mythic. Scott Mason is a speaker and coach who helps unhappy attorneys obliterate the myths keeping them stagnant, so they can magnetize and monetize professional freedom. He is...

Why are dream-inspired poems so powerful? We speak today with award-winning poet, author of multiple books, and committed activist, the dynamic Joan Gelfand.

Joan shares a poem inspired by a dream called Burial, quoted in full below. She speaks about why she thinks that dream-inspired poetry can be so riveting while telling someone your dream can evoke eye-rolling and boredom. She also reads a poem about Ferlinghetti which formed the basis for an award-winning video which can be found here.  Joan also gives specific advice about crafting poetry.

In the second half we take three c...

Today we celebrate the 250th official podcast of the Dream Journal by replaying a popular show which just happens to be with my brand designer Andrusa Lawson of Divine by Design. Urban shamanism and setting sacred space. Dreams, like myths, can be regarded as stories that are not true but that say something true. The essence of setting a sacred space is being intentional and finding a common sense of meaning. We also speak about non-verbal communication in dreamwork and traditional indigenous oral storytelling. Also, the power of urban spirits and dreams of city places.

After the...

Do voices in your head guide your waking life? Inner Wisdom Figures and Internal Family Systems. Inner exploration with today’s guest Charles Tack. 

Charles describes Internal Family Systems as a way of building relationships with the different voices inside ourselves, many of whom came from the cultural and familial messages that we grew up with. He then describes what he calls Inner Wisdom Figures, which are inner characters who seem to be a few steps of development ahead of where we are in waking life. Charles describes how to engage with both of these kinds of inn...

Can dreamwork lead to post traumatic spiritual growth? In this replay of a popular show from October 2022, our guest author and therapist Linda Schiller speaks about waking dream moments and synchronicity. She defines spirituality as an ability to feel held and speaks about how dreams, even painful dreams, can help us grow that ability. We also speak about the three faces of shadow: personal, familial and global and about the parallels between EMDR and REM. We explored my dream about asking for help.

BIO: Linda Yael Schiller, MSW, LICSW is the author of” PTSDreams: Transform Your Nightmares fr...

What does the #metoo movement have to do with the climate crisis? And how can dreams help both? Today meet Marsha Hudson and Norman Brown. We’ll talk about Love and Power and how better emotional versatility can improve relationships and reduce our impact on the planet… and on each other. Our guests start out by saying that women seek love while men seek power. Reconciling these two drives is the work of relationship. They talk about how a modern lack of empathy is the root of both the #metoo movement and the current climate crisis.

Marsha shar...

A conversation about psychedelics with holistic facilitator Steve Elfrink of Om Terra Psychedelics. How dreams and psychedelics shift consciousness and help resolve trauma. He describes primary consciousness as the body and the subconscious while secondary consciousness is everyday awareness. Primary consciousness is present all the time, but is deeply accessed through dreaming and psychedelics.

Steve recommends what he calls a psycholytic dose to help get out of a loop of unresolved emotions, but he cautions that a psychedelic session is just the beginning of a healing journey.

In the second half, Steve shares his own...

Dream yoga, dream tarot, and the creative life. How to live and embody the dream as a daily practice which helps with life and with death. Today’s guest is Niki Jaimes, founder of the Rising Wolf Collective. We start by talking about dream yoga as a daily empowerment practice and a kind of self study. She says dreams helped put her in touch with her emotions and bodily sensations and to develop her intuition, She describes a shamanic journey that led her to heal a mysterious shoulder pain.

We talk about the paradox that learning to fe...

Guide your dreams with the power of thought and intention. Explore creativity, healing, sex, grief, and the nature of time and space. Today we talk to Lucid Dreaming expert Dr. Clare Johnson.

Clare describes an intense dream which spurred her to write her next book which is currently in the editing phase. She says that dreams, lucid or not, demonstrate that we are in partnership with our own subconscious. She tells of lucid dreams in which she questions the nature of dreams, energy, and even of matter. We then get into a conversation about nightmares: what they...

Connect to the soul using dream incubation! In this replay of a popular episode from July, we speak with Machiel Klerk starting with the dream that inspired his creation of the fabulous Jung Platform, a site offering online courses, lectures, and certificate programs that are inspired by Jungian psychology. We go deep into dream incubation: what it is, what kind of questions to ask, how to set up a meaningful ritual to improve your changes for success, and how to recognize and work with the answer. We also talk about nightmares which Machiel describes as trying to wake us...

How to write your story and transform your Tragic into Magic! Our guest today is the inimitable Kelly Sullivan Walden author of ten books. Kelly starts by saying it’s best to write from a place of passion and describes what authority means to her and what it can mean to you. We talk about the idea of the hero’s journey which starts with a call to adventure then ends with giving to others what we have learned. Along the way we will encounter much resistance and, much like in working with dreams, we need to turn enemies into...