Methods, Approaches, and Theories:

Freud teaches us to pay attention to punning in the dream. Dreams love puns!

Dreaming of a Lion in your living room? Listen to the sound of the world “lion” and wonder, is this dream in any way about someone telling lies? Is the Lion at work? Is someone “lion” down on the job?

A woman who in her past worked as an erotic dancer had a dream that ended with the thought “its just hormones,” that she used to minimize all the content that came before. Upon further exploration, it became clear that she didn’t believe she had a right to take herself seriously because her concerns where just “whore moans.”

Punning in dreams can be a potent way to listen into resonances of the dream, to open it into new layers of meaning.

Try this: Tell your dream to a friend you trust with the idea that they will listen for puns in the dream. See what happens. It  can be a very insightful way to begin wondering about dreams and what they are saying, how they apply to life now, what they are attempting to inform you about.

Enjoy!

There are at least three ways to look at an image in a dream.

1. Pay specific attention to the image in the dream. What is it doing specifically? How do you feel watching it? How does it seem to be feeling? What is it up to and who or what else in the dream is it in relation to?
2. What is the behavior of the dream figure in the waking world. If its a biological being, what is its nature? How does it function in nature? What are its skills, attributes, qualities?
3. What are the mythic resonances of this image? This incudes cross cultural, but also your own associations. What do you think about when you think of this image? What stories come to mind?

Dream Art:

The process of writing or drawing a dream can be very powerful and revealing. Both practices help to integrate the material in body, mind, and emotion.

http://www.ondreaming.com/dream-imagery/index.htm

Take a meander through this site.

Does it give you permission to play a bit with your dreams?

Don’t be shy, Get out the crayons!