Dream Warnings of Cancer, Heart Disease, and Other Illnesses, May Save Your Life

Dream Warnings of Cancer, Heart Disease, and Other Illnesses, May Save Your Life
Written by Terry L. Gillis
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Table of Contents
Introduction Definitions History of Dreams and Health Research Dreams and Cancer The Cardiovascular System The Respiratory System Gastrointestinal Problems Neurological Disorders Migraine Headaches Pain and Other Ailments Mental Health Dreams Healing and Recovery Dreams Health Dream Examples Indicators & Interpreting Health Dreams Monitoring and Recording Your Dreams Conclusion About the Author Disclaimer
Copyright 2014. Dreaming Today. All Rights Reserved.
Introduction
If you could be warned weeks, months, or even years in advance of a life threatening illness, would it be worth a little effort to develop a new skill? How valuable would that information be? Were so often caught completely off guard and unprepared for a serious illness, that just the shock of it puts us into a tailspin. We feel helpless, defeated and even angry. We wonder how we didnt see it coming. We wonder what we did to cause it. And we wonder if there was something we could have done to avoid it. The good news is, we actually have a built-in monitoring system that keeps an eye on what's happening with us spiritually, psychologically as well as physically, and gives us detailed reports every night, without fail. It tells us what were doing wrong and what were doing right. And it shows us what we need to do to fix any problem areas in our livesincluding our health. This system is our dreams. Dreams occur naturally about six times a night and have provided insights into health and wholeness since the beginning of recorded history. Early civilizations found that they had abandoned something essential in the daily routines of city life and so dream sanctuaries afforded an opportunity to get back in touch with that essential something, that source of wholeness that provided comfort and healing. However, abandoned out of fear during the Middle Ages in the West, dream sharing and dream interpretation were again revived as healing channels in early 20th century psychotherapy. Eventually these practices made their way out into mainstream culture and flourished as popular techniques in self awareness, self help and improvement and spiritual growth. Though dreams may not predict the lottery numbers you want (though this has happened), there's mounting and irrefutable evidence that they do indicate trends that give us clues to upcoming problems with the body as well as the mind and soul and life in general.
Definitions
Physicians from Hippocrates to psychiatrist Dr. Kasatkin to oncologist Bernie Siegel have found that dreams do often predict illness. The ancient Greeks called them prodromal dreams from the Greek words pro meaning before, and dromos meaning running. Thus, prodromal dreams can tell us what is going on in our bodies before the symptoms become obvious and readily diagnosable. Current health dream terms Prodromal dreams are those which indicate the onset of illness prior to any noticeable symptoms. Example: Three Doctors
Im being rolled into pre-op on a gurney. Im telling someone (one of my sons?) what things Ill need. Im terrified about the surgery. Three doctors enter the room and accompany me to surgery. Ones my family doctor, ones named Dr. Chase (from the show House), and the third is the head surgeon. I say, Dr. Chase, please dont let me die. He reassures me that Im going to be okay, that patients dont die from herniated liver surgery. When I wake up in recovery, I hug Dr. Chase and thank him for saving my life. Symptomatic dreams are those which occur during the course of an illness and reflect symptomology. Diagnostic dreams are those that alert you to symptoms as well as causes of a problem with your mind or body, such as poor circulation, high blood pressure, food allergies or reactions, lack of sleep, etc. Example: (Robert Moss - DreamGate.com) In The Three Only Things, Moss discusses the case of a woman patient whose physicians could not agree on a diagnosis for her collection of symptoms until a wolf entered her dreams and told her, My name is Lupus Wolf. Tell the doctors. When she did this, her physicians agreed that lupus might be an accurate diagnosis for her condition, and embarked on a treatment plan accordingly. Lupus Wolf reappeared in the womans dreams, now as an ally in healing. Healing dreams are those dreams that show you what you need to do to resolve the issue, or that can even bring about what many would consider a miraculous cure. Our dreams provide us with fresh imagery and energy for self-healing. Example: (Robert Moss - DreamGate.com) Fifties Roadster A dreamer asked for guidance whether she should have surgery for a herniated disk. In her dream, she saw a zippy Fifties roadster, painted red and white, with a huge ultramodern sound system in the back. She was told in the dream that mechanical repairs were not necessary and would be excessively costly. Waking, she recognized that her body was the Fifties roadster, and that a sound system is also a disk player. She proceeded to experiment with very healing results with the power of toning and vibration to help with her back problem.
History of Dreams and Health

Dream Temples The Asklepion dream healing centers are all over Greece and were in full operation all over the Aegean Sea and coast of Asia Minor by around 400 B.C.E, (Before Current Era). Even the Romans
would later make trips for the healing cures. Apparently anyone (except pregnant mothers) could go be treated. The general procedure was to hang out and relax for awhile and hopefully to have a dream where Asklepios, one of his family members, or one of his animal familiars, would touch you. The most famous animal familiar was the snake, and it's still known today as the healing symbol of the medical profession, the caduceus. The most famous of these Asklepion sanctuaries is Epidavros (eh -Pee- Dahv' res) and anyone who visits the site today, will notice it's strategically located for harmony and relaxation in a comforting little bowl of a valley, as if it were specifically designed as a spa or retreat. Even in the busy city of Athens, the Asklepion sanctuary is significantly tucked away in a little grove on the side of the Acropolis hill. These dream sanctuaries or temples once surrounded the Mediterranean but disappeared during the Dark Ages when dream sharing was condemned and repressed by the Christian Church. This may seem like an enormous contradiction to some since dream sharing was a vital part of the early visions of prophets and apostles. The Church Fathers felt that dream interpretation was a pagan practice. Thus, one had to be a saint to tell the difference between dreams from the devil and dreams from God. And so, Christians didn't dare share their dreams or even admit to dreaming for fear of being accused of heresy, or worse. By the 19th century however, dreams were less taboo and science was gaining power and influence and gentleman researchers began re-exploring dreams. But it was a Viennese psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, who managed to revive them in his 1900 book, The Interpretation of Dreams. The interest in dreams as therapeutic tools continued to gain momentum and one of Freud's students helped bring them back into the mainstream. Carl G. Jung and his analytic psychologists developed the most elaborate dream theories and practices. Jung's work deeply influenced the dream movement that flowered in the 1960's and laid the groundwork for bridging the gap between Eastern and Western medicine and healing. From a Jungian perspective, Eastern philosophies needed to merge with Western materialism which would bring about a dance between the everyday mundane material world and ideals and transcendence of the spirit to obtain a state of wholeness. The unconscious was the mechanism to accomplish this. Dreams, he felt, attempted to move in a direction that was opposite to the direction we move in the daytime. By moving in this opposite or compensatory direction, the dream was a natural balancing process, and thus a restorative healing experience. We could assist in this process by cooperating with dreams and establishing a dialogue with the unconscious. These ideas and practices mixed with group processes that were being experimented with during the 1960's under the general title of a human potential movement. Frederick (Frtiz) Perls was the major proponent and practitioner of this type of dreamwork. In these groups, every character, object or situation (every symbol) in the dream was seen as a part of the dreamer's
psyche and given a voice. Perls, like Jung, felt the dialogue between the dream and the dreamer unleashed repressed emotional, psychological and somatic patterns that could make us sick, and allow us greater range of creative expression and experience and relatedness to ourselves, others and the world. By the 1980's it was clear that an enormous variety of dreamwork had developed, both inside clinical therapy, outside in grassroots support groups and in spiritual traditions. The Association for the Study of Dreams was formed to begin an exchange of research and ideas between these and many other groups interested in dreams, including cognitive psychologists, anthropologists, sleep researchers and a whole host of groups influenced by dreams such as artists, writers, and those interested in personal growth and spiritual development. Edgar Cayce, one of American's most famous psychics, who was known as the sleeping prophet, believed that our dreams serve several functions. Somatic dreams - dreams referring to the body - are extremely important to be mindful of. Very often dreams will offer solutions to health problems. For example, one man was plagued with food allergies for many years, but was unable to find the source of his discomfort. Then one night he went to bed and he dreamed of a can of coffee. He quit drinking coffee and his symptoms disappeared. If you had lived in ancient China about 4500 years ago and became ill, your doctor would have talked about the concepts of yin and yang, and the relationship between dreams and illness. Healers in that time believed The utmost art of healing can be achieved when there is unity. They understood the mind/body/spirit connection! If you had lived in Greece around 400 BCE and went to Hippocrates, the Father of Modern Medicine, he would have used dream therapy and encouraged you to incubate a healing dream. Aristotle, who was born shortly after Hippocrates died, helped advance the theory that dreams reflected a persons bodily health and suggested a doctor could diagnose patients illnesses by listening to their dreams. Galen of Pergamum a Greco-Roman physician who had a great impact on European medicine, received his training in the second century AD. He used dreams for both diagnosis and treatment. He even used dream-received guidance to perform operations.
Research
More recently, with the advent of PET, MRI and fMRI brain scans, medical research has confirmed through reproducible results, that what you dream about affects your body and emotions. In fact, your dreams can warn you of oncoming health problems, help diagnose them, suggest treatment, accelerate the healing process, and contribute to your lifelong health. Dr. Vasily Kasatkin, a psychiatrist at the Leningrad Neurosurgical Institute, studied the content of dreams over a forty year period. His finding corroborate the American content analysis studies of Calvin Hall and go further. Calvin Hall found that the recalled surface of dreams tend to reflect the general life condition of the dreamer. When someone is ill, there tend to be ill dreams,
nightmares, struggle and often violence. Kasatkin's findings further found that these violent dreams often precede an illness. Not only do dreams warn and diagnose health problems, but they apparently can reflect recovery and healing as well. R.C. Smith investigated a relationship between dreams and clinical outcomes in patients suffering from severe medical diseases (cardiovascular disease, infections, etc). Among males, significant associations were found between death references in dreams and subsequent decline in health. Females displayed a significant relationship between separation references and poor medical outcomes. Smith later found that cardiac patients who do not dream at all have an even worse prognosis compared to those who do dream. King and DeCicco examined the relationship between health (physical and mental) and dream content, testing the continuity hypothesis of dreaming, which states that dreams reflect waking life, and the compensatory theory of dreaming (Jung, 1964), which states that dreams compensate for that which is lacking. The study suggested that: As overall physical health declined, misfortunes (injuries/ illnesses) increased in dreams. As physical functioning declined and role limitations due to physical health increased, reports of body parts increased in dreams. In terms of specific body parts, lower physical health was only related to mentions of the head. Those with lower levels of energy displayed a higher number of physical movements (e.g., walking, running) in their dreams. Those reporting more physical pain had more animals in their dreams. Those with lower levels of mental health, as measured by emotional well-being, had more reports of sadness in their dreams. Higher levels of depression were related to more frequent reports of sadness and anger in dreams. Those higher in depression also reported more total aggressive acts, and aggressions with the dreamer as the victim. Mark Solms investigates the world of brain disorders. For several years he has investigated and compared dream reports with neurological information. Lately, this has included MRI brain scans. Though his conclusions offer little specific advice, they do indicate that general types of dreaming anomalies occur in tandem with specific problems with the brain and the area warrants further research. Robert Haskell, a cognitive psychologist, offers a viewpoint on dreams and health that may be helpful. He feels that dreams offer us a "cognitive monitoring system." His research into dreams and health include hundreds of studies in psychotherapy as well as somatic medicine. He found
that dreams do seem to reflect internal somatic conditions, often predicting them and even more, are a good way to explore how the patient is coping with these conditions.
Dreams and Cancer

In the work Tallulah Lyons has done with cancer patients, he found that many people dream about their cancer before it is diagnosed. These dreams are truly gifts if we listen to them. One woman dreamed her aunt, who had died of breast cancer, appeared in a dream and told her that she had breast cancer. Her next mammogram confirmed the dream. The actor, Michael Douglas told doctors for months and months that he was ill but he couldnt get verification. His inner mind, his own unconscious told him that "something" was wrong and he immediately consulted physicians to prevent further illness. He was eventually diagnosed with throat cancer. A breast cancer patient dreamed that her head was shaved with the word 'cancer' written on it. Three weeks later, she received the diagnosis that the cancer spread to her brain. Many examples of dreams preceding the onset of cancer have been published. One author traces a link between dreams, disturbing emotions, lower functioning of the immune system and increased susceptibility to cancer. He claims the images in dreams can symbolize the type of cancer and its location as was noted in the recurring nightmare of a woman who kept dreaming of dogs tearing at her stomach for several months before she was diagnoses with stomach cancer. Unfortunately, she died three months after the diagnosis. A physiologist turned-mediation teacher had a series of vague dreams about cancer that culminated in a vivid dream of having surgery on one of her breasts by a woman surgeon. This upsetting dream prompted her to request a mammogram, which was ultimately normal. Unsatisfied by the result, she pressed the radiologist to do an ultrasound. The radiologist refused because it wasnt standard practice. The woman pleaded to have it done exactly where the dream had indicated. The radiologist finally conceded and to his surprise the cancer was exactly where it had been indicated in the dream. She later had surgery, which was performed by the woman surgeon from her dream. In her wonderful book, She Who Dreams, Wanda Easter Burch, chronicles her dreams as they warn and prepare her for a breast cancer diagnosis, support and encourage her through her battle with the disease, and aide and uplift her during the healing and recovery process and beyond. I strongly advise every woman read this book both for educational and inspirational purposes. "In the summer of 1989, I began to experience physical pain. The first incident was a sharp, stabbing pain my left breast, so severe threat I could not breathe. I was frightened by the pain. I searched for a lump -anything unusual- but found nothing I could identify as "different." The pain was never constant. It was periodic, but always stabbing and intense. My inner voice began to come awake, telling me that there was a problem, that
this pain was abnormal. I pushed the voice aside, ignored it, insisted that it was wrong..." "The pain nagged at me. I was dreaming about my illness, but my dreams had not yet shouted at me with images I recognized, so I recorded the dreams and put them away..." "Throughout the summer and into the fall, the pain became more intense. There were long periods without pain, and I would lapse into feeling that I had imagined something was wrong, but intuition and barely remembered images in dreams tugged stronger..." Then the pain became more frequent. Murky dreams tugged at my soul but presented nothing concrete. I aggressively felt my breast for something unusual but found nothing -until I bent over and probed in a different direction, deep into an area behind the front tissue. There was a ledge with something small and hard beneath it; it was like feeling under a rock and suddenly finding something. The "something" under that ledge was a lump. Later, when two physicians described the appearance of my breast cancer, one used the image of a ledge of tissue and one described it as a globe of stars, like an oldfashioned cylindrical glass ball, only filled with dot-like stars. When I looked back through my dream journal, I found that my summer dreams had been telling me something I couldn't recognize at the time: one dream presented a ledge with debris beneath it, and another described the left side of an orb filled with starts." "Now I was more frightened than I had ever been in my life. I had followed the stabbing lines of pain to their source and found a lump. The lump moved and it was painful, both signs of a benign lump according to the literature. Then why did I not believe the literature? Why was I so terrified? My dreams, my inner voice, and my intuition were should "danger!" The warnings felt real, and I knew I was in trouble." Although my dreams of ledges and gloves of stars had not presented clear enough pictures for me to recognize breast cancer, they had been disturbing, gnawing away at my subconscious. They had coalesced into an intuitive feeling that something was very wrong and very dangerous..." A man who repeatedly dreamed of being shot in the left side of his chest was soon diagnosed with a tumor in his left lung. In a repetitive dream of a smoker, he is in the army, in a combat zone and attempt to take cover in the hollow trunk of a large tree. He hears machine-gun fire and looks down to see the bullets are reaching the tree and cutting mi in half, methodically going from the left side of my lower chest to the right, clear across my body. An examination revealed a small tumor on the left, lower lobe of his lung, but it had not yet metastasized (spread). A journalist dreamed that torturers were placing hot coals beneath his chin. He felt the heat start to sear his throat and screamed in desperation as the coals gnawed his larynx. He awoke very disturbed and received a long-distance call from his girlfriend who had just had a horrible dream of being with him in a bed filling with blood.
In a later dream, the journalist dreamt that medicine men stuck hypodermic needles into what he called his neck brain. He felt sure these dreams indicated something was wrong with his throat. He had difficulty, however, persuading his physician to take his concerns seriously. Finally, a physical checkup confirmed the presence of cancer in his thyroid gland, which is located near the larynx.
The Cardiovascular System

Cardiovascular system warning dreams tend to be specific and include rhythmic sounds, explosions, and/or blood. In a journal article, the dream of a patient with a coronary heart disorder was related. The man (heart patient) had received news of a severe financial setback on the previous day. In his dream the following night, he was on a stage receiving tremendous applause, which he acknowledged with a bow. He then opened his violin case and took out, not a violin, but a machine-gun and swiftly I put the muzzle to my mouth and, rat-tat-tat, I blow my brains out. I fall to the ground. The patient woke from his dream and experienced a massive heart attack a few minutes later. A fifty year old patient dreamed some guests shot at him at a palace reception. The dreamer felt the bullets pierce his heart and saw blood flow out. Other events then occurred (in the dream) and at its conclusion the man felt as if a bomb exploded. The dreamer had experienced an arterial infarct (heart blockage) during the dream. Prior to having a mild cardiac arrest, a woman dreamed of skeletal hands grabbing her and piercing her heart. In the cases reviewed above, the heart-related imagery is surprisingly specific. Individuals with heart problems are also more likely to project heart content into their waking imagery as well
The Respiratory System

Dreams often include feelings of suffocation. A tuberculosis patient dreamed of earth falling on top of her, compressing her chest and suffocating her. The dream was reported two months prior to onset. (Kasatkin, 1967) A second tuberculosis patient who developed pleuritisin in her left lung had reported a dream in which a mountain slide fell on her chest. When she tried to crawl through, the left side of her chest was too large to do so. (Kasatkin, 1967) Asthmatics tend to report more aggressive acts and threats to the self.
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Gastrointestinal Problems
G.I. problems are often reflected in dream images of sewage, waste, spoiled food, raw fish, or intestinal worms. A man dreamed he was in an apartment full of feces and dirty water. In a second dream, he was in a restroom littered with feces. Later in the dream he was caught by an enemy who hit him on the head with a rifle butt and another who bayonetted him in the abdomen. He awoke with dysentery, a headache, and a pain in his lower abdomen. A man experienced a recurring dream in which a rat was gnawing at the lower part of his abdomen. He was soon diagnosed with a duodenal ulcer. Following the operation, the recurring dream ended. Often the dreams of ulcer patients depict some injury to the stomach. The night before a twenty-nine year old man experienced a perforated ulcer, he dreamed that he was eating pizza and his stomach broke open.
Neurological Disorders
Dreams usually focus on the head or images of immobility. There are numerous examples of how disturbed cerebral conditions followed rapidly after a dream in which imagery of the head was featured. In a nineteenth century dream report, a womans deceased father appeared and told her that during his lifetime he had to wear a crown, which he then placed on her head. She felt the weight and tightness of the crown around her brown and realized that its rim was studded on the inside with sharp points that pierced her forehead and drew blood. After she awoke, she recalled that her father had suffered with epileptic convulsions before being cured through surgery. As she began to tell the dream to her sister, she suddenly shrieked and fell to the floor in an epileptic seizure. A week later the dream repeated and was followed by another attack. After undergoing treatment, both the dreams and the seizures ceased. A neurologist reported on the dreams of a twenty-one year old woman who was in good health. One night she experienced several dreams which emphasized the theme of immobility. In one, she became a living statue of stone, and in another, she fell into a sleep so deep she couldnt be awakened. She awoke the next morning a victim of sleeping sickness (encephalitis lethargica). Patricia Garfield reported that a woman in her 60s dreamed for several months of characters who were ominously still. In one, the seated people in a kitchen seemed to be wax-like figures, and in another, corpses sat upright in an undertakers parlour. This woman was later discovered in a deep coma. Her diagnosis was myxedema coma, a potentially fatal condition resulting from an underactive thyroid gland.
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A twenty-five year old woman experienced a different outcome after having recurring dreams of her family members turning into stone statues. Although she appeared to be the picture of mental and physical health at the time of these dreams, she developed severe catatonia (schizophrenia with rigid posture) ten days after the fourth repletion of her dream. Her immobility was remarkably similar to the petrification of her family members.
Migraine Headaches
Dreams focus on the head, often with direct attacks. A seventeen year old girl dreamed that a man broke through her bedroom window and shot her on the left side of her head. She awoke with a severe migraine headache on the left side. A woman dreamed she was walking outside when she was struck by lightning in the head. She awoke with a migraine headache. Dreams immediately preceding migraine onset tend to contain more anger and apprehension. (Heather-Greener et al., 1996)
Pain and Other Ailments

A woman dreamed repetitively that a nurse was holding a lighted candle near her left leg. As the dreams progressed, the candle was brought closer and closer to her leg until it began to burn. After some time, the woman developed pain and eventually an infection in the bone marrow of her left leg. (Mitchell, 1923) A woman who developed visual problems (inflamed retina) and pain had dreamed of colourful worms crawling on her eye lids only days earlier. (Mitchell, 1923) Associations can account for some unusual premonitory images in dreams. A man who had suffered from severe inflammation of the eyes while on a trip to Egypt, suddenly began, ten years later, to dream regularly of scenes from Egypt. He couldnt explain these Egyptian dreams, but soon after their appearance, he again developed inflammation of his eyes. The learned associated between scenes of Egypt and Inflamed eyes was apparently unconsciously activated when signs of eye trouble were detected. Another example of diagnosis by association was reported by Alan Moffitt, a former president of the Association for the Study of Dreams. Moffitt was allergic to animals, and whenever he petted a cat, his eyes and sinuses would swell up and he couldnt breathe. When he was about 9 years old, he had a dream in which a cat had been rubbing itself over him. After waking, he experienced a full-blown allergy attack.
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Health related dreams may be different in men and women. Robert Smith studied about 100 patients at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and looked for "Death Scores" and "Separation Scenes." Death scores had references to graveyards, funerals, wills and physical body failures. Separation had to do with social disruptions and relationships. For men who came in the hospital, it was the death score dreams that indicated a deterioration in health. But for women, it was separation dreams. Just a caution. These studies were done with patients who were all already identified as cardiac problem patients. Just having a death dream or separation dream is no indication in itself of problems. Jung noted, for example, that patients who did die suddenly rarely had dreams about it.
Mental Health Dreams

When it comes to dreams and their imagery, almost anythings normal. What isnt normal, for example, is if you never have people in your dreams, or if every dream has the same elements over and over and over. In an intriguing case study reported several years ago, a seemingly healthy adult male sought help from a psychiatrist for difficulties in his social life. As part of his therapy, he was instructed to keep a dream journal. In the two years he recorded his dreams, not one contained a single living thing; no people, animals or plants; not even the dreamer himself. Another more disturbing case was studied and reported by Calvin Hall, a number of years ago. Hall was provided with a series of dreams from an unknown person (by a colleague). The dreams all featured unnatural, confusing and distorted sexual and body imagery. There were marked omissions that are generally found in dreams, such as family, friends, home settings. It was later revealed to Hall that the dreams were those of a sex offender who had apparently been abused by a family member. Note: Dont confuse dreaming about sex and body parts with sexual deviance or abnormality. Its perfectly natural to dream about sex and every possible body part. Men tend to dream about sex four times more than women do, yet neither gender dreams about sex much in relation to all other types of dreams.a mere ten percent (average). Recurring elements dont necessarily signal a problem either. Quite often our unconscious will repeat the same theme or element until we finally get the message its trying to express. However, if you continually dream about blue horses in ballet slippers, for example, or any one element or theme, over and over, you may want to speak with a mental health professional. Anything and everything youve ever seen, read, or experienced, and even those you havent can and does make up the story and imagery of your dreams. I once dreamt of a bear (brown stuffed ones) tree and giggled when I realized the message was a bare (leafless) tree. Dont let the creativeness and uniqueness of your dreams scare you away from paying attention to them. Think of them as stories being told in codea code that only you can decipher. A new study found that sleep may play a role in how we process emotionally-charged memories, which could have important implications in how we understand how post-traumatic stress
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disorder (PTSD) works in the brain. Though researchers haven't quite reached a consensus on why we sleep, we do know that sleep helps our brains rebound after a long day. Also among its functions are sleep's ability to help consolidate memories, enhance cognitive function, and boost decision-making. Altered sleep patterns have been linked to mood disorders like depression, anxiety, and PTSD. REM sleep in particular seems to be disrupted in PTSD patients. Walker says he got the idea for the study when he heard that a side effect of a blood pressure drug was decreased incidence of nightmares in PTSD patients: The blood pressure drug is known to reduce norepinephrine levels in the brain. "This study can help explain the mysteries of why these medications help some PTSD patients and their symptoms as well as their sleep," Walker said. "It may also unlock new treatment avenues regarding sleep and mental illness." "We know that during REM sleep there is a sharp decrease in levels of norepinephrine, a brain chemical associated with stress," said study author Matthew Walker. "By reprocessing previous emotional experiences in this neuro-chemically safe environment of low norepinephrine during REM sleep, we wake up the next day, and those experiences have been softened in their emotional strength. We feel better about them, we feel we can cope."
Recovery and Healing Dreams

Wanda Easter Burch, in She Who Dreams, recounted many, many dreams that assisted her prior to and during her recovery from a radical mastectomy. Her dreams both reported on the progress of her recovery and offered advice and actual imagery for healing. Patricia Garfield, after she broke her wrist in a fall, had to have it re-broken because the bones were healing incorrectly. She became very aware of how the medical course of her recovery was being expressed in her dreams. Robert Van de Castle, in Our Dreaming Mind, shared his own recovery dreams. After suffering from severe heat stroke, and after an overnight stay in the hospital, he felt very weak and mentally fuzzy. He didnt remember a dream for several nights, and then, on the fourth night, he dreamed that he was involved in some sort of telepathy study with two colleagues and was in charge of collating the stimuli. However, everything was going so fast that he said the procedure had to stop because the reliability of his work was breaking down. He was then sorting through a box containing hardware, trying to find nuts and bolts. Two nights later he dreamed he was at a banquet celebration where music was playing. A performer was on stage making sensation skiing moves, including going up the side of the wall. Robert was at another platform, but making only minimal motions. In his waking life, Robert had been feeling considerable apprehension over whether he would be able to run again, and was going up the wall, with anxiety. In a later dream the same night, the tempo of his activities increased. He was running and turned a corner and started to accelerate. At that point in his dream, he remembered that he had promised his doctor he wouldnt attempt running for quite a while so he stopped running (in the dream).
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About ten days after his heat stroke, Van de Castle dreamed that 3 puddles of blood spilled on the floor. (Earlier that day 3 vials of blood had been drawn to determine how his recovery was coming along). As he was cleaning up the blood, a small frog appeared. For Van de Castle, a frog was associated with a special spiritual and healing quality. After waking from the dream he felt positive that the blood analysis would indicate the danger had passed. A few days later, the dream inspired diagnosis was proved correct. I have spent many years in dreamwork, and I believe in the profound power of dreams to heal. Their healing power comes in many ways: the healing of inner wounds, the healing of setbacks, losses and grief, the healing of self-confidence, and even the healing of the body. It's not necessarily that dreams themselves heal, though there are documented cases of such, but that they contain valuable insights into how we can heal ourselves. They help us process and integrate. They help us solve problems and reduce stress. And they help us envision bold ideas, creative solutions and unique therapies tailored just to our needs. At Aesculapian temples, if one dreamed of an olive tree, a serpent, a bearded man or a handsome youth (the latter was especially associated with miraculous cures), then the dreamer would be cured. If no healing dreams were experienced, the patient was given instruction by the temple priests for receiving healing information through visions. These techniques worked, according to testimonies inscribed on the temple walls, which probably were carved there to inspire the steady stream of dream pilgrims. All kinds of ailments and conditions were reportedly cured with the help of dreams, from chronic illnesses to blindness and lameness. Locating healing cures in dreams is usually the providence of Shamans, specially trained individuals who travel in various states of ecstasy to find cures for their community. But modern dreamers often find cures as well. Van de Castle relates a story of a woman who had been on antibiotics after an operation and was suffering from chronic vaginal yeast infections. Failing traditional treatment, she tried the advice of a friend and took folic acid. She had a dream with two parts, one of moving bowls of acid around her kitchen and another of her kitten gobbling up brown yeast and strawberries. She stopped taking the folic acid and tried the yeast tablets, which produced remarkable results for her. Example from my own dream journal: I was Tom from the television series/movie Taken. I was looking at a house to rent for my (his) daughter. It was at an old 3 story house that was beautiful, but I couldnt see much of it. I was then there beside Tom, and now I was his daughter. And we looked through the house, but could only see the basement, which was damp and grey, and there was a nook or opening which I thought was a stairway up, but it wasnt. It was just an empty shaft. Tom decided to rent the house and we said goodbye. We arrived at the car and I lifted my jacket up off the front seat. There were 2 other people sitting in the back. My jacket was a beige-green military jacket, and I tried to slip it on over a lacy white blouse. However, the ring on my right hand caught on something (a loose thread?) inside the sleeve and ripped part of the arm patch, which was either 4 stripes or some other
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military patch of some kind. I looked at my ring and noticed that it was worn out, and there were 2 or 3 holes worn though/out /into it. The gentleman that was renting the house offered to fix the rip, so I went back into the house. Inside, the man deftly repaired my jacket. I thanked him again, and got into the car. We drove for quite a while, stopped for something to eat, then continued on for a long while. We stopped at a motel for the night. Something happened over night, and people all around us were being poisoned and becoming zombies. We were trapped in the little store of the motel in the middle of a small town. We were running out of food and there was no water to drink. I was looking for a can of pop and there was none left in the upright pop cooler. However, I found 3 small bottles of Coke in a chest-like cooler. Someone opened one for me by popping the cap off with their teeth. I took a long drink of Coke and it was really cold and refreshing. Then, I knew that a red fern-like plant was the cure for the poison and that it was growing in the woods across from where we were. I had to get to it somehow, and a young girl went out with me. We were walking down a path, among a group of teenaged zombies, and we managed to fool them into thinking we were zombies as well. Perhaps by chanting or moaning? We made it to the woods and the plant. Next, I was in Walmart. I was looking at micro-machines. They were in packages of 4, 5 or 6 (cant remember which). I opened a package to take out just a couple, then noticed another package with 2 hotrod-type micro-machines, and I opened it up and took them out. As I did, I thought that Id have to tell Mike about them because hed like them and appreciate them. I then walked out of Walmart with several items in a cardboard box, to pay somewhere else (the original store maybe). I stuck a reddish-brown thimble or rubber finger thimble thing in my pocket without paying for it. I was then in a small country store (not sure if it was the original one, but I sort of think it wasnt). I put the box on the counter, and in the box was mini cars, several pairs of sunglasses, most of them broken, and another box (like a bracelet box) with some white jewellery partially sticking out. The man behind the counter was holding a syringe and asked me about being a zombie (or something to that affect), and if I had gotten the shot yet. I was indignant, and said that I was the one that found the cure! Patricia Garfield has also documented many dreams that have healed people. In one case a woman had suffered for years with severe migraine headaches. In a dream she was taking care of an old woman. The dreamer wanted to leave to take care of her own family, but decided to stay and help the old woman. The old woman finally died. The old woman's husband and son came to visit the dreamer and indicated they would help the woman with her headaches as she had been so kind to the old woman. They laid their hands on the dreamer and when she awoke, she stopped having headaches. This was a condition that had lasted for nearly 40 years and was spontaneously relieved by a dream.
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It is interesting to note that many of the spontaneous healing dreams involve a person or animal that touches or interacts with the dreamer's body in the dream, much like the ancient Asklepion dream sanctuary practices. However, there is little evidence outside of anecdotes that is available. What does seem clear is that dreams can pick up clues from the body and do so often long before the dreamer is consciously aware of them.
Health Dream Examples

Example #1 Anne Rice precognitive health warning dream: One day in 1972, Anne Rice had an eerie dream in which her five-year-old daughter Michele died as a result of an unusual blood disorder. Shortly thereafter, Michele Rice was diagnosed with leukemia. In the five weeks following Michele's death, Rice - in a grief-ridden haze - completed Interview with the Vampire. Claudia, the book's six year-old immortal vampire child, was inspired by her beloved daughter. "I want people to carry dog-eared copies of Interview with the Vampire in their backpacks," Rice once said. "I want my books to live, to be read. That will be justification enough for all the pain and work and struggling and doubt." Example #2 A man who called the National Dream Hotline dreamed he was in an operating room at a hospital following a heart attack. The surgeon and his team were quickly working to save the man's life. The dreamer could hear the heart monitor beeping, then it went dead and he awoke. This was a very frightening dream for this man, for given his lifestyle and physical condition he believed it could be precognitive. In the Language of Mind, this dream was telling the man he needed to aggressively respond to his desires. The dream illness symbolized his long-standing pattern of competition, it had pushed him in life but it had also left him empty. To repair his "broken heart" he would need to love his life, seeking meaning and understanding from his experiences instead of trying to keep up with someone else or beat his competitors. Following the interpretation of the dream, the SOM teacher discussed the man's physical health, including suggestions for change in diet, more mobility, and possible herbs and vitamins to strengthen the cardio-vascular system, to give him ways to take control of his health. Example #3 A woman shared her dreams on a discussion group. The dreams were almost always the same: My teeth were loose or falling out, or I had a huge wad of chewing gum in my mouth that I was unable to remove. The gum dreams were more stressful: I would be in a gum-inappropriate environment and the endless struggle to remove it was fruitless and embarrassing. Loose-tooth dreams just mean you are getting old. Everyone knows that. But I had always had these dreams, and the ones about the impossible-to-remove, taffy-like gum debacle occurred more and more
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frequently. Eventually, my teeth actually become loose, and I began trying to figure out why. I went to see my dentist, who advised me to see a gum doctor. This seemed almost funny, in light of the dream imagery I struggled with for so many years. Nothing seemed to be amiss, and I was advised to "watch it" and see if anything changed. The teeth stayed loose, nothing changed, the dreams continued. My back molars no longer met the way they should and there was noticeable shifting and wiggling. Finally, I went to see another dentist who wiggled my teeth, then stepped back and cupped his chin with his hand. "Hmm," he said. "I have been wiggling teeth for many, many years and I have never seen this before. I wiggle one, and they both move. Something is going on here, and I think I know what." He was right -- something was going on and had been for most of my life. An aggressive cyst was growing inside one of my maxillary cavities -- it was a benign sort of thing in that it wasn't malignant, but it was by no means harmless. It had slowly been gnawing away at the roots of two molars, growing undetected for all of my life. It was called an ameloblastoma and would have to come out before it did more damage. Prior to surgery, I had to bid farewell to those two molars. By the time they were pulled, they resembled the nubbins of baby teeth children tuck under their pillows for the tooth fairy. I could have used the tooth fairy for support then, but at 48, I was far beyond her demographic. While they were pulling things anyway, the oral surgeon tried to grab a piece of the thing -- painfully and unsuccessfully. It was so attached to me that the mere pulling created a huge bruise in the shape of South America on my face, with Tierra del Fuego at my chin. In the parlance everyone uses to describe these things, it was either the size of an apricot or a ping-pong ball. How can you have something that size growing inside your cheek? I still can't get over that. Once I knew it was there, I could feel it with my fingertips when I washed my face every day, but how big could it have grown before it showed? Blessed with Slavic bone structure, could I have stuck it out to peach size? Or whiffle ball? Fortunately, I never had to find out. Example #4 Medard Boss described a patient who dreamed, on three successive nights, about a Balinese demon of disease who forced her to sit on an over-heated central heating pipe which caused her to experience burning pain between her legs. She was subsequently diagnosed as suffering from acute cystitis.
Indicators & Interpreting Health Dreams

The average person may have a health dream several weeks to several months before they begin to experience any physical symptoms. Dreams often indicate the type and location of the
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problem. It's important to learn how to recognize and interpret your dreams so that you can think in a healthy manner and take action while the issue is in the preliminary or gestation stage. Kasatkin observed that the part of the body in distress is often portrayed literally, though not necessary happening to oneself. In one case translated by Van de Castle, in Our Dreaming Mind, a doctor saw a patient in a dream being mugged in the street. The patient's kidney was lying detached from the body. It turned out that the doctor himself had a seriously infected kidney. As I just mentioned, dreams can tell us which foods we might need in our diet to make up for some kind of deficiency or what foods aren't being processed properly or even which foods are contributing to our poor health. If you dream of a delicious chocolate cake, you just may need a few more carbs in your diet or more likely, that you need cocoa, which is an excellent antioxidant. Dreaming of a specific food may be a signal as to what is needed to make your metabolism hum along at the ideal rate. You may not need that precise food but rather what it signals, such as protein, fat or carbohydrates. If your dreams include a great deal of temperature extremes, this could be feedback about the state of your regulation of handling various environments easily and well. A healthy body can adjust to both heat and cold in an automatic and almost unnoticeable manner. When you are troubled with changes in weather and cannot handle the summer heat or the winds of a snowy winter day, this is feedback about the state of your health. Take note of it as feedback that is valuable. When dreams bring a friend or relation to mind and they appear to be something other than how you see them in the light of day, be alert to this message. Stress is the key to most bodily weaknesses that can lead to illness and people are very often the source of that stress. When you see your good friend in a dream with a hostile expression or wearing a mask, pay more attention to how that relationship is actually affecting you. Very often, we ignore signs of distress when they come from people who we have assumed are loving and giving towards us. This major dream indicator is common but very often ignored. Beware of dreams that have you visiting a doctor, therapist, chiropractor or any other such professional. These types of dreams are an indictor that not all may be well and that you are brewing some health issues that need to be addressed with preventative care ASAP. Being in a laboratory or having blood drawn for a test is another sign that is often dismissed. There are many case histories of people using dreams to find cures. One of the most historically famous being a dream of Alexander the Great, who dreamt of a dragon with a plant in his mouth. He sent soldiers out to find the plant, which was located where the dream indicated and it cured Alexander's sick friend, Ptomemaus. A woman named Helen had a disturbing dream that she shared with her daughter who interpreted dreams. "I was sitting in a car on my sister's driveway. I was backing out into the street when out of nowhere another car came speeding down the street and ran into the back end of my car. I wasn't hurt but my car was smashed. When I woke up from this dream it left me with a scared, uneasy feeling."
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In this particular case the car symbolizes Helen's body. In the dream, Helen's attention was directed behind her with no awareness of what was around her. The driveway symbolizes the dreamer's path of life on which she is moving backwards. Since all of her attention was on the past, she wasn't paying attention to what she was learning now. As a result, something in her life -- the condition of her physical body symbolized by the oncoming car -- quickly jolted her attention into the present. Four months after Helen had this dream she was hospitalized and diagnosed with diabetes. She even became legally blind as a result of the disease. In her life she had been living in the past, comfortable with what was familiar. Helen's younger daughter and family had been living with her. The younger daughter had been talking about moving. Helen was selfish (which is the mental cause for diabetes) in the sense that she was thinking only about what she was going to lose. She began to discourage her daughter from pursuing her plans to move. Since this time, Helen has made many changes and is now supporting her daughter's desires. Helen is beginning to recognize that her thoughts create her state of health.
Monitoring and Recording Your Dreams

Before you can gain any value or information from your dreams, you first have to remember and record them. If you have trouble recalling your dreams, there are techniques to help. Telling yourself at bedtime that you will remember your dreams does work, although it may take awhile to take hold. When you wake up, dont jump out of bed right away. Remain still and concentrate on the wisps of dreams or feelings you can recall. This often brings more of the dream to mind. Once we get up and enter full waking consciousness and the activities of the day begin, it becomes much harder to retrieve dream information. Before going to sleep, write a few sentences in your dream journal that reflect your day, your thoughts, or even what you wish to dream about. You can read more on starting and keeping a dream journal here. When writing out your dream, it's important to record your dreams in as much detail as possible. Dreams are ephemeral (lasting for only a short time), and easily slip from memory after waking up. Immediately upon awakening, write or record everything you can recall. Leave nothing out, no matter how bizarre or trivial it may seem. Even if you only remember a fragment, a word or a feeling, record it this small piece may fit into a bigger puzzle or connect to a series of dreams. Every piece or symbol in a dream has meaning, and more subtle meanings reveal themselves upon reflection, meditation, or even over time. Such things as colours and numbers have significance too. Colours are associated with various states of consciousness, emotion and even physical health, while numbers often have associations to time periods, as well as to archetypal meanings. Food is especially important in dreams as it can represent what you're putting into your body, feeding your mind, having a reaction to, and a number of other things. By recording whats going on in your life, and whats going on in your head, alongside your dreams, youll more quickly and easily notice patterns and connections, as well as repeating symbols associated with specific events or concerns.
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It's not unusual to go through cycles in dreaming--periods when it is difficult to recall dreams, and periods in which dreams are vivid and easy to recall. Simply beginning regular dreamwork with a journal is an invitation to your dreaming self to step forward, and the dreamwork becomes easier with time.
Conclusion
Our subconscious is forever vigilant in its monitoring of our biological, psychological and spiritual systems. It keeps a keen eye on the inner workings and sends information up to the conscious mind via dreams when it notices something is amiss. These messages usually go unheeded until the problem has become more serious or complicated. We then get bad dreams, nagging, unsettling dreams and nightmares. We pay attention to these dreams, but more often than not we fail to understand the message they convey. By paying attention to our dreams and learning to understand their language we can take action and/or make changes that might, at best, prevent illness altogether, and at least provide guidance and information to help prepare and sustain us through any dis-ease we may suffer. It seems clear that persistent and painful dreams about the body are worth exploring, if not for their predictive value, then for the opportunity they offer in exploring our own experience of our life condition. Attention to dreams brings a wide variety of benefits, ranging from insight and understanding to healing and wholeness. They are a gift that naturally occurs every night and need only a little attention to be one of our best friends in our journey of heath. Your dreams are one of your richest sources for guidance and healing. Once you begin tapping into their power, you can put this wisdom to use in daily life for greater happiness, fulfilment and personal growth.
About the Author

I believe that our dreams provide us with invaluable information, whether that information is for ourselves or for others. I know dreams have helped me in all areas of my life, from knowing when my best friend was in danger, to diagnosing my own illness (which lead to immediate surgery) to knowing that my children were both boys. I believe we all have the ability to become practicing psychic dreamers, bringing through life-helping information for ourselves and others, providing we're willing to set aside self-limiting beliefs, and practice. This belief comes from personal experience. When I was just ten years old, I awoke in the middle of the night in terror. I was incoherent and crying uncontrollably. My mother came to my room to soothe me, but I wouldn't be soothed. Id dreamt that my very best friend, Kari, was dying. She was screaming in agony (in the dream) and an ambulance was coming to take her away. After all attempts to calm me failed, my mother finally had to call Karis house (it was very early morning, rather than late at night). Karis mom answered the phone in tears. Karis appendix had burst and she was being taken to the hospital
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by ambulance as she spoke with my mother. This dream stayed with me my entire life. And because of it, my passion and search for understanding of dreams and the mind have continued and grown for over four decades. I studied psychology and did my thesis on dreams and dreaming at Trent University. This gave me a scientific perspective on dreams. I obtained my degree in anthropology because I wanted to study dreams in other cultures, at other times, and around the world. I received my spiritual perspective by studying the metaphysical and paranormal aspects of dreams and by becoming an ordained minister. But, my most valuable research has always been my own dream journal. I've remembered my dreams, and kept a journal ever since I was a little girl. Inherently, I somehow knew that they were important, that they would be an invaluable resource in my life... And they have been.
Dream Well, Terry L. Gillis, Dreaming Today I am always available to discuss dreams and dreaming. If you would like to explore your dreams or contact me for any reason, visit my contact page . Disclaimer I am not a medical doctor or medical practitioner. This guide does not constitute medical advice. If you find that your dreams might be pointing to a medical condition or health issue, seek assistance from a certified medical professional.
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Dream Warnings of Cancer, Heart Disease, and Other Illnesses, May Save Your Life

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Dream Warnings of Cancer, Heart Disease, and Other Illnesses, May Save Your Life

Written by Terry L. Gillis

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Copyright 2014. Dreaming Today. All Rights Reserved.

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History of Dreams and Health

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Copyright 2014. Dreaming Today. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright 2014. Dreaming Today. All Rights Reserved.

Dreams and Cancer

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Copyright 2014. Dreaming Today. All Rights Reserved.

The Cardiovascular System

The Respiratory System

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Copyright 2014. Dreaming Today. All Rights Reserved.

Pain and Other Ailments

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Mental Health Dreams

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Recovery and Healing Dreams

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Copyright 2014. Dreaming Today. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright 2014. Dreaming Today. All Rights Reserved.

Health Dream Examples

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Indicators & Interpreting Health Dreams

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Monitoring and Recording Your Dreams

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About the Author

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Copyright 2014. Dreaming Today. All Rights Reserved.

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