In this article I’ll explore how we can work with dreams in non-ordinary states of awareness, often called altered states of consciousness or ASCs. ASCs can aid in the understanding of dream experiences through naturalistic trance, EMDR, Active Imagination and hypnosis.
We are generally so identified with our waking self we tend to forget we live much our lives in different modes of awareness. Every night, we cycle through multiple non-REM and REM sleep stages, each stage with its own neurological and mental phenomena, all of them quite separate from our daytime consciousness.
Like a pebble dropped into a deep pool of water, when we sleep our minds move through a number of levels and phases, inhabiting different worlds from those of normal waking awareness. Dreaming in particular, happens in a very different awareness state in which the rules of ordinary cognition can be ignored or discarded completely.
This dislocation between sleeping and waking makes remembering and understanding our dream difficult. Like a fish out of water, a dream does not live easily in our waking life of linear, rational thought. In essence, it is impossible to fully capture a dream experience while we are awake. The dream and ordinary consciousness belong to different worlds.
I recall a dream in which I was fascinated by a crystalline object. I could hold it in my hand and view it from multiple dimensions and directions. When I awoke and tried to draw a picture of the object, I found it impossible. How could I create an image of something that has so many dimensions, many more than is possible in material reality? Yet in the dream all of those dimensions were obvious and available.
If a dream stays with us and we write it down, what we hold in our hands is a kind of secondhand description of a memory of a trip to a foreign country. Everything was unfamiliar because we didn’t speak the language. Trying to recall the trip later, it naturally fades into vague images.
That’s one reason people forget or reject the meaningfulness of their dreams. If we only identify with our conscious thoughts and outer events, experiences from that inner world of ASCs make no sense and can be quite unsettling.
Working with dreams, we learn through experience to translate imaginal communication into the language and categories of waking consciousness. That translation is limited and partial, but dreams are so rich with meaning and allusion, interpretation and amplification still provides amazing wisdom and insight.
What helps us to understand a dream is to relax our minds, let go of logical categories and embrace intuition and symbolic clues. It like letting our eyes un-focus so that what we see takes on the shapes and colors of an impressionist painting. This allows us to enter a non-ordinary state of awareness, a state similar to that in which dreams are born. Basically, dreams reveal their meaning most easily when we approach them in a loose, dreamy, altered state.
Using ASCs in dreamwork bypasses ordinary cognition and its rational and rigid patterns. It invites us to shift into what can be termed a kind of of trance. In these states, we do not think about the dream so much as re-enter the dream experience.
Trance and ASCs are normal—we see them often in babies and young children when they disengage from outward attention and look as though they are daydreaming. It happens to us as adults when we meditate in silence or we let our minds drift and stop thinking about anything in particular. It even happens when we are driving a familiar road or listening to music.
Trance states are characterized by inward focus, diffuse attention, loose associations, a sense of relaxation and feeling dreamy and drifty. In that state of dissociation, images, memories and feelings emerge spontaneously. Sometimes these stick in our memory but more often they slip back into the unconscious.
Without noticing, we shift into and out of natural trance states many times a day. In therapy, it’s important for a therapist to occasionally slow down and focus inward during a session. This not only gives access to non-rational processes, but also subtly invites the client to move into a similar state.
So, when listening to a client’s dream, I get quiet and still and allow my mind to move into an unstructured imaginal space of not knowing. Spontaneous hints, references and symbolic association always come to my mind. Essentially, I use a light self-induced trance, a form of self-hypnosis, to get out of my own way and into the dream world.
With a very cognitive client, I mirror back the dream images and events, slowly and rhythmically, using the client’s words and phrases. This focuses the client away from their ordinary thoughts towards the dream images and feeling. When done with a clear intention ands some skill, this approach easily induces a natural trance in the client.
For example, here is how I might reflect a client’s dream back to her (– are pauses):
You are a schoolgirl at a school — and you are doing odd things that are annoying and possibly wrong…, like splashing the teacher as you water the plants — You have to get somewhere — but it’s in the middle of nowhere — and there is no way to get there, — no path, no direction — You have a sense of where it is on a map — and that it’s in a green country — but you don’t know how to get there, — or even what it is. — You set off into the fields near a farm that belongs to a stranger — You worry that you might get caught trespassing.
Listening to her own dream, the client gets quiet and thoughtful. After I’ve spoken, she pauses and then tells me about an incident from her childhood. There’s no direct link between the dream and the incident—it just popped into her mind. We go on to discuss the incident and how it relates to her sense of doing something wrong and feeling directionless in her life. You might say the dream interprets itself.
A different form of ASC can be induced using EMDR bilateral stimulation. Although the client may not feel very different, in actuality bilateral stimulation induces a specific form of trance or dissociation. I’ve found this method very effective to resolve nightmares and disturbing dreams.
With the EMDR sound beeps and/or hand buzzers on, I ask the client to relate the dream in the present tense. I reflect back the dream as previously, and have the client focus on their physical sensations and feelings.
Gentle prompts such as “What does this remind you of” or “When might you have experienced something similar” often lead to the recall of difficult or traumatic memories. As these experiences come to mind, we continue to work with them, using a modified EMDR approach. Rather than consciously deciding on an EMDR target, we’ve allowed the unconscious to guide us toward whatever is most relevant and important.
The most common Jungian approach to dreams is called amplification. The dream is shared and the client and therapist explore and elaborate personal and symbolic associations. While this creates a rich and insightful way of dream working, Jung also discovered how to re-enter the dream world in a process he called Active Imagination.
Active imagination is a sophisticated form of altered state in which a person engages with the dream images so they take on a life of their own—a process called “dreaming the dream forward.”
The dreamer, alone or with the assistance of a therapist, quiets the mind of extraneous thoughts and intently focuses on a vivid dream image. The intention is to let go of conscious control and allow the unconscious to reanimate the dream so it progresses in a new and unexpected way.
Active imagination does not work for everyone, particularly those whose thinking is more verbal and rational, but it provides profound insights for some who are comfortable exploring their own imaginal world. The process requires splitting attention between the unfolding narrative and a witnessing part that watches and describes the action. This is typical of a self-hypnotic trance state.
Hypnosis is a useful ways to engage with the dream world. In a light hypnotic state as with natural trance, EMDR and active imagination, the person is semi-awake and aware of their surroundings. They respond to questions and can verbally describe their experience.
However, with a formally induced hypnotic trance, the client becomes increasing immobile and deeply absorbed in their inner experience. They are less inclined to speak or give feedback, so the therapist has to use intuition and experience to guide the process. This can feel disorienting at first—a bit like shooting in the dark!
After inducing a medium to deep hypnotic state (the depth of trance depends on many factors) I mirrors back the dream narrative in a hypnotic manner. I emphasize aspects of the dream narrative or theme that I know are related to the client’s process and concerns. I also make suggestions for the dream to resolve itself in a more positive and effective manner or for the client to have further dreams to clarify what is important.
The effect and outcome of a hypnotic approach is not immediately apparent. On waking, the client is somewhat dissociated and cannot fully describe their experience. Later they may have spontaneous insights or further dreams that move the therapeutic process forward.
I tend to think of hypnotic dreamwork as cultivating the ground for further unconscious growth, rather than providing conscious understanding. The intention is to engage the person’s inner resources to help them change and move forward.
Using altered states and trance in dream work, is stimulating and fascinating. It challenges how we think about human beings and how we, as therapists help our clients change and grow. It takes courage to let go of our familiar rational states, our well-trodden dream work techniques and enter the fluid unpredictable strange world of altered states of consciousness.