dreams and weight loss et al...
Can working with our dreams help us recover a healthy weight, have better relationships, a deeper sense of self, be happier people, feel true compassion for what we cannot change?
When we begin working with our dreams, the dreams meet us where we are in our lives. For many of us that’s living from day to day, engaged in our struggles, be it weight, relationships, careers, family, all our desires and fears reflected in the dream. They invite us to look at what’s going on here on the surface of our lives, ways we are in the world that may or may not be in alignment with our true self.
And then, in our willingness to take this honest look at ourselves, to feel into this, they begin to turn and go deeper. They take us on a descent to what is underneath the surface. They take us to the underlying, often surprising, always tender, reasons there are these issues in our lives.
What is always amazing is that the dreams don’t tell us what to do about this, which can be scary for those of us who just want to be told what to do to fix things. They don’t tell us what to eat, what calories to count. They don’t tell us to leave our partner or go to marriage counseling. And, so very importantly, they don’t ask us to do this on our own, to follow the lonely road of self-help prescriptions. Ever present in our dreams, not recognized at first, is an abiding presence of love and support, our own inner teacher who has always been with us but with whom we lost connection.
With weight issues, for example, we start to be aware of the desire to eat even if we’re not hungry and how the dreams helped reveal what it is we’re trying to numb ourselves to...and we can choose to stay with what’s there...to feel the pain, fear or loss that we haven’t wanted to feel. We can take a breath into that moment and show up for ourselves...and in that breath...healing begins.
Our dreams come to both challenge and support us, to help us clear our mind and open our heart so that we may begin to see, feel, understand and then, if we choose, to grow and change from the inside out. We become conscious...we wake up from who we thought we were to who we truly are.
Mary Jo Heyen
Archetypal Dreamwork Practitioner
Dream sessions in person, via Skype or on the phone