Justina Lasley’s In My Dream…
By Linda H. Mastrangelo, LMFT
The ritual of dream sharing has been around for thousands of years and yet many of us miss out on the rich and wonderful messages that live there. Dreams can help us work through everyday issues, promote creativity and problem solving, even answer some of life’s most challenging questions. A potent way to access this wisdom is to keep a dream journal.
Keep it Personal
By keeping a dream journal we are in turn honoring and encouraging the dream. Personal preference is key and one should follow what feels right. For some, lined paper feels familiar and contained. For others, a blank paged artist’s sketchbook to evoke freedom to play. One can sketch, color, paint, collage, illustrate using poetry, prose or myth: Basically whatever is the desired and/or appropriate medium to ground this dream.
Mind the Details
I highly recommend giving each dream:
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a title
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the date you had the dream
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emotions of the dream
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summary of events that occurred the day before
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include images of the dream, songs and even snippets (short flashes of dreams)
Benefits of Journaling
The subject of “dreams” is vast and includes visions, daydreams, waking dreams, hypnagogic and hypnopompic imagery, sensations etc. In other words, there are certainly variations or types of dreaming and you can pick up on these subtle nuances the longer you keep a journal.
A great starter Dream Journal can be found here by my dear friend and dream guru, Justina Lasley.