Chapter Seven

Dream Weaving

by Dr. Laurel Ann Reinhardt, psychologist and Dream Weaver

“Am I Chuang Tzu dreaming I’m a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I’m Chuang Tzu?”

—CHUANG TZU, ANCIENT CHINESE PHILOSOPHER

“The future belongs to people who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

—ELEANOR ROOSEVELT,
FORMER FIRST LADY, ACTIVIST, AND HUMANITARIAN

“Dreaming liberates perception, enlarging the scope of what can be perceived.”

—CARLOS CASTANEDA, SPIRITUAL WARRIOR
AND AUTHOR OF THE ART OF DREAMING

LAUREL ANN REINHARDT is a Licensed Psychologist who has been dream weaving for several decades. She works with people of all ages, helping them overcome their fears and live their dreams. As a mentor to young adults, she guides and encourages them to go after their own dreams. Laurel is the author of Seasons of Magic, a book about a young girl’s spiritual journey. The following text is based on Laurel’s work with dream weaving.

Waking to Dreams

Why dreams? How can they be helpful—after all, they’re not real, are they? Yet there are some cultures on the planet that actually believe our dream lives are more real than our waking lives. And there are some scientists who are beginning to think they might be right.

The truth is, no one really knows what dreams are. In fact, they might be many things, many layers of things. They might be related to yesterday’s events or what you had to eat last night. But they might be so much more. They might be helping you to answer certain questions you have, or solve an upsetting problem, or heal a long-standing illness. They might be telling you about events to come. They might even be giving you information for some of your friends or the whole planet. I myself have had the experience of having dreams “for” friends who weren’t remembering their own dreams.

“Dreaming provides a time and a space for personally carrying out our own future development as awakened individuals.”

—P. ERIK CRAIG,
DIRECTOR OF
THE CENTER
FOR EXISTENTIAL STUDIES

But why remember or work with our dreams if no one really knows for sure what they are or how they work? Is it enough to know that every culture, every religion has made use of dreams in some way? The Aborigines of Australia live in what they call the “dreamtime”; in the Bible, Joseph used his dreams to help his people; counselors use dreams to help people heal from physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual pain; Native Americans are still watching for the signs from dreams their ancestors had. No one knows exactly what dreams are or why they come to us, but it is clear that they are powerful and can make a difference in our lives. But where to begin?

Remembering

“Those who lose dreaming are lost.”

—AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL PROVERB

The place to begin is in remembering your dreams. And everyone is in a different place with respect to what they remember.

Some people have no trouble remembering their dreams at all—they wake up each morning with one or more dreams extremely clear in their mind’s eye or ear, and they are shocked to hear that this is not true for everyone.

Some people claim they don’t dream at all. These people can’t ever remember waking up with a dream and therefore have concluded that they simply don’t dream. The truth is that, as far as we know, everyone does dream at night, the only difference is in the ability to remember our dreams. (Research with people who claim not to dream has shown that these people, like everyone else, go through periods of REM [rapid eye movement] sleep, the kind of sleep that is most clearly connected with the experience of dreaming.)

“I have never lost the sense that where my dreams come from is where I come from. And for that reason, they deserve serious study.”

—ELIZABETH ROSE
CAMPBELL, EDITOR
OF THE ROSE READER

“The mind doesn’t just wander around in sleep without a purpose. It wants to bring back shapes and angles, golden ratios, oceans, and mountains—it wants to make order out of chaos. It seems to be this: It wants to dream up stories.”

—POPIE MOHRING,
MASTER GARDENER

The majority of people fall somewhere between these two extremes of remembering dreams every day and never remembering dreams at all. In fact, people seem to go through various cycles of remembering dreams. Girls/women may find their ability to remember is connected with their menstrual cycle. People also report their ability to remember being affected by such things as: the cycle of the moon, what they had to eat or drink the night before, the level of stress they are experiencing, or whether or not there is something in their lives they just don’t want to look at.

“I dreamed for years of escaping my house. But it never looked like my house. Sometimes it was a jail or dungeon. Sometimes it was some dark evil place. But I knew it was my house. I would usually get away but it took a lot and someone was usually chasing me. I took myself to a counselor when I found out I was depressed. We used my dreams to help understand my feelings. I was living in a violent and alcoholic family. Yet I was pretending to myself and everyone else it was normal—that everything was really okay. But it wasn’t. I wanted to escape.”

—DEBRA, AGE 24

The question is, if you aren’t remembering many, or any, of your dreams, are there things you can do to help yourself remember? And the answer is, “Yes.”

”Dreams are ‘the small hidden door in the psyche.’”

—C. G. JUNG,
PSYCHIATRIST AND
FOUNDER OF
ANALYTICAL
PSYCHOLOGY

How to Remember

The most important thing in being able to remember your dreams is desire—if you really want to remember your dreams, if this is important to you, then you are halfway there. This may seem like a little thing, but you’d be surprised how many people who don’t remember their dreams simply don’t care. Once you decide that you do want to remember them, the dreams often start coming. If you have already decided that you do want to remember them but they haven’t started coming to you, don’t worry. There are many more things you can do to help with this.

When you go to sleep at night, say to yourself (or to a spirit guide, guardian angel, or other helper), “I want to remember my dreams in the morning.”

Don’t eat or drink anything right before bedtime that could disturb your sleep or your ability to get to sleep. Going to bed with a full stomach will keep you from sleeping well, as will caffeine, which is found in chocolate, soda pop, coffee, and caffeinated teas. A little warm milk before bedtime, however, can be nice and soothing.

Try waking up without an alarm clock or radio or someone calling to you. Dreams are part of the night and seem to run away when confronted with anything from our waking lives. If you simply can’t do this on a regular basis, try waking this way just one morning a week. Then, as you awaken, be gentle with yourself—don’t open your eyes right away, move around slowly and gently, and just invite the dream images and memories to join you in your reverie.

Drink some “dream tea” before going to sleep, or sleep with a dream pillow under your regular bed pillow.

Making a Dream Pillow

Certain herbs can be helpful in promoting good, restful sleep, as well as dreaming or not dreaming by placing them in what are known as “dream pillows,” bundles of herbs sewn or tied inside a small cloth bag. You put this “pillow” underneath your regular bed pillow to facilitate your dreaming process. The herbs recommended for dream pillows are very powerful and are not for daily or regular use; use them only when you are having a lot of trouble remembering your dreams or when you are making a particular request of your dreams. Use a tablespoon each of three or four of the following herbs:

hops—for sleeping

mugwort—for dreaming

chamomile—for relaxing, calming

roses—for relaxing, calming

lavender—for relaxing, calming

rosemary—for remembrance/to help stop nightmares
These herbs may be found at local health food stores.

Dream Tea

Four of the six herbs that are used in dream pillows can also be used in a “dream tea” that works in much the same way as a dream pillow. Since these herbs contain no caffeine, you can drink this tea right before going to sleep.

hops—for sleeping

mugwort—for dreaming

chamomile—for relaxing, calming

rosemary—for remembrance/to help stop nightmares

Again, herbs are powerful, so use only a small amount of each herb (1/8 teaspoonful) for the tea, and don’t use it every night. Be forewarned—this tea will taste a little bitter, which is why a lot of people prefer using the dream pillow. However, there are some herbal blend teas on the market that have some of these same herbs in them, along with a few other things to make the taste more palatable. Ask someone at your local health food store to help you find these teas.

”Breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you

Don’t go back to sleep

You must ask for what you truly want

Don’t go back to sleep

People are going back and forth across the threshold

Where the two worlds touch

The door is round and open

Don’t go back to sleep.”

—RUMI, SUFI MYSTIC AND POET

Recording Your Dreams

Recording or remembering your dreams can be done in a number of different ways. One way is to write them down. If you want to do this place a piece of paper and a pencil (or, better yet, a special notebook or journal, decorated specifically with your dreams in mind) by your bed, ready to record any part of a dream that you remember upon waking. This might be in the middle of the night, so have the paper and pencil in a place that is easily reached, even with the lights off.

”When the state of dreaming has dawned,

Do not lie in ignorance like a corpse,

Enter the natural sphere of unwavering attention.

Recognize your dreams and transform illusion into luminosity,

Do not sleep like an animal.

Do the practice which mixes sleep and reality.”

—TIBETAN BUDDHIST PRAYER

If you do wake up in the middle of the night with a dream but you don’t have the energy or desire to turn on the light, let alone write down the whole dream, just record a single word or phrase that will prompt your memory of the entire dream in the morning. And don’t worry—even if you can’t remember any more of the dream in the morning, the one word, phrase, or image will be enough to work with. Dreams are holographic—meaning that each part of the dream can re-create the whole dream. I’ve worked with people who could get answers to some of their most important questions from a single dream image.

In addition to writing them down, you might want to record your dreams in other ways as well. Dreams are very sensual, especially visual. Drawing or painting them can be very satisfying, especially if you don’t get caught up in judgments about your artistic skills—the point is simply to capture the dream in some way that has meaning or value for you. Certain scents can evoke powerful memories, so remembering the dream while inhaling a certain perfume or incense can be helpful. Making something out of clay also works. Getting up and moving, or dancing the dream, may also help you to connect with it more deeply, especially if you add some music you enjoy to the process.

Sharing your dreams with others whom you trust—whether they are people who live in the same household with you or whom you have to contact by phone, at school, or at work—is an especially nice way of remembering the dream. Once the dream is shared, there are others who will be able to help you remember it. And, they may find something valuable in it for you or themselves.

Hold a Dream Circle

“In some ways, your dreams may speak a universal language, and therefore, they belong not only to you but a larger community.”

—LOUIS SAVARY, AUTHOR OF DREAMS AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH

There are records of a few cultures in which the community focuses on and is guided by the dreams that come to its people every night.

Choose to have six to twelve friends gather for a night of dreamwork. Start out by talking and possibly sharing in some activities, focusing your conversations and activities on dreams. You could talk about dreams you remember from the past, you could make dream pillows and dream tea together, you could look at art books together (a lot of art images come from people’s dreams), or anything else you can think of that would put you in the mood for dreaming and remembering. There is a deck of cards called The Dream Cards whose images could be used to stimulate your dreaming process (see resources at the end of this chapter).

When you do go to sleep, everyone should be in the same room, lying in a circle with your heads all pointing toward the center. When you awaken, the first thing you do is share your dreams with one or more of your dreaming “partners.” We are all part of the “circle of life,” and this includes our dreaming. This means that your dreams are likely to have relevance—to be important—for those around you, maybe even for the entire planet. So share them with people who will honor them and treat them as the sacred gifts they are. In this case sit around over breakfast and share your dreams. Are there any common messages or images?

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the mind while awake?

LEONARDO DA VINCI,
PAINTER, SCULPTOR,
ARCHITECT, ENGINEER, AND SCIENTIST

”Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.”

LANGSTON HUGHES,
AMERICAN POET
AND AUTHOR OF
THE DREAM KEEPER

Next, look for similarities between your dreams and your waking (day) life. Don’t be too literal with this. If you dreamed about wild animals of some kind, notice if any “wild” animals cross your path that day. A “wild” animal could be an unruly dog, a fox or deer, or a friend who starts acting “wild.” If you dreamed you were crying, see if something happens during the day to make you or one of your friends sad. Perhaps you hear a news story about someone losing their home or a child? Or, if you are given a gift in the dream, does something special happen to you during the day?

”The dream itself is a rebellion against language—and against, ultimately, the restriction that any kind of expression seems to impose on truth.”

—BRENDA MURPHEE,
POET AND ESSAYIST,
FROM DREAMS ARE
WISER THAN MEN

The Language of Dreams

This gets us into the question of dream language and interpretation. If you’ve ever checked out the dream section of your local bookstore, I’m sure you’ve seen the “dream dictionaries” that are available. The reason these books are called “dictionaries” is because dreams are actually a foreign language! This language has more to do with pictures and feelings than with words, and words are what we are more familiar with. So we need to learn the language of dreams. However, if you bought one of those dream dictionaries from the store, I encourage you to put it away, at least for now. The reason is that you have to learn to understand your own dream language, not someone else’s. Yes, there are some symbols that are “universal”—that is, they evoke the same or very similar responses in most people. But even those symbols carry personal and unique significance as well. Let me give you some examples.

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy has an Auntie Em. So, when I say “Auntie Em” to someone who has loved that movie, seen it several times, and talked about it with friends, they will undoubtedly think immediately of Dorothy’s Auntie Em. But they might also think of one of their own aunts who reminds them of Dorothy’s Auntie Em. I think of my own Aunt Em, who really isn’t anything like Dorothy’s aunt at all, but her name is Em. On the other hand, someone who has never seen the movie won’t have any idea of what an “Auntie Em” is.

Here’s another example. When I ask a group of twenty people what the word water means to them, I usually get at least ten different associations to that word: lake, ocean, glass, drink, swim, deep, beach, running, river, blue, aqua, fluid, clear, tasteless, fish, ice—the possibilities are nearly endless. If water showed up in one of your dreams, I’d ask you what kind of water it was, and your relationship or associations to it. I wouldn’t assume that I knew what water meant for you. But this is just what dream dictionaries do. So I recommend making your own dream dictionary.

Make Your Own Dream Dictionary

Whenever a new image appears in your dream life, put the word at the top of a blank sheet of paper and then start free-associating to that symbol—two or three associations is sufficient. The next time that image shows up in a dream, go back to that page and add any new associations that came up. Over time, you will discover what that particular symbol, picture, or image means for you.

This doesn’t mean you can’t sometimes use a “universal” dream dictionary or, better yet, a regular dictionary or an encyclopedia, to help you figure out why something showed up in your dreams. A friend of mine once dreamed about a car. I asked her what kind. “A Chevrolet—an Impala.” I asked her if she knew that an impala, besides being a kind of car, was also a kind of animal. She said, “No,” then went and checked out impalas at the zoo. It turned out that the impala animal made more sense to her than the Impala car.

There will be times when things will show up in your dreams that you didn’t know you knew about, just like my friend and her impala. Find out about them by looking them up or asking someone else.

Dreams also like to make puns, such as “Visualize whirled peas” (Visualize world peace). Have you seen that bumper sticker? It’s one of my favorites. How about the word dope? If Dopey from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs shows up in a dream, acting crazy and scary, is it really about a dwarf, or have you been acting a little “dopey” lately? Is it about that “dope” you tried the other day that made you act a little “DOPEY?” What about the word do? Was it really dew or due? Which one is it? Try them all out and see which one feels right or fits the best for you at the time.

What Do They Mean?

“A dream which is not understood is like a letter which is not opened.”

—THE TALMUD, JEWISH SPIRITUAL TEACHINGS AND LAWS

“If modern physics is to be believed, the dreams we call waking perceptions have only a very little more resemblance to objective reality than the fantastic dreams of sleep.”

—BERTRAND
RUSSELL, ENGLISH
MATHEMATICIAN
AND PHILOSOPHER

Everyone wants to know what their dreams mean. After all, isn’t that why we’re bothering to remember them in the first place? Well, yes and no. But let’s assume that that is why we’re remembering them—the only reason we’re remembering them—and start there.

“Dreams have always been an important part of my life. I think that is true for most people who are searching for spirituality and go out and fast. Dreams guide you; they show you the way that you should be living, or the direction, or give you signs to help someone else, and they are gifts.”

—JACKIE YELLOW TAIL, CROW WOMAN

One way to find out what dreams mean is by playing with them verbally, as I was doing above. You start by making associations to the images, the “sym-bols” that show up in your dream.

A symbol or metaphor is something that represents—or stands in for—something else. “Auntie Em” can be a symbol for a person or relative who acts like a mother, who looks out for our welfare, but who sometimes doesn’t fully under-stand us. Water can be a symbol for something that flows or something that has the potential for freezing and becoming blocked. After you come up with a bunch of associations you start linking them together and begin to make a story.

Let’s go back to my friend with the impala. In the dream she was driving around in her father’s car, which turned out to be an Impala. She began by making associations to her father (a nice man, kind of strict, not around very much), and to cars (a way to get somewhere; her father’s car, in particular, meant that she was a passenger—someone else, her father, was in the driver’s seat). This didn’t seem particularly helpful—my friend couldn’t come up with a “story” that made any sense to her or fit with her life at the time. But when I mentioned that the impala was also a kind of animal, my friend got excited. And she was even more excited when she came back and told me about impalas: they can leap high and far to get out of danger, but they won’t leap, even if they’re being attacked by an enemy, if they can’t see where they are going to land. This was exactly what was going on in my friend’s life—she knew she needed to change jobs because her current job was draining her life away, but because she didn’t have another job lined up, she wouldn’t make the leap of quitting the job she had. And, it was her father’s Impala because he had once not left his job when he really needed to. Amazing, isn’t it?

But there are other ways of making sense of your dreams, too, such as drawing, painting, sculpting, and dancing. The very first time I painted a dream, I was nervous. I didn’t consider myself an artist and it was a long, involved dream—how could I possibly capture the whole thing? Rather than try to do it all, I picked one scene to paint—I was in a car driving over an old, dried-up riverbed in which something was struggling to get out of the mud. Before painting the dream I had no idea what that struggling thing was, but as I painted, it emerged—it was a phoenix, a mythical bird of renewal and rebirth. I was stunned. It was so clear in my painting, and it had been so unclear when I merely wrote the dream down.

Sometimes acting or playing out the dream is very powerful, too. So, if in a dream you are dancing, you might want to go dancing and see how that feels. If you got together for lunch with an old friend, you might want to give that person a call. If you were on a train, maybe it’s time to take a trip somewhere and see what happens. There are reasons for remembering dreams besides just “fig-uring them out.” Sometimes it’s important to let the dream be a mystery and just let it guide you, let it take you where it wants to go. Like taking a trip—starting to drive somewhere without a planned destination—just to see what happens.

“We are in a time so strange that living equals dreaming, and this teaches me that man dreams his life, awake.”

—PEDRO CALDERÓN
DE LA BARCA,
SPANISH DRAMATIST
AND POET, FROM
LIFE IS A DREAM

Requesting Help from Your Dreams

“The Dreamer sees things we can’t see and answers the questions we don’t know how to ask.”

—RALPH THORPE, AUTHOR OF THE DREAMER: A VOYAGE OF SELF-DISCOVERY

If you are going through a particularly difficult time, if you’re having trouble with a friend or there is some question that is plaguing you, you can actually ask your dreams to give you help, guidance, and information about the issue at hand. Just before turning off the lights at night, ask for a dream to help you with the issue. (This might be a good time to use a dream pillow.) When you wake up in the morning, simply assume that any dream you remember is an answer to the request, no matter how unlikely that seems. Then start playing around with the dream in some of the ways I mentioned above (free-associating, dancing, drawing, acting out, or sculpting). Be sure to ask a couple of trusted friends for their opinions too.

Intensity

”There is a Dream dreaming us.”

—AFRICAN BUSHMAN

Dreams can be a part of the intensity of life—sometimes a scary part.

“I was at an all-girl’s camp with my mother. I needed to cross a bridge over some water that was full of snakes, including a big boa constrictor. One could get across the bridge only by thinking. I started across, stumbled, and fell into the water, but somehow managed to get out. Then my mother offered to drive me across. I got in the backseat. My mother was very calm and natural, as though she knew exactly what was happening. She began driving across the bridge. Suddenly, I was no longer in the car, and I stumbled again, this time falling headlong into the water. The water was full of girls who were floating on the surface and screaming. I was underwater but somehow able to breathe. The boa constrictor curled itself around my body and pulled me toward his head.”

—ERIN, AGE 17

Do you find Erin’s dream scary? (Would you be surprised to hear that Erin didn’t find the dream scary, just very powerful and important?) Do you have scary dreams yourself? Would you call them nightmares? Do you have the same scary dream over and over again? Are you afraid to go to sleep at night because of these dreams?

Sometimes dreams are scary simply because we don’t know their language; in these cases, getting to know our own dream language better will help. Sometimes scary dreams are trying to get our attention. Maybe it’s actually the same dream as a previous, less scary version to which we paid little or no attention. I have often worked with people who have had repeating nightmares that have disappeared once the person shared and worked on the dream with me.

Working with your dreams can help. Using a dream pillow with herbs aimed at helping get a restful, “dreamless” sleep, can help. You might also use a “Dream Catcher,” a sacred Native American tool that is used to help babies sleep. It is generally a circle made from a tree branch, with a webbing of sinew in the middle—it looks a lot like a spiderweb. In the center there is a hole, often with a feather placed nearby. The Dream Catcher is hung over the place in the bed where your head will be during the night and is meant to catch bad dreams. The “good” dreams go through the hole in the center, while the “bad” dreams get caught up in the webbing. The feather near the hole in the center moves when a dream goes through the hole.

“Some dreams try to loosen the hold of old fears and beliefs, to set us loose. Some try to hold us in place.”

—BRENDA MURPHEE,
POET AND ESSAYIST,
FROM DREAMS ARE
WISER THAN MEN

One of the scariest dreams for people is a dream about death—either their own death or someone else’s. The thing to remember is that, like anything else in a dream, death is usually a sign, a symbol. Rarely does it mean that someone is actually going to die. What you might ask yourself is, “What is dying in my life? What is coming to an end? What don’t I need to hang on to anymore?” Then, look at the context—the other things in the dream surrounding the dying person—for clues about what that might mean for your life. If it was a friend who died, then maybe there are some changes happening in one or more of your relationships. If it was you who died, and you happened to be in a school, maybe it is time for you to move out of the role of being a student.

”Bring me all of your dreams,

You dreamers,

Bring me all of your

Heart melodies

That I may wrap them

In a blue cloud-cloth

Away from the too-rough fingers of the world.”

—LANGSTON
HUGHES, AMERICAN
POET AND
AUTHOR OF
THE DREAM KEEPER

Enjoy Your Dreams

I’ve talked some about the sacredness of dreams, their intensity, and how they can be of help in our lives, but there is another very important aspect to dreams—they are fun. Where else can you go flying, take risks, lose your life and keep on playing? (I know in video games you get three lives just to start, but on the planet Earth, this time around, you only get one.) Dreams are great fun, talking about them is great fun, and painting them, making masks from them, and acting them out are great fun, too. It doesn’t have to be totally serious—simply respectful.

Becoming a Dream Weaver

“The dream, then, is a way of remembering a possible future in time to choose [the right path].”

—BRENDA MURPHEE, POET AND ESSAYIST, FROMDREAMS ARE WISER THAN MEN

“Iktomi, the great teacher, appeared as a spider. He taught the people to make webs to catch their dreams so they could reach their goals and make good use of their ideas, dreams, and visions.”

—OGLALA SIOUX LEGEND

There are some people, such as the physicist Fred Alan Wolf, who think that we weave the universe with our dreams. That is, we create our experience here on Earth through our dreams. At the very least, our dreams are part of how we make things happen. If we are dreaming the current crisis on this planet, then we have some work to do. You may notice that most (if not all) science fiction movies about the future are bleak, scary, and dark. Do these images come from our dreams? We need to listen and work with our dreams. It could be that the state of Earth’s health depends on people and their relationship to their dream life. When we work with our dreams, we become Dream Weavers because we are then using our dream life to help us make our choices. Dream Weavers don’t ignore their dreams. Dream Weavers use their dreams to help improve their own lives and the lives of others. Debra, in the example on page 169, joined Al Anon because of her dreams. This is just one small example of a positive choice someone made due to a dream. Debra is a Dream Weaver.

There are a lot of people on the planet right now who don’t think that dreams are important. Perhaps it is that attitude which contributes to the ill health of the planet as a whole. If so, it depends more and more on you, the Spiritual Warriors of your generation, to weave the dreams that can heal the planet.

”Then your I is no longer your mundane little self but the I of the Big Dreamer who is dreaming the whole universe.”

—FRED ALAN WOLF, PHYSICIST

What you can do to help weave the planet into a healthier, better place:

• Start remembering, recording, and working with your dreams.
• Make yourself a dream pillow.
• Hold a Dream Circle.
• Find a dream partner and share your dreams regularly.
• Whenever you dream about a friend or relative, and it is comfortable for you, share the dream with them.
• Make a Dream Catcher.
• Ask your school psychology, sociology, drama, or writing class to have a class session on dreams.
• Write a play from your dreams and present it to the community.

Remember, dreams provide us with clues about who we want to be and how to get there; they connect us with our deepest longings, our greatest wisdoms, our spiritual selves, and the rest of the cosmos.

Books, Resources, and Wisdomkeepers Related to This Chapter

The Complete Book of Dreams, by Julia and Derek Parker (DK Publishing, 1998). Great companion to this chapter and for those who want to continue their dream work. Explains how you can interpret your dreams yourself.

Dreams Are Wiser Than Men, by Richard Russo (North Atlantic Books, 1987). A collection of several Dream Weavers’ thoughts, experiences, and ways of working with dreams.

Dream Cards, by Stephen Kaplan Williams (Fireside Books, 1991). A set of 66 Dream Cards and 66 Wisdom Cards along with a book explaining how to interpret and learn from your dreams.

Laurel Ann Reinhardt, Ph.D., LP
Dream Weaver
e-mail: DreamWay@aol.com you or your school want more information on dream circles or dream weaving.

The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, by Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant (Penguin, 1996). A very useful dictionary to help you interpret your dreams.

Online Resources

The Association for the Study of Dreams
www.asdreams.org
Provides information on the science behind dreaming—the nature, function, and significance of dreaming. There is also a FAQ page, further reading suggestions, and journal and magazine research articles and excerpts.

DreamGate
www.dreamgate.com
This site is small but provides links to other sites and the opportunity to participate in online classes about the science of dreaming.

Dream Interpretation
www.dreammoods.com
This site includes a dream dictionary, dream forum (where you can share your dreams), and insights about dreams.

Dreamlover, Inc.
www.dreamloverinc.com
This site is devoted to the psychological and spiritual study of dreams, with a dream dictionary of more than 300 symbols, information on how to interpret dreams, and pages to help us understand what consciousness is, our sleep cycles, and dream research and theories.