European College of Hypnotherapy

European College of Hypnotherapy, UK
UK Tel: 01784 433421    •    International Tel: 0044 1784 433421

Dream interpretation


Dream interpretation and hypnotherapy.

People have a fascination with dreams. Sometimes we awaken from a vivid dream, containing strange images, that we feel must be significant in some way. The dream may actually be repeated several times over days or weeks, so that it seems that an important message is trying to reach us.

Attempts to uncover the disguised meaning within dreams have a long history – the ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and Egyptians developed much insight. There were even special temples where dreams could be ‘incubated’ and deciphered by skilled interpreters. A book exists (‘Oneirocritica’ by Artemidorus), written in the 2nd century AD (and available, in English, on Amazon), that reveals the method of dream interpretation in olden times. Symbolism and metaphors were fully understood – thus, a house could represent the body, and seeing a person ride a horse over rooftops would mean that someone (probably the dreamer) was ‘riding the high horse’. These techniques of comprehending dreams are still valid today.

Sleep-laboratory work has demonstrated that we dream for a total of about two hours each night – over six years in the course of a lifetime! But of course only a very small fraction is remembered on waking. We need to forget our dreams, otherwise they might be confused with waking reality, and nature has also cleverly arranged that we become totally paralysed in sleep, so that we don’t act-out the events.

The latest method of obtaining accurate and specific messages from the unconscious, via dreams yet requiring no interpretation, is the alphabet code technique. It’s described in the book ‘The Dream Oracle’ by Melbourne and Hearne.

How can hypnotherapy be used to interpret ordinary dreams? Small finger-twitches made in hypnosis, in response to questions, can indicate the meaning of each of a recalled dream’s features – e.g. the identity of the characters in the dream, and the underlying topic. So, if you have a puzzling recurring dream, hypnosis may just be the way of revealing its tantalising information!

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We offer hypnosis for dream interpretation  in Egham, Surrey, London, etc.