Most of us say the same thing: “I don’t really dream.”
But according to Indigenous psychologist Dr. Barbara Bain, that’s not quite true. You dream — somewhere between 5 and 16 times a night, in 90-minute cycles. That’s potentially 40 or more dreams a week, carrying information that was generated specifically for you.
The real question isn’t whether you dream. It’s whether you’re in relationship with your dreaming world.
Dreams Come From Your Heart
In Western culture, we tend to think of dreams as something the brain produces… random images, scattered memories, cognitive noise. But Dr. Bain, who is trained in both depth psychology and Indigenous ways of knowing, offers a very different understanding.
The heart, she says, is the seat of imagination. And dreams come through the imagination, through the vessels of our being, into conscious awareness. In Indigenous philosophy, what Western psychology calls “the unconscious” is understood as the sacred world. And the dreams that visit us each night are coming from that sacred world, with specific information meant for that specific dreamer.
That changes things, doesn’t it?
You Are Your Own Expert
One of the most powerful moments in our conversation was Dr. Bain’s reminder that no one can interpret your dream but you. Dream dictionaries and online symbol guides might offer a starting point, but a flower in your dream and a flower in my dream are not the same flower. They exist in entirely different landscapes, with different people, different dynamics, different medicine.
REMEMBER: You are a sovereign being. You are the source.
How to Start
Dr. Bain shared three practices for beginning a relationship with your dreaming world:
- Invite the dream in. Before sleep, speak (or think) an intention: “Dream Maker, I’m open to you.” She describes it as putting a key in a lock.
- Keep a dream journal. Place it open to a blank page beside your bed, with a working pen. When you wake, move as little as possible and begin writing from wherever you are in the dream, not from the beginning. Just capture the raw material.
- Read the dream aloud. This is an ancient act. Writing takes what is immaterial and makes it material. Reading it aloud makes it real and begins to reveal its meaning.
What to Do With a Difficult Dream
Here’s something that shifted the way I personally think about nightmares: Dr. Bain says difficult dream figures are not something to run from. They’re something to get to know.
She encourages dreamers to stop the scene when a difficult image appears, and ask: Why is this here? What is it offering? And, often, in the simple act of describing the image and developing a relationship with it, something softens. The dream figure begins to calm… because it’s been seen.
And just as in nature, where a healing herb grows near a poisonous one, in dreaming we will always find medicine alongside difficulty. We just have to stay long enough to look for it.
The Original Superpower
Dreaming, Dr. Bain says, is the other 50% of the story. The half most of us have forgotten. But the information that comes through the dreaming world is information we literally cannot access any other way. It comes unbidden, from something greater than ourselves, intended specifically for us.
Einstein had a conscious creative relationship with his dreams. So did Tesla. So have healers across cultures and centuries.
And tonight, so can you.
Grab your journal. Open it to a blank page. Find a working pen. And ask the dream maker to visit.
Your protocol is waiting.
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