Interview with Jean Campbell

A new feature on The Daily Dreamer debuts today: periodically we'll interview a dream worker. Our maiden voyage begins with Jean Campbell, CEO and Director of The iMage Project, who has developed a method that uses dreams to facilitate healing. Click here to learn more about Jean and her work.

DD: What got you interested in using dreams as a vehicle for healing?

JC: I developed DreamWork/BodyWork after years of work with dreams and eight years of training and certification in Bioenergetic psychotherapy modalities. Along the way I saw innumerable examples of dreams providing the information necessary to healing. Dreams are one way our so-called "unconscious" provides information to us about our physical and emotional health.

DD: Can you briefly explain how dreams can help with physical issues, and what sorts of issues are best addressed this way?

JC: If we take a DreamWork/BodyWork perspective toward dreams, the connection between dreams and health is easily demonstrated by this exercise, which anyone can do: Stand the way you usually stand. Feel how you exist in the space of your body. Are there areas of your body that feel stressed or uncomfortable? Note these.

Now, pick a character from your dreams. The character can be you, another person, a totem animal. Your choice. Then stand and move the way that character stands and moves in the dream. How do you feel in your dream body? What are the differences from your stance in waking life? We under-stand, in our deepest hearts, what we need and want for health.

DD: Can you give an example of how this process affected someone's health (or life)?

JC: When we change the way we move in the world, we are changing at all levels of reality. It is essential to be aware of the body--which carries a language of its own. Once, working with the dream of a woman who had been brutally wounded and raped, I listened to her dream of fighting off her attacker. The woman was lying down as she told the dream. I noticed the movement of her legs. Bent at the knee, her legs slid her stockinged feet along the mat at a regular rhythm. "What are your legs doing?" I asked, interrupting her dream story. All movement stopped.

"I want to run away," she whispered, "I want to run away." She sobbed in shame. She knew she needed to fight off the effects of this trauma, felt she should be able to do that if she were strong. All true. But until we can integrate all of our feelings, accept even our deepest shame, healing is not possible. Health is ease with oneself, as compared with dis-ease.

DD: Thank you, Jean, for telling us about this interesting aspect of dream work. This kind of work demonstrates that the tendency to think that the mind and the body are somehow separate just isn't so.

A New Reality

The Dream: I'm at a social event. Don is there. After a while I realize I must be dreaming because I know that Don has died. He looks very healthy and in some way I know he lives elsewhere. I want him to tell us about his new life. What's it like in the world beyond?

Interpretation: This dream gives me a clue as to what the precocious children represent in the last dream: their preternatural intelligence is not about things we are capable of knowing in our earthly existence. Don shows me a spiritual reality that transcends earthly existence, but he doesn't answer my questions.

A Place of Enchantment

From time to time a dream gives a glimpse of a unified and happy psyche.

The Dream: I am in a city apartment building with a friend or colleague and knock on a door. When a young woman answers I describe myself as a home health worker, although even as I say it I'm not sure that's quite accurate. It's my job to check on the welfare of children and families.

The woman is young and lives in an apartment with one large, high ceilinged room; there is a separate kitchen with an eat-in area off to the left. She lives with a man and their two daughters. What has me impressed, and even excited, is the way so many aspects of life have been integrated into this one space. The place is beautifully furnished,with a dark wood hutch to the left. There's a large bed in the middle of the room, and the clutter of children's toys and activities all around. The woman is bathing one of her daughters in a portable tub on top of the bed. The combination of the elegant furnishings and the joyous activity strikes me as wonderful. No conflict here between tidiness and the necessary business of life. The mother is completely comfortable with the low level of chaos, and it doesn't feel chaotic here,but rather serene and lovely.

Later I am invited to the wedding of the woman and the man. I go into the kitchen / eating nook. There is a window over the table and the spot looks bright and airy. “Look,” I say to my companion, “there's only one window, yet the entire place seems so bright and cheerful.”

Interpretation: The home health worker represents the part of me tasked with assessing inner harmony. She checks on the welfare of the various components of my psyche, symbolized by the children and families. In this unusual dream, it seems I've taken a step toward a synthesis of the sometimes discordant players in my inner world. The elegant and refined environment of the home, a symbol of this inner world, feels spacious and is full of beautiful and chaotic life. All are respected and cared for in a loving manner. Some sort of inner integration has taken place, and this is emphasized by the marriage of the man and the woman. Opposite tendencies have been resolved; the lion can lie down with the lamb. Serenity reigns, and illumination prevails. A mysterious light comes from within. Nice. Of course, it won't last . . . .

Guest Dreamer: Bed, Bath and Beyond

A typical dream for Hunky, a visual artist, is composed of images. She is perplexed by this dream because it consists only of words.

The Dream: This morning before I was totally awake I almost called out loud to my husband, "John, call Bed, Bath and Beyond!  Correct the error!  We don't want to pay for what we didn't receive!"  

Hunky: My imagination takes off with this dream, Carla, but I could be totally wrong.  Does it refer to my marriage?  Does it refer to my health (just got good news)?  Does it refer to my continuing concerns (issues around my father)?  Should I sleep on it (bed), and what is it?  Should I wash away certain concerns from my thinking (bath)? Should I look to the future (beyond) for positive, fulfilling endeavors?  I am totally confused.  Because this dream had no visual context I am challenged by its words. Can you imagine the dream as yours?

Carla: My version of Hunky’s dream operates on two levels. Marie-Louise von Franz says that a dream refers to, or is triggered by, something that happened in the past day or two. The trigger doesn't limit the meaning of the dream, but it can be helpful in starting to understand it. The first level has to do with my day-to-day concerns and issues, such as the ones that Hunky has mentioned. If it were my dream, I would ask myself if there were something that I had felt as if I had paid for (not necessarily with money--perhaps with my effort) that gave me nothing back. I call on my animus (my husband, my other-half) to fix the situation. I don't feel my feminine side can deal with the problem. Perhaps I feel I have to give, to support and to nurture beyond my capability. I need my male half to step in, be practical, and protect me from my tendency to overextend for the benefit of others.

The Green Circle

The Dream: A circle in shades of green radiating from the center, from deep forest to yellowish.

Interpretation: This little dream gave me new insight into the meaning of the last dream I posted. In the previous dream I knew something was bothering me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. In the mysterious way of dreams, the paradox of the color green – a color of growth and health, and at the same time a color of putridity – brought the issue before me with clarity: it centered on my feelings about sickness and health. The ill health of some dear friends in the present stirred up feelings about the long illness my mother endured, and how I endured it with her. The quick fix of the previous dream alludes to my wish to quickly cure my friends, on the one hand, and on the other to prevent the horror of our earthly frailty from emerging into my consciousness.