Penney Peirce

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-19-2022

Your dreams are trying to tell you something. If you can interpret your dreams, they offer you greater self-awareness, knowledge, and success. Don't overlook the details in your dreams — messages may be lurking there. Keep a dream diary to uncover themes and insight in your dreams. Study the meanings of common dreams, because they represent situations most people experience at some point in life.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

If you're interested in recording your dreams in a dream diary — or in interpreting your dreams — some emotion you've experienced is probably the driving force. Every time you express or deny an intense emotion, you can be sure there is fodder for a powerful dream. Though dreams heavy with emotion can be disturbing, they provide guidance about what's going on in your subconscious. Some topics of emotional dreams are: Psychological processing: You root out fears, pain, vulnerabilities, blind spots, and subconscious blockages so you can become conscious of what holds you back, clear it, and be courageous and free. You may dream about fears of being powerless, in pain, unworthy, unsuccessful, out of control, overwhelmed, victimized, rejected, changed, or of dying or facing the void. Taboos: You explore forbidden territory, inhibitions, and suppressed desires, often about sex, crime, or antisocial behavior, as a way to free self-expression. For example, a sensible accountant by day may dream of wild sexual trysts by night. You might find yourself acting out secret vengeance thoughts about an unappreciative boss or relative. Relationship dynamics: You receive insights about how you relate to others and how you give and receive so you can improve your ability to love. This includes learning to balance your internal yin and yang energy. You might dream you are a helpless passenger in a car driven by another, aggressive person, or that you took your obnoxious neighbor a cake instead of reporting him to the police. Past life memory: You travel in time to revisit memories of other lives, or to clear blocked energy where emotion is stuck. You re-experience, in a dream, a previous death, trauma, remorse, deep grief, terror, or a situation where you had too much ego. Precognitive warnings: You receive forewarning of sudden change or upheaval: A loved one is about to die, you are soon to lose your job or partner, or the world is about to experience a shocking event like Pearl Harbor or September 11. Or, you are shown an omen to watch for that is a clue to success in a new endeavor. Out of body travel: You collapse time and space and visit a distant sick friend you're worried about, have a visitation from a dead relative with a message for you, or travel with a friend who's actually in India. Recognize emotional symbols With a little practice, you can figure out how to immediately sense the "charge" that's often present with emotional zone symbols. Here are some examples of images that pertain to emotional processes: State of your emotions: Water, lake, ocean, river, pool, swamp, flood, tidal wave, swimming, diving, fishing, drowning, water vehicles, house burning, forest or brush fire, campfire, fire in a fireplace, smoke, explosion, storm, tornado, hurricane, earthquake, volcano, mudslide Emotional processes and issues: Babies, children, fish, snakes, lions, tigers, bears, sharks, dolphins, puppies, hummingbirds, otters, horses, elephants, sex, relationships, celebrities, battle, betrayal, hiding, hoarding, being drained, being chased, exposure, nudity, poison, suffocation, paralysis, prison, weapon, trap, losing or finding important items or money

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Dreams come in many shapes and sizes, some vague, some detailed, some frightening, some inspiring. They all contain encoded messages aimed at improving your life. As you become ready to start a dream diary to interpret your dreams, you might realize that many dreams deal with the functioning of the physical world. Some of the topics of physical zone dreams are: Daily residue: You watch a scary movie before bed, argue with your mate, or bring a problem home from work, then continue to process it in a dream. Health and healing: You receive information about a disturbance in your energy flow, or body, so you can avoid a budding health problem. For example, you may not realize that you're drinking too much until you dream about entering a rehab center, where the counselor gently takes a glass of wine out of your hand. Problem solving and decision making: You receive guidance so you can proceed in your life. For example, an interior designer might need an innovative focal point for a large wall and dream of using ladders in an odd, interesting arrangement. Skill development: You accelerate your learning by practicing in your dreams a new ability you're trying to learn in waking life. For example, when worried about your first presentation at an all-company meeting, you might dream repeatedly of public speaking until you are totally comfortable. Recognize physical symbols Certain images pertain to physical processes. Here are some examples of physical zone symbols: State of your body: Jar, earthenware pot, bowl, cup, glass, cave, basement, house, room, closet, train, bus, car, trailer, motorcycle, bicycle, tree, actual organs, tumors, body parts, aura Body processes: Eating, drinking, chewing, urinating, defecating, vomiting, washing, shaving, swelling, growing, flowing, breathing, stoppages Health issues: Hospital, clinic, doctors, nurses, surgery, massage or bodywork, energy healing, acupuncture, bandages, casts, X-rays, injections, construction, digging, sculpting, jogging, exercising Make a physical dream work for you Try the following writing exercise to track your "daily residue" dreams: 1. Look through your dream diary for dreams that might have been triggered by something that happened in daily life. Did the dream provide further insights that you applied? What happened right after you had the dream? Write about these things in your diary. 2. When you find a connection between a perception in waking reality and a similar dream, write about the underlying theme. What was it about the original trigger experience that made you focus on it so much that you needed to dream about it? What is your soul telling you?

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

To fully understand and record your dreams, it's best to start with some knowledge about your sleep and dream cycles, and how your dream cycles affect your waking life. Science tells us that everyone dreams for a total of approximately two or three hours per night. Robbed of vital dream activity through sleep deprivation or stress, you might become irritable and disoriented and will balance yourself by dreaming excessively the first chance you get. The dreams of children are shorter than those of adults and often contain animals and monsters. Nearly 40 percent of children's dreams are nightmares, which may be part of the normal developmental process of learning to cope. Every night, you rotate through four basic phases of sleep that repeat approximately every 90 minutes. During these cycles, you oscillate between awareness that is close to waking reality and awareness that penetrates deep into the collective, spiritual realms. What's important to understand here is that if your deep sleep cycles are disturbed, you may not be able to renew your vitality and sense of purposefulness easily. Phase one: Brainwaves slow from their waking frequency, called beta, to the more relaxed alpha state, where you may feel you are floating, and pictures may drift through your mind. Your muscles relax, and your pulse, blood pressure, and temperature drop slightly. Phase two: Your brainwaves slow more until they reach the level known as theta. You are now in a light sleep state characterized by many bursts of brain activity. Most dreams occur at this level, during which the eyes move back and forth rapidly beneath the eyelids. This is known as Rapid Eye Movement, or REM, sleep, and it lasts from several minutes to an hour. During REM sleep, your extremities may twitch, but most of your body is paralyzed. Your heart may beat erratically, and breathing can become irregular and shallow. When awakened, you easily remember your dreams. A newborn infant experiences eight to ten hours of REM sleep per day. By age five, a child's sleep pattern has become almost the same as an adult's. Phases three and four: In the third and fourth phases, about 20 to 45 minutes after you fall asleep, your brainwaves finally reach the ultraslow, regular delta frequency, which produces a deep, "dead sleep." You progress from 20 percent delta waves in phase three to over 50 percent in phase four. If you awake during either of these stages, you feel fuzzy and lost; so resist waking fully, and drop back to sleep immediately. Teenagers and small children need about ten hours of sleep, while those over 65 need about six. For the average adult, eight hours is optimal. Some studies suggest women need up to an hour's extra sleep a night compared to men, and not getting it may be one reason women are more susceptible to depression.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Most people don't think about the effect that dreaming has on their waking lives, but dreams help your imagination grow, help you develop what's in your psyche, allow you to tap into your inner wisdom, and drive you to increase real life success. Dreams really are a doorway to greater self-awareness, knowledge, and success. Sounds great, right? But how do you open and walk through that door? There is an actual pathway that can take you from wishful thinking about dreams to a reliable dream habit. Just follow these steps: Intend to remember a dream. You can prepare your awareness to be receptive. Decide what kind of dream experiences you want to have. Do you want to visit an exotic place or connect with a relative who has died? Do you want to heal psychological or physical wounds? Pick something specific or ask for general guidance; then, program your subconscious mind before sleep. For example, "I will remember my most important dream in the morning." Or, "Bring me an insight concerning which job offer to accept." Sleep well; wake up well. If you're too stressed or wake often during the night, your dream cycles will be disturbed. Eating foods like turkey, milk, bananas, or cheese before bed can have a sedating effect. When you wake in the morning, take a few moments to gently rise from the depths of sleep to slowly come back to daily reality so that you can maintain a connection with your dreams. Maintain the subtle feelings and sensations in your body before your mind kicks into gear. Recognize your dream activity. It's important to develop a habit of turning your attention immediately to your dreams as you wake up. Let your first thoughts of the day be: "What have I just been doing?" Dreams come in various forms: a cinematic saga, a fragment, a single symbol or word, or even a highlighted experience later in the day after you wake. Speak in present tense about dreams: "I'm swinging on a rope, jumping from tree to tree. I sense I might fall." Speaking to yourself in the past tense can distance you from the dream. Record your dream. Once you've learned to preserve your live connection with your dreams, you must do something to make the dreams real and physical to your body. This way, your body, which is connected with your subconscious mind, knows you meant what you said the night before when you asked to remember your experiences, and it will cooperate. Tell someone right away, describe the dream into a recorder, or write it in your dream diary. Decode the message. Making sense of your dream is perhaps the most daunting step, but also the most fun. This is where you'll ask yourself: "How is this dream image, dream choice, dream action, or dream emotion part of a process I'm going through right now in my waking life? How are the dream elements part of a life lesson I'm learning?" Bringing the subliminal into conscious awareness validates the process. You can learn more about what meaning specific dreams and symbols hold by looking at the following graphic. Follow through. If your dream contains guidance, a warning, an answer to a problem, or an inspiring image, use the information. Follow through on what you receive because this is why you dreamed the dream in the first place. Using dreamtime insights in daily life reinforces your intention to connect the two halves of your experience, completes the dream cycle, and frees you to move into a new phase of exploration and creativity. Do it all again. When establishing a reliable dream habit, your subconscious mind will engage fully and bring you dreams consistently after you repeat the process at least three times. Some people say seven times just to be sure. Dreams deliver messages from your subconscious and superconscious mind. Use these steps to tap into your personal messages in order to discover (and remember) what your body is trying to tell you. Click here for the full PDF of 8 Common (and Not So Common) Dreams Decoded.