Remember How to Fly: Tips for Dreamwork and Dreamplay

"Everyday the culture will try to steal us away from ourselves. Every night we have to steal ourselves back again. Every every time."

~Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes,
author of Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

"You are born to fly, and in dreams you remember the soul has wings."

~Robert Moss,
author of Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole‍

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Dreaming is such an enormous topic, so we are just scratching the surface with some tips and tools, which we hope will serve to inspire exploration, experimentation, and reconnaissance (recognition).

Evening Affirmations for Dreaming

"Incorporating positive affirmations into your evening rituals can enhance your dreams by easing you into a state or rest and receptivity. Here are some affirmations for insightful dreams:

~I open myself to the divine wisdom of my dreams and the unlimited potential of my imagination.
~My dreams always have the answers I am looking for. I listen carefully for their messages.
~Tonight, I ask for dreams that will bring healing, renewal, and welcome changes to my life.
~The more I listen to my dreams, the more I learn, understand, and appreciate about myself.
~My dreams are a gateway to embracing my inner magic, truth, and power.
~Tonight, my dreams will be vivid, clear, and insightful. The messages I need will be easy to recall in the morning.
~In my dreams, I awaken to my true self and embrace all parts of my being."

~Excerpt from Luminous Dreams: Explore the Abundant Magic and Hidden Meanings in Your Dreams, by Katie Huang.

Tips for Dream Journaling

Keep a notebook or pad of paper right by your bed, easily reached in the dark, with a pencil or pen, and possibly a flashlight. Record impressions, sensations, images, words, feelings, such as...

~Colors
~Weather, foliage, atmospheres & cosmos
~Themes (rushing, being lost, exploring, abandonment, dancing)
~Moods and senses
~Rooms or places, unknown spaces
~Emotions within the dream
~People, archetypes or obscure or out-of-picture figures
~Dreams within dreams or memories, or the collapsing of reality and dream-space
~Powers or lack thereof
~How you feel upon waking up
~Magical influences and abilities
~Desires, vices, hunger, needs
~Recurrent dreams (are they the same, or slightly different?)
~Words (spoken or read or even felt) that recur or that stand out
~Time in which the dream occurred (night, day, during a moon phase or when the moon is a ~Certain sign or during an astrological season)

~Lisa Marie Basile, author of Light Magic For Dark Times

Relaxation with Crystals

Prepare for dreaming by relaxing before bed and meditating with crystals. Amethyst, Clear Quartz, Howlite are good dream helpers, and you can read more about them in our article "Swimming Beneath the Conscious: Crystals for the New Moon in Pisces."

Explore Books, Decks, and More

Find books on lucid dreaming and dream interpretation at Paradise Found! We also have a list of books that can be ordered online from our Bookshop.org page; the list is called Dreamwork & Dreamplay: Cultivating Imagination Through the Power of Dreaming and contains books and decks of interest to the intentional dreamer, including The Mystical Dream Tarot.

This beautiful deck was created and written by Dr. Janet Piedilato with woodcutting artwork by Tom Duxbury based on Dr. Piedilato’s watercolor illustrations, The author is a transpersonal psychologist, complementary health-care consultant, and ordained minister who has spent a lifetime studying the value of altered states as represented by visionary, dream, and shamanic experiences. She holds doctorates in biology and transpersonal psychology, and studied under Stanley Krippner, the world-renowned dream psychologist.

The deck features “dream images” used to “dig more deeply into the personal consciousness, helping each of us find answers which are within our own unique psyche. . . .Each of the Major Arcana has a "dream incubation message", so that you can pull a card before bed and meditate on the short passage of text that will (hopefully!) inspire some creative, fruitful dreaming...

"All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together."

~Jack Kerouac