Daily Mail, Thursday, August 29, 2019 Page 49
femailMAGAZINE 49
by Victoria
Aitken
gods, and the roman orator
Cicero accepted the idea of
dreams which appear to predict
the future.S
IgMuNd Freud first
suggested that dreams
were a manifestation of
our unconscious minds
and should be analysed. Carl
Jung took this a step further,
seeing dreams as subliminal
images that the dreamer’s
memory might have forgotten.
Through my studies, I have
learnt that we should listen to our
dreams for the sake of our mental
health. and I believe that if we all
paid attention to what our brains
are telling us while we sleep, we’d
all have so much more insight.
recurring dreams or nightmares
happen because we are not
listening to our inner voice. They
are the subconscious screaming
‘pay attention’.
I’ve been taught how to record
my dreams, keeping a notepad
and pen with a torch by my bed
and writing down everything I
recall as soon as I wake up.
Once I started doing this, I
began to dream even more
regularly and vividly. It was as if I
had unlocked something.
at first I could remember only
vague fragments of dreams, but
as time went on it became easier.
Beside each dream I would write
what I did the day before, to spot
links with my dreams.
sometimes a dream wouldn’t
make sense for months, then I’dread it back and the message
would be clear. dreams really are
like puzzles you need to solve.
For a while, I was in a long-
distance relationship with a very
successful man — let’s call him
Mr X — and I wasn’t sure if he
was right for me.
during the day I would think
fondly of him, but my dreams
told me a different story. One
night I dreamt I was caught
between the russian President
Putin and rocks, which suggested
to me that this man wasn’t a
comfortable choice.
Then I had a dream about a long
driveway. at first it was beautiful,
but as I walked along it, the terrain
became more barren. This showed
me that if I got into a long-term
relationship with Mr X, my life
would be hard.
I didn’t pay attention, and tried
to convince myself that my waking
mind knew best. so the dreams
kept coming. There was one about
a long corridor, telling me I’ddeveloped mental ‘tunnel vision’.
In the next, Mr X was in a shallow
swimming pool. I reasoned that,
if I was honest, Mr X was a
bit shallow. Or perhaps the dream
meant I was the shallow one,
because my admiration for
Mr X’s material success
was blinding me to
his unsuitability as
a partner.
after I had
skied in a race,
in sochi in
russia, I
dreamt I was
in another
race but my
ski poles were
missing. I
realised this
coincided with a
time when I wasn’t
feeling supported in
my day-to-day life and
needed to make changes.
you can even actively use your
dreams to solve problems with‘dream incubation’. Write down a
sentence about your problem and
place the piece of paper by your
bed. review this before sleeping
and visualise yourself dreaming
about the problem. Keep a pen
and paper, and even objects
related to your problem,
close by.
The artist and
poet William
Blake did this,
putting some
sketches or
poems by his
bed to boost
his creativity.
Many art-
works and
inventions exist
because people
listened to their
dreams. singer Paul
McCartney woke up
with ‘a lovely tune’ in his
head that became the Beatles
hit yesterday. Wagner told a friend
that he had dreamt the entireopera Tristan und Isolde. The
russian chemist Mendeleev
dreamt the periodic table.
and the sewing machine
wouldn’t exist if inventor elias
howe hadn’t had a nightmare
about cannibals attacking him
with spears with holes in their
tips. This allowed him to design
an effective needle.
sometimes, dead people can
visit you in your dreams with
messages for you or others. I
remember one in which my late
grandmother Nada appeared,
telling me about a garage business
that would be a good investment.
a few weeks later, I discovered
that my mother was working with
a garage business.
My father, former Cabinet
minister Jonathan aitken, is now
an ordained priest and the prison
chaplain at Pentonville. I’ve
suggested he should start dream
workshops for prisoners —
something that was done at san
Quentin, the state prison in
California, and was found to boost
inmates’ self-esteem and improve
their mental health.
listening to my dreams has
meant I sleep better and feel
calmer and more in control.
Many other people are realising
the importance of dreams, too,
which is why there are so many
apps and courses. and that can
only be a good thing.
n FOR more information about
dream therapy courses, see:
institutefordreamstudies.org;
dreamanalysistraining.com;
charliemorley.comO
Ne night, about
18 months ago, I had a
vivid dream about a mole
that was poisoning me.
When, a few nights later,
I had the same strange dream
again, I googled what being sick
in a dream might mean.
Maybe, I decided, the mole could be a
metaphor for somebody in my life who
wasn’t doing right by me — a figurative
‘mole’. at the time I was working with a
bitcoin company, arranging strategic
alliances, and there was someone in the
firm who wasn’t being honest with me, so
I concluded the dream was a warning.
I’d been pretending everything was fine,
but now I decided to follow my instincts,
and told the person I couldn’t work with
them any more unless they were straight
with me. When nothing changed, I quit.
But even after that, the dream came
back — I would later learn that if you
don’t pay close attention to dreams, they
keep repeating themselves. and it got me
wondering. Perhaps I should take it more
literally. Was my subconscious warning
me about physical moles on my body?
I went to a mole-scanning clinic. It
turned out one of my moles didn’t look
quite right and needed to be removed for
safety. If I hadn’t had that dream, I’d
never have had it checked.
My dreams have always been detailed,
but I never used to pay them much heed.
after the mole dream, though, I started
taking note of them — and the more I did
so, the more I realised they were telling
me about the issues I faced in my life.
I bought books about the theory of
dreams and began to study them. I found
it fascinating, and decided to enrol on an
online dreams course at the Institute For
dream studies, based in america. dream
star Institute runs a good course, too.
One method of dream analysis taught is
the ullman method (Montague ullman,
who died in 2008, was a New york
psychiatrist and champion of dream
analysis), in which you discuss your dreams
with a group of people.
dreams are universal. In the Bible,
Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream
about seven years of good harvest and
seven years of bad. The ancient egyptians
believed dreams were messages from theStyling: JULIA STORM£280
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hudsonshoes.comSweet
slumber
The average person
has three dreams a
night — while some
have seven!Ever wonder what your
subconscious is trying to
tell you as you sleep? So
did VICTORIA AITKEN.
And what she discovered
transformed her life
I learned to
READ
MY
DREAMS
(and you can too)
Picture: CAMERA PRESS/NICKY JOHNSTON