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January |ˈjanyoōˌerē|

noun ( pl. -aries)

the first month of the year.

ORIGIN Old English , from Latin Januarius (mensis) ‘(month) of Janus ’ (see Janus ), the Roman god who presided over gates, doors and beginnings.

Happy January! In the spirit of Janus, consider what gateway you’d like to step through. What is beginning in your life and what would you like to start? Each night is another opportunity to step through the doorway of your dreams, into new ways of seeing, perceiving and conceiving your life and experiences.

I was born in the Year of the Rabbit, so I’m a little sad to see it end.

But lucky for me, just as the Year of the Rabbit was coming to a close, a bunny hopped into my life. I am now the proud foster parent of Honey Bunny, my daughter’s cloud-gray bunny, who I am looking after while she follows her dreams in New York City.

So, though the Year of the Rabbit has ended, my Year of the Bunny has just begun!

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And what does the Year of the Dragon mean for dreamers? I consulted my sister on this one, as she lives in Japan and has put more thought than I have into the Chinese zodiac. She pointed out that the Dragon is the only mythical creature in the Chinese Zodiac. Thus, the Dragon year might be a time to celebrate imagination, and to explore our personal myths through the imagery of our dreams.

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Happy Chinese New Year to all!

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Make the most of the Year of the Dragon by getting to know your dreams! Contact me for more information about Dream Consultations through Third House Moon.

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Do you dream in color?

I’m always slightly taken aback by this question. Doesn’t everybody dream in color? Why I wonder does this question get asked so often?

Not only do I dream in color—but my dreams are in vivid color, sometimes even in over-saturated, trippy, Technicolor. I don’t recall ever having a dream in black and white.

But the questions persist.

I’ve even heard a theory that those of us who say we dream in color, are in fact retroactively projecting the color onto our otherwise black and white dreams. Frankly, I don’t buy that one.

I recently read about another theory, which explains the misperception that people dream in black and white … and this one interests me much more.  It goes like this:

Our dreaming mind is very much influenced by the technology we, as a culture, use. This makes perfect sense to me. I’m sure I’m not the only one who now dreams of having trouble completing a call on my iPhone, whereas such anxiety dreams used to involve rotary, then push-button phones. Apparently people who play video games regularly are having dreams now that reflect the fact-paced action of their electronic play, and are becoming more adept at taking on different personas in their dreams, as they do in their wake-life games.

So, according to a study published in 2008, during the early years of television when the pictures came in only black and white, people dreamed more often in–you guessed it–black and white. That doesn’t explain how the idea of black and white dreams has become so deeply entrenched, but it’s an interesting theory nonetheless.

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Meanwhile, I’m eternally grateful to Dorothy, for stepping through the monochromatic landscape into Technicolor. Perhaps in that great cinematic stride she colorized the dreams of an entire generation!

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What about you? Do you dream in black and white? Come on, really? You’ll have to show me or I won’t believe you

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Don’t tell Robert Hoss that people don’t dream in color. He studies color psychology in dreams. I highly recommend his book.

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To read more Corner View blogs in or about Black & White, start here.

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., born  Jan. 15, 1929

Recently I had a dream … about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I was sitting on a tour bus (actually it was a living room sofa, being driven like a bus, with a tour guide at the helm narrating the noteworthy sites) and I learned that Dr. King had performed a  wedding of two famous historical figures at the church we were driving past.

I see this as a hopeful dream and a call to action. In the dream I’m learning that Dr. King performed a wedding and a wedding is a symbol of union, of bringing people together in the name of love and commitment.

Dr. King’s dream of racial harmony does require ongoing commitment through ups and downs, just as a successful marriage does. It requires us to act in love, and faith, to renew our commitment to harmony again and again, through good times and bad.

In honor of Dr. King, let’s re-commit ourselves to his dream of racial harmony.

And let’s be inspired by him to dream big!

Let’s share our dreams, as he did; believe in them; and watch them manifest.

Click here to watch Dr. King’s famous I Have a Dream Speech

At the Lincoln Memorial, where Dr. King gave his famous speech.

Click here to read about how Dr. King’s dream influenced my own.

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A new year is a hopeful thing, like a new journal, a brand new book, new socks, a new coat of paint! For me the January’s blank slate also prompts me to wonder what Wonderful Things I’ll fill the year with.

Like everyone else, I want 2012 to be full of prosperity, happiness, and joy. But I have an added motivation, which is that at the end of each year I make a list of 101 Wonderful Things about the year that just passed. Some years it’s more difficult to wring out 101 Wonderful Things for my list, but it’s usually pretty easy once you get in the habit of looking for them.

If you’re doing the math, 101 wonderful things per year boils down to about .275 wonderful things per day. So, by today, Jan. 11, I should have accumulated at least 3 Wonderful Things. That’s a very reasonable pace. In fact, I try to end each day by reflecting on 10 Wonderful Things about the past 24 hours. If my memory were better I’d easily have 3,650 wonderful things to list by Dec. 31.

So, as I prepare to close the book on 2011, I can’t help but notice that many of my Wonderful Things last year had to do with Dreaming, Writing, and Mindfulness … the three pillars of my Building-a-Conscious-&-Wonderful-Life Philosophy.

Here are some of the things that made it to the list for 2011 and that fit into those categories:

#1 My Proprioceptive Writing Practice, including my weekly PW calls with R&G. #2 My dreams that guide, provoke, reassure, accompany, and ground me … as well as let me fly, travel, twirl, somersault, dance … etc. #3 The gift of Reiki continuing to flow through my life, for which I’m grateful to my sister, Rachel, Marilyn (my teacher), and the whole Reiki lineage. #4 Celebrating my 5 year anniversary of having a regular yoga practice. #5 Becoming an editor with All Things Healing’s Dream Medicine Page. #7 Lucid Dream Meetups downtown over Thai food once a month. #18 Following Deepak Chopra’s Energy guidelines for a month or two: Weekly lassi fasts and daily routines that felt GOOD. #22 Dreaming each month with the Dreaming Global Illumination Full Moon Dream group. #24 Another year of hosting 350 Dreamers and dreaming with others from India, Europe, Asia, Canada, the US, etc… for Global Healing. #25 Publishing LEARNING IN MRS TOWNE’S HOUSE, with DNMNK’s encouragement. #29 Maho Bay dreams: experiencing nature as part of me, & me part of nature during my first vacation in the U.S. Virgin Islands. #32 Graduating from the Institute of Dream Studies and becoming a Certified Dream Therapist. #41 Taking a Tibetan Dream Yoga weekend workshop with Michael Katz. #42 Seeing Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” (twice … once with mom and once with DNMNK). #46 Participating in a free teleseminar with Jean Houston. She said (among many other Wonderful Things), “The universe is in love with you.” #59 The dream healing that allowed me to go on Mass Appeal’s local TV show to talk about dreams. #60 My first trip to The Netherlands and Belgium, thanks to my participation in the International Association for the Study of Dreams annual conference.#80 Learning to love the Tarot and discovering how well Tarot and dreaming go together!#99 Falling in love with trees. I may become a bonafide tree hugger yet.  #101 An unexpected visit with Virginia in Santa Fe … the silver lining I needed at year’s end.

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So, will you try it? Start a 10 Wonderful Things practice in your day to day life, and then add a 101 Wonderful Things tradition at year’s end? What Wonderful Things can you add to your list today?

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To learn more about the intersection of dreams, writing, and mindfulness and how these three pillars can help you build a Wonderful&Conscious Life, visit my web site.

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To Ring in the New with other Corner View Bloggers around the world, start here.

Related articles

• Joyful Dreaming (CV) (allthesnoozethatsfittoprint.wordpress.com)
• Can a Dream Change Your Life? In a Word, Yes. (CV) (allthesnoozethatsfittoprint.wordpress.com)

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According to researchers in a 2009 study conducted at the School of Psychology in Manchester, England, daytime personality traits such as neuroticism, anxiety, anger, and stress, negatively impact one’s quality of sleep. Conversely, positive personality traits, like expression of gratitude, can improve the quality of sleep.

People who fall asleep focusing on gratitude, the study says, sleep better and longer, and have a more positive outlook in the morning.

What do you have to lose? Go to sleep thankful.

Ten Wonderful Things

In my book Mindful Moments for Stressful Days I suggest a simple gratitude practice that I call “Ten Wonderful Things.” I invite you to try this, or any other gratitude practice each night:

• As you fall asleep think of Ten Wonderful Things about the day that just passed.
• Be sure to look for small wonderful details, in addition to the big ticket items. In other words, you can feel just as grateful for the sight of a hummingbird hovering above the bird feeder outside your window as you can about getting a promotion at work.
• As you think of each Wonderful Thing, re-experience it in your imagination, calling to mind all of the sensory details of the experience (taste, smell, sounds, texture, visual details, etc.)
• Hold each experience in your mind for a minute or more, as you focus on gentle, relaxed breathing.
• Feel your heart fill with gratitude as you recall each of these wonderful moments.
• Note in your Dream Journal how you feel in the morning after going to sleep grateful.

From now on, rather than counting sheep, use this practice to count your blessings as you drift into sleep.

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Learn to improve your sleep and learn from your dreams. Contact me for a dream consultation.

Citation:

Gratitude influences sleep through the mechanism of pre-sleep cognitions. Wood AM, Joseph S, Lloyd J, Atkins S. School of Psychology, University of Manchester, Manchester, England, UK. 2009. alex.wood@manchester.ac.uk; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19073292

Related articles

• How Gratitude Helps You Sleep at Night (psychologytoday.com)
• Trouble Sleeping? Try Gratitude! (crossroadscoachingonline.com)

It's true, I sleep better in my new, improved, sleep sanctuary.

On a recent visit home, my adult daughter walked into my bedroom and exclaimed that enough was enough! She declared that the blankets on my bed, a mish mash of hand-me-downs from my mother that I’ve been using for decades and the cast-off blankets my daughter left behind when she went off to college, were “unacceptable” and that I deserve better.

When she was born, an astrologer told me that my now 23-year-old daughter’s tastes would run toward the regal. And as the years unfolded, I learned that the stars didn’t lie! My daughter has always been drawn to all that glitters! She loves designer clothes, fine jewelry, and luxury items of all kinds. Unfortunately, my budget was never quite kingly, so I spent a lot of time trying to teach my extravagance-loving daughter frugality.

So, when she made her declaration about my bedroom I immediately took my default position: “There’s nothing wrong with these blankets. They keep me warm!”

But my daughter would hear none of it. She insisted on setting a date to take me shopping for new … matching! … blankets and pillows.

I put her off for weeks. But in the meantime, as part of my campaign to improve the quality of my sleep, I began using the Zeo sleep monitor [read more about that experiment here] and signing up for their sleep coaching emails.

Among the Zeo Sleep Coach’s suggestions was one that, in my capacity as a Dream Therapist, I often offer to others: Make your bedroom a sanctuary for sleep.

Suddenly I saw my daughter’s insistence on upgrading my bedding in a new light. I realized that my bedroom was not quite the sleep sanctuary I advised others to create. It was, quite frankly, shabby.

So, I took her up on her offer and off we went to Bed Bath & Beyond. To satisfy my frugal side I brought along a handful of coupons. My luxury-loving daughter helped me pick out a beautiful new bedding set, patiently answering my protests (“Who needs matching pillows?” “You do!” “I don’t need a throw blanket.” “Yes you do!” etc.).

Finally we purchased a beautiful purple and lavender set of blankets, sheets, pillow shams and even a throw.

It was truly a gift for me to realize that my daughter had plenty to teach me about pampering and caring for myself. Meanwhile on the checkout line I took the opportunity to point out how much money I’d saved using my coupons–because I still have plenty to teach her about making the most of her money.

As for my sleep; I must say it worked. I am sleeping more soundly in my new sleep sanctuary.

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You don’t have to spend a fortune to make your bedroom into a sleep sanctuary. Here are a few easy steps you can take:

• Eliminate clutter to make your sleep environment feel relaxed and spacious.
• Use heavy curtains or shades to eliminate as much light as possible. A dark room is essential for a good night’s sleep.
• Backlit digital clocks and electronic equipment all emit light. Limit or eliminate the number of light sources in the room.
• If you have a phone in your bedroom, turn off the ringer when you go to sleep. If you keep your cell phone in your room turn it to “airplane mode” so that it doesn’t send and receive signals while you sleep. This will eliminate the possibility of being woken by a text message or call, but will allow you to use the phone’s alarm clock, as well as the voice memo feature of your phone for recording your dreams.
• Check your mattress and pillows. Are they still comfortable? If not, it may be time to replace them.
• Candles, incense, and some decorative cozy pillows are all accessories that can give your room a cozy, inviting feel.
• Use a lavender-scented eye pillow to help you relax into sleep.

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Contact me for an individual dream consultation, including advice on how to create a healthy sleep environment, and how to recall and work with your dreams.

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I am trying to get to Santa Fe, New Mexico to visit my friend A. who has cancer. But first I need to go to the very tip of Long Island to celebrate with my dad, who is turning 80 that day. On the way, I’m to meet my mother and bring her with me. But she wanders off and no one can find her. I panic. Where could my mother be? It’s getting late and it’s cold. At this rate we’ll miss my father’s celebration and I’ll miss my plane, too. At last the police locate my mother and we race off to meet Dad for dinner. Afterward, I drive all night to get to my airplane on time. I manage to get to Santa Fe, and feel relieved and triumphant. But then I sneeze. I realize I have a cold and so I can’t see A. An infection could be deadly to someone who is in the midst of chemotherapy treatments.

Am I awake or dreaming?

The above scenario has all the elements of a dream: It’s surreal. It contains anxiety over travel (a common dream theme), inability to connect with loved ones, and the pursuit of seemingly impossible tasks. But alas, this was my recent waking reality. I had planned to spend my vacation week in New Mexico visiting my friend A, but first, I’d meet my mother, who is suffering from dementia, and take her to meet my father, stepmother and brother in Montauk, Long Island, to celebrate Dad’s birthday. After temporarily “losing” my mother and needing police intervention to find her again, we all did manage to celebrate Dad’s 80th together, I managed to catch my plane, and yes, then the cold.

After I landed in New Mexico, I called the American Cancer Society to ask when it would be safe to visit someone undergoing chemotherapy. I was told to wait at least 24 hours after I was fully clear of any symptoms. My heart sank.

In Santa Fe, sick and unable to see A, I was filled with the nearly unbearable pain of disappointment. My cold was getting worse by the hour, and was making me as physically uncomfortable as I was emotionally distraught.

A silver lining

But, there was some amazing good luck in this story, too. Another dear friend of mine also lives in Santa Fe. Virginia had met me at the airport, taken me to her studio apartment and fed me steaming bowls of chicken soup and equally nourishing servings of conversation and connection. Hearing my tale of woe, she told me that one of the things she most admires about me is my resilience in the face of difficult situations.

Hmmm. I wasn’t feeling so resilient at the moment. But the comment led me to ponder: What do I do in the face of difficult situations that helps me find meaning in them? It was the same set of skills and impulses that made me a dreamworker. In fact, my nightmares have taught me how to face life’s monsters.

Like most people, when a menacing beast or monster chases me through a dream, I used to turn on my heels and run – or better yet, I’d try to wake myself from the dream. But as I grew, I learned that if I turned and faced said beast or monster, during the dream or in my imaginings when I woke up, I could befriend it. I’d ask it what it wanted from me, and disarmed by nothing more than my curious and calm gaze, it would cease being threatening and instead offer some grain of enlightenment.

Taking the first step

The first step in working with my waking nightmare in Santa Fe then was to stop trying to flee from it by avoiding the reality I was presented with, and turn toward the messy feelings.

Lying in bed that night, I paid attention to my thoughts and feelings. When I felt pain, emotional or physical, I just let myself feel it. My head ached. My sinuses were so full I thought they’d explode. I could hardly breathe, my eyes were tearing and there was not an inch of my body that felt good. After a few minutes of this I realized, “If this is what some disappointment and a cold are doing to me, imagine how A. must feel!” And I did, I imagined how she, too must be desperate to escape the physical pain and discomfort of her chemo treatments, of the fatigue of fighting cancer, the fears and anxieties of facing a life-threatening disease, and the piles of disappointments from all of the things she has had to give up over the past few months of dealing with surgery and visits to doctors and chemo treatments—and all the things she can’t look forward to now that cancer has taken over her life for the foreseeable future.

And then came deeper sadness. And then, true compassion and empathy. Alone in my motel room, I felt as if I were, finally, with my friend in her distress. Being with her in this case meant imagining my way into her experience instead of keeping my spiritual and emotional distance by wanting always to help, and lift her out of her feelings; avoiding the urge to protect her and me from the pain of her reality.

I stayed with the feelings and felt myself sinking into them. There was comfort underneath all of the sadness. There was a sense of being not only with my feelings, and with A, but with a gentle, loving energy, as well. For the first time since arriving in Santa Fe, I felt relief.

In the days that followed A. and I talked on the phone, texted and visited via Skype. All of this we could have done with me at home, half a continent away. But maybe this nightmarish journey was the only way I could have learned how to truly be close to my friend.

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Ready for bed wearing my Zeo headband.

My friend DNMNK recently lent me his Zeo for a few weeks. The Zeo is a nifty device that looks like a digital alarm clock with a removable headband. You wear the headband to sleep and the Zeo records your sleep stages and data. You then upload your sleep data to Zeo.com where you can see your sleep patterns graphed on your own personal Zeo sleep page.

You learn, among other things, how long it takes you to fall asleep, how often you awaken during the night (more times than you’re aware of) and for how long you are in REM, Deep Sleep, Light Sleep and Wake during the night.

I asked DNMNK if I could borrow his Zeo for a couple of reasons. First, the purpose of the Zeo is to help educate people about their sleep patterns so they can create conditions for improving their over all sleep. Ater all, a good night’s sleep helps us with memory consolidation, emotional regulation, general feelings of health and well-being, and more. Since I am someone who wakes once or twice each night and sometimes has trouble returning to sleep, and because I’m often sleepy during the day, I wanted to see what I could learn about my sleep patterns and how to improve them by using the Zeo.

Also, I am a prolific dreamer. I remember my dreams every night—several, in fact. This is much more than the average person, who is lucky to recall 3 dreams in a week. I wanted to see how much time I actually spend in REM sleep, and assumed, that my percentage of REM would be very high. The average person spends 25 percent of their sleep time in REM, the sleep stage known for generating the most dreams and the most vivid ones. Based on the length and detail of my nightly dream reports, I figured I must be in REM for nearly the entire night.

What I discovered was quite different from what I expected.

After collecting about 10 nights worth of Zeo data I learned that in fact I spend an unusually small amount of time in REM sleep. Turns out, I spend about 14 minutes in REM each night as opposed to the average for a woman my age of an hour and 44 minutes.  What was I to make of the fact that I’m way below the average in terms of REM sleep, but way above average in dream recall?

Consulting with DNMK, who is also a neuroscientist who studies the dreaming brain, and also reading up on sleep stages on the Zeo web site, I learned a few interesting facts. For starters, the brain awake and the brain in REM sleep look very similar.

Zeo clocked me as being awake for nearly two hours per night. The average woman my age is awake for about 33 minutes a night. Here I was pretty much off the charts. Since it’s difficult to distinguish between the wake and REM-dreaming brain states, maybe I was dreaming in the state Zeo was recording as awake.

By tracking my dreams upon waking during the night and in the morning I began to see that this was in fact the case: I was dreaming when Zeo recorded me as being awake.

According to Zeo’s web site, the device is accurate 75 percent of the time. As a point of comparison, when DNMNK uses the Zeo, his experience of dreaming seems to match Zeo’s recordings of his sleep stages quite regularly.

So, what else might be going on in my case?  One possibility raised by DNMNK is that  I might be spending time in a state called hyper-aroused REM. In this sleep stage people often experience false awakenings (“waking” into a realistic environment, only to realize later one was actually still dreaming), which may lead to, or come after lucid dreaming (the hybrid state of consciousness in which one is sleeping and is aware that one is dreaming while doing so). Since I experience a fairly high number of false awakenings and lucid dreams, it is possible that I am experiencing this hyper-aroused REM state, a possibility that Zeo doesn’t account for in its data-collection system.

Image by stevegarfield via Flickr

All of this has been an interesting revelation for me. Sleep is such an important part of our overall health and our experience of the world, so I am a strong proponent of each of us being our own sleep and dream scientist. This is one reason I keep a dream journal and encourage others to do the same. And it’s one reason I recommend trying out the Zeo. In future posts I’ll discuss other things I learned from my weeks spent with the Zeo. But for now, it’s time for me to get to bed!

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Today is the anniversary of the birth of Madam C.J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove on Dec. 23, 1867. The daughter of slaves, she became the first black millionaire by building a beauty empire for people of color.

Walker was also a dreamer. Living in poverty, Walker dreamed a black man appeared to her and gave her the recipe for a hair tonic to help stop her hair from falling out.

Walker reported: “[A] big Black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out.”

Walker followed her dream, and found her way from poverty to riches.

Isn’t it time you began to follow yours?

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I learned about Walker from a beautiful Young Adult book by Jeannine Atkins, Borrowed Names.

To learn more about how to remember, understand and follow your dreams, contact me for a dream consultation.