I have been interviewed on three different radio shows recently, talking about dreams, spirituality, psychology and especially my new book, What To Do When Dreams Go Bad: A Practical Guide to Nightmares. Here is a rundown on each appearance, with links to the podcasts (audio files) for each.

Back in October I was interviewed by my friend, author Thorn Coyle on her show, Elemental Castings. We talked about dreams, water, the dark, rhythm, and Aikido, among other things. It was a great conversation, and the complete hour-long show can be downloaded here.

In April, I was interviewed by Dr. David Van Nuys of Shrink Rap Radio. Our wide-ranging conversation about nightmares—and, toward the end, children’s nightmares specifically—makes for fascinating listening. Listen online or download the podcast here.

This past weekend an interview with me was aired on Paradigms, a new show about visions of a viable future. The entire show, featuring live music as well as the interview, is available for listening here. I will also post an edited version of just my conversation with the show’s host Baruch, very soon in my Audio Clips.

Finally, an article about me appeared in the SF Martial Arts Examiner, written by Paul Rest. Being a student of aikido, the martial art of non-violence gives me a unique outlook on the work of dreams. Read the profile here.

Normally when we have a scary or troubling dream we try to push it out of our minds as quickly as possible. There it stays, for months and sometimes years, gathering dust in a corner of our psyche. Whenever we happen by chance to think of it again, it feels just as strange and unnerving as it did the night we had it, though the intensity does fade with time. But the image imprinted on our memory never really goes away, it stays with us unchanged for life.

There is another way of dealing with bad dreams, one that has a much happier ending. With just a little effort, we can transform those frightening scenes into ones of power and strength. As we learn to tap into the hidden ally within every nightmare image, we discover that many things once fearful to us can become sources of joy and freedom.

Read on…

I pay particular attention to the dreams I have when I am away from home. Particularly on overseas or extended journeys, it seems to me that our dreams take on a different character. As our lives are unmoored from habit and routine, our dreams are likewise free to roam, and often show us startling pictures of life back home. I call this the “View of the Earth from Space” phenomenon. Sometimes we can only identify patterns and see larger truths from a distance.

Read on…

Everyone has anxiety dreams. Even fabulous cable and radio show hosts like Rachel Maddow have their share of dreams where things go wrong in major ways. I just came across this video from Maddow’s recent appearance at a Mother Jones fundraiser in San Francisco where she gives a great description of her recent anxiety dream.

Read on…

Midway through a sound sleep you suddenly wake up, heart pounding and head filled with horrible nightmare images. Instantly wide awake, you replay the bad dream over and over, wondering what it means and why it had to happen to you. While everyone else is asleep, rest eludes you as a thousand fears ricochet through your mind. What do you do next?

Welcome to the world of nightmares. Everyone has them, though they usually become less frequent as we age. But no matter how old we are, we can still experience that feeling of helplessness when something happens in a dream that is just so wrong. And we wonder, is it us? Did we do something wrong? Could we prevent something bad from happening in the future if only we understood the dream?

Read on…

I think everyone who practices yoga should also work with their dreams. As spiritual practices go, the two are very complimentary — one emphasizes body and breath, while the other emphasizes psyche and emotions. And something that is not widely talked about in spiritual circles is that cross-training in more than one discipline really does help your focus and progress in each.

As a dreamworker and yoga student myself, I have developed a couple different methods to merge the two disciplines. The main one I use came about during a restorative yoga session four years ago. I’d recently had a very powerful dream in which there was a strange spinning object in the sky — almost a planet, maybe a moon or a satellite, but in the end I had no idea what it was. It was a pivotal piece of the dream, yet try as I might I couldn’t arrive at its meaning using symbolic associations.

Read on…