Spellbound

“I bet you get this all the time,” said the sales assistant helping me choose a new skirt yesterday, “but what do those dreams mean where you are trying to walk but your feet are heavy and it’s all so slow? I keep having that dream.”

“You probably have the dream when you feel you’re not making fast enough progress in some area of your life, when it feels too hard, too heavy, too slow,” I suggested, “but to be specific we’d have to look at the details of the dream.”

Her eyes flitted while she took this in, “How true. That’s fascinating!”

Fascinating is a word I hear a lot in my work. According to the Thesaurus, fascinating is similar to mesmerizing, intriguing, absorbing, and spellbinding. How true, people are mesmerized, intrigued, absorbed, and spellbound by their dreams, even when they don’t know what they mean.

Dreams are expressed in the language of your unconscious mind where much of your deeper self resides, out of sight, out of (conscious) mind. It’s your deeper self that calls to you from a remembered dream, intriguing you, feeling fascinatingly familiar yet elusive, difficult to pin down, difficult to name. It’s your deeper self that can influence the way you respond to life, beyond your conscious control or awareness. Such is the power of your unconscious mind to cast its spell upon you.

When you know how to look into a dream you can identify those unconscious aspects of your deeper self and the ways they influence your life – some good, some not so good.

So what might be going on for someone who has the heavy feet dream? Here are some of the many possibilities:

• Fear of success. Consciously you want to succeed in reaching the goal you have set yourself, but unconsciously you fear the changes you believe success will bring you.

• Fear of failure. As above, but unconsciously you believe you may fail and you fear the changes you believe failure will bring you.

• Unconsciously you have the belief that you’re not worthy (or a whole host of other negative judgements) of achieving the goal you’ve set yourself or the life it will open for you. Self doubt casts its spell on you.

• The goal is no longer appropriate for you (you have grown, changed), or you’re chasing the goal to fulfil someone else’s expectations. Your unconscious mind is wiser, and casts its spell to slow you down enough to see a better way.

There are many more possibilities, but these are some of the more common ones. In each case, your unconscious mind causes you to put obstacles in your way, for example: to strive for unachievable perfection, create complications, take on too much, let stress drain your energy, find excuses, binge eat-drink-drug-exercise, obsess over your Facebook feed, keep checking your email, overlook replenishing mind, body and soul. These obstacles successfully sabotage your likelihood of achieving your goal, and most of them also exhaust you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, making daily life as draining as the dream pictures, one heavy bogged-down step after another.

If you have this dream, reflect back on the last 24-48 hours to identify the situation that feels heavy going and slow. If it’s not obvious to you, look next for the situation that is all go, high energy, busy-busy-busy, but, when you think about it, not really getting you where you want to be. Or take a piece of paper and make a list of the obstacles that got in your way (and the unexpected things that turned up that needed your attention) during the last two days. Can you see the connection between your dream and your life now?

The details of your dream are important: what happened before the heavy feet part, what else was going on, where you were headed to, who else was there, how you felt about it all, the texture and slope of the path, what you were wearing (the list is as endless as our dreams are unique). When the details are analysed, your unconscious beliefs, conflicts, and emotions, are uncovered. The aspects of your deeper self that have you spellbound are unmasked.

It’s a fascinating process, but it’s time to ensure that your unconscious – your deeper self – is working with you to achieve the kind of goals that are healthy and appropriate for you.

Do you still want to achieve this goal? Is it time to commit to it more fully? Is it time to modify it? Is it time to let it go? Has it served its purpose?

Is it enough to unmask your unconscious saboteur? Yes and no. Awareness helps, but it’s better – and more rewarding – to do a dream alchemy visualisation to rewire the unhealthy unconscious beliefs or to strengthen the healthy ones.

It’s best to create a visualisation based on your unique dream, using your unique dream symbols, designed to zone in on the belief that needs to be changed, and change it.

But here’s a more general dream alchemy visualisation that you can do if you have this kind of dream:

While awake, close your eyes and imagine yourself back in the dream, just at the point where it all gets tough. Visualise – and feel – your feet and legs feeling light, see and feel yourself now lightly stepping, running, or dancing with ease and a sense of joyful fulfilment as you suddenly arrive at your destination.

Do this visualisation 15-20 times a day for a couple of weeks. You’ll notice that things become lighter and clearer, obstacles melt, hesitation vanishes, and you’ll feel more confident about where you’re going and why.

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