Back

For Back of or Behind see Back Of

Back Pain: This can be caused by tension, and this is turn could be about holding yourself back through anxiety. See back pain and its cure.

Back – trunk spine: Mostly the back indicates your strength, particularly moral fibre; confidence physically; decisiveness, ability to stand in face of opposition; power to endure without being overcome. A psychiatrist once told me that many men in a tramps home were diagnosed C.W.B. It meant ‘congenitally without backbone’. That is, They hadn’t developed the strength to deal with everyday life.

Example: ‘I was looking across a hedge at a bull. I seemed to be just looking at its back.’ Andy.

Andy was a teenager, uncertain of himself. In this dream he was looking at and discovering his strength. This was a revelatory dream for him because he suffered a great deal of anxiety in the past because of an old back injury. He had in fact left a higher  paid job and taken a much lower paid work because he felt he couldn’t cope. From working on the dream he felt, he was adequate as a person. So the dream was a turning point after which his ability to explore and be active outwardly was hugely enhanced.

So the back can also indicate what you are holding back in yourself, or even what is happening to you ‘behind your back’. Holding back in this way can create real back problems because it causes tension in the back – causing pain – causing worries about the back – causing tension – and so on.

The different strata of the back may also indicate different aspects of yourself. The lower back for instance suggests the earliest stages of your development such as life in the womb and birth; but also the earliest levels of experience such as sensuality and sexuality.

The back at about waist height links with your process of growth and digestion of experience, along with sympathetic links you have with others and the world.

The back connecting with the chest indicates your emotional and feeling development and the way you connect with the world through empathy – especially what you take in and put out of yourself.

The neck connects with your ability to express yourself and communicate with others, along with such things as asking for your needs and speaking your inner truth.

Carrying something on your back: The influences and burdens you carry from your past. This can be useful or difficult depending upon what you carry. This also suggest your karma, or the results you face in the present of all past events and actions – cause and effect. See: dweller on the threshold.

Sitting on the back of an animal: Being supported by your inner and instinctive strength, wisdom and animal self. See: animals.

Somebody on one’s back: Feeling dominated by someone else; feeling the ‘weight’ of one’s parent’s, or someone else’s wants and decisions instead of your own. Carrying an influence from the past.

Idioms: Back breaking; back to the wall – See the example in nightmare, and note the use of the words ‘back against the wall and what it implies; behind one’s back; flat on ones back; get off my back; put somebody’s back up; rod for one’s back; pat on the back; stab in the back; turn one’s back on; scratch my back.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is this indicating strength. If so what strength does it help me become aware of?

Is this an injury or weakness – if so what vulnerability or weakness does it help me become aware of?

What does the theme of the dream tell me about myself? See: themes; Processing Dreams.