Body Situations

To quickly find what you are looking for click on the entries below – Looking for body parts click HERE:

(Anaesthetised Body)   (Appearance – Smiling – Frowning –  Baby Head on Old Body)

(Bodilessness Bodyless)   (Body Being Cut Open)   (Body electrocuted or electric shock)   (Body Put in Bag)  (Body Convulsing)  (Body Bottom Half)  (Body Injuries)   (Body Without Head)  (Burned or burning body – Where burn is painful – Where the burning body is beautiful)

(Coldness in lower part of body – Coldness in chest – Cold feet)

(Dead body)  (Diseased Body)   (Dismembered body)

(Half a body – Missing Bottom half – Missing Top Half)

(Leaving body)   (Left Side of body – If you are right handed – the left handed)   (Limbs, loss of)

(Maggots in body)   (Murdered body)

(Old head on baby body)

(Primitive body – such as prehistoric form)   (Pulling things out of ones body)

(Right side of body – If you are right handed)

(Sickness in body – Top half of body)

 

 

Body Anaesthetised

This suggests deadening of feelings, repression of love or anger, or the ‘sleep’ or repression of passion, creativity or reason.

Jung said in Man and His Symbols – ‘I was also surprised to find many intelligent and wide-awake people who lived (as far as one could make out) as if they had never learned to use their sense organs: They did not see the things before their eyes, hear the words sounding in their ears, or notice the things they touched or tasted. Some lived without being aware of the state of their own bodies.’ This could be represented in a dream as being anaesthetised. It could also point to a desire to have pain taken away or be relieved, or memory of an actual medical operation. Such a past experience sometimes leads to feelings connected with dying.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Do I feel ‘dead’ in any way or in any part of my body?

Have I deadened my feelings or creativity in any way?

Am I seeking to avoid pain and so deadening myself in some way?

Becoming awake meaning noticing what you feel – even unconsciously. See What we Need to Remember About Us and Victims – Easy Dream Interpretation

 

Body Appearance of

How your body or other people’s body appears in a dream gives a lot of information. Most of this can be taken literally.

From how our body looks people tend to identify themselves with it, women more so than men. In fact in our early years we tend to build our sense of identity from our looks, health and how others react to us. Also our feelings about how attract we are sexually are also used a great deal. But as far as dreams are concerned they have a much wider view than our physical looks and our sexual charm. See Identity and Sex; Identity And Dreams; What we Need to Remember About Us.

So take time to consider if you are confident, happy, purposive in your dream. All these are scene setting for the rest of the dream. If you are tired and untidy in the dream, or your body is looking ill, then these factors represent the state of mind and perhaps even of health you are in or feel yourself to be in at the time of the dream. Also realise that dreams are dealing with a mirror image of your inner feelings about you and also the big global picture of you. These may shown in such dreams as:

Example: I have this recurring nightmare. I see my mother standing by my bedroom door, blocking it as if I am being trapped and stopped from getting out. I often call to her, “Let me out Mum” but she just stands there staring with no expression on her face at all. I end up getting out of bed and switching my bedroom light on and then she disappears. Sometimes I will see her standing by my wardrobe. It seems as if she is always standing by a door and trying to trap me.

The dream shows Natalie trying to find a way out of her dependence on her mother. Therefore it is a reflection of what she feels and does not admit to herself.

Our identity as it is shown in many dreams is not a formed thing like our body. In its essence it is not even male or female, but both. Summarising such dreams, it is the sense of bodilessness, aloneness, loss of power and los of our sense of identity, which bring so much fear in our dreams. There are antipodes of human experience. At the tip of one is focused, self determining self awareness. At the tip of the other is unfocused void without focussed identity which occurs in sleep. Strangely enough we experience both each day in some degree. The first while awake – the second when we sleep. Yet to face the second with consciousness feels like all the horrors of death and loss. But facing it is important, especially in the second half of life. Although the unconscious carries the dark images we have of death, it also provides what feels like certainty about an existence which transcends death to those who experience it. This is presented as an awareness of existing eternally as part of the very fabric of life. In one form or another this is what those who dare to confront the dark images of death find beyond them.

Smiling: Would be referring to confidence and happiness.

Frowning: Suggests anxiety or concern about something.

Baby head on old body: Immature personality; ones decisions are being influenced by childhood feelings and drives. See: baby.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I aware of how young my attitudes and perhaps feelings are?

Can I see signs, even if only at the moment, of how parts of me have not matured?

Have parts of me been frozen or held back in life experience, thus not enabling them, to grow and mature – if so what held me back and how can I help those facets grow?

See The Two Powers and Acting on your dream

 

Body Bodilessness Bodiless

We build our identity and our sense of self out of the many interactions with other people and the world. In a real sense we create each other by believing in our body and communicating with each other. With prolonged absence of other people and events, and especially if we lose our ‘noises’ and body awareness, we feel we – our sense of identity – is disappearing or dying. People immersed in a sensory deprivation tank begin to lose a clear sense of themselves, and can result in anxiety, hallucinations and depression.

Bodilessness may therefore show us feeling unrecognised, unnoticed, isolated by circumstances or attitudes. It can indicate feelings of loneliness or feeling cut off from sexuality and body drives. Feeling without body is also often used in connection with, or to represent, feelings about death. In some degree it links with a sense of losing our identity or going beyond boundaries. It can also reflect feelings that you are a ‘nobody’.

In its positive aspect bodilessness is an exploration of the subtler aspects of our mind, our internal world, and relatedness. As such, bodilessness may be a great realisation of freedom. This positive side of it may bring a sense of survival of bodily death. It may also relate to the experience of being in the womb, and to the participation in another person’s being – or participation in the existence of all things. This is because the sense of bodilessness often brings with it a melting of ones boundaries and a feeling of being part of all life. This is sometimes called an ‘oceanic’ experience because it can feel like one is melting into an enormous ocean of life or consciousness. See: first example below; identity and dreams; archetype of death and rebirth; out of body experience; altered states of consciousness.

Example: I had a spontaneous OBE as a teenager, and after recovering from the shock of finding myself floating over my body and staring down at myself asleep in bed, I had an indescribably exhilarating time flying through walls and soaring over the treetops. During the course of my bodiless journey I even stumbled across a library book a neighbour had lost and was able to tell her where the book was located the next day. I describe this experience in detail in Beyond the Quantum. From The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, Grafton Books.

But more than anything else it is the experience of your core self without any images of having a body – a retreat from the old sense of self of having a particular body.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I perhaps not very aware of my body sensations or my body functions?

Do I desire to be out of this world sometimes – if so why?

Have I experienced my awareness as being capable of independence of my bodily awareness?

It would be good to read Bodiless Awareness and Levels of Awareness

 

Body Cut Open

A vital change being made in oneself; an emergency of emotional or physical nature, or the release of deeply buried feelings or tension. In some dreams it shows the release from restraints or the awareness of deeply buried past experiences or insight in to your body’s health.

In some women’s dreams it occasionally represents a sexual relationship or painful sex. In times past it was sometimes used as an actual operation to release ‘evil spirits’ so has the association of release of tension; the release of a trauma or painful experience.

Example: Dreamt I had the most excruciating pain in my left thumb. It was so bad I went to the doctor. The doctor became a surgeon and he cut open the thumb and lots of spiders came out. Ann.

On being questioned Ann explained that she had recently felt a lot of painful and angry emotions about her mother who had died shortly prior to the dream. The spider often depicts connections with the mother. So here the cutting is to release the pain in a healing way – suggested by the doctor.

Example: Feeling tired – exhausted – just lying drained of energy. I am conscious of people talking, saying I was ill. I thought I was just tired. Then I asked what the matter was. I was told it was my heart ‘dry and hard like a boiled egg’ they said. Found I couldn’t talk. Tried to write, wanted my husband to know that I loved him, but the pen kept drying up. Finger and feet began to get cold. An icy coldness slowly spread all over my body. A liquid warmth was then all around me. I thought I was haemorrhaging. A needle was stuck in my left arm and my chest was being cut open – it didn’t hurt. There was a lot of activity. They said I had gone. I was trying desperately to let them know I was still there. Then I was in a bag and sliding off a table. The bag was tied above my head. Then from the confined darkness I was free. There was a brilliant light all around. I could still see the sack with a body still in it far behind me. I was incredibly happy and full of energy. Trish L

For Trish the cutting open links with the freedom to move beyond the enormous and deadening life experience shown by the beginning of the dream.

Example: I saw a dark brown fertile field in which a plough was cutting large furrows. Suddenly I myself became the field and the sharp steel plough went easily through the length of my body and cut me into two halves. Although it hurt, it was indescribably beautiful. I experienced myself as the ploughed-up field, and the furrow as my own flesh, but it was not bleeding.

Medard Boss reports this dream of a woman who though experienced in sex, had not previously felt deep love. He says the richness and depth of her sexual feelings when in love, are depicted by the dream and being joyfully cut open.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I been deeply hurt or experienced an enormous ‘opening’ of some sort?

Am I aware of something inside that needs to be exposed or cut out or allowed out of my life?

Am I discovering parts of my experience that were deeply buried and held inside me?

Try Talking As to uncover more, or even Being the Person or Thing.

 

Body Electrocuted

This suggests emotional pain such as one might get on hearing ‘shocking news’ or perhaps a painful way of experiencing change. It can also depict any sort of shock or startling response to internal or external events, and may also be a dramatic way of symbolising the pain one feels physically from repressed emotions such as anger or desire. These may cause such psychosomatic but real suffering as lower back or chest pain.

The electrocution could also be a response to something happening to the body while asleep, such as lack of circulation in a limb causing pins and needles. In some dreams though it is clear to see it as the response we have to our own enormous energy – i.e. we may be frightened of the enormity of our potential energy, or we may be related to in a painful way. Such energy can of course be creative or destructive, as happens with negative emotional energy when the different physical effects of joy or grief and hatred are looked at.

Some electrocution dreams deal with the way we experience and relate to energy. The following example clearly illustrates this.

Example: I was kneeling on the floor in a house. I have worked as an electrician so was probably working in the house, but in some way I had hold of, or was connected with, a large electric cable. The cable was live with electricity, and it touched my right shoulder. The effect was excruciating and shocking pain. The most intense memory is of struggling to pull the cable away from myself, fighting to stay conscious against the terrible current lashing through me. I screamed out for my mother, who I was sure was in the building somewhere, to switch off the electricity. I knew I only had a little time because I could not survive that current long. I have a vague sense that the current stopped, then the current and the struggle started again. T.B.

In exploring his dream T.B. first of all met feelings of great pleasure and strength about his ability to work, and that work and helping people with practical needs was the main way he shared love, the main way he expressed his energy. He says, “So the dream is not simply saying I am working, but that work, as an expression of myself, connects me with others and the world. In other words, this is an important part of my communication, socialising, and loving others.”

He goes on to say, “The electricity is the energy of my life. It is the energy of my emotions, of my connection with others. This had been, as it were, short-circuited by what I felt to be the criticism, the rejection, non understanding of my last two female partners. I felt that I had tried and tried, while preserving my own integrity, to live in the way they wanted me to. But this felt as if it was an enormous self-denial at times. It was a self-denial that created this almost death dealing introversion of energy. The anger I felt about this had in it the sense that there might even be an inherent attempt to kill out my manhood, my flow of positive male energy. That is how I felt, anyway. As I summarised this I felt I could stand up and smile, and say I’m not going to be killed.” See: example under blindness in dreams.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What sudden shock have I experienced recently?

Am I aware of the enormous potential energy I have?

Is the dream depicting the way my energy is expressing or being held back – and is this creative or self destructive?

Try using Energy Sex and Dreams – Being the Person or Thing

 

Body In a Bag

The loss of or end of something, perhaps a relationship or ones life as it was. But if the body in the bag is a parent or partner the image could mean a move to independence. It also suggests feelings about death or being ‘on the scrap heap’. See:second example under body.

Example: The evening before she had the dream her boy friend had rung her up. Caroline was struggling to end the relationship. She said to him – ‘Look, as far as I am concerned you are dead!’ That night she dreamt she saw a scroll pinned up on the wall. The writing said ‘Alan – her boyfriend – is dead.’ She felt shocked and could not believe it. She went off to look for him and found him in a white plastic body bag. She could see his outline. He was gasping for breath, suffocating. She felt sad. Caroline.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is it I am either trying to get rid of or sending away?

Am I letting go of a past way of life?

Is this about a move toward independence?

What rubbish in myself or way of life am I discarding?

Try being the body in the bag – read Being the Person or Thing or Easy Dream Interpretation

 

Body Convulsing

Great internal pain or conflict that is discharging; great conflicting emotions or drives; a response to past trauma which is being partially released but causing a conflict because of remaining resistance; enormous internal changes.

The following dream shows Caroline watching convulsions bring a body back to life, and that is another possible meaning. In this case the convulsions suggests a painful experience of the deadness in her life as it is being healed. It occurred at a time she was breaking with a long time partner and shows the re-discovery of her artistic skill, the pain of coming to life again after the deadening effect of the relationship, and the change of self image she is undergoing.

Example: I was being shown round a huge warehouse. In one of the rooms, there were my paintings. In the next room I was shown there was a girl being operated on. She was being revived by electric shock treatment. I remember feeling that it was creepy watching her body jerk and convulse as she was being brought back to life. Then I turned to look in a mirror and saw there was glue all over my face, I was tearing it off to get the layers off my skin. Then I started to tear at my skin. Caroline.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What are the convulsions expressing – dying or coming to life?

Is there a deeply felt conflict or trauma I am facing at the moment?

Is the convulsion due to an electric shock – if so what has chocked me recently?

Try using Characters and People in Dreams and Life Changes

 

Body Bottom Half

This section of the body is used in dreams to depict your sexuality and instincts; the animal, less rational, more passionate or ‘driven’ side of yourself. It expresses the supporting sustaining aspect of your physical and psychological processes such as the nourishing and reproductive process and the physiological or automatic motor energies. Sometimes it is associated with feelings or difficulties in regard to your mother. The lower body is therefore the energies or processes of life in you that move you without your conscious will or even consent, such as the ageing process, desire, fears, your needs and hungers.

Dreaming about the lower part of the body in general suggests recognising or giving the less rational, procreative or basic ‘needs’ more awareness or expression in your life – or the need to. Because the lower part of the body relates to what remains largely unconscious or instinctive, it often appears in dream that deal with lifting up, or transforming the ‘lower’ habitual or instinctive energies or drives into conscious and directed energy and creativity. This is sometimes called sublimation, and is a fundamental drive in our being. It is the process of unconscious life moving toward consciousness. It can be likened to the potential in a seed unfolding until it flowers and produces seeds. Our whole growth from conception is in this direction, but at a certain time we need to take on the work consciously. See: fundamental process;Individuation.

In researching this section of the body and searching through dreams connected with the lower part of the body, it was found that in a large number of dreams mentioning the ‘lower body’ falling was dreamt of in some way. See: Tolstoy’s dream example under falling. This may be due to it having to do with letting go of conscious control.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I failing to understand or be aware of the parts of me represented by my lower body?

Do I have a difficult relationship with my sexual needs or instincts?

Am I holding too tightly to a rational and controlled relationship with life?

Think about these things What Economic and Look at I

 

Body Injuries

This suggests hurts, or events that may have led to emotional scars. The injury might very well have been self induced, as when we internalise anger or aggression. The main point about an injury dream though, is that it depicts something that has led to you functioning less fully or efficiently. Just as a sprained ankle in waking would make it difficult to go about your daily life easily, so would a damaged ankle in your dream suggest a similar thing.

The dream could also be about attitudes or memories that are felt as hurts, or even imagined but felt hurts.

Another possibility is of body situations that are developing, perhaps out of internal stresses or emotions such as grief, but are still subliminal. See body areas below.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

What part of me is injured and what does this suggest as far as my functioning is concerned? (See entry for what ever body part is injured).

Is there any way I can help or heal this? (See: Carrying dream forward in peer dream work).

Did someone else do this to me – if so am I aware of any event when I felt such a hurt?

 

Body Without Head

Feelings of being led by your physical appetites and sensations, or being thoughtless.

Idioms: keep your head above water; get ahead; airhead; lose your head; out of my head; take my head off; keep your head; losing my mind.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Are you acting out of desires or urges without thought?

Is stress making you act differently?

What is up with your head?

See Easy Dream Interpretation and Settings in Dreams

 

Body Burnt or Burning

Where burn is painful – Emotional hurt, the sort that can leave a deep impression – scar – on one. The burning often shows how we are dealing with our emotional or sexual energy. So the burn suggests we are relating to it is a self destructive way.

Where the burning body is beautiful – Feeling of potential and wonder; realisation of the wonderful inner potential, the enormous energy we hold within. It might also show how we are experiencing and expressive direction of emotional or sexual energy.

In the Oneirocritica (AD. 350) it says about burning ‘The burning of the body indicates a very evil reputation.’ Astrampsychus. This was probably due to the custom of the times to burn dead bodies.

Example: We started to walk back towards the house and we both noticed that the power lines were slung very low to the ground about chest height to me. I knew there was a car coming up the road towards us and at the same time felt it was connected up with something to do with the power lines. I was feeling drawn towards touching them, knowing what would happen. Sure enough once I had hold of the power lines my body started to burn up. My body rose to the height of the house windows and I could hear the yells from my burning body, I thought it must be a hell of a shock for everyone looking on. H. C.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is the burning painful or cleansing – and what does that relate to in my life?

Am I meeting powerful emotions and longings at the moment – if so what are they about?

Is there a burning desire I experience?

It might be useful to use Acting on your dream and Talking As

 

Body Coldness

Repressed or resisted emotions and urges. This sort of cold or shivering often occurs as people start to release unconscious material. It is possibly caused by resistances which inhibit full flowing expression of feelings, causing a sort of stop/start action, or a stop/go flow of energy. The coldness can also show emotional coldness, being without feelings, or lack of motivation or enjoyment. In some dreams the coldness comes about through the loss of something that warmed or enthused you, but may also be caused by distancing yourself from others.

Fear or tension brings about coldness, or you may actually be feeling cold while asleep.

Coldness in lower part of body – Impotence caused by tension or anxiety; sexual coldness; restraint of passion and wanting.

Coldness in chest – Lack of feelings or emotional response; feeling ‘cold’ toward someone; held-back emotions.

Cold feet – Fear; not wanting to do something; indecision; inactivity. See: cold.

Idioms: catch a cold (catch cold); cold call; cold comfort; cold feet; cold shoulder; cold turkey; in a cold sweat; in cold blood; leave out in the cold; out cold; stop you cold; throw cold water on.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I experiencing anxiety or tension at the moment?

Is there any sense of holding back my sexual feelings or emotions?

Am I holding back or something I want to do and causing a stop/go situation?

Use the body to discover dream power – See Resistances – they are a main cause of not getting healing from your dreams.

 

Body Dead

The dead body depicts a whole set of personality traits or attitudes, very often potentials, that have been denied life or expression. For some reason we have not allowed them expression. A person hurt in love might kill out any feelings towards the opposite sex. This ‘dead’ part of them can be shown as a body.

Dead body dreams may also be the way we meet feelings about death. The Bible describes a dead body as something that can ‘defile’ a person, and this feeling of disease or uncleanness might also be a part of some dead body dreams.

In some dreams the dead body is that of the dreamer, and is looked back on. In such dreams there is often the feeling of immense release and certainty about life continuing beyond death – although occasionally this is preceded by great fear. The dream could also be about feelings to do with old age and dying. (See: death; death and dreams; death – life after).

If the body is of someone else you know or a parent it can depict what is left inside you from past relationships. For instance we might figuratively carry the dead body of our father around with us, occasionally trying to rouse it to life to get him to say he loved us. In such cases the influence of past experience still lives in us and may at times be shown as a dead body. Or it could be that we have killed out love or connection with that person and this situation, the deadness between you and the person shown, is depicted as a dead body.

In his book Death Dreams, Kenneth Paul Kramer and John Larkin ask the question who or what dies in the dreams where either the dreamer dies, and watches his/her own death, or the dreamer watches the death of another body? Nobody dies. The dreamer is simply experiencing ideas, concepts or feelings about death.

Example: Dreamt that while talking with my wife I remembered that my son and I had murdered someone years before, and buried the body under a great slab of cement. After the murder the guilt – or rather the fear of being found out – was awful, but as each period of time passed, we gradually managed to lose memory of what we had done. But now I had remembered and felt the anguish of the guilt and fear of discovery. C.R.

C.R. had repeatedly dreamt such dreams. Writing about what he found when exploring his dream he says:

I was led to a direct feeling link with my mother as the dead body. I saw, or felt, that when I cut off from her at 5 and attempted independence of my need for her, because of the pain she brought about in me, I had killed her as an inward figure in my life, and buried my feelings of need for her. The cement represented the energy I had used, the decisiveness, to bury her, to get her out on my life. I went on to recognise that killing and burying my mother, or my relationship with my mother, in that way was not in my own best interests. It was really an expression of my own lack of love and awareness of my best survival direction. So I took the bones and carefully and reverently buried them, along with my father.

There are many dreams of people who communicate with they they know are dead. Here is an example:

Example: One day one of my friends called me and informed me of his death. I broke down in tears and was like that for almost a week straight. I’ve had two dreams about him. In both I would see him and his mother smiling and happy and I would ask him what happened and why he wasn’t dead. His answer is that someone made a mistake and that he never really died. The dreams went about the same way but they occurred in different settings (one in a neighbourhood and one in my old school) but in the second one I was happier to see him and we talked and touched each other more. What does this mean?!?!?!?!

In such dreams communication is a mixture of what the dead person thinks and feels, and also what the dreamer believes death is like, and also the difficulty of translation. Please read Dreams and Symbols as it is an attempt to explain the difficulty.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Have I killed this body – if so what am I killing or denying in myself?

If I imagine myself as this body what do I feel or connect with in myself? (For help doing this see – Stand in Role.)

Do I know the person who is dead – if so what is my relationship with them – have I removed them from my love?

See Techniques for Exploring your Dreams – Secrets of Power Dreaming – Talking with the dead

 

Body Diseased

The sickness may be about what you feel about yourself, or what is a situation in you. Sometimes we feel we are a person without resources, but we might actually have many resources. So there is a difference between feeling something and it being a reality. So the sickness may depict our sick feeling state, or show how depleted we are in spirit and heart.

But the sickness may show an actual state in the body rather than a psychological state. So if you have any sense that it is not representing psychological states, you need to have a medical check. See Kasatkin, Vasily.

Dream information is usually quite specific, so the area of the body being shown as sick is important. Look up the section of the body involved in the other entries, and consider if the sickness is about that area of your feelings or attitudes. For instance a sick heart might refer to feeling ill disposed or without love to other people or the world – a sick leg might show your confidence, motivations or enthusiasm is weak. If possible take the information out of its symbols and express in everyday words. See: processing dreams.

If the sick body is being healed or rejuvenated, this is a very useful dream as it not only shows what sickness occurring within you is, but also what change of attitudes, or what resources are available to heal or change the condition. See: illness and dreams.

Dreams about being ill often illustrate the sort of body, or self, image we have. Because anxiety is such a frequent human experience, anxiety about illness, or possible illness, is very frequent. Therefore such dreams may be graphically illustrating the unconscious fears you have about your health. Carrying such negative images of yourself around cannot help but have a depleting influence on your body’s immune system – considering that positive imagery has been found to have such a strengthening influence. Occasionally such images of sickness – i.e. fears that we are ill – occur out of unconscious desires to punish oneself, but more frequently out of general anxiety. Dealing with such negative self images is important because they are a real source of sickness. See: visualisation.

The rather humorous dream in the example below shows how ill the dreamer could feel about something as simple as wind. The second example shows a very different situation.

Example: It seemed as if I were watching a married couple in their house. The woman had been out somewhere and the man had perhaps eaten something and now had pain. The pain was not specific and he and the woman talked over what began to be felt as a serious developing illness. The morning of the next day the situation was worse. At that point their son, about eighteen, walked in, very bright and positive – apparently not living independently. They told him the situation. Remaining bright and positive he asked his father to lie on the bed with head on pillows and knees bent. Then he took hold of his father’s ankles and moved his legs up and down in a pump like action. Farts accompanied each movement and the problem was resolved. Zak.

Example: I had just got out of bed, and started walking along an upstairs passage toward the bathroom, to wash and shave. As I took a few steps along the passageway I realised I had got wet somehow, and looking back I could see, against the sun coming through the window, a fine spray of water coming from a burst in a water pipe. Then suddenly a wave of water rolled out from the bedroom. A whole section of a large lead pipe had come away. That is, the front of the pipe had come off. I rushed into the room and pushed the pipe back in place, holding off the massive water leak. But the water had gone onto what was an electric fire, and was now a gas fire which was leaking. I couldn’t deal with the gas fire because I was holding the pipe and I shouted for help, feeling that with the massive amount of water on the floor the floor would collapse. KS

A few days after this dream KS was diagnosed with a burst colon and was seriously ill. See: illness.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What part of the body is sick in the dream – and what psychological function does that represent? (Look it up).

Am I holding fears of illness or negative images of my body’s health?

Does the dream feel like something warning me about illness – if so I need to get a medical check?

What do I feel if I imagine myself as the body? Stand in role.

You could also try Acting on your dream

 

Body Dismembered

This suggests emotional or mental stress and breakdown. As difficult as this is to meet in actual life, it may be followed by emergence of a new self. The dream could also suggest that you are tearing yourself apart in facing a difficult situation, and this could be causing your present inner and outer life to fall apart. This may be the result of living a life that was not true to your own inner needs or the needs of the present. Sometimes habits of response to life that were generated in your past are so damaging they lead to this self destruction. The need is therefore to recognise them and let them go or transform them. It is worth remembering that feeling dismembered or torn to pieces by events is just that – a feeling. The feeling leads you to see life in that way – as a threat and not worth having. But such feelings can be moved beyond. See: habits.

The dream may depict parts of yourself that have been torn apart because you discarded them, have feelings of guilt about them, or you repressed or split off from them.

Example: I was walking along a road and recognised a house. I had known a man who had lived there. He had killed his wife and I had disposed of her body. The body, cut and broken into many pieces, was buried in the front garden. I realised I felt guilty about my part in the murder, and had purposely pushed the memory of it out of my awareness to avoid feeling guilt and fear of the body being found.

Andrew, whose dream this was, when he explored it met feelings about how he had messed up the opportunities for love in his life through living out his hurts and angers with his wife. He had thereby killed the love between them and had tried to bury his awareness of this.

The dismembered body is frequently seen in myths and is particularly related to death and rebirth, to suffering and new beginnings, or a return to the womb and perhaps memories of birth.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is this body of someone in particular – if so in what way have I torn our relationship or my feelings apart?

If I imagine myself as this body what feelings do I meet and what does that tell me about myself? (For help doing this see Stand in role

What is it I have torn myself apart trying to do or be?

Is there any way I can help or heal this? See carry the dream forward

 

Body Half of

The half-body dreams certainly suggest some form of balance lacking between the conscious personality and the natural drives.

If top missing: It shows a lack of thinking and higher emotion.

If bottom missing: It indicates trauma to, loss or denial of sexuality and sensuality.

Example: My stomach… growing larger and larger until I saw an enormous stomach covered with a shapeless brown skirt that fell to the ankles… my mother… my mother… very pregnant. . . . ‘That’s my sister in there! I’VE GOT TO HACK MY SISTER OUT OF THERE!’ My other voice screamed again as in fantasy I grabbed an axe and hacked away at my sister’s foetus in my mother’s stomach. But – blotting out that fantasy – the nightmare of my very fat aunt with only the upper half of her body, her stomach missing. Now I knew. Blindingly. I must have been intensely jealous when my sister was about to be born, and I must have wanted to kill her off; an impulse which I had repressed from consciousness, only to have it appear in this nightmare of a very fat woman who had lost the lower half of her body. In the nightmare the very fat woman had been my aunt and not my mother. But I had had enough analysis to know that the substitution of one person for another in dreams (or life) is one of the salient mechanisms of the unconscious, called ‘displacement’ I had never before seen displacement so clearly demonstrated. Constance Newland, from her book Myself and I.

Constance was facing the problem of frigidity, in which her sexual feelings had been cut off, so although her dream was not directly about this, it still held in it the cutting off of the lower half of the body.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Can I recognise that I am only living half of what I am capable of?

What is it that is missing – my intellect and reasoning or my sexual and sensual self?

Does my dream suggest how I can find balance – if not how can I take the dream forward to find satisfaction?

See: Carrying dream forward – also Talking with a dream character

 

Body Leaving it

This is sometimes about the urge to escape or get away from the cares and responsibilities of physical life. It can also be about reaching a powerful confrontation with feelings about life and death. Shock or illness can cause this confrontation.

Sometimes such dreams are exploring the idea of survival of bodily death, and might even be the result of remaining aware in some degree while falling asleep, thus being aware of the loss of sensory input, translated into the imagery of leaving the body. See: out of body experience; altered states of consciousness; identity and dreams; second example in death and rebirth.

If you see another person leaving their body, it probably means you are fearful they will die, or have an intuition about them dying.

Example: When we came to my sister, I had the feeling she was ill. I can’t fathom why, but I was just about to ask him to look after her, when he stretched out his right hand and gently stroked her cheek. He said to her, “You’re dead aren’t you?” I was absolutely stunned and it was then that I was aware of how cold and white he was. I realised then that he was dead, and so he could see she was dying – due to some aura as her spirit was leaving her body. He then disappeared, and I was frantic trying to find him, to ask him how long before she would die. I was crying and almost hysterical to find him, and that is how I awoke. Mrs. C. M.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What led up to leaving the body, and what can I understand from that?

Was this happy or frightening? (If frightening see paralysis while asleep.)

Am I someone who does not relate well to external life?

It might help to read Talking with the dead and  Being the Person or Thing

 

Body Right Side of

If you are right handed, the right of the body represents: Outer activity and dominant functions. The abilities and personal traits you express outwardly. This may also relate to your father’s influence in your life and body. For instance if father is an anxious man there might be a lot more signs of stress on this side of the body. This is probably opposite for the left handed. See: Left side of body above for fuller description of left right split.

Example: Morning began to dawn, and the old lady went back to bed. Then a horrible woman, like a nurse, came in and lifted her in her arms. She held her and rocked her like a baby, in a revolting sort of way, and the old lady began to suck her thumb of her right hand, and take on baby attitudes. Then I noticed that her right leg was only half the length of her left, and was only like a half grown leg.

In this dream there are clear indications of the psychological meanings of the right side of the body. The thumb sucking shows a childlike need and the right leg, the strength to meet external life, is not properly developed.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is my dream suggesting about this dominant side of myself?

Is there any suggestion of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ here?

Can I recognise what the dream shows about the right side?

See Ages of Love and Easy Dream Interpretation

 

Body Left Side of

If you are right handed, the left of the body represents: The left side of our body, or left arm, leg, etc, often links to inner feelings that support your outer action – such as confidence. It indicates your less used or supported functions. If you are an intellectual, the left might depict your less used or totally ignored feelings, intuitions, irrational urges, whereas the right might depict orthodoxy, the rational and accepted.

The left may represent your mother’s influence in your life and body, the right the influence of your father.

A difference in the way the left and right sides of the brain function, and what they control, was defined because of a form of treatment given to a few sufferers of an acute form of epilepsy. Usually there is a connecting bridge of nerve fibres, some 200 million of them, called the corpus callosum, between the two lobes of the brain. This bridge was severed in some epilepsy patients, forcing the lobes of the brain to act independently. From this is was seen that each lobe deals with different functions and perceptions, as well as different sides of the body.

The left lobe of the brain for instance is almost always larger than the right lobe. Considering that the left lobe controls behaviour of the right side of the body, and the right lobe the left side, there are direct connections between the brain lobe and the hands.

Other differences than size also occur between the lobes. The left lobe contains many short neural fibres that provide rich interconnection within limited areas of the hemisphere. The right lobe contains many long neural fibres that connect widely separate areas.

It was discovered that the left hemisphere of the brain controls the right side of the body; speech; reasoning; a sense of past and future.

The right side of the brain controls the left hand side of the body; the spatial sense; intuition; awareness of gestalts – arriving at meaning through putting together many small bits of information; feelings; the present.

All the above might be opposite for the left handed, but not necessarily so, as the left handed dreamer might share similar associations with ‘right’. See: Right side of body.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is the dream indicating something to do with my less dominant feelings and skills?

Does the dream suggest any weakness here or injury – if so what is happening to my confidence or supportive attitudes?

Is there something I am not accepting or in touch with and keep myself from expressing?

See The Life Will and Dreams are a reflection of your inner world

 

Body Loss of limbs

Limbs, loss of Usually pertains to the sense of inadequacy or lack of psychological function connected with the limb. Loss of a leg for instance would be lack of ability to stand up for yourself, stand your ground – the strength that enables you to meet opposition or to motivate yourself and get a move on in life. The ability to be mobile.

Loss of an arm would relate to inadequacy in the ability to reach out and influence other people and the world, giving and receiving, keeping others at bay or holding on, depending on dream. See: arms; legs.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I aware of not having a full expression of the psychological aspect of this limb?

What has happened to me to damage my ability in this way?

Is there anything I can do to change or heal this situation? See: carry the dream forward.

What is the theme of the dream suggesting as to how the limb was lost?

See Use the body to discover dream power and Easy Dream Interpretation

 

Body Maggots in

Possible need to cleanse body of toxins or infection, or a sense of dis-ease emotionally in that area of self; something, like a fear or resentment, eating away at one. It could also indicate a decay or part of you lacking life, something ’eating away at you’.

The unconscious telling us that a part of our attitudes is not wholesome or ‘well’. So repressed emotions causing tension in the chest might be represented as maggots. See: body; corruption.

The secret witnessed in dreams is that if you dare stop running from these emotions and cut-out cartoons of death, with their maggots and rotting bodies, you will break through the screen the images are projected upon. The wondrous reality of life will be waiting for you there, ready to share the love and transformation that lies in death. Dare to challenge the mirage.

Example: Some children are going to show me the “life thing.” They pull me into a room and are going to stand me up on a short platform but I want to be more important or higher, so I insist I stand on a dresser. I hold my arms up in the air and then notice a clingy sensation around the fingers of my left hand. I pull it down to look at it and am appalled. A thick spider’s cocoon is wrapped around them and spider eggs are in there and hatching! I squirm to get it off me, and then I see there are snakes wrapped around me and termites or maggot insects on me. It is all nightmarish and scary and disgusting. I wish I’d never been so arrogant as to want to be higher. The children knew this and see I’ve learned my lesson and help pull off the snake. There is a strong sense of life among the decay – the seamy side of life. Barb.

Here we see a wonderful example of the fact we are all things at once, the rotten maggoty side of us and also we are part of the wonder of Life. We should not ignore it. See parasites.

Example: I was in a dark room developing prints. I believe Les was in charge, but I cannot recall details of what he said or did. I don’t know whether I was doing all that good a job. Then I was wearing a cream coloured blanket, a bit like Mike’s poncho, but different. I happened to rub or scratch my flesh and felt like bits of something on me. I looked and saw they were maggots. They had come off the blanket. I tried to brush them off, and it was like pieces of dirt or scum coming off the body, but I could not seem to get rid of all of them. Doing active imagination afterwards I saw my sexual feelings rise like a thermometer. This didn’t clear the maggots, but I felt impressed to rise thermometer right up to my head. I watched the liquid rise. Then it came out of my head like a fountain, raining down on my body. This fell upon the maggots, which fell off me. As they did so they became seeds that grew in the ground.

Another example of how maggots are simple signs of something rotten in oneself, and how when our attitudes become positive they are seeds of life. Remember that maggots only live on rotting things. Because of this they are sometimes used on humans to eat rotten flesh. As soon as they have eaten all the sick flesh the maggots drop off.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I in any way meeting the feelings felt in the dream – if so in what context and situation?

Do I feel ‘maggoty’ in any way, and if so what about?

What part of the body are the maggots existing and what does that link with? (Look up the body part or object).

Try Being the Person or Thing or Talking As

 

Body Murdered

This usually refers to a period of your life, or aspects of you, that have been angrily pushed out of consciousness because of difficulties felt. This can also be an image of anger toward someone, or a member of your family, such as a brother or sister. Such anger is sometimes a defence against becoming aware of the root pain behind it. In such cases the murder in the dream may be a way of avoiding the pain. The murdered body may also represent oneself – or at least, feelings one has about being murdered by lack or love or a difficult birth. See: Dead body; murder.

We usually resist seeing ourselves in the role of the dead body. The reason the difficulties do no surface, become known and resolved is because we resist them. These resistances are obvious and need to be melted for healing to take place. Dreamers wake with terror from a nightmare for instance and desire nothing more than to blot it out from their feelings. The nightmare is an attempt to make conscious the intense feelings from a trauma, but we resist this because we have not learned the ability to witness such feelings and personal emotions without fear. Another resistance is the automatic withdrawal from pain. Just as we automatically draw out hand away from a hot surface, so we draw our awareness away from a painful memory. The methods we use are many – using redirected attention, as when we rush to entertainment, alcohol, talking with friends, nicotine, breath holding, and so on.

Many dreams I have been sent are about someone they know who has been murdered.

Example: I’m an Ojibwe woman, 50 years of age. On February 26, 2011 my only child (son) was the victim of murder by gun (3 shots). In June a few days before my son’s birthday this year I had a dream: Knock at my door, answered my door to find a dark skinned man in a white robe flowing to his feet was standing there. He said, “I have come for my bird” and he had his hands held together forming a cup. I allowed him into my house…. dream ended. Today, October 5, 2011 during my nap I dreamed the first time where my son was present in my dream. I was preparing a meal for several people; my son was assisting me with the meal preparation. We finished and the people were all seated around the big table eating, talking and laughing. I told my son to go eat. He said “I don’t want to eat with them I want to eat with you, Mom.” So we fixed our plates and went to the back yard to eat together. While we were eating my son says “Mom you were right that girl is pregnant.” I woke up.

Many dreams like this are ways that one can come to terms with the loss. Some times this is by releasing passionate emotions such as in the following dream.

Example: I need help to understand this dream. Last night I was dreaming that my love one had killed somebody and didn’t tell me until he had been arrested by the police. And then I kept seeing replay of themurder but the thing is my partner didn’t look like him but he just had his name but look like someone else. And then I started seeing the murder replay over and over again and I started getting verbal abuse from people telling me my partner is a murderer you can’t marry him. I was so confused until I admitted that I can’t not marry him anymore. My feelings in waking life are not at all like that. I love him very much and we are getting married in about 5 months. In my dream I felt so sad and kept on crying throughout the dream and no one would befriend me. I am so puzzled.

To understand your dream you first have to accept that we are all murderers and poisoners. Of course we do it out of sight and in the dark, unconsciously. To murder is to repress our feelings or departments of our life. We are taught as children to murder our dreams and our love. A man may kill his love for a woman because she does not come from a wealthy family. Or we may kill our feelings because we are ashamed of them or guilty about them. We may kill a creative streak in self due to feelings of incapability, unworthiness. The murderer is a representation of a fear or anxiety that is threatening to, or is killing, feelings and energy. Trauma in childhood can often lead to murderous rage encapsulated in the unconscious, and only appearing in some dreams.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is the victim someone I know – if so do I want them out of my life?

If I imagine myself as the body of the victim what do I feel? See Stand in role

Did I feel guilt about this – if so when in my life have I killed my love or connection with someone?

See Characters and People in Dreams and The power of Habits

 

Body Old Head on Baby Body

Immature sexuality and emotions. This usually shows itself as strong and unaccountable feelings that are normal in young children, but painful and out of place in an adult. Examples are enormous jealousy; difficulty in letting ones love partner out of ones sight; powerful emotional reaction to any sign that ones love partner is emotionally distant; difficulty in leading an independent life financially or emotionally.

Dreams sometimes illustrate this when we see ourselves in the dream with an adult head on a baby body. Or we have an adult body but the genitals of a child, and so on.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Are there any ways that I recognise in myself as childlike? See: love – ages of.

Does the dream show how I might help this part of me grow up?

What is happening because of this baby or child head – i.e. what are the consequences in my life?

See Easy Dream Interpretation

 

Body Primitive

Such as prehistoric form: Strong basic responses such as anger, sexual drive, fear; like and dislike; territorial defence. Very often the dream shows the meeting with these basic responses. Perhaps something has released them more fully, or uncovered them.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Am I aware of meeting very primal or natural urges recently?

Have I been allowing my deeper or unconscious self to express more fully – perhaps through such activities as meditation, free dancing, a powerful sexual relationship, etc?

Am I relating well to this or am I in conflict with it – if in conflict how can I resolve it?

See carry the dream forward and Talking with a dream character

 

Body Pulling Things Out

This suggests that you are becoming aware of feelings or parts of yourself that were previously internal or unconscious and perhaps need to be got rid of. The dream might also point to thoughts or attitudes that were previously taken to be important parts of you but are now seen as separate. This could relate to something that got into you from a previous relationship or event.

Example: My mouth is full of chewing gum and I am in public trying to carry on a conversation. I keep surreptitiously pulling great wodge’s of the stuff out of my mouth but it never seems to get any less.

 

Useful Questions and Hints:

Is there something I feel uncomfortable about myself – if so what is it?

Has something stuck in me from the past that is now being got rid of?

Does the dream give clues to how this got into me – or the body?

If I imagine getting this thing out what do I feel?

Try Being the Person or Thing and Talking As

 

Body Right Side of

If you are right handed, the right of the body represents: Outer activity and dominant functions. The abilities and personal traits you express outwardly. This may also relate to your father’s influence in your life and body. For instance if father is an anxious man there might be a lot more signs of stress on this side of the body. This is probably opposite for the left handed. See: Left side of body above for fuller description of left right split.

Example: Morning began to dawn, and the old lady went back to bed. Then a horrible woman, like a nurse, came in and lifted her in her arms. She held her and rocked her like a baby, in a revolting sort of way, and the old lady began to suck her thumb of her right hand, and take on baby attitudes. Then I noticed that her right leg was only half the length of her left, and was only like a half grown leg.

In this dream there are clear indications of the psychological meanings of the right side of the body. The thumb sucking shows a childlike need and the right leg, the strength to meet external life, is not properly developed.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is my dream suggesting about this dominant side of myself?

Is there any suggestion of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ here?

Can I recognise what the dream shows about the right side?

See Ages of Love and Easy Dream Interpretation

 

Body Sickness in

Can refer to an awareness of illness in part of body shown. Most often depicts psychological problem symbolised by part of body – see body parts below. See: Diseased body; dead people dreams; hiding; illness.

Top half of body: Thinking; feeling; rational conscious activity. This is also the most vulnerable part of the body, and so some dreams are about protecting or feeling vulnerable.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is being shown regarding the top half of the body, and what does that say about myself?

Is this showing as too rational or not rational enough?

What strength or vulnerability am I experiencing?

See Use the body to discover dream power and What is the main action in the dream?