Feet Foot
Your basic psychological support system, therefore the attitudes and ideals you use to get around in the world. Feet are also your ability to balance. Where you place your feet in the dream can also indicate whether you feel secure in your present life situation, or whether you are finding conditions, ‘footholds’, to advance or make changes.
In the bible it says, “The feet are symbols of desire. They must be bare: drawn out of everything temporal and mortal.” This suggests that our feet can represent our desire or motivation, and to take our shoes off means we are willing to drop our own purpose and follow the urge from our core instead of desires for things that pass away. The feet may therefore indicate your involvement in all things physical, and all the beliefs and viewpoints that are dependent upon it. (The Bible can be seen as collected folk wisdom that is venerated, and so can be disconnected with any religious organisation).
To dream of feet might also suggest your sensitivity to your present life situation, whether it is rough going or not.
Our feet can sometimes be linked with roots, in that we stand upon the earth with them. As such they are the way the lowest or most primitive in us is transformed, just as roots lift up earth in the process of transforming it into living cells.
As the idioms below suggest, we mention feet a lot in our everyday language to indicate attitudes, motivation or lack of it, and how well or badly we are coping in life and relationships.
Barefooted; To be in contact with reality, your real life situation. Might also suggest rough going if walking is hard. Of course, in some cultures it could mean poverty.
Loss of foot or feet: Incapacitated in making moves, or in being independent or self-motivated; in the Oneirocritica, c.AD 350, it says that to lose ones feet points to a barrier in regard to a planned journey.
Muddy feet: This suggests that you are mired in attitudes that are very material or very practical and have lost sight of your other dimension of being.
Washing feet: Is not only a sign of caring for yourself or being cared for, but is also a statement offering you a new life that is free of the worries and fears of the everyday physical world.
Example: When I asked how it could be possible that such love could be a part of my life I wept as I received the response. It was that we must learn to wash somebody’s feet. I felt this very deeply. I saw that it wasn’t simply a case of taking a flannel, a piece of soap and washing off the dirt from someone’s feet. That is not what it is about. That is not what it’s supposed to be.
To touch such love is painful and I was weeping as if in agony. What is it to wash somebody’s feet? I don’t understand. I am listening but I don’t understand. I feel it but I cannot grasp clearly what is meant.
Then I was told that the person who washes somebody’s feet is the servant. You have to realise, first of all, that you are a servant. You are nothing more. You are not proud, you are not above somebody else. You are a simple servant of life. And yet you are life – that grand mystery of life. Like the grass, life can be trodden under foot. You have to realise that before you can really touch anybody with that great love.
Idioms: back on your feet; caught flatfooted; cold feet; drag your feet; fancy footwork; feet of clay; footloose; grass grow under; itchy feet; jump in with both feet; heavy foot; land on your feet; put my foot down; put your foot in it; pussy-foot around; put your best foot forward; put your foot in your mouth; set foot in; shoot yourself in the foot; sweep you off your feet; take a load of your feet; two left feet.
Useful Questions and Hints:
Do any of the idioms suit the situation in the dream – if so what does it suggest?
If my foot or feet are damaged, in what way is my ability to progress or ‘stand’ in waking life difficult?
Am I in good or difficult ‘standing’ in my life – if difficult can I imagine changing it?
See Associations Working With; Inner World; Techniques for Exploring your Dreams
Comments
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Tony
Can you please help? My Partner had a dream where people he knew were cutting their feet off and walking around on their stumps? What does this mean?
Hi,the other night i had a dream i was sat outside a shop i was barefooted with my feet flat on the floor and i was drawing a stencil of my feet with a pencil what could this mean
Stacey – I get the feeling that you have been looking for something in the world – the shop – and have not found it there. So you have dropped any social roles – the shoes – and have stood barefoot on the earth. Drawing around your feet suggests you are destined to leave your mark on the world. Further dreams will clarify this.
Tony
Hi Tony,
last night I dreamed about my fiance’ who just died 46 days ago (today), in my dream i saw he had a wound in his right foot (on the upper part of the foot, or the mound). I asked him how he got the wound he said he kicked something.but in my dream I didn’t believe him and I felt like he didnt want me to ask him any more further. what does my dream mean?
I dreamed that my big toe was splitting in half and giving birth and it was bleeding and I was upset because this was not natural.
I had a dream/nightmare that my husband had tried to hide the fact that he cut off his own foot. When I “found out” in the dream he acted proud that he was able to buy surgical grade ice for it over the counter, however he confessed to not using a good blade to cut off his foot and needed to go back and “clean up” the leg. His foot was on a desk in his bedroom and the toenails were gross and nasty and full if fungus. I refused to get into bed with him because I was afraid whatever infection he had would make me sick too. Iran away screaming I was going to tell his parents (in my dream we were our younger selves and not yet married). I was also screaming about how he has health insurance and why it was stupid he did it himself when he had insurance. He was terrified of me telling anyone else about what he had done. What does this mean??
I dreamed that I saw a huge Grecian-like head and foot. My sense was that they were carved out of marble.
Do you have any ideas on what that might mean?
Three weeks later, I saw a picture of a head floating near NYC that looked very much like the one in my dream. That night, while watching a TV show, I saw a foot that was EXACTLY like the one in my dream! Very odd….
Hi Tony,
Thank you for the information. I was wondering if you had any idea what this could possibly mean- last night I dreamt I had stepped on a bus, barefoot, holding my sandals in my hand and paying my fare to the bus driver. I think I was crying and apologizing to the driver that I did not have my sandals on my feet, but rather in my hand. Any thoughts would be much appreciated, I’ve searched high and low for possible meanings.
Thank you,
Karla
Merry Christmas!
Thanks – and I hope you too feel the wonder of the new Sun being born on the 21st.
Tony
I had a nightmare last night where I was “captured” by my ex and some other man. They started washing my feet, scrubbing the really hard and loads of mud started coming off. They were looking for some secret. They had me tied down and I couldn’t do anything about it. The nightmare was scary enough that it work me up.
Cristine – Please realise that in the world of dreams our most intimate fears and longings are given an exterior life of their own in the form of the people, objects and places of our dream. Therefore our sexual drive may be shown as a person and how we relate to them; or given shape and colour as an object; or given mood as a scene. Our feeling of ambition might thus be portrayed as a business person in our dream – our changing emotions as the sea or a river; while the present relationship we have with our ambition or emotions is expressed in the events or plot of the dream.
Your ex and the other man are images of your memories – if you imagine yourself as them you may find this out for yourself. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-understanding-your-dreams/#TalkingAs.
Also being unable to move because you are tied down is another image illustrating how we relate to the part of us that all the time controls the workings of our body and mind. Of course it seems to you as if it is an attack because you have no experience of it. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us/#Important
You are being cleansed of a lot of emotions which cause you to feel bogged down, or past experience which may hold you back, but has enormous growth potential in it.
Also nightmares are a way of helping you deal with and face difficult emotions, many of which are simply fear of the big you that lies behind the fact that you are created and kept alive by massive forces that you probably have no understanding of.
Tony
Christine – The reason you were tied down was that it was a process your life process wanted to do, and because you were scared of it you had to be restrained. Please read the following to properly understand it – – http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/what-we-need-to-remember-about-us/#Important
You were scared because you are frightened of Life working on you. Also it was not your husband who tied you down but all your memories and lessons you learned in your relationship – The dreams about your ex are about drawing on all you got from him. Most people are often totally unaware of the experience they take in and how it interacts with them when we love someone. In other words the memories and experience we gather unconsciously change us and are not lost. It is part of you and is symbolised in dreams as a person or event. You have taken in millions of bit of memory, lessons learnt, life experiences along with all the feelings or problems met by loving and living with someone and they are what makes you the person you are. Your dreams tend to put all that in the image of the past person when you are dealing with the influences left in you from the relationship. Your dreams take place in a very real virtual reality, like a computer game. You are actually alone in your dream, so anybody you dream about is a creation from your memories, desires or fears. There is nothing else but you and your feelings, hopes or fears in your dreams. Nothing can hurt you or kill you while you dream. But a dream is intelligent not like a computer game.
You feet were being scrubbed because you were being given a chance to be cleansed of all the attitudes and cares that come from being immersed in worldly or material thoughts, cares and fears.
Tony
Christine – Whatever you dream about is yours – after all you created the house in your dream so you own it. But you suffer from a feeling of not owning or being worthy of what is yours.
The new owners are probably a newly developed attitude or sense of yourself, and you are not allowing it to be really felt as YOU. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/characters-or-people-in-dreams/
Tony
Hi,
I dreamed I was being carried by a man I know. He is close with my son. He was carrying me in a standing position over his head holding my feet in his hands. He and my eldest son were running ( with me held above him) through a mall trying to get to my car. I was afraid. I kept pleading for him to stop and put me down. I said I was afraid I would fall. He stopped once and I opened my eyes to see where we were. I recognized that my car was at the exit ahead. He said it was only it was not the exit I was pointing to on the left, he said my car was parked on the right. He picked my back up by my feet and hung me backwards and upside down over his back and ran to the exit with my son. I insisted I would fall and was going to vomit. I had my eyes closed each time and could feel myself sway and wobble and was terrified. We made it to my car and I opened the drivers side door and got in. What does this mean? Many thanks
I am going through a tough time with my husband saw my brother very often who my mother loved so deerly(she died 22 years ago) – I had a dream of my mother toughing my feet, what does it means, I do not dream about her much, what doe it mean?
Karen – Touching your feet is a sign or warmth or love. In India it is sign of deep respect.
Tony
Hi Tony,
I had a dream where everyone was turning into feet, because it was all that people needed, but I didn’t want to turn into just feet, so I tried to run away from it. What does this mean?
Thanks!
I dreamed that my son’s feet were cut off, but i sowed them back on but could not get his toes on. The dream started with me and him at hospital going from department to department and waiting room to waiting room trying to get him surgery. What does this mean?
Hello Tony
i had a dream that my index toe on my left food was bandaged and when i went to take off the bandage my flesh was brown and rotten. I didnt feel pain but i knew i couldnt walk on it..
do you know what this means.
Angela
Angela – The left leg is the support, the way we need the health of our leg and feet to enable us to easily get about in our daily activities. So it seems from your dream that you are unaware of the situation – lack of pain. But even so it is becoming clear that you need help to be able out do your everyday things. Maybe you need to ask for help sometimes.
Tony