Tony’s Biographical Information

BORN – May 10th 1937 at 10am, Amersham, Buckinghamshire, England. I was born two months premature at a time prior to intensive care and antibiotics; born of an Italian father and a country girl mother, half old English and half Irish. My birth name was Tony Criscuolo. But due to war feelings that we must be enemies my fathers brothers changed the name to Crisp. After I had written several books under the name Crisp I changed it back to be with my ancestors in spirit. My birth took place in the upstairs room of a small house in Amersham High Street, nearly opposite what used to be the old fire station.

Because I was two months premature and born dead – not breathing – the doctor threw my lifeless body aside and told my mother that I would be a weak child and she could have more children. However, my grandmother witnessed this and carried my body off and bathed me in hot and cold water and got me breathing. I owe her my life, she was my resurrection. The name of that resurrection was love. My grandmother had given birth to 13 children, some of who died. I have a sense of her bearing an old and deep wisdom passed on through generations of women.

What I missed out of the story was that the gap between my thrown aside body and my grandmothers resurrection was that I had a near death experience. That because my lifeline, my umbilical cord, was cut early and I was not breathing, so the delay led to my feeling of dying. I know many people cannot believe that a baby can remember such things. Well true they cannot remember as we do with words and images, but all life forms have enormous emotional responses and are known to experience a conditioned reflex. Whatever it was caused my baby self to remember, the experience left me with the desire to share the experience, to communicate to others about the wonder that we all are, about health of our body and amazing world the meeting with death reveals to us. See The Baby Who Became Tony

It took ages to realise that I was born a runt – a small or weak person – that could not function as normal healthy people can. I didn’t realise the extent of its influence until I journeyed to Australia and had to have  a full medical examination to enter. The woman doctor, a very efficient and straight-out person, asked me did I know I was born prematurely? I said I did and asked her how she knew. She said, look at the roof of your mouth, it shows your body never completed its growth.

I am one of the unborn. I have maintained a level of awareness that is natural in the womb, but that most people leave behind before they are born. This enables me to do things in my mind that are not easy for other people. The so called religious seers are freaks, people like me who maintain unusual levels of awareness. They look at life through different perspectives. I look at life through the eyes of the afterlife, or the prebirth, but it fucks up my ‘normal’ life quite extensively.” See Mind of a Newborn

When I was born childbirth was surrounded by very different attitudes than exist today. The shadow of enormous mortality still fell over mothers and babies, and it influenced doctors. Antibiotics didn’t exist. Infant care was not developed to the degree it is now. The doctor was telling my mother and grandmother a straightforward and accepted truth of the times – ‘Why attempt to give life to this premature and tiny baby? It will be difficult to rear, more prone to illness, and it will be harder for it to cope with life. It isn’t breathing at the moment, so forget it and try again for a healthy baby. Leave it’.

My Grandmother

EDUCATION – Amersham and London. Was thrown out of school at fifteen due to not being able to conform to the attitudes of domination  I met in the educational system of the time.

Tony is now on FaceBook 

My early schooling came from animals. I was lost and found in our dog’s kennel. He was a beautiful collie and taught me to walk – by holding the scruff of my collar and letting me walk. And at that time I was surrounded by animals on farms, and in the fields. But later I was taught in a little country school, St Mary’s in School Lane Amersham. There were a mixture of local children and refuges due to the war. But later still, most of my education came from reading and studying what the masters of life said, and trying to practice what they had written. Then at last I found a way into my inner life through dreams, and they have been wonderful teachers. As a skinny, sunken chested and spotty thirteen year old, I started walking the mile to school instead of riding the bus. A beautiful blonde Swedish pen friend had dumped me, and a probing look in my big bedroom mirror had assured me I needed to do something about the shape I was in.

So, I walked from St Pancras Church along the Euston Road to Marylebone High Street twice a day, using a deep breathing exercise I had found in a book about yoga. The aim was to breathe in and out as fully as possible, lifting the shoulders to gain the maximum in-breath, then almost fold over with collapsed chest to get the full out breath. I was oblivious to the strange looks from passing pedestrians and motorists as my shoulders regularly rose and fell while I strode purposefully along. But that first week I gained an inch on my chest. Okay, it was painful to grow that much in a week, and then again the next week. But gradually the growth slowed when I had gained four inches on my chest.

It was an extraordinary lesson to learn so young, to know that through directing my attention and energy in a particular way I could radically change my body. I went on to extend this with other exercises in the nearby YMCA gym. I even lied about my age because I needed to be fourteen to join. What I noticed as the months went by was that not only was I changing my body, but I was also changing my confidence and social life. In other words the guys at school started wanting me to be their friend, to be in their team, instead of ignoring me and leaving me to be an outsider. Acclaim

Before and After

At fifteen this led me to start experimenting with what amount to mental exercises, to see if the mind could be changed as radically as the body. What I uncovered in that direction was even more far reaching than what had happened to my body. I didn’t just find change, I uncovered unsuspected depths and heights. I found facets of myself previously unknown. See Lucidity – Going Beyond – Criticism That led me to discover much later LifeStream, that opened a whole world of experience for me. I also discovered an approach to religious belief that has lasted and has grown through my whole life.

1954-55

Went to work in Fleet Street as photographer. Trained at London Polytechnic – photography. I left there and at age sixteen I started my own business as freelance photo-journalist. Sold mostly to Health and Strength magazine. An interest in self-help in body and mind, that had started at age 13 with yoga practice emerged more strongly. Took a course in meditation and relaxation techniques.This gave me the experience of breaking through the barrier of sleep, and going beyond into consciously travelling into the world of deep dreamless sleep. It led onto me experiencing an extraordinary out of body experience.

Those amazing experiences led me to begin a study of Eastern philosophy and yoga of East and West and searched for a teacher. See:  Teens; The Me As I Was Then; Tony’s Photo’s

1955 – 57

Compulsory National Service in Royal Air Force. Trained as Nurse. Honorary pass with accelerated trade test. See Swaps Camera for Rifle. During this period took postal course in writing. Started selling articles on self-help health of body and mind.Began an eleven year training in spiritual psychology, extending perception, healing, etc.

Tony at 16

Tony and my son Marco doing our time in the RAF

1956-67

I was a Rosicrucian Member from 18 to about 29, so before leaving the RAF and into civvy life. After being released from the RAF I started nursing  geriatrics in Amersham General Hospital. I was nursing elderly men, and I called it the elephants graveyard, for I saw many old men die. I suppose it gave me a different view of death. The moment of death was extraordinary – something, life, their person, movement left them, and there was not a person there in the body.

When I left the Hospital to earn a better wage I worked for a while at a small photographers in Amersham run  by Ron Haddock, and moved on from there to work as photographer – was a director of Landseer Studios and Photo Repro Company, a graphics art business near Leicester Square, London. I had loved photography since I was eleven, and created a darkroom under the stairs, and built my own enlarger. So I ran a small business developing and printing people’s films and prints. Ran a book business in spare time. The business was The Arcane Library specialising in alternative areas such as popular psychology, meditation, dreams, spiritual philosophy. Sold books world-wide. I really wanted to circulated the ideas regarding this non-sectarian insight into the human spirit. Then the Beetles came along and did it a million times faster!

Camping in Devon without showers	Camping again –   Tony after leaving RAF

I was also still writing as freelance journalist in this period. I wrote a series of articles for Yoga and Health, some of which are included on the site. See Life and Death and The Chakras. In 1962 began the study of dreams after reading/selling Dr. Leslie Weatherhead’s book on the subject, and P.W. Martin’s description of peer group work in his book Experiment in Depth. Also I had come across the work of Edgar Cayce and worked for while as their UK book distributor. I had already studied Jung and Freud, but Cayce, Weatherhead and Martin presented the subject as accessible and useful to the general public. All the other books on dreams I had read and sold presented it as a purely clinical or superstitious subject.

Inner Life – also I was teaching my dog to read. 🙂

During this period there was an explosion of interest in meditation, yoga, the inner life. I started teaching classes throughout Buckinghamshire – Wycombe; Slough; Hull, Leeds, Holyhead, Liverpool, Gerrards Cross; Amersham; London Dance Centre, Combe Martin, Exeter, Exmouth, Lamorna, Ilfracombe. Subject – relaxation, yoga, meditation.

Tony Teaching a class in Spain.

1968-69

Sold the Arcane Library to Helios Books. Started working full time teaching yoga, relaxation, exercise in Bucks. I was one of the early members of The British Wheel of Yoga. I was asked to be the secretary for the BWY but turned it down and passed it on to Chris Stevens.

Worked at Tyringham Naturopathic Clinic in Buckinghamshire, teaching yoga and methods of movement and tension release. This and the classes presented me with an enormous number of people with muscular/psychological tension that the general relaxation techniques or meditation did not help. Through my attempts to learn more about the function of stress release, I studied the process of dreaming, and its connection with waking discharge of muscular tension. Naming what I found Self Regulation, then ‘Coex’, and for the book Liberating The Body called it ‘inner-directed movement’, but is now LifeStream. See Life’s Little Secrets

1970-71

Moved to Devon. Helped my wife, Brenda, run a vegetarian wholefood guest-house, and also taught yoga in local classes. Meanwhile, from the work done in classes and at Tyringham, saw there was a market for a compact book on the subjects I had taught. In 1970 Collins published my book Yoga and Relaxation. Sphere later reissued it as a paperback under the title Relax With Yoga. Writing articles for several health oriented magazines.

1971-78

At the end of 1971 a friend Sheila Johns asked me to teach her yoga as a private student. At the time I felt so ill and depressed I said to Sheila how could I teach anyone feeling as I did. So I suggested we start a explorative session to see if there was a way I or we could find healing. When the group started another friend, Mike Tanner came too. So we  started a small experimental group to explore the connection between dreams and spontaneous movement, as it was used in many ancient cultures. This turned into a revelatory experience for me and I began the slow path of real self discovery. See The LifeStream and Waking Lucid Dreaming to see what it was about.

Mike Tanner and Sheila Johns

The group developed and became a focus for people interested in alternative health and self help. With the help and support of Mike Tanner and Sheila Johns I started one of the first ‘personal growth’ centres in the UK, and ran it in Devon from 1972 until 1980. The centre, Ashram, in Combe Martin, was a focus for psychotherapy, personal growth and yoga in the South West at that time, and was the nucleus for several ‘LifeStream’ groups elsewhere.

In January of 1972, two friends, Mike Tanner, Sheila Johns, and I formed an experimental group. We wanted to research into the probability of the dream process breaking through into waking consciousness with ourselves as the subjects. This began a process which we entered more deeply into over the years, and with it my personal journey to healing – but also to waking up in and exploring the world of the unconscious. Not only did I find childhood trauma, but also a vast unity of minds of which I was a part. It was a unity that spilled into my life as visions and insight.

Then one night, B., my wife, got out of bed because the baby was crying. When she had settled I got up and went to the toilet. Just as I was getting into bed again I heard a voice speaking to me. Literally a loud voice came from everywhere around me. It said, “You have asked how God touches the human soul – now watch closely.”

This work gained recognition from recognised Humanistic Psychology authorities. David Boadella wrote in Self And Society (the official magazine of Humanistic Psychology) “The most powerful advocate of this kind of mutual help process in England, has been Tony Crisp. Tony Crisp developed methods of working with bodily charge, breathing, muscular tensions, and the contact and energy of small groups, quite independently of Reich, Janov, Lake or Lowen. …. I regard him as the best exponent I know of what I should like to call the ‘democratic’ approach to working with emotional and bodily energies.” While this was gong on I was holding down a full time job to feed my family, Marco was born 1960 – Helen in 1962 – Neal in 1964, Leon in 1970 and Quentin in 1972. I always wanted a big family, being an only child I wanted more family around me. One of the approaches that developed out of our explorations we called the Seed Group. It started as a form of free meditation and unfolded into a very powerful means of self exploration and spiritual experience.

S.M. Chrem, in his book The Role of Energy In The Psychotherapeutic Process says, “It seems to us that although the body therapies described claim to practise organismic self-regulation techniques, all of them have highly developed structures in their therapeutic approaches. The least structured approaches in which the process of self-regulation is much more respected are best exemplified by the work of David Boadella and Tony Crisp. Although they have a wide range of techniques to apply when necessary the client plays the most active role. These therapists trust in the self-regulating process and follow the client, waiting  for the develop of his/her process. This attitude serves also as a model to the client, who soon starts to trust his/her own internal spontaneity and the creativity of their unconscious. With the arousal and amplification of the involuntary movements, gestures, symbols or words, the spontaneous activity is integrated with consciousness, will and analytical power.” See People’s Experience of LifeStream LifeStream was the name I eventually called the practice.

The Seed Group – Jo May, writing about one of the techniques I developed in our self-help groups says: “About eighteen years ago in a workshop I came across a small group structure called the Seed Group. The workshop was being run by Tony Crisp and was essentially about emotional expression via the body. The Seed Group was later developed by David Boadella into his form of working with small groups, and certainly up until a few years ago when I last had contact with him, formed the basis for his training in Biosynthesis. Tony Crisp’s Seed Group may also have been one of the first structures for working with people therapeutically in small groups. Most group-work up to that time, as I recall, seems to have been within the context of a whole group.” LifeStream is a summary of my approach to human potential and what I learned from Seed work and self-regulation groups. I never charged for these groups, though it was weekend or longer courses, so we suggested donations.

Example: The staff just kept saying she is a very lucky woman to have so much love pouring out to my mother at the end of her life, it was infectious too… as staff members felt the difference when they walked into the room and wanted to be part of it. I remember the love generated in the Seed Groups, that was the only reason  that I came back after the first time with Annie ……because I felt the love…..and felt that I could trust these people with my battered being while I took a look inside to find more of me.

Do You Dream? – My second book, was published by Spearman in 1971. This was published in the USA by Dutton, and in Germany by Lubbe Verlag. My aim, after exploring dreams for some time with individuals, was to carry on the tradition of Weatherhead, and present a lay-persons guide to the dream. At the time there was very little else on the market in that vein. The book is now out of print but still available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble in eBook form.

From the experience of the experimental group, LifeStream, and from previous work in movement and relaxation, I started working as a therapist using dreams and what at the time we called Coex, and is now LifeStream. I always tried to keep a ‘self-help’ basis for my work, and I didn’t charge the enormous fees others asked, but worked full time at a wage earning job,  seeing it as a way of working with the self regulatory, self healing processes within each of us. Also I constantly honoured the spiritual nature of human life. Also although I led many therapeutic groups I never remained in the position of authority, but joined in the action and was a part of the group as an individual.

Yield was published by Turnstone in 1974. It was not a successful book, being an attempt to describe the symbolism of the New Testament as it relates to personal unfoldment. This was like looking at the New Testament as if it were a dream, unfolding its symbolism.

Yoga and Childbirth – was published by Thorsons in 1975. Very journalistic but sold well. Issued by Sphere as a paperback.

Me writing before computers

From these years – nine years – I worked as a kitchen porter full time, and after that until my 60th year I worked as a self employed builder decorator and handyman. This was while working at the Capstone Restaurant in Ilfracombe owned by Ann and John Clemence, where I learned a great deal of practical skills. So all the other things mentioned such as books and classes took place in my spare time.

1978-82

	Difficult personal time. Divorced and remarried. My new wife, Hyone, was a wonderful companion and partner in all I undertook. She taught, explored dreams, plunged into her own depths working with the techniques we used.

1983

Worked as dream correspondent for The Daily Mail and She magazine with my wife Hyone. Also writing about dreams for magazines such as Over 21 – Cosmopolitan – Natural Health, etc. Was asked to teach LifeStream in Japan. The Bioenergy Centre in Kanazawa organised workshops two years running. Taught in Tokyo, Kanazawa, Kyoto. An unpublished book I had written on self-regulation – Transformation – was serialised in the Japanese magazine BIOENERGY. From 1983 I regularly worked as one of the teachers and sometimes director of the holistic holiday community at Atsitsa on the Greek island of Skyros and at the Skyros Institute. In both places I was helping people use simple techniques to discover the wisdom in their own dreams, and to work with the processes of healing and personal growth within themselves that express as spontaneous movement. See Yoga in Japan and Yoga in Japan 2

1984-90

The Instant Dream Book was published by Spearman in 1984.

Taught dream work and self-regulation in Montreal Canada. This was organised by my long time friend Krysia Gallien, who is still living  in Montreal. She has added her skill as an artist to her many other skills. See her art HERE.

Did a tour of UK broadcasting on local radios doing phone-in on dreams. Was taken up on regular basis by London Broadcasting Company (LBC). Taught in Iceland, appearing on national TV and radio, and in national newspapers.

The Queen of self-help health, Leslie Kenton published an appreciation of my work in a feature ‘Rituals of Beauty‘, in the magazine Harpers and Queen. “Through his work with dreams and his in-depth study of dream function, Crisp knew that during sleep each of us experience spontaneous movements while we are dreaming. Most of these movements are only barely expressed through the body.” See Life’s Little Secrets

Frequently invited to lecture on dreams by Marcia Karp and Ken Sprague at The Holwell Centre for Psychodrama & Sociodrama, North Devon. Did regular seminars on dreams and LifeStream at Little Grove Education, Chesham. Also taught at Cortijo Romero in Spain a few times – now run by my friends Ann and Alan Dale.

Mind and Movement – I consider this book to be an expression of the central theme of my life’s work and thought. It was was published by Daniel in 1987. A study and explanation of the connection between dreams and self-regulation, and the spiritual practices worldwide, such as Subud, Seiti, spontaneous dance movements, waking dreams, etc. In 1972 I experienced a turning point in my life. I had been very depressed and suffered psychosomatic chest pains which were difficult to cope with. The turning point was that I discovered how to let my body and mind heal me. This is what prompted me to write Mind and Movement, as describe as LifeStream.

From experiencing LifeStream it led me to realise I am simply naked awareness immersed in the processes of nature – an intricate part of nature in fact. I am nature knowing itself as an individual called Tony. But beneath that tiny exterior self lies this whole world of existence within the forces of nature. In essence I am not Tony, I am not anybody, I am simply life naked of form and identity. My being stands in that nakedness and it is okay.

Leading a group in Spain

It was an attempt to tell others what I had found. What I now call LifeStream was such a miraculous experience I wanted to explain it in modern language. I say modern language because it is a very old path, and as so often happens people want to be ‘taught’ something that is innately theirs. Unfortunately it was never a success and so I no longer teach, as I felt hopeless in presenting it. It seemed dream work was the popular direction, although my love was for the wonder of LifeStream. I think LifeStream was a direct confrontation with oneself, and that was too much for many people. They preferred to be taught things that were like postures you could copy. In LifeStream there was an entrance into the unknown. What I found and write about wasn’t a new technique but is a new approach to an ancient path that countless thousands of men and women have trod in the past. It involved allowing the body and mind more freedom to express. My book Mind and Movement describes this. But it was not popular, as most people either look to an authority figure, or want to be taught something that is not innately theirs already. LifeStream cannot be taught but experienced. See The Inner Path To Wonder 

Dream Dictionary – was published by Macdonald in 1990. This was later titled The New Dream Dictionary in a revised and enlarged edition published by Little Brown in the UK. Also published in USA by Dell; Sweden by Viva; Holland by Uitgeverij het Spectrum; Japan by Dobutsu Sha; Spain by Ediciones Apostrofe SL; Hungary by Hunga Print Publishing; Poland by Amber; Czechoslovakia by Element, and Russia by Popourri. The book led to national broadcasts on dreams and national television – ‘The Garden Party’ and ‘This Morning’. It became third best seller in Optima imprint.    The book led to a – Tour of Eastern Australia to publicise Dream Dictionary. Six broadcasts and one national TV. It  has received many favourable reviews.

Tony and my son Quentin

At the end of the 80’s I started my dream website. At first it was called Waves, but as the Internet developed I changed the name to DreamHawk – the hawk is an ancient symbol and was known in Egypt as Horus. The hawk is often representrd as a messenger or a far seeing creature. Because it flies high it has an overview of what it surveys. It can therefore signify the spirit or the flight of the soul. But it is also a hunter and can attack, so can be seen as in opposition to the victim predator theme. 

Then later my son Leon, who is a professional in IT (LinkedIn) suggested a new format for the site. That happened on June the 26th in 2010, and that is the format you see today. Before that it looked like this – 

But of course my history and that of Dreamhawk still carries on in many directions, and here is a sample of its more inner history – Some More of My History and also History of Ashram –  Tony Crisp – The Many Sides of T

1992

Publication of Liberating The Body by Harper/Collins – November. James Whale show ITV. Contract for Book of The Hand, published by Optima – Little Brown – written by my son Neal Criscuolo who is the hand expert and myself as editor.

1993

Started work with Teletext – the UK television text service – on January 1st as dream interpreter for Dream On. Finished in August. Two publicity tours of UK regions. Quoted in Sunday Times supplement regarding dreams and the Queen. Quoted on same in Wall Street Journal. BBC TV did piece on queen and dreams. Interview on ABC TV USA about queen and dreams. Still doing regular dream ‘phone-ins’ for LBC.

1994

Revised edition of Dream Dictionary published in April as The New Dream Dictionary. Finished The Hand Book in new year, published in September. Started working for Teletext again in February. Worked for a while with Yannis Andricoplous on his I to I magazine. See feature from I to I on – an interview about my work – What Keeps Me Going.

1995

Hyone and I sold Ashram in Combe Martin, Devon, where we had been living, to our long time friends Juliana Brown and Richard Mowbray. They still run it as a centre named The Wild Pear Centre.

Living in Melbourne, Australia. Worked for New Zealand Teletext producing a dream page, as with UK Teletext. Early in the year did a book launch for The New Dream Dictionary and The Hand Book. This resulted in many national broadcasts, two national TV appearances on ‘Good Morning Australia’ with Burt Newcombe; large feature in The Age, and centre spread in the Herald Sun. Wrote a new interpretation for the I Ching, and worked at enlarging Dream Dictionary for possible multi-media use. Finished working for Teletext UK.

I left Melbourne at the end of 1995, leaving Hyone in Australia. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the end of our marriage. It was the beginning of a very difficult period.

1996-99

Studied English Studies at Ruskin College Oxford for one year. While there wrote Super Minds for Element books. It was published in January of ’99. Finished writing Dreams and Dreaming for Allison & Busby. It was published in September 1999.

Coincidences was published in June 2000. I then worked on a new dream dictionary for the software program Alchera, produced by Harry Bosma. The stay at Ruskin College, along with the writing of Superminds, Dreams and Dreaming, and Coincidences, were all done with the caring support of Chris Campbell, who was my partner from 1996, and is still my very good friend. Tony in his building work role. The pictures below I was at the time helping my friend John Hodgson repairing his wall. Good times, because we also added the wall to wall bookcase.

2001

Bantam/Dell have now published the revised version of Dream Dictionary. This is a great excitement, to offer readers a much improved book.

This year was a wonderful experience for me. During it I spent time in Mexico and San Francisco with Jacqueline and Jim Hermann. Jacqueline and I drove from San Francisco to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. It was all a transforming experience, evoking many poems and dreams, and the healing of an age old shadow that had clung to me since childhood.

2002

I was now living in Wales, Near Swansea from 2000, in the UK. During this year I have been adapting to living alone and learning the skills needed. I am not a person who seeks attention and company. But I have had a tremendous burst in my ability to write poetry – sometimes one every day.

2003

Finished working on a set of Dream Cards published by Cico Books. Each card is a beautifully coloured illustration of a dream image, and an accompanying book helps you explore your dream with the cards. The boxed set is titled Dream Power and is published in the USA, France and in the UK.

One of the big events for me this year, challenging as well as wonderful, was that Johan, Ayana and their small son Caleb lived with me. They had moved to the UK from Namibia to study ways of helping mothers raise and educate their own child. Their aim is to take their experience back to Namibia and possibly South Africa to help the white, black and coloured mothers learn skills enabling them to raise their children with a fuller access to the child’s potential. They feel it better to work toward raising healthy and whole children in touch with their inner life, rather than try to heal the countless stream of people crippled by being raised in our present social and educational structures.

This year I experienced a dream that foreshadowed world events and changed the direction of my life. See The Prophecy of The Star Beings.

This year CJ came into my life and played a big part in it for years. She loves gardening, DIY, being a great friend. We went to New Zealand together to visit her family, and she was a great support and friend. Another friend who has stayed with me for many years is Jacqueline Shenton. Her support, interest in dreams and inner work has been wonderful. And my first student, Brenda Blake, who taught me so much. I found that by teaching we had to experiment, and by experimenting I learnt enormously.

Picture is CJ and Tony

Brenda Blake and a picture		of Jacqueline Shenton

2004

In January of this year I finished the latest book, titled Your Dream Interpreter. This is published in the UK by Cico, and in the USA by Readers Digest. This is a beautifully illustrated book and is a real pleasure to have helped create.

In December of 2004 started writing Lucid Dreaming. This was commissioned by Godsfield.

2005

Lucid Dreaming was finished in April, and was published in April of 2006. I really enjoyed writing the book and feel I have said things in it that previous books did not give the right setting to express.

Events in the early part of this year led me to a meeting that has been life changing in many ways. The meeting was with ‘Dakota’, a woman with whom an extraordinary connection grew. This led to a spiritual marriage in which our inner life is linked in ways that constantly nourish and transform us. So much wonder and experience have arisen from this, so many inexplicable events. See 

My dream life has been extraordinary also, and new territories of experience are being explored.

Something else that has happened this year has been a massive increase in the amount of visitors to the website. I get a lot of pleasure providing something so many of you use.

In New Zealand with CJ in a friend’s house – with a friendly cat.

At the very end of the year I spent time with my two friends Johan and Ayana in Namibia, and helped deliver their new baby. See A Method to Shorten Labour.

The picture is of Ayana and her baby I helped to give birth to.

2006

This year I finished writing Eye of Dreams. The book was started in 1994, and some of it appears on this site. But there were several chapters unwritten that have now been completed. The book summarises the extraordinary dimensions of dream and the inner life I met or experienced during my forty years of work with dreams, exploration of the unconscious, and working as a psychotherapist.

So far I have not been able to find a publisher for the book, though I haven’t tried too hard. The reason being that I am revising The New Dream Dictionary.

When The New Dream Dictionary was published it was 156,000 words in length. Over the years, as I gained new insights or wrote new features I added them to my computer file of the book. This enlarged it enormously until now it is over 702,000 words in size. This is far too big to print in hard copy. So hopefully, as and when I finish the revision, it will be presented either as an online resource – perhaps the largest of its type – and made accessible; or sold on a CD as a computer file to access. I don’t think this will happen until well into 2007 or 2008, as it is a huge undertaking to not only revise, but to set up all the internal and external links.

During this year Your Dream Interpreter has been published in several languages – in French as De Decoder nos Reves; in Portuguese as Interprete dos Sonhos; in Swedish as Drommene Dine.

2007

In the early part of the year I visited New Zealand for the second time with my friend CJ. Didn’t work or teach, just enjoyed being with her family and absorbing the seashore and mountains.

The revision of Dream Dictionary is now complete, as from the end of October. A company in the US is going to present it to users in a very new way that I will describe when it is out. I also hope it will be presented on the website, but I am waiting for site builders to create something special. Up until now I have done all the design and work on this site. A new design and functionality is needed for the new presentation of the dictionary.

2008

Hudson Entertainment are now offering a specially tailored version of my online Dream Interpreter for the new type of mobile/cell phones. This is a new departure for Hudson as they have previously only dealt with games for phones. It means you can have the full dream dictionary on your phone. The database for this is huge. Much bigger than any book on the subject and what is presently on this site.

The enlarged and revised edition of Eye of Dreams is now published. I am also working on a book provisionally titled Face to Face with the Future! It is being written in collaboration with Dina Glouberman, and our combined experience will hopefully produce an outstanding book. It is about the enormous changes in the world we face in the present and future, known and unknown, and what understanding, talents and skills we need to meet it creatively and perhaps with love.

During the last few months of this year Tiziana Stupia and I have been working together exploring the possibilities of LifeStream. Some of this she has recorded on her travel blog, and now in her new book Meeting Shiva. This has been a very rich time of exploring and sharing. Tiziana is now working toward presenting LifeStream and dreamwork to other people.

On December the fifth of this year, despite living a healthy life, I experienced a stroke. Thanks to the quick and skilled work of the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, London. It was a wonderful experience. I had no language, and I felt I emoted up a new level of perception, pre-verbal, a world of quite peace. I can not simply write well yet. As my spelling can sometimes do some strange things. Bear with me. See my first effort in writing in I Am Stop the Wind.

I asked several experts on strokes how I could suffer it despite avoiding fats and unhealthy foods. The answer was that it didn’t matter. I had inherited genes that gave me what I had.

2009

This year so far has seen me gradually re-building the skills of walking, talking, writing and being after my stroke. Quite a journey, and still progressing. I am starting to write up my experience of the stroke, and some of the wonderful things I learned from it. See Tony’s Experience of Stroke; Tony’s Video Talks about Stroke. CJ and Chris’s son Joe were with me almost constantly while I was hospitalised. At last, this year has seen the release of the immensely larger dream dictionary that I called Dream Call for mobile/cell phones.

Hudson Entertainment has now launched the massive dream dictionary using Twitter as a platform. Dream Call is 318,000 words in size, compared with Dream Dictionary at 150,000.

Unfortunately there is still no sign of a better planned website. Also there has been a vicious attacks on the server on which my website appears. I suppose it is a sign of the times – Internet terrorists. Though I suppose this is also a sign of the breakdown of the old values so long prophesied.

As this year nears its end Larry Minikes suggested that he put Dream Call on iPhone. I do not know how long this will take, but it feels like something big. Dream Call will end up enormous because we plan to include the dream encyclopedia in it. This will now be published during 2010, and is called Dream Dictionary Ultimate or uDream.

A New Life – Since the 17th of December I entered a new epoch of my life. It started  10  years ago.  At that time I had a love affair with a passionate woman. Unfortunately it didn’t last long – though in fact looking back I think it was good fortune as I had a lot of living to do that prepared me for what came later. Its shortness was due to my new love deciding that she preferred her previous man-friend who had just ‘come back’ to her.

In June of 2009 Ros came into my life again with amazing results – amazing because for the past ten years I had lived a life of a bachelor, and a semi recluse. I thought then that I could never manage a full relationship again, though I had tried several times since. So now I have moved my home and am living with Ros.

Another turning point is that it has seemed to me the past year or so that I had been figuratively run over by a bus – my stroke – and only now do I feel I am becoming more fully human again.

2010

Well, I made it into 2010!! I seem to be settling into a different lifestyle – so different from my hermit existence. Apart from Ros’s teenage daughter Tamsin, my son Quentin has moved in as well. Oh yes, we have two – sometimes three or even four – dogs sharing living with us.

This year has challenged me in all sorts of ways. The mobile/cell phone connection has worked well, and now – March – the iPhone uDream, the massive dream dictionary is now going through tests ready to be available.

NOW the new website so long mentioned is being done. But the work involved means I don’t have time for much else. But it should be launched by the middle of April if all works well!!

Later seems more like end of May or beginning of June!!!

It turned out to be the end of June – the 26th.

This year has seen several turning points for me. Ros and I got married – not in any regular way. It seemed to me that Life did it and joined us together. Such things are quite private, so no more words. See Sacred Marriage

A big event – for me – is that my next door neighbours, Steve and Andrea, are moving out because they are having a new home built. Because they will be homeless for a short time they are going to move into the Welsh cottage I have loved and experienced so much in. It is a big event because I had never had neighbours before who I have fallen in love with – and they tell me the feeling is mutual. So there!

I am back in the cottage alone.

2011

It has been such a learning experience to receive so many peoples dreams via the website. It is helping me to take another step forward in understanding dreams. Also it has kept me so busy I haven’t had time to write anything of any length. I suppose partly because of that my inner life has taken some big strides forward. It has all helped to see dreams, when approached the right way, as a major pathway to ones Core Self.

This year I have, in my spare time, as it takes me a long time to answer the requests for dream interpretation, published a lot of new book titles in eBook form. So now, in Kindle format, you will see Africa Sky Stories; Another Kind of Beauty – Love Poems; Chakras; Core Experiences; Death and Beyond; Exploring Inner Space; Face to Face with the Future; Prayer and Dream Interpretation; Sexercises: Surviving Love and Relationships; The story of a Premature Baby; This is the Time of the Quickening; Using Your Intuition; and many of the other titles mentioned above that were published in hardback or paperback formats.

This year also Hudson Entertainment ended their contract with me, so no dream dictionary on cell phones. But it is still offered on iPhone.

June – Have just published in Kindle format House of the Ancestors. It is a love story about two people – Shaun my best friend, and Dakota a woman whose story is told in the book. It is autobiographical, and is not fictionalised. Meeting Dakota

October – So much is  happening this year. In early May I left Totnes and Ros to live with my friend John Hodgson in Bristol while I waited for the friends who are using the cottage in to finish their new house and move out. So now I am living alone again in the Welsh Cottage, which I find beautiful. Life works in mysterious ways.  When I moved out I helped my son Quentin to move to London. Now I am looking forward  to see what 2012 produces.

2012

Here I am, well into 2012 – it now being the end of March. I have been so busy trying to keep up with answering peoples queries about their dreams, that I haven’t had much time for anything else. Also my age makes it harder to work the long hours I used to. I used to sit and write through a whole day when writing a book, and at night working as a therapist and leading groups.

But the other things I have been doing is to set up Facebook and Twitter sites. (Tony on Facebook and also DreamHawk is on Facebook). Also recently finished putting together a new book Dream Yoga. The idea came because of the problems I see people getting into because they fail to understand such things as the bear trying to kill them is not outside them. How can a bear be an outside creature when it is in a dream? It is all the graphic depiction of our fears.

Tony writing – about 1980’s

Also they have never been taught how the mind works – visions, hallucinations and voices being heard are the process of dreaming breaking through into waking life, and they should not be scared of. So here is what I am trying to do – educate: A Look at Enlightenment – The book version of Dream Yoga (33,000 word) – and a shorter version on site Dream Yoga (4000 words)- and also an attempt to Explain Visionary Experiences

My work station today Still living in my little cottage.

May has begun and a feature I started last year titled What we Need to Remember About Us has started sprouting leaves and little branches –  It must be the warmer weather. But as time passes I have come to realise that a lot of people could understand and deal with their dreams without looking at the dream dictionary. At the moment the idea is still growing, so I am gathering notes to feed it.

I decided that on June 23rd I will not answer so many dreams on the site, but will start working on a new version of Dream Dictionary and an upgrade of the site. Signs of this will appear fairly soon on the site, and my son Leon is thinking of publishing the new version of dream dictionary with  Chomu Press, his and my other son Quentin’s company.

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I spent all day today, November 25, putting together a new book that I had already written the pieces for. It is called Learning How to Love.

After a long life of loving my children and different partners, and failing miserable in some, I write this from long experience of mistakes I and others make. My experience also arises from having worked as a therapist for 25 years, also from the experience of working with thousands of dreams people have sent me.

In all, having read through the book, I am guided by the things I have written. Love is such a wonderful, down to earth and yet spiritual subject, here are only pointers on the way.

Looking forward to the birth of a new era on December the 21st.

2013

I spent Christmas alone with my cat. We didn’t go to any parties, but it was fine 🙂 I found four kittens abandoned in a hedge. I caught two but neighbours caught the others. One of mine went to a good home and the other – Kitty/Kitten – I kept.

This was the result of my wanting her to know motherhood before she was sterilised. She was a wonderful mother and here are her five kittens. One of the ginger toms I kept and still have so much pleasure with.I watched them all being born. It took place under my duvet/comforter at the foot of the bed. What a washing day that was.

Now I am fully involved in revising my Dream Dictionary Ultimate. It is a long job. It was originally 361,955 words on 20 March 2004. It is now 1,890,337 words long. Wow!! A lot of work went into it. and it is still growing on 23/08/2018.

On April the 11th I published a brand new edition of The New Dream Dictionary. It is in fact a new version and has enlarged descriptions. This is not the new version for the  the dreamhawk site.

It was the version originally for the US cell phone service.

So I hope it is worthwhile reading.

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I am sorry to say I had to delete my old Facebook page Dreamhawk.com. The reason being that I put an advert on once and it carried on forever. It was ruining me financially. But I have a new one also dreamhawk.com

I have worked six days a week since 2010, and have lived alone for ages now – it means doing everything; keeping up with the dream requests; cooking, house cleaning; keeping the garden tidy; feeding the cats and odd jobs about the house; putting myself to bed – I sleep like a log; oh yes, and clearing up body parts left as gifts by my cats. Sometimes people complain to me that cats are such predators. And I have to smile, because cats are very open about their predatory life. But everybody especially humans and dog owners are tremendous predators, except they have all the enormous killing done out of sight, and the results neatly packaged up.

And do not tell me vegans or vegetarians are without predatory habits – plants have consciousness too – Experimenting with this I attempted communication with a sick New Zealand tomato tree we had. It was in a large tub, well fed and watered, but had the greenfly, and was also wilting. We had sprayed, but the general debility of the plant seemed to attract the fly. I used the technique of LifeStream to see if my intuition could assess the condition of the plant. The first thing I felt was an unexpected wave of love, as if the plant was wordlessly saying thank you for caring. Then I had the sense of my consciousness meshing with the consciousness/being of the plant. My impression was that the plant was an entity, a form of life and awareness, but it did not have a focused consciousness which could formulate the idea what causes this sickness? Because I could ask the question, and because I allowed my consciousness to consider the plant, a new situation arose; the plant could be aware of itself. The difficulty of the process was that everything was direct non-verbal experience. As the experience of plant life was new to me, I had to spend some time allowing the sensations to soak in and be analysed by my rational mind. What arose out of this was the understanding that the root system of the plant needed to spread sideways, not down. We therefore put the plant in a sack, with the same earth spread thin. Within a week the greenfly had all gone, without spraying, and the plant grew strong and luxuriant.

2014

Hello to 2014 and to all my dear readers.

The year promises good changes – changes in me – the world’s people – how we see ourselves.

Once more I have to leave my latest Facebook page because if you look at it you will see I have not been able to post on it since December the 17th of 2012. It must be the third or even fifth Facebook page that hasn’t functioned properly. Also Twitter it have not been able to log onto since November 2012 – despite being able to access all over sites.

So now, again, I start yet another Facebook pages – Tony is on Facebook and also DreamHawk is on Facebook. Please visit it if you wish.

Spring is fast coming to the northern hemisphere, and winter to the southern.

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It’s the middle of April, the sun is shining, and I have been out gardening after months of rain. Also I have published a new eBook – Levels of Awareness in Waking and Sleeping.

It isn’t anything new I have written, but I am up to the MI’s in the online Dream Dictionary, and reading through it I realised how much work and thought had gone into it. So here it is, still a little rough as far as presentation is concerned, but I will soon polish it.

I am still learning so much from the dreams you people send – thank you.

This is me taking a selfie in Portugal with my family. I forgot to smile 🙂 June – I do not have many visitors, only three in this year – my old friend John Hodgson, my son Neal and my two grandsons Emile and Ennio. But I had a welcome guest adopt me and my home. I am told her name is Chloe, a black cat that is very adoring. She is here hampering my typing but it feels good.

July and I have just published another small book – Hidden Side of Dreams. I describe it as “An exploration of an old age secret connected with dreams and was regarded in the past as divine or even religious. Now that secret has been revealed as a natural process in us – but it is still wonderful and a doorway to a hidden world within us”.

2015

This year the best thing that happened to me is that Anna started appearing in the Forum – actually before 2015 – and began to work with people’s dreams. This took a great burden off me, and is part of the wonder of the internet, because Anna lives in Vienna in Austria. So now we are partners in working and exploring dreams and ones inner life.

The only other thing is that I finished a new feature Integration – meeting oneself

Integration is about truly finding parts of yourself that are missing. Someone recently told me that in a business exercise a participant felt she was schizophrenic and it troubled her. Yet the word simply means there is a split in the way we relate to ourselves and life. That is quite amusing because we are all so cut off from knowing who or even what we are that we are all, according to the definition, schizophrenic. This small book and feature describes ways of help in dealing with the terrible fears, anxieties, nightmares, depression and general disorders we face. Here are personal experiences of finding integration; a new look at the Chinese Ox Herding Pictures; another approach to yoga; a detailed look at drug use; and a way of loving – or finding love.

2016

Christmas and new year have passed, and in a few days Anna is visiting to come and help me pack my things in readiness for a move to France, a farmhouse near Bergerac. My son Leon is the owner, and I will live there and help care for the animals and garden. We aim, to be self sufficient with electricity and water – a well and solar cells, and hopefully ground source heat pumps. (This didn’t happen because of difficulties of several kinds.)

But started the year publishing a new book – probably the biggest book published as an eBook – just one  feature of it has 1,700,000 words, and growing. Yet the book is very small and that is its magic – like us, we are small yet hold an enormous hugeness within. The title is Features Found on Site. It holds virtually everything I have written in a long and many sided life.

Another landmark is Anna’s tireless work on our own on-line Spanish Dream Dictionary – see Introducción

That’s me relaxing because Anna is such an amazing worker.

Two new books are Integration – Meeting Yourself and Journeying Beyond Dreams and Death

  and 

Lately I find myself trying to move toward a synthesis of my experiences. Not quite there yet, but the above are good tries.

It is late September, and still waiting to move to France – but it seems in France the legal side takes forever. Vive la France!

2017

Well, still waiting to get to France. Emma Dewhurst has told me she plans to supercharge my effort to write and be published. It sounds great!!

2018

We’ll see what 2018 brings.  Who knows, I might get to France?? 🙂

Well, the latest news is that Cico are publishing ‘Be Your Own Dream Interpreter’ 

This colourful and delightful book has one of the best introductions to dreams and understanding them – along with How To Do It. Oh yes, it also has a full dictionary of dream symbols.

It is now out and available in UK and in USA

But I have been trying to republish my books, as all of them were put out of print because they had not been presented well. So at this time in November I have re-presented Every Seven Years You Change – Do You Dream – The Complete Guide to Reading Hands – The Hidden Bible – Super Minds – The New Dream Dictionary – The House of the Ancestors – and Learning How to Love – Are You Multidimensional – The I Ching – Chinese Oracle – Tony’s Experience of Stroke – Liberating the Body – Learning How to Love – Integration – and Life’s Little Secrets – Yield – Tony’s Experience of Stroke – Super Minds – The Hidden Path To Christ

I hope to re-present more later.

2019

M.  Would you say from the journeys you have made and the work you have done that your body feels different?

T.   My body does feel different… I don’t feel like superman at all,… I’m not bursting with energy or anything like that, I would certainly say to people do not dangle that carrot in front of you. We are all going to die,… I do not have any expectation that  I am going to escape any of that.

Knowing the Self isn’t an insurance policy that we are never going to get ill, it lessens the likelihood if we are integrated then we can met those pains and heal those parts and there is a greater sense of well being. The death of  Steiner and Ramana tells us that.

I am 82 now; but in my 30’s  I felt terribly ill, I felt so bad there was a point that I couldn’t focus, couldn’t even respond to people, I was so depressed and had lack of any life or well-being, nothing to look forward to, no reason to live, only for my children because I don’t want to leave them with a dead body hanging about.

Compared with that I am transformed but that means I have become a normal human being – I say normal because most people are so full of emotions, fears, amd crap they have never faced or dealt with, so being ‘normal’ is fantastic because I have cleared out the ‘illness’ most people carry within them. I do not go up and down emotionally but always feel in a pleasant mood. I still have touches of arthritis. But I am an expression of Life itself and it is natural to get older, but that seems OK. But something I realised recently I have not had a headache or migraine for twenty years.

I love gardening and so see the changes as a plant grows. First it develops leaves, then it flowers, and men and women do too, then everything goes into producing seeds – in humans many people mate and have children. But there are many other ways to leave offspring – giving yourself to others as parents, teachers, nurses, great innovators or inventors. Some explore new or old pathways into the jungle within us.

I think about these things, but I have this other resource that makes it feel that this is a part of my life …I have grown up, being in old age and I can meet death. I have met it many times. So, I feel I’m ready for it. It has been quite a long journey and I would like to slip back home to the Self that I sense is there and immerse myself in it instead of dipping into it. See Opening to Life

Fortunately, like many others I was not born with a silver spoon in my life.

But I do have some luck because Cico Pblishers have published two new books –

One is a translation into French and the other is into Estonian of Be Your Own Dream Interpreter

2020

Well, I hope you have survived Covid19 – but it looks like we now have Covid20 – so the story goes on. But I having lived for twenty years by myself, don’t have a car so don’t go anywhere and I can’t even walk far so don’t get tempted to see or visit other people. It is a good policy to avoid infections. But you poor buggers who have to work to support your self and family and cannot work to do it – well I send my best to you. My only visitors are my son Leon and Brenda Blake a lifelong friend.

But I would love to find a woman companion who understands me and me her.

2021

In the few words I have left there may be some wisdom, but the greatest and most succinct wisdom is found in these words from The Tao Te Ching –

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal  Tao.

The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.

Most people are usually thinking they are the most beautiful/handsome and successful; a huge failure or a mistake of nature; lost in the world of their thoughts and speculation – but those who have achieved wisdom know what you are and it is that you are both nothing you can ever understand, because Life is never ever completely understandable, and at the same time YOU are IT, the latest in Life’s Creation. See Zero

Each time I experience my ‘Core Self‘ it seems to me I am experiencing what is behind things and the cause of everything. So in a way I am part of the whole universe. I sense that it is true of everyone of us, but we are often so lost in our thoughts and emotions we lose sight of this Wonder.

Today – me in my tiny garden

2022 

My message I want to leave – the message is in the words.

All the above is of course just a reflection of some outer events. My major work has been exploring the inner world. Some of this is described in Eye of Dreams; House of the Ancestors; Integration – Meeting yourself; Life’s Little Secrets, Meetings With Christ and Story of a Premature  Baby, the latter being part of an autobiography. 

But during my life I have worked as a shop assistant – photographer – parent – kitchen porter – trained nurse – telephone exchange operator – van driver – builder decorator – plumber – electrician – television aerial erector – radio and TV broadcaster – journalist – author – group leader teaching LifeStream, dream work and self help – psychotherapist using dreams and LifeStream – a bee keeper – newspaper columnist – cook – what next!!!. There are just too many things in life to enjoy and taste. Now I am enjoying being an old man ready to fly into the next world. All the exploring of inner worlds I have experienced in the past means that at my age I am already halfway there! In fact, when I die I think I will still be around to help with your dream, probably better than before. So reach out for me in your dreams with your questions.’

Achievement I am Most Proud of – With Brenda co-parenting our five children – Marco Amalfi to Crewe, Helen Facebook, Neal NC Squared, Leon Ortoo Ops. Quentin  Chomu Press. It has also greatly enriched me to share the childhood lives of Cary, Leigh, Shawn FaceBook, Joe FaceBook, Tamsin FaceBook.

The picture below was taken the day I left hospital after my stroke.

Top left of photo – Neal – Leon – Helen – Quentin

Middle – Marco – his son Ruairi – Neal’s son Emile – Me Tony

Bottom – Leon’s  wife Isumi – my cousin Bob

My Family

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