Since we spend a third of our lives sleeping, we can teach our children to be creative and even problem-solve during this time. Children are often unaware of why they should remember their dreams because so much of their effort is dealing with their outer world.
I invite you to share that dreams can help them access new ideas, develop their creativity, and even help them problem-solve.
Children can be taught that dreams are fun and adventurous. Dreams can present them with new ideas. Children may present a particular problem to their “dream-makers,” asking how it can be resolved for their highest good. Before drifting off to sleep, encourage your children to ask to remember their dreams. As they awake in the morning, before moving about in their bed, encourage them to get in touch with their dreams. Alarms often jolt us out of the dream state, so it is best to awaken before we actually have to rise in the morning. This can be programmed as well, just by asking. We are powerful beings!
Dreams speak to us in symbols, and everyone has their own interpretation of what particular symbols mean to them. For instance, whenever my daughter appears in one of my dreams, I know it is symbolic of my own inner child speaking to me. Yet, it’s so fun to have Laurie show up! I have learned that everyone in the dream state is actually a representation of myself. So when a particular friend ends up in my dream, I have to ask myself what that person represents to me. What part of them am I? It is often confusing, but dreams are not meant to be complicated. I suggest looking for the simple explanation.
Before going to sleep, ask your children to create their own imaginary dream-makers. Begin by inviting them to take three long, slow deep breaths. With these breaths, we put ourselves into the alpha state, which is a more relaxed state of mind. These dream-makers could be animals, fairies, Angels, elves, sci-five characters or anything that would be familiar to your child. I would suggest, however, these characters should be light and fun, rather than threatening and monster-like. Allow them to use their own creative imagination to describe these dream-makers. The more detail the child gets in touch with, the more the inner conscious will interpret the seriousness of the intent. Creatively drawing these images would be fun and meaningful for some children.
Each night, your children can imagine these dream-makers, and invite them to teach through clear, simple messages. Communicating with a team of dream-makers may be a fun, comfortable way to drift off to sleep! Once they are accustomed to hearing from their dream-makers, encourage your children to hand a specific problem to them before sleeping. Children may even want to put their need in writing, placing it under their pillow. A child may wish to determine a particular project for school, know which musical instrument they could be proficient playing, learn tips to be better at sports, etc. Don’t let them be discouraged if it doesn’t work the first night. Teach them persistence.
I believe sometimes we ignore messages in our dreams and sometimes we have a full- blown nightmare to bring something significant to our attention. Nightmares can also be caused by stress, traumas, and even some medications. It is also important to monitor the TV viewing habits of children, and that includes news-programs.
I would like to repeat a technique I shared a year ago, to teach children how to be in control of nightmares. Laura Silva, an internationally known mind-trainer shares:
“If during a dream you are ever confronted, attacked, or frightened by a monster or a bad person – point your index finger at that problem/person; each time you point your finger at the monster, it will shrink to half its size. Open and close your hand, over and over, pointing your finger until the monster is only a couple of inches high. You can then pick up the monster and play with it in the palm of your hand! Now ask the monster what he wants. That monster will never be a threat to you again!” This technique works just as effectively in the awake-state. Just ask your child what the monster might represent to them. What are the fears they are dealing with during the day? It certainly opens up some important communication between parent and child.
When I record my dreams, I am more likely to remember them. My inner conscious realizes that I am committed to understanding them. I would encourage you to get a special dream book/journal for your child. Encourage them to name their dreams and draw or put them in writing. (Spelling is not important here. We don’t want to cut off their creativity by being teachers.) An assortment of markers and colored pencils makes it fun. Reviewing the journal, children can be alerted to recurring dreams.
I have heard that Robert Lewis Stevenson would often start a story idea with his dream-makers before sleep, and create wonderful adventures for himself as he slept. His dream conscious took over and created fully developed narratives. Later in life, he tuned into these dream-makers while sitting at his typewriter, creating a “day-dream” for himself. Unlocking this creativity enabled him to become one of our most memorable writers.
Dreams are messages from our wise mind and can provide guidance and problem solving. Our dream-makers can be likened to imaginary friends. Dream adventures can know no bounds. I encourage you to assist your children in unlocking this powerful potential. Please share with me the results.
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Happiness Lies Within
Happiness Lies Within
As a hypnotherapist, I challenge people to change their thoughts to change their destiny. I believe the whole purpose of this incarnation is to learn to love our-selves first, and then to extend that love to others. Until we really learn to fully love ourselves, we put on a protective shield because we do not feel safe in the world. We create self-imposed limitations to love. The good news is that we can free ourselves from our self-limitations. We can change our mind about how we see the world by getting in touch with our inner spirit. At the core of our being we are love, so there is no need to search for it, just acknowledge it.
It is our inner critic, bombarding us with negative messages, which blocks our receptivity to love. Most of these messages we heard and accepted about ourselves date back to our early childhood. Our negative thought patterns may have come from parents, siblings, peers, relatives, authority figures or others who played a major role in our lives. Young and vulnerable, we made the decision to accept their restrictive messages as truth. Remember, those who gave us limiting information were dealing with their own negative internal messages. I believe that these people all did the best they could, even if it wasn’t good enough! We cannot change the past, but we can consciously make the decision to let go of our own limiting beliefs. It is a choice. Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life, states, “ No matter what the problem, the main issue to work on is loving the self. This is the “magic wand” that dissolves problems.”
We seem to adopt personas or masks to “fit” in the world, gaining recognition or trying to please others at our own expense. As we grow, we become aware of “spoken or unspoken” expectations that others have imposed on us. Failing to meet these expectations, we take on the feelings of inferiority and unworthiness.
To blame others for our unhappiness only takes away from our own power, viewing our-selves as victims.
To free ourselves from these restraints, we can learn to love and accept all parts of ourselves, claiming responsibility for what we think, feel and do. We may even begin to look at our experiences as gifts. We might ask ourselves how our experiences helped us to evolve. We then become masters rather than victims.
I believe that once we are willing to take responsibility for our own lives, getting in touch with our joy and our passion, our life is transformed. The journey begins by getting in touch with the Divine part of us, our inner connection. We just need a little willingness to get in touch with our feelings and to love ourselves without judgment for what we are experiencing. We don’t need to change ourselves to love ourselves. We can love ourselves with all of our feelings of inadequacy and perceived limitations. I don’t believe we can love ourselves with our mind, the intellectual part, but rather with our heart. I invite you to participate in the following exercise to get in touch with your inner spirit.
Move into the heart area and take a few long, deep breaths.
Imagine a beautiful pink light surrounding the area of your heart.
Feel your Divine connection, that spark of the Light within each of us. Fill yourself with it.
Allow yourself to move into the awareness of this calm, peaceful feeling.
Get in touch with your feelings. Let go of any resistance to allowing all of your feelings.
When you take responsibility for your feelings, accepting them, you take charge of yourself.
Send this loving tranquility to each part of you that needs it. (the part that is feeling angry, unloved, judgmental, confused, scared, anxious, misrepresented, grief, insecure, etc.) Breathe that love into your being. Know that you are not alone in this transformative work. Ask for help.
I invite you to make these statements:
I know that all of my feelings are okay. I let go of my resistance to them.
I willingly release all things that no longer serve me in a healthy way.
I love myself for who I am right now, and for who I am becoming.
I am willing to give and receive love, knowing that I am a loving and lovable person.
Breathe that truth into the core of your being. This is allowing personal transformation.
Happiness does not lie outside of our-selves. It is getting in touch with who and what we are at the core of our being. We see our life as a journey with many choices. To experience freedom and happiness, we need to allow ourselves to have all of our feelings and to be okay with them. Surrendering to our feelings, allowing them to wash over us without judgment, brings credence to our experiences. If we deny or ignore our feelings, they will come back to us in another form until we have dealt with them. Learning to love all parts of our-selves expands our capacity to love others with their problems and limitations. Loving our-selves fully cancels out the fear to love others.
And so I invite you to direct love and tenderness toward yourself this week. Allow yourself to feel the emotions that are stirred through just living life. Feel the emotions, surrendering to them without judgment. Love yourself for who you are and what you are feeling in that moment. As you breathe in self-love, you will find a blissful, freeing state. Allowing the feeling without judgment transmutes the emotion. When we love ourselves fully, we are in the Oneness. In that place, we experience that happiness lies within us.