As most of you who work with dreams know, dreams reflect our physical health. For example, problems in dreams involving "horses" and "houses" are so often carriers of specific symbolic information about physical health that it's always a good idea to ask the dreamer whether this might be true once again. And, whenever the seemingly stable nature of the world the dream creates as "background" suddenly reveals itself to be unreliable and unpredictable, it's once again such a frequent marker for "warnings" about physical health that it's worth looking at such an image with that connection in mind.
This information regarding the dreamer's physical health nestles within the larger truth that all dreams come in the service of health and wholeness and speak a universal language of symbol and metaphor. If a dream is remembered at all, it means that the dreamer's waking mind is being offered a potentially healing role to play in the further unfolding of the physical health issues the dream has brought to conscious attention.
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Traditional Chinese medicine is founded on a
series of ancient texts that lay out the basic conceptual framework of the Five Element medical healing tradition.
These texts talk in considerable detail about the central importance of dreams remembered from sleep, and the role dreams play in diagnosis and choice of treatment modalities, (including acupuncture and the selection and proper preparation of herbal medicines). Illness is understood to be the consequence of various imbalances and "movements" among the five foundational life energies or "elements".
Despite this clear emphasis on paying serious attention to dreams, (both the client's dreams, and the dreams of the practitioner), dreams are seldom acknowledged, let alone taught, in Chinese medicine schools here in the West.
I am greatly indebted to my friend and colleague, Bob Quinn, a Chinese Medicine practitioner and teacher, as well as a skilled dream worker, for making it possible for me to experience the intersection of dream work and Chinese medicine. These experiences have led me to conclude that Chinese Five element medical theory appears to be an expression of archetypal patterns in the dreams of people who have little or no conscious knowledge of the existence or nature of what Carl Jung termed "archetypes of the collective unconscious."
Bob recently arranged two weekend events where he and I focused on introducing and teaching archetypal group projective dream work - primarily to students and practitioners of Chinese medicine enrolled or teaching in institutions promoting and training people in Chinese medicine in Oregon.
Both workshops also attracted dreamers who were not familiar with the Five element foundation of traditional oriental medicine, but whose enthusiasm about the practice of archetypal group projective dream work led them to want to understand this seemingly "exotic" connection between dreams and Chinese medicine.
The Five Elements:
Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water
Those of us who were raised in the West are likely to be familiar with the ancient "Four element" theory of healing. This theory proposed that everything in the universe is composed of various combinations and balances among the four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water.
In China, (and other nations throughout Asia that have been profoundly influenced by Chinese thought and culture), the basic idea is that everything is made of different blends, balances, and movements of five basic elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.
I was initially surprised that "air" is not on this list but later understood that for the prac tical purposes of Five element medicine, "air" is so deeply associated with "metal" that it can be understood as a specific extension of that element.
In both of the workshops we drew names out of a bowl to select the dreams we would focus on. As a result, there was a fairly even balance of Chinese medicine students and non-students chosen for group work with their dreams.
It was not surprising that the dreams shared by the Chinese medicine students and practitioners contained many specific references to various "movements" and "balances" of the traditional Chinese five elements. We all dream about our literal waking life activities and our dreams provide symbolic implications of those activities that reflect our psycho-spiritual levels (particularly the less conscious aspects of our internal life).
What surprised me deeply, during both weekend workshops, was that when the oriental medicine students and practitioners focused on the dream accounts from the "regular dreamers," they were frequently able to name physical symptoms and interior mental and emotional states that were not at all evident from simple physical observation in the moment - and these "uncannily accurate" projections were regularly confirmed by the astonished dreamers themselves.
When I asked the oriental medicine students and practitioners what (in their imagined versions of the dreams) led them to articulate these specific projections regarding the dreamers' non-obvious physical symptoms and mental-emotional states, it became clear that it had to do with the symbolic implications of how images of earth, metal, wood, fire, and water appeared in the dream narratives.
To name only one example, they noted the literal appearance of "wood" in the narrative, and how the trees and other wooden objects appeared in relation to the other four elements in the dreamers' original narratives. They then associated these images and plot situations with the organs (and organ systems of the body) with which the element "wood" is traditionally connected; then they asked questions of clarification generated by their knowledge of what sort of symptoms and emotional-psycho-spiritual experiences would be likely to be linked with "imbalances" in that organ system.
Time and again these projections were right-on-the-money, as confirmed by the dreamers' amazement. Comments like, "How could you possibly have known that from this dream?" echoed around the room all weekend.
The first couple of times this happened it was "merely" synchronous and "spooky." As those of you who have been doing group work with dreams may have noticed, there are often little flurries of synchronicity that appear in the symbolic content of dream work shared across multiple dreams offered by different people. As this pattern of Five element "diagnosis" emerged (and was repeated months later during the second workshop with significant numbers of new Chinese medicine students and non-students) I concluded that the basic metaphors of Chinese Five element medicine must be, in themselves, archetypal patterns, (akin to the archetypal visual image patterns of the Tarot deck, and the archetypal sound patterns of various kinds of music).
If I've Missed This, What Else Have I Missed?
As a dream worker I have to ask the question: if I missed this huge archetypal connection for all these years, what else have I missed? Fortunately, I believe that this sort of abruptly expanding self-awareness of how little I know is humbling, healthy, and profoundly "professional." My next task is to attempt to acquire sufficient knowledge, (and wisdom!), to bring this new level of archetypal understanding to my own dream work practice. It may be too late in life for me to go off and learn the complex discipline of Chinese medicine (if I were younger I'd leap at the chance), but I feel the need to find ways to deepen and extend my understanding of Five element Chinese medicine and its intriguing application to understanding the archetypal patterns in our dreams that reflect our physical and spiritual health.
I know that all of you reading this are interested in understanding how your own dreams, and the dreams of others work, and most of you are interested in how the body's health and wellness is reflected in our dreams; I am increasingly convinced that we can all enrich our understanding of archetypal patterns by at least some rudimentary knowledge of Five-element Chinese medicine.
If you want to know more, Bob Quinn and I will be offering more workshops. They will be announced on my website Schedule and in future issues of this E-Newsletter.