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Dream Diagnosis and Dream Rx
By Robert Moss

Our bodies know what is going on inside them, and they speak to us about this in dreams, which often diagnose developing illness before physical symptoms are detected. By working with these diagnostic dreams, we can often deal with a problem before it has reached a critical phase – and sometimes avoid painful and costly medical interventions.

Some of our dreamscapes are living dioramas of what is going on inside our bodies. Conflicts taking place in our dreams are sometimes dramatic portrayals of how our immune system is trying to cope – or failing to cope – with disease. Dreams can take us deep into the cellular structures of the body. For thousands of years, gifted physicians have recognized that such “bodytalk” dreams can provide accurate diagnosis of our ailments, often long before physical symptoms have developed.

Reading somatic messages in this way was central to traditional Chinese medicine, as well as to medical practice in ancient Greece and in many other cultures. In the Victorian era, Western doctors continued to look for diagnostic information in their patients’ dreams

Sometimes, the dream diagnosis can mobilize us to get the right medical help before a developing illness becomes even more serious.

In her late thirties, Ellen, dreamed that a threatening intruder walked into her dream house and pointed a gun at her breast.   She was sensitive to dream imagery and knew intuitively that the dream was warning her that she might have developed breast cancer. She immediately sought medical help. Ellen’s cancer was discovered in its earliest stages, thanks to the fact that she remembered her dream and acted on its warning, and her problem was solved with a simple lumpectomy. 

Sensing that her dreams were telling her about a serious health problem, a young woman called Carol made repeated visits to a physician who was initially baffled by her punch list of vague and elusive symptoms The doctor began to question whether there was really a physical problem. Then Carol dreamed a very simple dream – a large wolf appeared and spoke to her:  “I am Lupus Wolf.” Carol called the next morning, snagged an appointment and told her physician the dream. Now he went to work and soon confirmed that her dream diagnosis was exactly correct; she had lupus.

The dream of Lupus Wolf gave Carol more than diagnostic information her physician could work with to help her get well. Lupus Wolf became a guide and partner in her dreams, helping her to become an active participant in her own healing. He showed her the foods she needed to eat, warned her away from a medicine that would cause anxiety, and led her in further dreams to a healing garden, a place she found she could revisit to relax and imagine herself well.

Dreams Give Us the Right Prescriptions

Dreams offer us prescriptions that may or may not require a doctor’s signature, and help us to make good choices between alternative practitioners and practices.

A woman dreamer asked her night dreams for guidance whether she should have surgery for a herniated disk. In her dream, she saw a zippy Fifties roadster, painted red and white, with a huge ultra-modern sound system in the back. A mechanic told her in the dream that mechanical repairs were not necessary and would be excessively costly. Waking, she recognized that her body was the Fifties roadster, and that a sound system is also a disk player. She proceeded to experiment – with very healing results – with the power of toning and vibration to help with her back problem.

Five months before she was diagnosed with a serious form of breast cancer, Nancy dreamed she was searching for three white tigers that needed help. A man in law enforcement helped her to track them down. They followed Nancy’s intuition to locate the tigers, while the man used his formal training and strength to help the animals. Nancy met the law enforcement man from her dream in waking life five months later; he was her oncologist. The dream guided her to work with his formal skills while continuing to draw on her own intuition.

Dreams help us to tell the difference between what is medicine and what is poison for our system (and a particular Rx may be either or both) – sometimes quite literally.

When my friend Wanda Burch was a child, her father dreamed that a prescribed tonic was poison. When her mom came home with the prescription, her father grabbed the bottle and drove back to the pharmacy, demanding that it be tested. There had been a mix-up; the tonic was rat poison.

An elderly woman called Mary received an equally serious warning about a prescription. In her dream, she walked into a pharmacy and watched the druggist pouring pills into a bottle. Mary opened the cap and tumbled one of the pills into her hand. She turned it over and was horrified to ass a skull and crossbones on the back.

A few days later, a physician changed Mary’s usual prescription to one he thought would work better for her. When she went into the pharmacy with the prescription, she found she was inside her dream. She opened the bottle she was given, examined the contents and felt certain she was looking at the poison pill from her dream. She went back to her doctor and insisted on returning to her previous medication.

Sometimes the dream Rx is for a natural remedy. Troubled by hypertension, Cara dreamed that a charming chef appeared in her kitchen and cooked her a delicious breakfast of oatmeal with raspberries on top. Inspired by her dream, Cara went to the grocery store the next day, purchase the necessary supplies, and started eating oatmeal with raspberries for breakfast – and her blood pressure came down.