Dreams and the Emotional Body
Just like our physical body is made up of many parts that allow us to perform the wide variety of physical functions we are capable of, I like to think we also have an emotional body, the part of us that feels fear, feels joy, feels balance, feels irritation…the part of us that makes it possible for us to experience the full kaleidoscope of emotion that is our particular human experience. The part of us that feels what it is like to be us.
We know that we can become disconnected from our physical bodies. Certain muscle groups can start to atrophy if we don’t exercise them. Organ systems falter if we disregard their signals for care and attention. Our emotional bodies work in a similar way. If we don’t exercise our capacity to feel joy and arousal, it becomes harder to access. If we don’t pay gentle and tender attention when we find ourselves “snapping” out of anger, we can end up poisoning our relationships or making poor life choices. Slowly but surely, if we avoid our emotional bodies, we lose touch with that it feels like to be us, and in doing so, feel either emotionally overwhelmed or a pervasive sense that something is missing in our lives.
You could also think of the emotional body as the bridge between our physical bodies and our minds. We have five senses that make it possible for us to receive information about the external world, and we have our minds that create the narrative of our consciousness, informing us about what we are seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching and what that means to us, given our ideas/stories about who we are. Our emotional bodies create the container where these two functions can interact, providing us with that ineffable quality of our perceptions. We all have the instinctual knowledge that even if two people are both looking at the same rose at the same time, they are not necessarily, or even probably, having the exact same experience. Our emotional bodies are the reason why.
Our emotional bodies hold our memories, our tastes, our values, our sense of morality and perhaps most significantly, our truth. One difference between our emotional bodies and our physical and mental ones is that we don’t have the same kind of conscious control over the experience of our emotional body. This is not to say it acts independently—but unlike our mental body or our physical bodies, when we try to will the emotional body to do something or another, it simply will not.
Another way to think about the relationship between these three aspects of consciousness—body, mind, soul—is understanding the soul as the center of our internal world and the body as the center of our external world. In this scenario, the mind is the go between, or the container if you will. This aligns with a way of understanding dreams.
When we are asleep, our bodies are paralyzed and no longer perceiving any information from the external world on any conscious level. It is then that we enter our dream realm, and because our bodies are in such a suppressed state, our minds enter deeply into our internal world, our soul, and into the landscape of our emotional body.
Conceived like this, why would you not be deeply curious and open to the experiences your dreams share with you? The information your mind receives within a dream—and the way that your mind interprets it—can tell you so much about the way you are living your life, right here and right now. In this humble, reverent way, we can become agile at navigating our shadows through devotion to our dreams, and ultimately, with enough patience and hard work, become free.
When you commit to reawakening to the wisdom of your emotional body, of your soul, of those deepest stirrings and most resounding calls, of those visions or whispers that linger, over and over, way after it was reasonable for you to even try—you find yourself back in the driver’s seat of your life, headed down a road to a destination unknown. This is the hearts-open path. This this is the letting your scarf whip in the wind, this is keeping your eyes straight ahead, this is knowing that there will be twists and turns and leaning into them instead of bracing yourself. This is the path of abandon. This is the path of dreams, and it is littered with the ones that never came true.
To begin the journey, take a look at a dream that had potent emotional material within it. If there are any parts of the dream that are difficult or challenging to feel, go towards them. Make some space to simply feel what it’s like to be present in your dream. Even if your mind is running 100 mph or you have all kinds of qualifications about why you can’t feel that feeling right here and right now, try anyway. Consider this a “full-emotional-body-workout”—to feel the feelings in your dreams, as deeply as you can.
Truly, I know of no better tool than our dream material to guide us into the parts of our emotional bodies that need our attention and energy. By being a patient and humble student to the information of your dreams, you can begin a journey back to full connection and alignment with the wisdom of your heart and the calling of your soul.
And of course as always if there is any way I can help you on this journey, let me know!
