Do you find your dreams intriguing? Do you wonder what they mean? Can they even predict the future? Kathy Martone Ed.D, a retired Jungian psychologist, said dreams can provide validation, insight and promote psychological growth.
“It is a way to bypass the ego so you really get an honest picture of what is going on inside your psyche and in your personal life, as well,” Martone, who facilitates dream interpretation groups in Eureka Springs, said. “The ego tends to want you to gloss over things. The important thing about dreams is they give insight into your personal psyche, the spiritual issues you struggle with, interpersonal issues, and family dynamics.”
Martone said dreams can also provide warnings in the form of premonitions, giving you information about future events and your health.
“Just recently I had a dream about a friend of mine who had fallen and was split down the middle and needed help getting home,” Martone said. “A few days after that dream, she fell and broke her back. She needed help getting home. All dreams are fascinating but these precognitive ones are even more so.”
The final thing, and the one she finds the most important, is that dreams can be a vehicle for a very profound and powerful relationship.
“In my experience, dreams offer one of the clearest channels for communication with the Divine,” she said.
Her dream groups are people who gather in a sacred circle to get their dreams interpreted.
“It is a group process I facilitate,” Martone said. “I do like to start with a short ritual by calling in the four directions, and setting up the energy. I like the idea of group wisdom, as other people can have ideas about what the dreams mean as well.”
As far back as there are written records, there have been accounts of unusual phenomena occurring in connection with dreams. Practically every ancient civilization thought dreams were important.
Martone said there is a mapping that goes on between the body and mind or brain.
“The parts of the brain that get activated during dreaming are the pons and the brain stem, considered to be the most primitive parts of the brain,” she said. “This most ancient tissue produces a language that is pre-verbal and is an image language. This is the language of children. And, it is the language the ancient peoples used before there was verbal language. It is fascinating that this ancient tissue in the brain produces this ancient language. Visual languages are very important to the brain. Visual stimulation wakes up more of the senses in the body than any other sense. Movies, for example, are so popular with people because they stimulate us on so many different levels.”
She also finds it interesting that there are so many artists, scientists, musicians, inventors and authors who have been inspired by their dreams. Albert Einstein developed his theory of relativity based on a dream from his adolescence. Paul McCartney, Mozart and Beethoven all got inspiration from their dreams. Elias Howe got the idea for inventing a sewing machine from a dream.
“His dream is one of the more fascinating ones,” Martone said. “He was trying to come up with a way to thread a needle for a sewing machine. He had a dream about being attacked by cannibals. He was in a pot and they were getting ready to cook him. He freaked out and woke up just as they were ready to stab him with their spears. The spears had a hole in the tip and that is where he got the idea to thread the needle for the sewing machine.”
While most people don’t welcome nightmares, Martone said there are often positive meanings to nightmares if you understand the language. And once you understand the meaning of the nightmare, it stops.
Martone has been interested in dreams since she was a kid. She used to have a lot of dreams that came true. She still has some of those, but not as many as when she was younger.
Some people say they never dream, but Martone said we all dream. The trick is how to catch them.
“There are simple things to do to start remembering dreams,” Martone said. “In all my years working with people, I have never found someone unable to remember their dreams. People can learn how to do it. It is a very easy, simple process. It is a matter of paying attention and listening. In our culture, we don’t value dreams very much. In other cultures where they value them, they always remember their dreams.”
Martone earned her master’s degree in psychology at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, and a doctorate in counseling psychology from the University of Arkansas. In graduate school, she did her thesis and dissertation on dream telepathy. After that she joined a dream group in Little Rock that she was involved with for 12 years. She also still does phone sessions with a Jungian analyst in New York she has been working with for 35 years.
Martone and her husband, Gary Toub, moved from Denver, Colo., to Eureka Springs in 2015.
“I started getting homesick and wanted to come back to Arkansas,” she said. “I missed the Ozarks. Gary had never been to Arkansas, but fell in love with it. I was relieved because I wanted to move here pretty badly. Definitely I think Eureka is a very unique place and I always thought it would be a good place to do dream work and metaphysical work. The energy here is just so positive for that kind of thing.”
Martone has openings in one of her dream groups that meets on a Friday evening once a month. For more information about dream groups, call Martone at kmartone@dreamagik.com or call (303) 394-3928.