PRESERVING MENTAL HEALTH FOR A LONG AND HEALTHY LIFE
'Avoid Nightmares with Conscious Work'
New York Times, July 27, 2010
Western Medicine and Therapists are beginning to realize the immense benefits of ancient yogic techniques and to integrate them in their own practice. Emerging techniques such as "Mastery Dreams" are directly derived from yoga practices such as 'Psychic Sleep' (Yoga Nidra) or "Detached Awareness of the Inner Space of Consciousness" (Chidakasha Dharana) and are used to resolve past trauma and unresolved subconscious material which continuously affect us on the conscious level through our fears, preventing us from enjoying a carefree life. Unlike the dream state where awareness is lost, during these techniques the practitioner is able to directly access the level of the unconscious mind and through the practice of detachment and desensitization he/ she is able to neutralize all the mental impressions stored there. Once the emotional content of memories, suppressed fears and desires is removed it stops the resulting ingrained negative behaviors and patterns from affecting the sufferer in his daily life. For more, read below.
Nightmares resulting from traumatic events usually fade over time, as the haunting images and terrifying plots become less intense. The dreams may also naturally evolve into what some specialists call “mastery dreams,” in which the dreamer has found a way to ease the pain or horror — say, confronting a rapist or saving someone from a fire. But when that does not happen of its own accord, many therapists use behavioral interventions to reduce nightmares or guide the waking patient toward having a mastery dream — using the conscious mind to control the wild ways of the unconscious. Some of these techniques have been in use for years. In one treatment, known as lucid dreaming, patients are taught to become aware that they are dreaming while the dream is in progress. In another, called in vivo desensitization, they are exposed while awake to what may be haunting them in their sleep — for example, a live snake, caged and harmless — until the fear subsides. Both techniques have been researched extensively. More recently, therapists and other experts have been using a technique called dream incubation, first researched in the early 1990s by Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. And Hollywood has just produced its own spin on lucid dreaming and the idea of controlling dreams, with the release earlier this month of “Inception,” a thriller whose plot swirls through the darkest layers of the dream world. As Dr. Barrett wrote in an online review of “Inception,” for the International Association for the Study of Dreams, “I love the idea of millions of action film fans the world over leaving theaters asking each other if they’re ever had a dream in which they knew they were dreaming — or whipping out their smartphones and Googling to find out if you really can learn to influence dream content.” Using dream incubation for problem solving, Dr. Barrett, the author of “The Committee of Sleep,” which expanded on her initial research, asks patients to write down a problem as a brief phrase or sentence and place the note next to the bed. Then she tells them to review the problem for a few minutes before going to bed, and once in bed, visualize the problem as a concrete image, if possible.
