Dreaming Big...

...according to Jung.

Bore me instantly by reciting your last night’s dream. The wows, the insane amount of detail… none of it is interesting, because none of it is real.

Or is it?

Dreams were never something I was especially interested in, but understanding my self doubt – buried skilfully beneath the clown / the wise guy / the critic – was. When I was on the hunt for a therapist in my late 20’s, by fluke I was led to someone who changed my relationship to dreams forever.

Francoise Richards, a Jungian psychoanalyst, was the Vice President of the Analytic Psychology Club of New York. When I arrived for my first session at her Upper East Side apartment I was expecting the usual: a room full of books, many shades of brown and mahogany, and an hour to share my edited version of life so far. Instead Francoise opened the door with her blonde bouffant hair, aquamarine shade of eyeshadow, silk-tied blouse and years of pain, wisdom and warmth beneath her shiny smile.

Rather than my history, she demanded I recall my last dream, on the ready to dive into my psyche based on the symbols and associations that revealed themselves during my sleep.

I was skeptical for a long time. Concrete facts and lived (rather than lofty) experiences have always been important to me, especially when working in the field of yoga. Give me alignment over manifestations any day.

According to Francoise, my dreams revealed that I was living in the darkness of my subconscious - in yoga, some call this the lower samadhi. The lake, the pool, the dam, all locations for many of my dreams, were manmade constructions and thus represented me, living in an unnatural and unstable state.

Many of my dreams took place on a train, a bus, a plane or in a car with me as the passenger, which seemed to confirm my afflictions. These modes of transport symbolised a lack of control on my part, with someone else driving, instead of me.

Her analysis to me seemed baseless and unsexy, so I fought against believing them. How could I, a successful yoga teacher who preaches mindfulness, be living in an unconscious state with little self awareness?

But as we worked together, Francoise’s interpretations began to make sense. It was true – at the time I felt particularly foggy and insecure about my future planning, which was apparently supposed to involve marriage, kids, and settling down.

I didn’t want to admit it, but I started to see how some of the reoccurring symbols and themes were mirroring the lack of confidence I was experiencing during my waking hours.

I barely scraped the surface of Jungian psychology, but even today, I manage to extract some worthy messages from my dreams. Recovering from the flu recently had me in the thick of “fever dreams”, those that take you on a wild and vivid trip of chaos.

Without too much detail, this dream had me driving full speed down a steep hill with failing brakes and in pure panic, I shift to reverse, speed backwards, and meet the same issue - defective brakes.

Before crashing into a car at my rear, I woke up panicked, relieved and pretty clear on the dream’s message. Slow down. An ungraspable concept for me a lot of the time.

It took a few days for the interpretation of this dream to sink in, but I realised I was fighting upstream to be it all as a yoga teacher, business woman, and mum. And I was exhausted.

Yoga teachers: we love a good self care ritual, we’re all about a long savasana - but just like any other job, survival mode can kick in, bringing with it patterns where we compete, compare, isolate, and very quickly, end up burnt out and disillusioned.

That’s the complex thing about working in a field that touts wellbeing. We’re not living an unblemished life of wellness, and when we fail to perfect the image that we believe we should be upholding, guilt creeps in - a feeling that our sluggish immune system or cluttered mind is somehow our fault.

I’ve come to accept that we can’t perfect wellness – or teaching yoga – or much of human existence, for that matter. And the more we attempt to live up to unrealistic ideals, the further away we move from health, love and meaning.

What I find helps most is understanding the part of me that strives for perfection, and soothing she who is yearning to be seen. Remembering that perfectionism brings with it no finite goal, because there’s always something or someone who appears to do it better.

Healing means forgiving that nagging alter ego who taunts me to believe in my unworthiness rather than my goodness, and as poet Dana Faulds puts it:

“Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain…”.

I never thought I’d be one to seek out meaning from my dreams, but it’s good to know that if my own sensibility can’t slow me down, at least the tales from my subconscious state can. The impetus to traverse inward can be harder to find at times, so the more tools we have to amplify our healing, the better.

Carl Jung wrote,

“An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling.”

As yoga teachers, we’re not expected to be brilliant, or know everything there is to know about each bone, muscle, posture or Hindu deity. We make a difference via human connection. Understanding and remembering the complexities of our own Self, and from there, seeing others for who they are.

Teachers, if you’re interested in dipping your toes into this work, join me and your community of teachers in UPLEVEL, a retreat for yoga teachers, March 2025, Germany.