EP18: Interpreting & Understanding Your Dream Language

Holly Emmerson, from @DreamOracleHolly talks about how to understand your dreams by looking within and tapping into your highest self. It is better to analyze your emotions, patterns, and overall vibration of a dream before analyzing objects and characters. Because the dream world consists of the collective conscious, messages from dreams can be messages for the individual, for others, or for the collective. When you learn to understand your personal dream language, you can start to break down your dreams and truly use them to better understand and navigate your waking life. Many times, our heart and intuition will tell us more about our dreams than our mind will.  

Holly created the Dream Oracle School, which helps others tap into their dreams, and awaken their own inner dream oracle.  Enrollment opens Feb 28th 2022.  

Lucid Dreaming Clubhouse open chats hosted by The Dream World Podcast every Tuesday 12 EST. Ask questions, share your dream and learn about dreams/lucid dreaming!

The Ultimate List of Things to do while Lucid Dreaming: Written by Oneironauts of the World

Chapters

• 0:40 Holly’s intro
• 2:48 How to understand the meanings and messages from dreams
• 4:50 Dreaming for the collective & analyzing dreams from a collective perspective
• 7:24 Setting dream intentions
• 8:44 Dreams aren’t literal, how to analyze dream symbols using your dream language
• 9:10 Dreaming of your ex, or understanding recurring dreams
• 10:40 Lucid Dreaming
• 11:20 Tapping into your higher self through dreams
• 12:30 The full moon & Dreams: Does the lunar cycle have an impact on our dreams?

Transcript

When trying to analyze and understand your dreams. It's important to know that we all have our own dream language and our dream language can really help us interpret what things mean to us. You've gotta start by looking at the emotions, the feelings, the overall vibration of the dreams. And then you can start breaking down the characters, environments objects, and as you start to journal on these things, you notice patterns over time and you start to understand your dream language.

So the guest on today's episode is Holly Emerson also known as dream work O Holly. Instagram. She helps people learn how to understand their dreams and tap into their own inner dream Oracle. So I'm super thankful that Holly is here today to tell us about how she got into dream work. 

Yeah, thanks for having me.

So as a child, I was always really fascinated by my dreams. However, I never understood what my dreams were trying to share with me. And so for most of my life, I just kind of set dreams aside, you know, back then I would try and look up the meaning of my dream, but nothing that I came across ever fully resonated with me.

So I just kind of, kind of just put it on the back burner and then it wasn't until 2017 that I went to Egypt with my spiritual teacher Brook still. That's when the dream Oracle in me, totally awoken. And I didn't even know what a dream Oracle was is kind of a term or a name that I just started myself because I'd never heard of it before.

Um, but essentially when I was in Egypt, yeah. My dreams just really started to awaken in such a deeper way. And the meanings and messages really started to pop for me. And so I started sharing them on my Instagram. And then it just started to kind of grow from there. And my mother-in-law, she actually had asked me one day, if I could get a dream message for her.

And I was like, I don't know if I can, um, let me try. And so I tried and lo and behold, I got messages for her. And so I started just kind of experimenting, dreaming for other people, seeing what messages I could get, um, what answers I could get for their questions. And it worked and it just kind of grew from there.

And then people started reaching out to me, asking. You know, how do they start understanding their dreams more? And so that's why I created my dream Oracle school, which is really about teaching people to understand their personal dream language. And then if they also feel that their dream Oracle, then there's an avenue that they can take to, um, work with me to awaken those dream Oracle gifts that they have.

Awesome. That's a really cool journey. I'm definitely gonna check out your whole dream Oracle school learning how to interpret your dreams is a very like personal journey. So how do you get people to shift away from just Googling? Oh, what does a dog mean? Um, how do you really show people to really tap into that?

Yeah, 

it's really about setting aside, you know, this desire to like the natural, it's almost like a reflex that we have to go after the symbolism first. Like, like you said, what does this dog mean? Let's look it up. Um, and it's really about what does this dog mean to you and what does the whole dream mean?

What does the vibration and the energy of the dream versus the symbolism? So I always suggest people start tuning into the energy first. Before they start looking at the symbolism and try to not focus and like tunnel vision in on one thing. But it's about, you know, looking at all the subtleties and the tones and the energy of the dream.

Yeah, for sure. I've 

definitely noticed that my, my emotions and the things I'm feeling will tell me a lot more about the dream. And also I've noticed like the patterns over time, you know, keeping a dream journal, how you can find meaning in the. Overall, you know, progression of what your dreams are 

showing.

Yeah. Definitely patterns are definitely a key thing. Like what is the common thread? Like oftentimes our dreams. It's not just one dream that we have to look at. You know, there could be many dreams that, that are kind of strung together to tell the story or the message. 

Yeah, for sure. They can definitely be a process.

Um, when you said that you were reading dreams for other people, how do you set the intention to go into your dreams and find messages to 

help other people. Yeah. So essentially how it works is my spirit guides know my personal dream language. And so when I'm dreaming for other people, my spirit guides basically connect with their spirit guides and get the answers.

And then my spirit guides send it to me through my dream. 

If you're getting answers that make sense and resonate for other people, then it kind of, to me, is showing that we're tapping into some collective consciousness. It's not just our dream world, you know? 

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I personally believe that the dream world is the collective consciousness.

It is, you know, the, the realm of spirit, it is the universe. It is the infinite. And so when we are going to sleep, part of what we're doing is really tapping into that. And because we are all part of the collective, we can, we often get collective messages. And I think a lot of people approach their dreams from looking at like, what does this dream mean to me instead of like, what does this dream perhaps represent for the collective.

And sometimes looking at your dream from a collective perspective is easier to see the messages pop out than it is when you look at them from the, the lens of I and me, you know, you're just tuning into a more broader energy. You know, when I'm looking at a dream, like, what does this mean for me? It's, it's almost harder to see  and when it's collective, for me, it's easier to see.

And then at the same time, you know, when I see a collective message kind of pop out of the dream, many times, that message is very important for me and pertinent to me because I'm also part of the collective. And I also kind of liken it too. You know, when you have, for example, a friend or a partner, And they're having a challenge with something.

They can't see the answer because they're like really in their challenge. And, and sometimes it's really difficult to see, but you're like, it's right there. You just have to do X, Y, Z. And our, I feel like our dreams are kind of like that because, you know, sometimes we can't see what our. Biggest challenges are or how to overcome our biggest challenges, even though it's like right there, but it's easy for us to see what they are for other people.

Cuz  we have a natural tendency to judge and think we know everything . And so when we kind of frame our dreams from a collective perspective, I do find that it is easier to start seeing the pops in the messages. And then also starting to understand your personal dream language. 

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense because I've been doing a lot of.

Collective dream circles lately just with groups of people. And it really does show exactly what you're saying. Like something that when I listen to your dream, I might have a perspective or something to offer. Maybe you didn't think about it that way. And a lot of times it will resonate or that perspective might help you realize something.

So there's definitely power in the group sharing for sure. The other thing I wanted to ask you was about dream intentions. I know you can have intentions for different things. Like what are some things that you say, or maybe just advice when coming up with dream intentions, what are the ones that, that really 

work?

The dream intentions that I find really work are intentions that really align with your higher self. You can mess around with dream work and it's always pulling you to connect with your higher self and align with your higher self. I mean, you can do an intention of like, show me how to find my soulmate, for example, but.

A better, more aligned intention might be something like, show me how to align more deeply with loving myself, you know, and aligning with that energy of love within. So you can open up the channels within to receive that love versus like, when am I gonna meet my soulmate or how can I meet my soulmate? So do you see like the subtle differences between.

Those two. Yeah. And I find that spirit with dream work they're they won't give you the answer. If you word it like that, they'll probably like recorrect you and try and like guide you into actually connecting with that love within yourself. For example. Yeah, it 

makes sense. I think some people maybe get lost in the sauce trying to, you know, do something specific that they forget the bigger picture and the 

journey, you know, our dreams.

Aren't literal and how we experience our waking reality and interpret our waking reality is often not how our dream language is getting really stuck into one perspective or train of thought with a dream. It can limit you because you're not seeing necessarily the, the bigger picture. You know, I have people who come to me and.

They're having repetitive dreams about their exes and I'll do a dream oral reading for them to find out, you know, what does this mean? Why does this individual keep dreaming of this person? And every time I have done these readings, it has nothing to do with that individual at all. One woman, it had to do with grief.

She had to process grief from a certain phase of her life. Another person, it was about anger and frustration showing up in her life and the patterns and that actually stemmed from childhood. And so it, it seems so backwards thinking like how can dreaming about, you know, my ex mean something totally different, but oftentimes it does.

Our, our dreams have so many meanings to them. It's never just one thing. And so the best thing to do is not use your mind. And drop into your intuition and your heart and discover what your dreams are, meaning from that place versus trying to interpret with your mind. Yeah, it makes 

sense. One thing that I always do to remind myself of that, when trying to understand why my dreaming of this person is I just ask all the questions related.

to that person. Like what time period of my life was this? What was I feeling at that time? Who is this person to me? You know, what do they represent? So it could definitely be way deeper than we think. And I know you, we are focusing a lot on just regular dreams, which have so much to teach us. Are you a lucid dreamer at all too?

Do you have focus on that 

at all? I do lucid dream. It's not a primary focus. It just it's something. That happens. Oftentimes when I'm doing the dream Oracle readings for clients, that's when I will be lucid dreaming, but it's not lucid dreaming, controlling the dream. It will be lucid dream observing the dream and knowing that I'm in the dream, because for dream Oracle readings, you don't want to be lucid to the point where you're controlling, because then you're controlling the message.

But then there's other times when yeah, I do lose a dream and can control, and those are just fun. You know, there's different things that, that you can do with that for healing and, uh, supporting your spiritual awakening. What I'm always feeling into and feeling inspired to do and wanting to inspire others to do is just connect with their higher.

You know, much of the things that we desire or want to manifest. They, they all stem from like pulling us towards our higher self and what stands in our way are blocks and barriers that we need to overcome. And so using our dreams to help us navigate through these blocks and barriers, overcome them, heal them, remove them, reprogram them.

Um, we can use our dreams to do that and support us. You know, it's not like a be all end, all like dream work is, is the thing, but it's another additional tool that we can use to support ourselves in our waking life to help bring us to deeper alignment with our higher selves, those other timelines, whatever you wanna call it.

But ultimately it's just about aligning more fully, so we can more deeply embody our true self, our higher self, and then live our life and create our life from that place versus, you know, our lower ego self place. It is a full 

moon today. How does that affect our dream space? Does it, and what can we, how can we kind of take advantage of that?

Ooh, that's a great question. So our dreams are very much influenced by the moon. So tuning into the lunar cycles is a really fun exploration. And so I always recommend that when you are journaling, your dreams is making note of the lunar cycle and starting to uncover what your patterns are based on the moon.

So some people. Actually most people definitely do know. I feel like because when there's like a full moon or a new moon, people definitely have a theme to how they dream during those times. So some people will have super vivid dreams or maybe they'll have prophetic dreams or maybe they'll have lucid dreams, or sometimes people will notice that it's harder to remember their dreams.

Like they go into a deeper dream realm that is harder to be consciously aware of. So it really. It's never a one size fits all. That's one thing that I've definitely discovered with dream work is everybody has their own experience with dreams. And what's interesting is exploring one's astrology or human design with dreams, which is something that I'm learning more about too, cuz I'm definitely not an astrologist.

And I'm starting to become very curious about human design and how that affects our dreams, but just like we have our own charts for astrology and human design. It's like we have our own patterns for dreaming and it's very much tied to the moon. And so, yeah. Make note of kind of how you. As an individual experience dreaming at that time.

And then, you know, when you've maybe got like six cycles, six lunar cycles, you can look back in your journal and see what patterns might be arising for you, depending on where the moon is in her cycle. 

Yeah, I see you growing on Instagram and I'm proud of you because it's such good work. And like these dream healers that, that are just kind of popping up everywhere.

I'm like just cheering us on, you know? 

Yeah. You know, I feel like it's time, it's time for this gift to be re woken in the world. So, um, first off you can find me. Instagram, which is at dream Oracle, Holly, I'm on, um, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. As at dream Oracle, Holly TikTok is new. So give me a follow there because  follow me everywhere.

Sure. And yeah, so actually on February 28th, I'm going to be opening enrollment for my dream Oracle school on February 28th. And so if you're listening to this and you're like, Ooh, I feel this curiosity to explore my personal dream language. I know that there's messages in my dreams, but I'm just not totally sure what they mean.

And I want to start more consciously. Joyfully connecting with my dreams, then, you know, come check out dream Oracle school. It's a monthly membership program that I have. And like I said, it's opening on the 28th and enrollment. Isn't always open. So, um, if you're listening to this at a later time, then you can join the wait list and then be notified.