Somatic Dream
Category: Sleep Science
Mechanism of Converting Body Signals into Dreams
The body keeps sending signals to the brain throughout sleep. During REM sleep, however, sensory input from outside is largely suppressed, so signals arising inside the body stand out by comparison. The brain interprets these signals and folds them into the narrative of a dream. A full bladder brings a dream of hunting for a toilet or for water; an arm pressed under you as you turn over brings a dream of injuring that arm; a hot room brings a dream of fire. Each is a typical case of a bodily signal converted into a dream. What is easy to overlook is that the brain does not translate the signal directly but builds a whole story out of it. From the very same bladder signal come a flood dream, a dream of swimming in a pool, a dream of walking through rain, each shaped by the memories and the state of mind of the person dreaming.
Diagnostic Dreams in Ancient Medicine - From Hippocrates to Galen
The idea of putting somatic dreams to work in medical diagnosis goes back to ancient Greece. The fourth book of Regimen in the Hippocratic corpus, the book known as On Dreams, sets out a procedure for reading bodily disorder from the scenes that appear in a dream. Because the medicine of that era explained health through the balance of the humours, dream images too were read as marks of an excess or a shortfall of one humour or another. Galen likewise used dreams as an aid to diagnosis, leaving on record the case of a man who dreamed that one of his legs had turned to stone and later developed paralysis in that leg. The body may register something amiss before consciousness notices and pass the news on in the form of a dream. That reading has been handed down since antiquity. It belongs to the side that reads dreams, though, and it is not a judgement about symptoms. When pain or discomfort persists, set the interpretation of the dream aside and consult a medical professional.
Distinguishing Somatic from Psychological Dreams - Interpretive Practice
In the practice of dream interpretation, telling a somatic dream apart from a dream that carries psychological meaning is the crux. When you dream of water, the reading changes a great deal depending on whether it is a somatic dream from a full bladder or a psychological dream symbolizing the flow of feeling or the depths of the unconscious. The first clue is physical circumstance. If you drank a lot before going to bed, start by considering the water dream along the somatic line. The second is how thick the emotion in the dream is. A dream built directly out of a bodily signal has little emotional swell, while a dream holding a psychological theme brings strong feeling with it. The third is the complexity of the dream: a simple scene repeating leans toward the somatic side, and intricate symbols or storylines lean toward the psychological side. That said, dreams in which a bodily signal triggers a psychological theme, mixing both elements, are no rarity.
Utilizing Somatic Dreams - Dreams as Dialogue with the Body
There is also a view that puts somatic dreams to active use. In the rush of daily life bodily sensation tends to get pushed to the back, yet a dream amplifies the news from the body and delivers it. When someone carrying tension in the shoulders and neck dreams again and again of shouldering a heavy load, that may be the body reporting how close it is to its limit. If you note your bodily state (pain, fatigue, hunger, temperature and the like) alongside entries in a dream journal, patterns in your somatic dreams start to surface. Turning your attention to the body before sleep with a body scan, moving awareness from your toes up to your head, also makes the outline of a somatic dream easier to make out. A somatic dream is one form of dialogue with the body, and a clue for recovering the connection between mind and body.
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