Analyze Your Dreams with Traditional Chinese Medicine

Last night I was on the winning side of a battle in the late 1800s. As I fought to protect the young baby in my arms, I was not at all surprised that I knew how to operate a shotgun. My shots were natural and amazingly accurate. It didn’t even shock me when seconds later, I walked through the door of a house and ended up at my ten-year high school reunion. Everyone was there, including the guy I had a crush on. Unfortunately, I was completely naked and forced to give a speech on the importance of using cinnamon in all recipes. 

Nowhere but the depths of sleep can we have such illogical, random adventures containing both fictional and real people. Some dreams are mundane, while others shake us to the core of our souls. What is really going on during dreams? Ancient China used dreams as one sign and symptom to assist medical diagnosis. Exploring the dream theories of ancient Chinese medicine as well as the ideas of modern science paints a poetic picture of the dreamy events of nighttime.

To understand ancient Chinese dream analysis, here is a quick crash course in Chinese medicine. There are twelve main channels of energy flow in the body. Each channel is related to a corresponding body organ. The organs and channels of energy work together for body function. If the energy in a channel is excessive or low, symptoms of ill health appear. With this simplified explanation of Chinese medicine, one can appreciate the dream diagnosis from the ancient medical texts. 

Themes in dreams may be subconscious manifestations of energy flow imbalances in the channels. For example, if one cries during a dream, this implies the energy in the lung channel is out of balance. Grief is associated with the lung channel. Each channel is associated with an emotion. The five main emotions in Chinese theory are joy, worry, grief, fear, and anger. These emotions are related to the five basic elements. They are fire, earth, metal, water, and wood respectively. When these elements show up in dreams consistently it could have a connection to the channels related to the element. For example, dreaming of raging fires at night may be explained by an imbalanced fire element or heart channel energy, whereas dreaming of large bodies of water points to the water element organ of the kidney.