Somatic Time Travel
This morning I had one of the most powerful dream experiences of my life. There was no lucidity involved. I was having a great time at a bar with friends. I was hanging out with a close friend, joking around, drinking, having a good time. One of our mutual friends showed up and we greeted him with a hug, and continued hanging out. We were drinking, dancing, just having a good time.
Okay... nothing out of the ordinary, as far as dreams go... so what made this so special?
The particular friend I was hanging out with is someone I have seriously wronged in my past (roughly 10 years ago). It's a friend I no longer talk to, and have deep feelings of shame about what I have done. It's something I have never truly processed.
When waking from the dream, I felt light and free and full of life. Having spent the past few weeks focused on Alexander Technique inspired mindfulness of the body, I was able to notice what had changed from when I went to sleep. Most notably, I felt a kind of relaxation and lightness on the left side of my chest, which I understand to be the area around the spleen (noted to be associated with shame and guilt).
For the first time in 10 years, my spleen had relaxed a little bit. The Alexander Technique is all about inhibition, and inhibiting harmful tension that affects the proper use of self. So I paid close attention to the lightness in my spleen, and did my best to stay in a state of inhibition of the tension that subconsciously colors my conscious experience during waking life.
It was a new feeling for me. I was able to keep the spleen relaxed, and it felt amazing. I felt more space under my ribs, and it felt so freeing. However, it was something I had to "not do." I had to consciously inhibit my unconscious desire to tense and flex my spleen upon waking from the dream.
I had to use my attention to focus on my spleen and maintain the state of relaxation that came about because of my dream experience. In my dream, all was well. My relationship with my old friend was still intact, and seemingly better than ever before. We were getting along how we used to. The damage I had done was gone, at least, during the dream.
When I woke, the physiological and emotional state of my waking body reflected that of my dreaming self. My spleen had relaxed in the dream, having the sense that all was well, and we were still friends. The damage done had been erased, and that erasure was physically reflected in the state of my dreaming body. When I woke, I got a glimmer of that physiological state. I could feel what it felt like to be alive before I had committed my wrongdoing.
I knew this feeling would be transient, part of the ephemeral dreamset, the short period of time upon waking up from a dream, before rapid memory loss of the dream experience takes place. Using the Alexander Technique of inhibition, I was able to persist this physiological state from the dreamset into my waking life, and start to become familiar with what it feels like to have a relaxed spleen - to become familiar with an undoing of my transgression.
Of course, my dream experience did not actually undo what I had done. I have long ago had to deal with the realization that I may never get the closure I want, to be able to "make it right." I may never receive forgiveness from who I have wronged. They wanted to part ways with me, and we no longer talk. But in my dream this morning, all was well. I was transported back to a time of innocence, and could feel that state of innocence, and persist that state into my waking life.
While this feeling of lightness may not last, it provided both insight to me -- that I in fact do live my life with a constantly tensed spleen, and it provided hope -- that it is possible for me to not have this persistent tension.
I do not have a clear answer for how to get over feelings of shame. But my experience this morning showed me that dreaming can help me experience what it is like to not feel shame, and simply having that feeling in waking life, and applying attention to that feeling, can be an avenue for overcoming the physiological effects of shame. Right now, I know there is nothing else I should do to address the root cause of the shame (it is my problem to bear, the damage has been done, muddied water is best left alone), and if my rational mind is able to inhibit tension in my spleen to help me live better, then perhaps it's what I should do.
What can we learn about dreaming from this experience?
First, the dreamset is valuable for more than the ability to capture narrative. The dreamset is the short period of time before rapid memory loss of the dream occurs, and the dream experience is lost. In my paper (forthcoming in CHI 2022), I discuss how important this period is for dream journaling and capturing the dream narrative. What I failed to understand is that the dreamset is perhaps more important for its emotional tone -- for the short period of time after waking up is the only time we can truly feel what it was like to be in the dream, and do something meaningful with that feeling.
For me, using a mindset of Alexander Technique inhibition, I tried to maintain a feeling of relaxation in a part of my body that (apparently) was never relaxed. Even now, as I write this, I have improved interoception into the state of tension in my spleen, and have a sense that I am better able to to inhibit the tension my unconscious mind wants to apply.
For those of us who have committed serious wrongdoings, and feel shame about it, we may not be able to address the root cause and "make it right." But I think most of us have suffered enough, and it's better for all that we release this tension so we can best live our lives. For our lives have been shaped by our shame beyond just the tension in our spleen. Shame has made us look closely at ourselves, led us to become people who could no longer do what our former selves had once done. And if, in a dream, we can feel what it might be like to not feel that shame, then perhaps we can learn from that experience, and seek to persist that feeling into our waking life.
I believe that those of us with intense shame are no longer the people who caused the shame in the first place, and we may do well to somatically time travel to a time before we became ashamed with ourselves, and utilize our rational mind, with its capacity for inhibition, to restore a physiological state better suited for the person we have since become.