We are all dreamers, whether or not we pay conscious attention to these mysterious, spontaneous interior experiences.

As someone who has vivid and often bizarre dreams, I am fascinated with them. While I was on summer vacation, Jeremy Taylor did a workshop on dreams at my church. I was bummed that I missed it, so I did the next best thing:  I checked out his latest book, The Wisdom of Your Dreams: Using Dreams to Tap into Your Unconscious and Transform Your Life, from the library.

When I opened the book, I expected something similar to what I see in most dream books: a discussion of what it means when you dream about x (where x = a specific event or item, such as losing your teeth or teeth). Taylor, however, doesn’t take that route. He talks instead about how dreams operate on several levels to reveal information to us about our deepest selves. According to him, dreams don’t come just to tell us what we already consciously know. Dreams reveal and help us work through our deepest fears, intimate relationships, health, work, place in society, our pasts and our futures.

Taylor even posits that there’s a purpose for bad dreams and nightmares. They are not just to show us horrible images and freak us out. Rather, Taylor says, nightmares are how the unconscious transmits information that needs to be remembered and can’t be forgotten. So nightmares are not just throwaways–they contain valuable content and messages.

In the book, Taylor doesn’t only talk about dreams, but he devotes most of the book to the importance of dreamwork through the safe space of dream groups.

For Taylor, the importance of dreamwork is not just for the dreamer, but for those in the dream group as well. Working the dream benefits everyone because the ownership of the dream through the language of dreamwork helps everyone to tap into his or her own subconscious. The key is that you don’t tell somebody else what his or her dream is about because you don’t and can’t know. You can only say what the dream would mean if you were the one who dreamt it. So instead of saying “well, that means you’re clearly struggling for your mother’s love and acceptance,” in the dream group or in dreamwork, you would say, “If this were my dream, it would mean I’m struggling for my mother’s love and acceptance.”  Doing that may or may not lead the dreamer to what Taylor calls an “aha,” but framing it in that way makes the statements and interpretations less judgmental and less telling somebody else about his or her life.

Although the book doesn’t seek to explain the universal symbols of dreams, Taylor does walk through dream work and explains how to uncover the deeper sense of self and the different layers of the example dream(ers) used in each chapter. He also shows the fundamental effects working on dreams and understanding/uncovering their subconscious messages had on the people featured.

He uses a variety of dreamers: prison inmates, housewives, seminary students, himself. Some are reluctant to engage in the process and some are eager. But the end result for all of them is that the dreamwork offers a profound moment of understanding for them all.

At the end of the book, Taylor offers up a list of resources for further study in the appendix.

I’m in a dream group now that closely follows Taylor’s teachings, and I’m glad I read the book.

Women Unbound?

The other books I’ve read for the Women Unbound challenge have been memoirs and written by women. When I read this book, I didn’t know that it would count for the challenge. But it does. Taylor specifically points out that dreamwork is helpful for understanding the frustrations of groups that live in a patriarchal society. It’s an explicitly feminist text–something else I appreciated about it.

Women Unbound: 9/8

I will be forever annoyed that there are no commas in that title.

I’ve told this story for many more years than I lived it, but it only recently became clear to me that the radical part of the tale is not that I stopped dieting; it’s that I stopped trying to fix myself.

You may have heard of Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything by Geneen Roth. It’s been on the non-fiction bestsellers’ list since its first week, and it was featured in O Magazine (how I first heard about it) and on a little something called The Oprah Winfrey Show.

The title alone had me interested in the book, and before I read one O-endorsed word, I knew I was going to read the book.

It’s funny because when I started the book, I was a detached observer thinking the book didn’t apply to me.  I kept feeling that way until I got to the end of the prologue and one line jumped out at me. In that one line, the book became personal.

When Roth was on Oprah (and, yes, I watched both of the episodes before reading the book), Oprah said that you could substitute “food” with “sex” or “drugs” or with anything else women may have an unbalanced relationship. After reading the book, I’m inclined to agree. The main thrust of the book is getting women to consider why they crave or reject food when it comes to dealing with emotion. Why is it so much easier to over- or undereat instead of allowing ourselves to feel?

When a diabetic tells me that she can’t eat what she wants because what she wants will kill her (and therefore she feels deprived), my response is that what will kill her is wanting another life than the one she has, another condition than the one that is hers…It’s not her eating that is killing her, it’s her refusal to accept the situation.

I think Roth is definitely onto something in terms of examining relationships with food. She advocates mindful eating and intentional eating. Eat when you’re hungry without distractions and make sure you feel your feelings. Easy enough, right?

In some ways, though, I think she oversimplifies. Her notion that you’ll eat what’s right for you if you stop and listen to your body sounds good, but the reality is that sometimes people do need to be re-taught what and how to eat. Not only that, but her book ignores the importance of support in the form of a group or an individual to help women work through the issues/triggers for over/undereating.

Ironically, most of her observations are made based on not only her personal experiences with dieting and weight, but on observations of retreats she runs for a group of women. I mean, I know the focus is on self, but feeling full emotions can be terrifying if there isn’t someone else around to help you as you think about turning to food instead.

Maybe that’s why Mighty O started a companion guide for the members of her community? [Yeah I am kind of an Oprah kind of person. Shocker, right?]

I also got annoyed with the tone at times. It’s very calming spa/yoga voice, which I don’t necessarily have a problem with, but it just got annoying to me in a few places. [It’s kind of like when someone starts talking to me like I’m going to flip out. Granted, I may be on the edge, but the calming voice can be its own irritant. Then again, it does give me something else to focus my annoyance/rage on. But I digress.]

I’m glad I read the book. It made me think about my relationship with food–as well as other areas in my life I might use to numb emotion.

Women Unbound: 8/8

Masturbation is a primary form of sexual expression. It’s not just for kids or for those in-between lovers or for old people who end up alone. Masturbation is the ongoing love affair that each of us has with ourselves throughout our lifetime.

I chose to read Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving by Betty Dodson specifically for the Women Unbound reading challenge. I hadn’t actually heard of the book before, so when I saw that Susan over at Black-Eyed Susan’s said it should be required reading in Women’s Studies classes, I had to check it out. Since, you know, it was certainly never mentioned in any of the Women’s Studies classes I took throughout college or graduate school.

Betty Dodson is a sexologist (her Ph.D. is in sexology). She also has a very current website (Warning: Not Safe for Work) to answer questions about sex, masturbation, and orgasm.

I think the book is very important. Dodson completely demystifies masturbation and celebrates it as a way to build self-esteem, encourage body knowledge, and improve partner sex. She is pro-masturbation as a way to combat sexual repression, especially for women. What power women would have if they understood their own genitals and their own orgasms. How great for our teenage girls and young women to know they can have sexual release without the fear of pregnancy or STDs–that they are their own greatest lovers. That it’s okay to please themselves sexually and that it’s not just about the boys and their pleasure. (Think about girls who feel pressured to perform oral sex on boys while getting nothing in return–except damaged reputations.)

If girls and women know their own bodies and know how to please themselves, then they are empowered.

That doesn’t mean Dodson ignores men in her book because she doesn’t. Masturbation without shame is just as important for men as women in the battle against repression.

Dodson does all of this while also offering this book up as a memoir of sorts. It operates as a chronicle of her journey to being more sex positive and pro-masturbation. From her childhood to her first awesome lover to the opening up of her relationship with her mother to her development of her art to her bodysex groups, she details how all of these things came about and their impact on her thinking about gender, sex, and sexuality. And masturbation plays a part in all of these events.

While the book does contain erotic art and detailed descriptions, I didn’t find it to be pornographic at all. The point is to educate, not titillate. And I walked away from the book feeling way more knowledgeable than before.

I wish I would’ve read this book sooner.

Thanks to Susan for suggesting it as a must-read for the Women Unbound Challenge. I would encourage others to read it as well.

Women Unbound: 7/8