4 Benefits of Dream Walking
Dreams are an evolutionary mechanism designed to help us process memories and information, psychologically and emotionally grow, expand spiritually, and act as a gateway to our deepest parts of self. When we become an active observer of our dreams we connect to ourselves in a new way to further develop conscious awareness. One great way to activate our connection with dreams is to incorporate a dream walk into your bedtime routine!
What is Dream Walking?
The phrase “dream walking” has different meanings for different people and practices but I define it as simply a conscious and intentional walk into one’s personal dream space. I like to think of it as a visualization while falling asleep, often guiding myself down a woodland path and into a prairie that represents my personal dream space. But you can also practice it as a meditation, self-guided recording, or even a series of physical movements.
The key to a successful dream walk is the power of your intention.
Intention is everything in the dream space. On any given night, your dreams will usually flow on their own and reflect what you’re currently experiencing in waking life. However, like lucid dreaming, dream walking can help guide you toward a specific goal in the dream space.
You might use a dream walk to intentionally guide yourself into a dream about:
A waking-life difficulty so that you can problem-solve in the dream space.
A past hurt or trauma you’d like to heal.
A spiritual experience you’re looking to explore.
A deeper form of meditation.
Or even to practice a skill like playing an instrument!
How to Dream Walk
After completing my evening brain dump (an important part of my dreamwork practice), I think of the particular goal I want to accomplish and explore in my dreams. I ask myself what the space looks and feels like that holds my particular goal and begin to build a mental image of it.
Depending on what I’m exploring I might find myself in an area of my home, outside in a natural space, flying across the stars, or even deep within the Earth!
Then, with the imagery of my destination in mind and my intention set, I begin walking down a path in my mind’s eye toward the space I envisioned.
I continue thinking of moving down the path toward the space as long as possible. Sometimes I’ll fall asleep on the way and will hopefully continue that mental walk in my dream space to the destination but sometimes I’ll reach the destination before I fall asleep. In either case, just go with it and see where your mind takes you!
The 4 Benefits of Dream Walking
The following 4 benefits of dream walking are not an exhaustive list but can give you an idea of why this practice can be helpful. You may find additional benefits as you explore what dream walking feels like for you personally.
1. Strengthening Your Internal Relationship With Self
Healing work of any kind is built on a foundation of self love and the willingness to observe your internal narrative. You can’t begin to heal until you admit that a part of you needs healing.
When we identify something within us that needs healing, we begin to listen to ourselves. There are many, many people in this world that have chosen to ignore their inner voice and knowledge and push through life pretending that everything is fine when it really isn’t. The first step in any healing process is to listen to yourself and what you’re really saying.
When you dream walk with the intention to focus on your own healing, you strengthen the bond between your conscious self and your internal narrative. With every intentional act to reach out to yourself, you build a sense of rapport between your levels of consciousness and true, inner self.
This strengthening of your internal relationship over time can build the foundation for deeper healing work, personal understanding, and greater spiritual connection.
2. Increased Probability of Lucid Dreaming
The process of dream walking is another way to increase your capability of lucid dreaming.
Like the mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD) method, your intention guides you purposefully into your dream space. This intentional aspect is a quality of lucid dreaming and can help you have a more conscious approach to your dreams.
When we experience lucid dreams, we further open ourselves to the exploration of self. Dream lucidity can help you explore your memories with purpose, receive internal messages, and play out scenarios to examine the potential outcomes of waking-life situations.
3. Achieving Mental Health Goals
When paired with mental health work, dream walking can be an additional tool for achieving your mental health goals.
Let’s say you have frequent panic attacks and you go to therapy once a week to work with a therapist on addressing this cognitive, physical and/or behavioral pattern. You may not have identified the root cause yet or the healing work that is needed. By adding a dream walk to your bedtime routine you can bring in some extra assistance from your subconscious or unconscious parts of self to help you identify the root cause(s), directly supporting your therapy work for the panic attacks.
You may also receive additional insights in your dreams about the situation. These could include images or memories that lead you to the root cause and the healing work that is needed. They might depict techniques that could work best for you based on your individual needs. And they may even just offer relief from the buildup of stress from whatever may be causing your symptoms!
For more on using your dreams (and nightmares) as a healing tool to pair with therapy, check out my book, How to Heal Your Nightmares.
4. A Stronger Connection to Your Dream Practice and Dream Recall Ability
Your ability to work with and recall your dreams can be strengthened by developing your dream pathway: a type of neural pathway or neural network. Neural pathways are the avenues that transport information from one part of the brain to the other.
Our habits are great examples of developed neural pathways in action.
Exercise is a common habit example: if you desire to feel fit, strong and healthy you know you need to exercise. You begin acting on your desire by exercising but it’s difficult at first because it’s something new. However, you find that the more you regularly engage in exercise, the easier it becomes to convince yourself to do so which then builds exercise into your weekly routine.
From a neural pathway perspective, the more you act on your desire to feel fit, strong, and healthy through exercise, the more you navigate the exercise-related pathway in your brain. Over time, that neural pathway becomes well-travelled, making it easier to mentally navigate until it requires very little mental effort to go exercise.
It’s the same technique for dream walking!
Take your desire to work with, experience, and recall your dreams by incorporating a dream walk every evening as you fall asleep. By engaging in the action of dream walking, you travel your brain’s dream pathway every evening and build on the practice. You take the desire for experiencing dreams and connect it to the action of intentionally walking into your dreams.
Over time, your brain will put more effort into experiencing and recalling your dreams the more you travel the pathway.
Deep Connection
Engaging in a dream walk is an engagement with yourself. It’s another tool in your arsenal of self-exploration and another way to find support through times of change and healing.
Whatever your purpose is for dream walking, know that your dreams are always supporting you. The observation of your internal narrative, the effort and intention that you put into honoring yourself, the dedication you show to your own healing… all of these things grow over time.
Set aside some time for yourself before falling asleep this evening and give it a try! Take a dream walk and see what information you’re ready to explore within yourself.
