Nature Dreaming; Japan's Earthquake and Tsunami

 On Tuesday, March 8, I had a dream I called "Wave."

I'm sitting on the beach with Sarah B. It's a vacation spot--lots of people are there with us. We're chatting. Something strange is happening in the water. I see a plume of smoke rising up and there is also a wave curling in an unusual way. Sarah asks which one I'm watching and I say the smoke. But then the wave collapses and sends its energy to the left, wiping out the smoke. We watch a huge surge come in 1/4 to 1/2 mile to our left. Then I watch the water. It's rising and rising. Now a big wall of water is coming. I sense it and I get up and grab our towel. We start walking in but we need to move faster. I remind Sarah to just hold her breath when it hits. We just reach the bus when it hits and I jump on top of it as the water hits me. It pulls me up but not far. Next I see myself writing a blog title about how I survived it. 

While I wrote this dream down that morning, I felt intense emotion and my eyes welled up with tears. At the time, I felt it might be related to the emotions I'm feeling around my trip and the sadness that comes from leaving a familiar place.

But I'm certain this dream was also precognitive in some way, predicting the events that happened in Japan yesterday. I've had dreams like this before that predicted or echoed earth events. I call the phenomenon nature dreaming. Others apparently experienced this as well. When I checked the dream sharing site remcloud.com, it had results showing that tsunami and earthquake dreams were trending yesterday. The Dream Tribe put out a call on Facebook to see who'd had quake or wave dreams and several users shared their tsunami dreams. My fellow Dream Tribe member Ryan had a dream about a tsunami hitting Inverness, Calif. where he used to live and woke to his wife telling him about the Japan quake. Linda, also a Dream Tribe cohort, reported that she and her husband both had dreams about tsunami dreams earlier in the week.

What does it all mean? At the very least, to me this is a powerful demonstration of how connected we are to the Earth and each other, and it serves as proof that we are all nature dreamers.

Dream Tribe: Nature Dreaming

In my latest Dream Tribe post, I discuss synchronistic dreams I've had about events connected to nature. We're all connected and we're all dreaming about (and as) Nature. We might not notice it in our everyday lives, but I believe if we start to pay attention to our dreams and to Nature in waking, we will start to notice patterns of nature dreaming.


Check out the post to find out more.

Fall TerraPlaces Project Launched

Autumn begins this week, we get to enjoy a gorgeous harvest full moon, and we also get to revel in the launch of the Fall TerraPlaces Project!

During this three-month phase we'll be exploring the connection between place and dreams. How do landscapes show up in our dreams? How does a deeper connection with the land affect our dreams? I'll be teaching you how to foster a more in-depth relationship with both the land and your dreams. We had a fantastic time during the last phase sharing our places with one another and I can feel the momentum growing already with this new phase. Come and join us!

Nature Dreaming

Here is a startling example of how nature inhabits our dreams, straight from my own dreams.

On July 31 I had the following dream: I am in a cozy cabin with a fire going in the fireplace. I settle in and feel good, but there is a nagging something in the background. I look at the view -- I see the Golden Gate Bridge and the sun setting, but something feels off. Then a huge, luminous, gorgeous tidal wave sweeps toward me. It is so beautiful! Illuminated from the inside and turquoise and green. It is also scary. Then a goddess in a yellow dress appears in the room with me. I know she is the sun. She stands in front of me and says, "Jump!"

The next day, solar storms occurred on the sun that affected the magnetic field of the planet, causing gorgeous aurora borealis visible by many people on Earth. Pictures of the aurora that I saw featured colors that reminded me exactly of the tidal wave in the dream. When I heard about the solar storms, I was blown away...this is what my dream was telling me about!

There are many hints within the dream: the fire, the Golden Gate Bridge, the tsunami (the storm looks like a wave on the surface of the sun), the sun goddess. It's all there. Of course, the dream had personal significance for me as well with the emotional upheaval I'm going through. I believe most, if not all, dreams have several layers of meaning.

These kinds of dreams happen all the time and some have them more than others. I'm someone who happens to dream of natural elements, especially storms, quite often.

Image courtesy of NASA Goddard Photo and Video