Recapitulation through dreaming

[tpit]

Hi,

I've read through the content of this website and I wonder if there's any thoughts on combining what is called recapitulation here and dreaming? Can you recapitulate in the dream space.

Example

I do a meditation / ceremony using drumming with an intention. I then have what I call a dream drama. Where a drama in my normal life, in this case i'm going to use the example of my relationship to my mother and the energies within that relationship are expressed in the dream. The drama or narrative plays out then I find myself in my room connected to my physical body but still in a trance/dreamlike state and there's a vibration on my body that when focused on becomes tense and painful until I focus on it and am able to move this vibration off my body.  As I explore these experiences and try to bring cohesion to them I find that experiences like these definitely do affect the nature of the relationships or the drama that's playing out in my normal life. According to your traditions or understandings could this be an example of a combination of what you call recapitulation and dreaming?

[silenceseeker]

Hi Tipt,

Yes you can recap in dreaming and in fact, it's usually very effective if you can mange it because a lot of our repressed emotions and memories are stored on the dreaming side, this is where the go.

I like what you are doing with the meditation ceremony with intention, the only thing I would change is that as you are focusing on the experiences, instead of exploring the drama, use the breath and head turning movement of the basic recap exercise to take out the emotional energy from those memories, repeat the process until they are 'just' memories. You will definitely know when you've accomplished this because when you recall them, they won't have the same pull that they always have and you will find your life adjusting accordingly.

With regards to the makers recapping in dreaming, the process is actually the basic exercise (or other ones learned here) that are done while you are asleep and dreaming. It requires you to realize you are dreaming and have the awareness to start the recap process within a sleep dream. So, it's a little tricky to manage sometimes and there are other ways to get at the emotions in memories but it can be very effective because you are working with the place where they have been stored.

 

[tpit]

Hi Silenceseeker,

Thank you for your response. 

Just to clarify further, do you mean when I realise i'm in the dream instead of engaging in the narrative to use the breath and the head turning movements to move the energy of the dream? 

I would say that the experience of the drama brings my focus to this narrative and without it I wouldn't know what to focus on. I didn't clarify in my first post that the intention to go into the nature of my relationship with my mother wasn't my intention for the meditation I did. My intention was to heal myself of depression. Then this experience came up in my dreaming. I feel like the next logical step might be to hold a ceremony with the intention to go into this experience further then see if it comes up in my dreaming again and if it does try to do the recap techniques you mentioned? 

[silenceseeker]

12 hours ago, tpit said:

Hi Silenceseeker,

Thank you for your response. 

Just to clarify further, do you mean when I realise i'm in the dream instead of engaging in the narrative to use the breath and the head turning movements to move the energy of the dream? 

 

Yes - almost. When you realize you are in the dream, instead of engaging in the narrative, use the breath and head turning to recover the energy, the emotional energy in the dream. Let's say the emotion is shame. Focus on the triggering event and 'inhale' the energy of that, the shame or whatever emotion or mixture of emotions are there. Inhale it as you turn your head to the left and then pause and exhale all that out with the intention of recovering 'what is yours and releasing anything that is not yours.' Repeat that until the memory has no emotional pull to it.

 

"I would say that the experience of the drama brings my focus to this narrative and without it I wouldn't know what to focus on. I didn't clarify in my first post that the intention to go into the nature of my relationship with my mother wasn't my intention for the meditation I did. My intention was to heal myself of depression. Then this experience came up in my dreaming."

Right, this is what can happen when you intend to self-heal, your energy starts to show you all the ways, all the threads that are connected to that intent to heal. Your task as a recapper, whether in dreaming or on the awake side, is to track down all those threads and start recovering the energy of what shows up for you because somehow, it's connected although it may not be obvious at first. So, it looks like there may be a connection with your depression and your relationship with your mother. If you recover the energy from the experiences with your mother, other things will probably show up in your continued intent to work on depression. It can get quite complex and tanglds but you can get through it all and recover everything connected with your depression. The beautiful thing about this practice is that once you recover all of the connections, it will truly be healed and should not return. (Although learned patterns from depression can try to reassert themselves but that's another thing and is easier to deal with).