Abstract Index Conference Index

ABSTRACT

The Role of Nightmares in Recovering from Cancer

Tallulah R. Lyons, M.Ed.
blyons@mindspring.com

Tallulah Lyons facilitates a weekly dream group with cancer survivors at The Wellness Community in Atlanta, GA. She combines art and dream work with her career as a special education director, teacher and consultant. She is certified in dream work through the Haden Institute.

4) Summary
Visualization techniques are widely used with cancer patients both for treatment and in the recovery process. A long-term dream group of cancer survivors in Atlanta, GA has been experimenting with nightmare images. Transformed images correlate with biochemical changes in the direction of healing.

5) Learning Objectives
1) Participants will learn about visualization techniques used with cancer patients.
2) Participants will learn the basic findings from clinical studies on mind-body connection.
3) Participants will learn how nightmares can help in the treatment/recovery process.

Evaluation Questions
1) How are visualization techniques used in the treatment/recovery process?
2) How can nightmare images be of critical importance?
3) What is the basic finding of clinical studies regarding mind-body relationship?

Abstract
The Role of Nightmares in Recovering from Cancer

Visualization techniques are now widely used with cancer patients both in treatment and recovery processes. A long-term dream group of cancer survivors in Atlanta, Georgia has been experimenting with images from personal nightmares. Each member of the group keeps a dream journal and over the past year has selected a nightmare to work with through Active Imagination. Dreamers have documented transformation of imagery and corresponding changes in emotions, perceptions, attitudes and behavioral responses.

Based on the principle that nightmares bring to consciousness issues that are of critical importance for survival, we have theorized that transformed nightmare images correlate with transformed emotions that are of critical importance for health and wholeness. The implication is that images from nightmares can be the best possible images to use with visualization techniques aimed at pain reduction, treatment and recovery.

Imagery studies now fall within the fast growing field of psychoneuroimmunology, or PNI. This is the scientific field of mind-body connection. Research conducted over the past ten years demonstrates that there are complex interrelationships among behavioral, neural, endocrine and immune processes. Many scientists are pushing for a new paradigm in which body and mind are no longer referred to as separate entities but only as bodymind. Increasingly, research is demonstrating the inseparability and interrelatedness of the mind and the rest of the body. PNI studies affirm the effectiveness and demonstrate the physiological changes brought about by visualization techniques.

As dreamwork facilitators, we can be grateful for the new scientific studies that enlighten our understanding of mind-body connection. We are affirmed in our work as we bring dreamwork techniques to those in need of physical as well as spiritual healing. We are affirmed in our trust that dreamwork brings about both psychospiritual and physical change. Members of a long-term cancer support dream group offer good examples of healing experiences, both physical and spiritual through engaging with their personal nightmare images.

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