What do you do when you have just had a terrible nightmare? If you are like me, you lie in bed trying to get the frightening scenario or image out of your head. Most of the time I'm sweating, my heart is pounding and the prospect of going back to sleep seems unlikely.

I don't have them often but they do happen. Common themes include falling off cliffs, careening off the highway or being attacked by someone who has broken into the house. Sometimes they are sneaky. Things look familiar and then, slowly I realize I'm in danger.

I dream vividly and in color, so my nightmares can really freak me out. Since I'm am such a big nocturnal dreamer, I've taken classes about dreaming and participated in a dream group, learning how to break down the elements of a dream and understand the underlying message.

Unfortunately, all of this education never taught me how to recover from a bad dream. But, in the last few years I've developed a method that almost always works. Since I love offering practical tips, I thought I'd share my strategy. The idea came to me as an adaptation of a visualization a body worker led me though to heal a traumatic event from my childhood. At age 7 I was caught in a hail storm while walking to school. I did not have a coat or an umbrella. By the time I arrived at my second-grade classroom, my legs were purple. I was cold and terrified.

I shared this event with my body worker friend and she asked me to close my eyes. I visualized all the elements of the event that were most frightening. I shared how alone I felt and the physical pain of the hail hitting my body. School seemed a million miles away.

Once I had the calamity firmly in mind, she guided me to surround the hail, the road and all the aspects of my situation in golden light and send them to heaven. I also envisioned people coming to my rescue and gently taking care of me.

As I'm sure you know, the mind is powerful. After altering the traumatic event, I felt much better. I had a sense of control and peace. I had substantially transformed my bad experience. This method works quite well as a way to recover from a nightmare. If I've got a bad guy trying to kill me, I surround him in golden light and send him to heaven. If I've fallen off a cliff, I image a golden parachute deftly catching me in mid-fall and lifting me back to safely. The more times I successfully transmute my upsetting dreams to a positive experience, the less frightening nightmares have become. I find this both amazing and empowering.



Healing from past events or learning how to respond creatively in the moment of a bad dream is a powerful tool. I hope you can remember it the next time you wake up from a real doozy.