Course Index
Dreambody Index
Pathways

WALKING THE PATHS OF THE SENSES 

   Sound - auditory (inner and outer), voices, thoughts and sounds.

   Visual - inner and outer images or colours. 

   Feeling - proprioceptive, body sensations.

   Movement - Kinesthesia

   Smell - olfactory. Gustatory - taste. We combine these. 

   Relationship - with yourself and other individuals.

   Community - how we are at work, in groups, in our environment etc.

   Environment - the different environments we live in. 

   Spirit - unseen energies usually in the background that give us messages we can't receive from anywhere else.

These paths are either occupied or unoccupied. Julie Diamond, a dreambody process therapist from Portland, Oregon gives the following analogy: our being is like a "haunted house"; we live in and occupy certain rooms of the house. Other rooms are empty and unoccupied, and therefore become haunted by ghosts (dreamfigures). Occupied means someone is home. Unoccupied means no one is home. 

Someone occupying the auditory and visual paths, may have proprioceptive (feeling) and kinesthesia (movement) paths unoccupied. They would gain the most living space by occupying the proprioceptive and kinesthesia rooms. In other words they would learn new information about themselves through feeling and movement.

Often people resist working with unoccupied paths. People who experience life through their feelings may resist thinking and space out when asked to explain what they are feeling. They may have an edge around their "intellectual" side (sound path).

"Most people think of the mind as located in the head, but the latest findings in physiology suggest that the mind doesn't really dwell in the brain but travels the whole body on caravans of hormone and enzyme, busily making sense of the compound wonders we catalogue as touch, taste, smell, hearing and vision." A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman. 

Your senses can guide you to the paths that are most comfortable and familiar. You can use your strong sense to help you with a weaker one. Say you are strongly visual but have trouble with feelings. When feeling overwhelmed, ask yourself what the feeling looks like and describe it visually or draw it. To effectively learn the paths of the senses; you need to practice using them regularly. 

Do This! 

Exercise 29 • Defining Your Occupied and Unoccupied Paths 

Spend the next couple of days defining which senses you are most comfortable with and use the most. This knowledge is necessary to understand what I am communicating to you. 

Is VISION the way you mainly perceive the world? Do you dream in colour? Do you use many visual words like "I saw" or "imagine this?" Do you describe your experiences in visual terms? You may enjoy beautiful sights and love to go to the movies. Visually your surroundings are very important to you. Vision path.

Maybe SOUND is your path and you love to communicate through music or the spoken word. You enjoy listening to the sounds that surround you. Noise or disturbing sounds are unbearable. Sound path. 

Are you good at MOVEMENT, maybe a dancer or athlete? Is it easiest for you to express your deepest thoughts non verbally by dancing or gesturing? Movement path. 

Are you regularly filled with lots of FEELINGS or BODY SENSATIONS? Aware of moods, body sensations or body symptoms? You really enjoy touching and being touched. You can speak with your fingers and listen with your skin. Feeling path.

Is SMELL one of the first things you tune into when you walk into a room? Do you love to open your spice jars and deeply inhale the fragrance? Are you attracted to perfumes and essential oils? Smell path. Do you love to eat? You enjoy the lingering TASTE of the last morsel or drink you consumed. Gustatory path.

Do you prefer company to being alone? Would you prefer to work on a project with a friend? RELATIONSHIP path.

Maybe you work in a busy social place and you can't wait to get to work. You love wandering around your COMMUNITY talking and visiting with people. Community path.

Do you sense the hidden life all round you? Do you spend time deep in thought? Do you have a rich secret fantasy life? Is your dream world active and appealing? SPIRIT path.

Upstairs I turn on my full spectrum light to stimulate my pituitary. It is winter and I suffer slightly from SADS (seasonal affective disorder syndrome). Basically it is a condition brought on by a lack of light, so the extra hour or two of artificial light makes me feel better. I take Ginseng and make my morning Coffee. The Ginseng will awaken my body over the next couple of hours and the Coffee will awaken my mind in the next half hour. My Scandinavian genes love good rich organic Coffee.

As I sip my Coffee (taste path), I feed my mind and spirit with thoughts (sound path) from some new or old favourite book. I love books. When the mood is right I sit for meditation. The form of meditation I practice is based on sitting very still and quieting the mind with the repetition of special words. Often I enjoy being still and just observing my thoughts and body feelings and allowing them to flow as they will. I enjoy meditation. I feel that my regular practice of sitting has helped me penetrate the heart of the exercises that you will find in this book. Ellen White (Shaman elder) calls meditation, preparing. She says that you never know when the door to other worlds will open so you need to be prepared. 

In dreambody we practice changing paths at will. We also practice observing how our dreaming body changes paths on its own. Shamans call this stalking the dreaming body. The difference in techniques is that I am either observing the paths that my awareness is occupying without intervention or I am deliberately choosing paths to explore as I meditate. 

I enjoy writing and I like to record my dreams (composite path). Dreams can be visual, auditory, feeling, movement, relationship, world or spirit. Some people actually experience taste and\or smell in their dreams. Dreams are the royal road to the dreaming body. 10% of life happens in the real world while 90% takes place in the dream world. Paying attention to our dreams can point out paths that we maybe neglecting in our waking life. If we have a strong dream about a relationship it may suggest that we need to pay more attention to the relationship path. 

Speaking of the relationship path, my youngest daughter is probably awake by now and filling my morning with sunshine. She is a bright spirit. Children are life's gift to itself. Some shamans will not perform a healing ceremony without children around as they are the holders of life's future. I like the saying "For the seven generations unborn." 

Next I go and turn on the computer and begin working.  This is my world path. I have

The paths are part of our every day living. Awareness of them can be used to improve our health, reduce suffering, increase pleasure, strengthen relationships, move out of stuck states, reduce boredom and increase creativity.

Read over the following descriptions of the paths and have fun exploring them. Play is the greatest way to learn. 

Vision pathway-dreams, fantasies, colours, visions.

Ordinary world visions are the primary dreams, plans and fantasies that we enter into consciously and purposefully. 

Dream world visions happen to us, like fantasies that intrude upon us, disturbing and distracting us. One way to deal with dream world visions is to accept them and purposely and consciously enter them. Usually they will transform if we actively dream them onward. 

e.g.. You have been dreaming about a friend and how much you want to connect with him. Go ahead and let yourself dream through it remembering to include the events that you imagine happening afterward. Carl Jung called this active imagination. Shamans call it awake dreaming. 

Do This! 

Exercise 30 • Exploring the Vision Path

Look around you. See what you are seeing. Look inside and see if you see anything? Think in imagery and draw your thoughts. Have your dreams presented any outstanding visuals?

• What can't you quite look at?
  
  
• What vision can't you quite imagine?

Do This! 

Exercise 31 • Visual Path Training

Go for a walk. Focus your visual attention on one colour. Notice where it occurs naturally and where it is used. After your walk sit still for a few minutes and sense how the colour, coloured your mood.

Do the same with the five following shapes; a circle, square, triangle, cross or spiral. Do this for each colour and shape.

• Record visual experiences:

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Sound pathway -songs, sounds and thoughts.

Ordinary world -conscious thoughts, deliberate speech, songs. 

Dream world - slips of the tongue, unwanted thoughts, inner sounds. 

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Do This! 

Exercise 32 • Exploring the Auditory Path 

Sit quietly and listen to the sounds around you. Listen to your thoughts and then let them move on. 

• What sounds bother you?
  
  
• What can't you quite hear? (Screams, laughter, yelling, noise, certain conversations).
  
  
• What sound do you have trouble voicing? Try making the sound just a little.
  
  
• What are your favourite thoughts? Do you have unwanted thoughts that cycle?
  
  
• What is your favourite music? Your least favourite?

Do This! 

Exercise 33 • Training in the Auditory Path

Go for a walk around your neighbourhood and focus on the different sounds. Move toward or away from sounds that catch your attention and notice which is more appealing.

• Record sound experience:

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Smell Path 

Smell is the most direct of all the senses. Smell connects with the medulla, the ancient limbic brain a mysterious, intensely emotional section in which we feel, lust and invent. This is the reptilian brain, the oldest part of our minds. Smell associates strongly with our long-term memory. There is almost no short-term memory with smells.

We have over five million olfactory cells. Some animals have as many as 200 million. We have had a long love affair with scents as some fossilized roses were dated 40 million years ago. 

Ordinary world smells for many of us include the external smells of cooking, flowers or pollution etc. 

Dream world smells form the hidden smells of memory and subtle perception. They include inappropriate and mysterious smells, i.e. a sweet smell in the forest without anything visible around to produce it. 

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Do This! 

Exercise 34 • Exploring the Olfactory Path 

Take some time out to go explore different smells in your environment. Walk around and sniff. Pick up a handful of moist earth and smell. If your sense of smell is low, take some Zinc. Wake up your nose. 

• What can't you quite smell?
  
  
• Which smells turn you on or off?
  
  
• Record smell experiences:

      Ordinary world feelings: Pleasure, pain, heat, cold, fatigue.

      Dream world feelings: Emotions, moods, mysterious   sensations that come and go.

Our proprioceptors let us know where we are in space. They communicate about our internal organs and the movement of our limbs. They are intimately connected to movement. Touch is a powerful healer that draws us to professional hands-on healers. The lightest touch registers with our dreaming body.

I sometimes find it hard to identify and articulate exactly what I am feeling especially when I am under pressure to do so. I cultivate my emotions and value them highly. I postpone decisions if they don't feel right much to the frustration of my logical side. 

In dreambody, pain is blocked proprioception. So before you run to the drug store when in pain I suggest you try the following exercise. Pain attempts to communicate a message from one part of us to another part. If we don't take the time to listen then the sender (pain maker) increases the pain. It does little good, long term, to kill the messenger.

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Do This! 

Exercise 35 • Exploring the Proprioceptive (bodyfeelings) Path 

Find a partner to help if possible. Locate an area where you are experiencing pain or discomfort. Have your partner place their hand gently on that area and keep it there. Your job is to stay with the feeling. If you switch paths and start to see things or enter debate, observe it then go back to your feelings. Try to stay with your feelings for at least 10 minutes. This is "cooking" a process. Whenever your attention wanders observe what was happening just before it started to wander and go back to that place. If the pain moves to another area, follow it. Take your partner's hand and move it to the new spot and go back to what you are feeling. 

If something really strong comes up and you need to talk or change paths then do so.

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One client of mine has difficulty getting in touch with her tears. I wrote the following piece for her.

Well of Tears

Sometimes we are afraid to feel our sadness for fear that we will be engulfed by it and drown. Sadness is a well that one can safely dip into and in its waters you will find the true longings of your soul. One can easily hide behind anger or happiness but not our sadness.

Where is your well located? That is different for each person. The last time I found mine was quite by accident. A longing so deep and buried suddenly surfaced and bathed me in uncontrollable tears. My whole body cried. Yesterday, my whole body sang as I bathed in the fulfillment of that longing.

There is no chronological time in that world where the well is located. I remember those tears as if they happened yesterday although they happened years ago in Chronos world. The well you search for is a sacred well. It is found in sacred time. Sacred time is the time of the soul. My soul awakened me in the middle of the night to write these words. This is sacred time as the rest of the world sleeps. I sit alone with the fire burning writing about the well of tears.

Ellen White, my shaman teacher calls it water power. She says that I am good with water power. Maybe that is why I have touched my well of tears. Kirpal Singh, my mystic mentor, would soak his papers at work regularly from his well. So deep and constant was his contact with that well. He called it the fast road to the Beloved.

Intense longing is like an incredible magnet that draws the source of your longing irresistibly to you or it to you. Like a moth to the flame, you have no choice. Reason and rationality stand no chance against the forces of your soul. May you find your well of tears and may it quicken your journey back to the beloved.

Do This! 

Exercise 36 • Training in the Propioceptive Path 

When experiencing a body sensation that you want to alter, do the following. Focus your attention fully in the sensation. After a few minutes begin to expand the feeling to the surrounding area. Establish it there and then expand it to include more area. Until your whole body is experiencing the sensation. You can do this with pleasurable sensations like an orgasm or painful ones like a headache. You can even expand it to your surrounding environment.

A change of feeling equals a change of destiny. Your body acts as an emotional filter and communicates the marks of your emotions. The reason we do most things or want most things is to get into the feeling state we hope they will produce.

• Record your feeling path experiences:

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Movement pathway - how our bodies move.

Ordinary world movement: direct conscious movement, i.e. ballet, martial arts, yoga.

Dream world movement: unconscious movement: cramp, twitch, spasm, excess blinking, bumping into things.

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Do This! 

Exercise 37 • Exploring the Movement Path 

Get up now and explore how your body likes to move. Put on some music if it helps.

• What movements are easy and which can't you quite make? Moving playfully, ecstatically or erotically?

Next time you are in a negative mood and you want to change it, get up and move your body purposefully and positively. A short walk is good.

• Record movement experiences:

Relationship path 

      Ordinary world relationships - husband, wife, partner, parent, child or friend.

      Dream world relationships - dreamfigures, totems or allies.

Do This! 

Exercise 38 • Relationship Path Training

Next time that you feel in conflict with someone, suggest that you go for a walk together. Stay in relationship to each other and notice if anything changes by adding movement to the relationship path. 

Next time that you have a body symptom, think about your relationships and ask yourself if this symptom has anything to do with any of your relationships? Role play, discussing what came up for you with the person in question. Notice if your symptom has changed any. If appropriate and desirable you may want to contact the person and get together to talk. The relationship path can be challenging and rewarding. 

• Record relationship experiences:

This path includes personal relationships and the world including plant, animal, and mineral relations.

      Ordinary world community: The people you depend on for structure, growth, permanence and security. Architects, teachers, lawyers, parents, children, partners, bankers, doctors are all part of the rational. 

      Dream world community: The people who provide you with non-predictability, irrationality, inspiration, change, growth and creativity. Mystics, shamans, clowns, madmen, street people (city shadows), inventors, plant people, mineral people, etc. 

Do This! 

Exercise 39 • Exploring the Community Path

Go for a walk around your neighbourhood and observe the people who make up your community. Think about other members of your community that may not be present. Be sure to include the mineral, plant and animal communities.

• Who or what can't I relate to?
  
  
• Do you feel like a part of your community?
  
  
• What is your role in the community?

When a gypsy goes to see a doctor they take seven or eight family members with them. A strong community support system is healthy for our own immune system. In some indigenous cultures, banishment was the worst possible punishment.

• Record community experiences:

Environment path

      Ordinary world environment - weather, physical atmosphere in your home.

      Dream world environment - internal atmosphere, psychic atmosphere around you.

Do This! 

Exercise 40 • Exploring the Environment Path

Think about the environment you are in, in terms of fire (temperature), water (humidity) and wind (quality of the air). Go outside and think about the weather in the same way. Do you feel good in this environment? Would you prefer a different one. Can you change your environment in any way to make it healthier for you? Add a humidifier, open the windows more or turn the heat up or down? 

Do This! 

Exercise 41 • Environment Path Training

Next time the weather bothers you pick up the energy and occupy it. For example, the cold wet rain bothers me. 

So one way I might work with it is to pretend I am a big black Pacific Northwest cloud. I am laden with rain looking for somewhere to off load some. Oh, there is Don, I think I will drop some on him. I hover over Don and drop some rain on him. He goes inside so I drop more until it drips through his roof and onto him. 

This is more fun than being Don, feeling sorry for himself, because it is raining again. But what about poor Don? 

I then start stalking why and how the rain bothers me. We live on a boat, I start to get cabin fever, and my relationships get cramped. My wife is also bothered by the rain. Now I can go and talk with my wife, the relationship path. 

So become the bothersome part of the weather and pick it up. See it, feel it, move and act like it. Next, interact as this part with yourself. Have fun bothering yourself. After you have some of the energy from the disturber, go back to being yourself and try to figure out what bothers you the most and in which path. What small changes might you make? Record environment experiences:

Spirit path.

      Ordinary world spirit: What we call spirit in the world, the new age spirit, the spirit of peace, the spirit of a healthy plant, spirit of a healthy person.

      Dream world spirit: scary visions, mysterious patterns, cryptic notes, devas, overpowering elemental forces or ecstatic body feelings.

Do This! 

Exercise 42• Exploring the Path of the Spirit 

Spend some quiet time meditating on different areas of your life like your home, work place, favourite walk, parents house, etc. Can you sense a certain energy connected to each area? Is the energy light or heavy, bright or dark?

Which areas do you trance-out around? We tend to trance-out when there is an attacker around, even if it is not obvious. 

Trancing means you have difficulty focusing. 

• Which energies are you attracted to?
  
  
• Do certain people attract you or repel you
   
• Record spirit experiences: