Oh my heart… My facebook has been pinging all morning with friends sending me condolences. That’s how much Meat Loaf was a part of me. Meat Loaf, I’ve no doubt you’re in “Paradise” now.

Your dreams are the most powerful part of who you are! In my latest book Dream On It, Unlock Your Dreams Change Your Life you will learn how the dreaming mind works, the 10 MUST KNOW RULES to understanding every dream, how to easily figure out what the different people in your dreams mean, and so much more.

Plus, there’s a comprehensive dream dictionary in the back.

“This is an AMAZING book! It was given to me as a gift and I love it! I could hardly put it down. I refer back to it often to interpret my dreams now. I loved it so much I recommend it to everyone I know.”   – Mel Martin, Amazon reviewer

The post That Time Meat Loaf Told Me About His Recurring Dream appeared first on Lauri Loewenberg | Dream Expert.

According to a documentary on The History Channel, on January 15, 1968, during his 39th birthday party, King told his aide Dorothy Cotton a dream he had the night before…

“I had died and no one was there. I yelled to Ralph Abernathy (a minister, civil rights leader and close friend to King), Ralph, bring those people standing there over here.”

Was this dream warning him of what was to become a reality only two and a half months later? No one can say for sure, but what is a fact is that other notable figures who made huge waves in history had dreams of their own deaths only weeks beforehand, Elvis, Princess Diana and Abraham Lincoln, just to name a few.

The post MLK’s Dream You Probably Didn’t Know About appeared first on Lauri Loewenberg | Dream Expert.

Sometimes it’s hard to decide what New Year’s resolution to make because there are so many things we’d like to change, and some of us don’t even bother with it. If this sounds like you then you may be interested to know that – whether you can’t decide or you don’t think it’s worth it – your inner subconscious mind knows what you should change in this new year… and it has probably been nagging you about this for quite some time.  In other words, if you have any of the following common recurring dreams, then you have got yourself fertile ground for a New Year’s resolution!

Being chased – If you’re constantly running from something or someone in your dreams at night, then odds are you’re avoiding an issue in waking life. In general, chasing dreams are caused by “fight or flight” situations where you choose “flight” or avoidance rather than “fight” or confrontation. Perhaps you’re the type that tries to get out of obligations, or you avoid someone rather than having that needed confrontation with them. Whatever the case, if this is your recurring dream then avoidance and procrastination is your issue.

The resolution – Resolve to face and deal with your issues this year, no matter how difficult they may be. You can’t run forever.  Avoidance is never a good way to handle an issue.  All it does is prolong the pain and anxiety. Like ripping off a band aid, it may be difficult or painful for a moment, but once it’s taken care of the relief will feel so good!

Tornadoes – If this is your recurring dream then you are likely a proud card-carrying member of the worry wart club! Tornadoes are a classic symbol for worry and anxiety over approaching doom.  The spinning of the tornado is also important as it is connected to the idea that you feel something in your life is spinning out of control. These dreams are showing you your own worry in the form of a tornado so that you can understand the destructive force it has on your psyche.

The resolution – Time to channel your inner storm chaser this year and confront these worries head on. First, identify what your worry is connected to. Is it something you have no control over like world affairs or someone else’s issue?  If so then know that all you can do is change your reaction to it.  Rather than fearing the worst, hope for the best or remove your mind from it altogether.  If your tornado dreams are the result of worry over a current situation directly connected to you that you can change, then stop focusing on what you fear the end result may be and start focusing on what you want the end result to be. A simple shift in your thought process can make huge positive changes in your life.

Your mate is cheating – This dream has caused a lot of men to get slapped first thing in the morning! But it rarely means that your mate is actually getting his or her pleasures elsewhere.  It DOES mean, however, that there is a third wheel in the relationship. No, not necessarily a person but rather a thing. There is something that your mate is giving too much time and attention to and it is causing you to feel “cheated” out of the time and attention you feel you should be getting.  Usually the third wheel is work, but it could be something like fantasy football, the X Box, golf or a new baby that’s taking all the focus away from the relationship.

The resolution – Resolve to carve out more time for each other.  Ask your mate if they can cut back a bit on all the time he or she is giving to this other thing. Don’t be naggy about it. Offer up a compromise.  “If you cut back on X then I’ll cut back on Y,” for example.  If this isn’t possible because the third wheel is work or a new baby, then make a date night. Once a week make sure you create a time and place where it is just the two of you focusing on nothing else but each other. This will not only fan the flames in your relationship, it will stop those awful cheating dreams dead in their tracks!

Filthy, clogged or out of order toilets – This dream often has major Eew factor! It’s also one I get a lot.  In this dream you gotta go! But you either can’t find a toilet or the ones you do find are nasty, clogged, out of order or even in a place where everyone can see you go! This recurring dream means you have a recurring behavior pattern of “holding in” your frustrations and negativity rather than “”relieving yourself” and opening up about what is bothering.  These dreams are showing you what you are doing to your inner psychological plumbing: you are allowing it to get backed up! The more you hold in what you feel is “crappy,” the more life will stink!

The resolution – This year, start working on letting it out.  It doesn’t matter what others think of you. If something is bothering you, holding it in is the worst thing you can do. That will only lead to tense relationships, angst, headaches and even back pain! When we hold in emotional frustration, it starts to affect us physically.  So let it out and flush it away.  You’ll be surprised how well those that are frustrating you will be able to handle it… and most importantly, you’ll be surprised how great your clean, clear emotional plumbing feels!

Teeth falling out – Believe it or not, this dream has nothing to do with your oral hygiene! Anything having to do with the mouth in a dream is actually connected to the way you have been communicating lately.  Loose teeth in a dream mean loose speech in waking life. And if they fall out of your mouth uncontrollably, then odds are you’ve let something slip out of your moth the previous day. If you gossip, if you say things without thinking about it or tend to continually say things you wish you hadn’t, you’re likely very familiar with this recurring dream.

The resolution – Start thinking before you speak! Once it’s out of your mouth, you can’t put it back in.  Be mindful that what you say affects others. The loss of teeth in waking life would make you worry about your looks the same way bad communication might make you worry about how you appear to others.  Just as you polish those pearly whites for aesthetics, polishing up your communication skills will make you shine too.

It’s a new year.  Why not create a new you?

Dreams are so very powerful and have so so much information inside of them, when you know how to understand them. My latest book Dream on It is very thorough and will teach you how the dreaming mind works. It’s been so effective that it has been featured on Dr. Oz, the Today Show, Live! with Kelly and Ryan and more! It also includes a chapter on animals in dreams and how they are connected to our behaviors and instincts. Once you’ve read Dream on It you’ll never look at your dreams the same again! It also makes a FANTASTIC gift for anybody!

“This book was given to me as a gift and I love it! I could hardly put it down. I refer back to it often to interpret my dreams now. I loved it so much I recommend it to everyone I know.”   – Mel Martin

The post Your recurring dreams can determine your New Year’s resolutions appeared first on Lauri Loewenberg | Dream Expert.

I know the idea of these very vivid, long and often frightening dreams being a good thing seems ridiculous… but trust me. They ARE a good thing. Heck, this is a movement and I am VERY excited about it!!

You see, I have been a professional Dream Analyst for a very long time, Twenty four years in fact. And one of the things I am CONSTANTLY asked is, “How do I remember my dreams? I don’t think I ever dream.”  My go-to response is, “But you do dream. Every single night. Every 90 minutes throughout the night. It’s a natural and necessary function of the brain. If you sleep, you dream. You probably had four or five dreams just last night. You simply aren’t remembering them.”

Why are we remembering our dreams NOW? WIthout getting into all the boring scientific, biochemical this and norepinephrine that… the fact is that dreams are slippery and if you don’t capture the memory of your dream within 30 seconds of waking up, it’s gone! So now that we are all forced to stay at home during this pandemic and not go to work, we no longer have to wake up at ungodly hours to an alarm clock, jump out of bed and get ready. No. Instead, we sleep until we wake up naturally, the way our bodies were designed to wake up: slowly, gently and with a head full of dreams just waiting to be remembered.

In addition, without having to wake up to an alarm, we are able to reach that last, final cycle of REM that happens to be the longest of them all. Each cycle of REM/dream sleep that we have throughout the night increases in duration, so the last cyle of dreaming, before we wake up in the morning, can be 45 minutes long! Thanks to the alarm clock, we usually don’t get that last, super long dream. But now… we are! That other magical, adventurous and bizarre life we’ve been living, every single night of our lives, is finally being acknowledged!!

Do you have any idea how happy this makes me?!

Okay. I realize you may not find this as celebratory as I do because, if you are like the entire world right now, the dreams you are remembering are, well… terrible. They are probably full of stress, aggravation and scary scenarios like tornados, death or bug infestations. I get it. These sort of dreams suck! But, believe it or not, they are good for you!

Our dreams are built in therapists. You know how, when we have a problem or big decision to make, we tend to say, “I need to sleep on this?” And we often wake up with a clearer head or a great idea? That’s because we sorted it all out in the dream state. Don’t just take my twenty four years of research and expertise for it.  Scientific studies are also finding that we are able to solve difficult problems while we dream. And I have found that the more disturbing the dream, the more important the message. The disturbing dreams we get, during stressful times, serve as a mirror reflecting back to us how well or how poorly we are handling our stress. I have found that they can also offer guidance and answers when you look closely at the details within the dream.

At the beginning of this pandemic, before I knew there would be such a global trend in dream recall, I made this infographic on stress dreams. Within days of posting this, clients began telling me their dreams were becoming longer, more vivid, and upsetting. They were dreaming of their hands falling off, snakes attacking at parties, ants coming out of their bodies, fires consuming buildings, children going missing… GAH!! Media outlet after media outlet, from Spain to the UK to here in the U.S., began reaching out to me, asking me to comment on the quarantine dreams trending on social media.

Want me to personally help you understand your dreams? It’s an amazing experience and will give you more answers than you could ever imagine!

Then, TMZ came along and asked me a VERY interesting question.  “Have you noticed an uptick in traffic to your site? What are the most common symbols people are searching for?” So I looked. And what I found was fascinating.

A significant uptick on both of my sites began on March 15th. This site, LauriLoewenberg.com has seen a 60% uptick in traffic. And my instant dream decoding site has seen a 40% uptick in traffic.

Since March 15, the most searched symbols were:

#1. Grandparents dying 
– I think this is because the elderly are the most vulnerable to this virus and the fear of losing our grandparents to it is being expressed in the dream state.

#2.  Storms/raining/tornadoes
– Weather in dreams will reflect our emotional state at the time of the dream because our emotions are the weather of the mind. Rain tends to represent sadness and tears. Tornadoes represent worry and anxiety that is spinning out of control.

#3. Child missing/child being taken
– Again, most likely fear of losing a family member to the virus, BUT we can also dream of our child missing or being taken when the child changes or reaches a milestone because we “miss” the younger child. I would imagine this dream is so frequent now because we miss the child that went to school everyday and didn’t drive us crazy!

#4. Being bitten by a bug or snake
– We tend to refer to illness as “a bug.”  There is infact a bug going around right now that is scary as hell and no one wants to catch it or be “bitten” by it. I think snakes are also common in dreams right now because they tend to represent a toxic person or a toxic situation in your life. This virus is literally toxic. We also will dream of bugs when someone or something is really annoying or “bugging” us. Being quarantined with your partner and/or family 24/7 for weeks now, even their blinking can bug you!

#5. Falling
– Falling most often represents the feeling of being let down, plans falling through, etc. But it can also happen when something is going in the wrong direction and we feel we have no support. It is also a common dream for people who suffer from depression. In these current circumstances, people’s bank accounts are falling, plans for the future are falling and emotional states are falling.

Sigh.

So how are all these depressing, stress dreams the best thing to happen to us, you are probably asking?  Look at your upsetting dreams and nightmares as helpers. They are not only allowing you to express your fears and concerns safely in your head, but they also are a means by which you can “check in” with your mental health. If your bad dreams and nightmares continue to be frequent or get progressively worse then that is a good indication you need to retrain your brain, so to speak. Do this by redirecting your thoughts whenever they start to go negative. Think about and start planning something fun to do once we are all on the other side of this. Do fun and constructive things with your kids, like a new recipe every day. Call that friend that always makes you laugh. Watch a Will Ferrell movie on Netflicks.

Additionally, at night, right before you turn out the light to go to sleep JOURNAL! Write out all your concerns. Get them out of your head and onto paper… or onto your laptop. In addition, write about the positive outcome you would like to see. Write about what you can actively do to make things better between you and your partner, your finances, whatever it is that troubles you. What can you actually do about it?

Then, once you have sorted out your thoughts and got them out of your head, turn out your light and as you drift off, think about what you love, who you love, the possibilities in your future, etc. These positive thoughts will transform into better dreams. Guaranteed! But you have to be consistent. Journal each night, Think positively each night. This is how you reprogram your brain. It’s easier than you think!

ONE LAST THING!

Take this time as an opportunity to start paying attention to your powerful, dreaming mind. Start journaling your dreams as well. If you keep a dream jouirnal in tandem with a day journal, you will start to see how your dreams correlate with your thoughts and events of the previous day, how connected they are and how insightful your dreams can be. It’s a fun new habit to start. I also recommend sharing your dreams at the breakfast table every single morning. It’s not only a great way to start the day because, they can be freaky and the laughs you will share are priceless! But sharing your dreams with each other is a wonderful way for the family to stay plugged in to each other.

Happy dreaming and stay healthy!

Want to be able to understand your recurring dreams? Your nightmares? Your sex dreams and more? Then grab yourself a copy of my latest book Dream On It, Unlock Your Dreams Change Your Life and you’ll be understanding your dreams in no time!

“This is an AMAZING book! It was given to me as a gift and I love it! I could hardly put it down. I refer back to it often to interpret my dreams now. I loved it so much I recommend it to everyone I know.”   – Mel Martin, Amazon reviewer

The post Your Quarantine Dreams Might Be The Best Thing To Happen To You! appeared first on Lauri Loewenberg | Dream Expert.

Madonna 20 VMA awards

Madonna Has Recurring Nightmares of Being Attacked with A Knife.  More specifically, she is attacked by a dwarf with a knife! This nightmare suggests Madonna is feeling victimized in real life. Knives in particular can symbolize cutting, emotionally wounding remarks.

Madonna faces a lot of criticism from the media and the public in general. While it may not bother her while she’s awake, it clearly bothers her while she sleeps. And the dwarf? That’s her fear of being dwarfed or diminished in the public eye. Let’s face it, she’s a BIG celebrity and she does everything in a BIG way. However, criticism does bring her ego down to size… of course, she won’t let that show!

If you ever have a dream involving a knife, ask yourself if you have been the victim of someone’s cutting remarks lately. If not, then there may be a person or a behavior you need to cut out of your life!

Taylor Swift 7 VMA awards

One of Taylor’s recurring dreams involves her being framed for murder! Recently Taylor Swift opened up to Dave Barry of Capitol FM, a radio station in the UK about this nightmare, “I always have nightmares that I’m being framed for murder and then I’m being framed SO well that I can’t remember if I did it or not in the dream. So that really winds me up and then I’m just freaked out for the next couple of days.”

I think this little tidbit is VERY juicy! Without having the opportunity to personally talk with Taylor (interviewing the dreamer is the best way to figure out the meaning of the dream) this is my professional assessment:

Death in dreams is usually about something coming to an end in the dreamer’s life, typically a natural ending or change that is occurring. Murder is a forced death, therefor in dreams it is often about a forced ending in waking life. Now, what we all know – and quite frankly love – about Tay Tay, is that she goes through relationships like a bag of Lays potato chips.  We love this about her because her break ups inspire her songs.

These recurrent break ups are likely the murders in her dreams. There is also confusion about whether she actually committed the murders or not; she is framed for the murders. This shows us that in real life, Taylor doesn’t feel she is at fault for the break up (a break up is a forced ending, like a murder is a forced death). But as time goes on, she probably questions herself, “Hmmm. Maybe I was too clingy or too demanding,” for example (she’s framed so well she can’t remember if she actually did murder). But here’s what’s sad about it guys, feeling that she is framed for murder in the dreams might mean in real life she feels used in relationships. She feels used over and over again because she has this same dream over and over again.

Doesn’t that just make you want to hug her tight and say, “There there Taylor. Now now.”?

Rihanna 7 VMA awards

Rihanna had a nightmare of a building collapse.  She told it to me back in 2005, when we were both on the air on KZHT in Salt Lake City. She had recently had a nightmare that she and her brother watched a plane crash into a skyscraper. The Skyscraper then collapsed onto her brother. While this nightmare is eerily reminiscent of 9/11, it is actually more about Rihanna’s relationship with her little brother. Planes often symbolize that which you have high hopes for or that in your life you hope will take off.

At the time, Rihanna’s first hit “Pon De Replay” (Hey Mr. DJ) was out and her career, like a plane, was taking off. The building is the relationship she had “built” with her brother. It is presented as a sky scraper because she and her brother were very close and the relationship was a BIG part of her life. The plane hits the skyscraper, causing it to collapse because Rihanna – at the time – was worried her busy schedule and jet setting all over the world would conflict with her relationship and that her absence would harm her brother emotionally. As horrible as the nightmare is, it confirms the deep emotional bond she and her brother share and serves as a reminder to keep that bond alive no matter how big her career gets… and man, did her career get big since then!

Foo Fighters 2 VMA awards

Ever get that recurring dream about a house you’ve never been to? Well then, you’re in good company because Foo Fighter’s lead man, Dave Grohl, recently revealed to Us Weekly that he has been getting that dream his entire life!  “My entire life, I’ve had the same recurring dream about a house I’ve never been to.”

The unfamiliar house dream is actually a very common dream. You see, the house – whether it’s your actual house, a house you used to live in or some random dream house – represents YOU! The house in your dream represents everything about you and how you live.  The style of the home, the condition of the home, what happens in the home, even the rooms in the home are connected to you and how you feel about your self as well as what is going on inside the psyche that your body houses.  The dreaming mind uses the home in order to show you yourself and your state of mind in the form of a physical structure so you can better understand your own personality construct, thought construct and even body construct.  Look at your house dreams as an honest blueprint of your current self image.

In most cases, dreaming of an unfamiliar house suggests the dreamer is still getting to know her or himself and is discovering things about themselves they didn’t previously know, like discovering new talents, skills, opinions or ideas.  Dave Grohl, being a musician and song writer, it would make sense that he’s constantly coming up with new ideas and opinions. However, the unfamiliar house dream can also mean that you are not feeling “at home” in your current life, that what you are dealing with or where your life is at is not comfortable or what you you think it should be. This could also fit for Dave because in that same US Weekly article he states that he’s been touring almost every year since he was 17. He literally isn’t “at home” a good portion of each year so his life is made up of unfamiliar places.

Want to be able to understand your recurring dreams? Your nightmares? Your sex dreams and more? Then grab yourself a copy of my latest book Dream On It, Unlock Your Dreams Change Your Life and you’ll be understanding your dreams in no time!

“This is an AMAZING book! It was given to me as a gift and I love it! I could hardly put it down. I refer back to it often to interpret my dreams now. I loved it so much I recommend it to everyone I know.”   – Mel Martin, Amazon reviewer

The post The MTV Video Music Awards Are Tonight and These Winners Have Had Some Crazy Dreams! appeared first on Lauri Loewenberg | Dream Expert.