The Quantum Mind and healing : dreambody history, theory and practice

By Arny Mindell

For most of us, and for many therapists, the body appears as a central topic only when there are severe symptoms. It is still a relatively surprising to discover that symptoms can be enlightening.

After completing my Jungian studies and becoming a training analyst in the 1970’s, I realized that if dreams were meaningful, the same must be true for all personal, physical and dreamlike experiences. I began studying how the dreaming mind appears not only in our nighttime dreams, but also in every little thing we notice all day long. I was amazed to discover the dreaming process in our everyday minds and in all our body experiences- including symptoms. Whatever we experience is recognizable in our dreams. Based upon these and other observations, together with many friends in Zurich Switzerland, I began developing what is today called, “process oriented psychology”, a non-pathological approach to everything we experience from body symptoms and dance processes, to relationship issues and large group situations.

The central theme of all my ideas is about process, as understood in Taoism and physics. Process allowed me to use my background in applied physics, Jungian psychology and the “Tao that can not be said.” I found new approaches to altered states of consciousness including psychotic and comatose states. Spiritual experiences appeared in an entirely new light for me.

Treasure, Follow and Unfold What you Notice

In any case, after studying many alternative and ancient medical practices, and not knowing where to turn to integrate my own dream and body experiences, I returned to my interests in science and became a simple observer. I decided to take seriously every detail of what people did and said. I watched and listened, questioned and explored what they meant and felt when they spoke about dreams, body experiences, relationships and world issues. The results renewed my belief in the human spirit, in the Tao.

Dreambody

The basic observational approach led to my first discovery. Dreams appear not only at night, but also during the day in the form of many experiences, including body symptoms. The way our body symptoms feel to us, the way we experience them is mirrored in our nighttime dreams. If you have a stabbing pain, this stabbing sensation feels better when you are “more to the point” in your everyday behavior. The bottom line is an insight; body symptoms are part of the dreaming process. The body is dreaming. I called the phenomenon of dreams reflecting body feelings, the “Dreambody” and wrote a series of books about that reflection phenomenon.

The Body’s Mysteries and Psychology

I was awestruck by the incredible experiences “locked” in the bodies of my clients. I was not only touched by the pain and fear around symptoms, but also by the dream-like experiences of things they told me about. Tiny “insignificant” itches to life threatening disease manifests the most amazing dream like content almost more explicit than dreams themselves. Working playfully and seriously with little kids and adults, in good health and near death revealed perennial wisdom waiting to be told.

Allopathic approaches to the body are an important aspect of body experience. But these approaches rarely incorporate our consciousness. Dreambody levels of body experience connect to the origins of time, space, and perhaps life itself. Following apparently meaningless symptoms, pathological states and even the tiniest subtle body cues (that I found in working with people in comatose states) revealed almost incomprehensible mysteries. (See my book “Coma, Key to Awakening”). The body itself is a trustworthy guide in helping us dream and understand “reality”.

Dreambody in the world

By developing new ways of working with the body and dreams, my process oriented approach allowed me to track and follow, appreciate and discover that dreams not only occur in the body, they also occur during all kinds of movement experiences including signals and “double signals” in relationships. (A double signal is a body movement sending out a “double message”. You may be saying one thing, while your body is saying another.) Normally, we are as unconscious of these double signals as we are of the significance of our body symptoms and dreams. Awareness of such signals clarifies and deepens our relationships. Eventually, learning to “process” the dreambody in relationships led me to tracking the dreaming process of large groups in action. New approaches to conflict and international events appeared along with the creation of an international network of process oriented training programs and schools etc.

The Dreambody’s “Pre-Signals”

As the century turned forward, I returned back to physics. I wanted to know more about where dreams and body experience came from. What is life? Who are we? Where did our universe come from? To explore the dreaming body, our physical experience and our relationship to the universe, I went back to the quantum realm of physics and of our body. I explored and tracked body experience in the form of the tiniest, first beginnings of symptoms. Looking into these nano-like events enabled me to understand how much of the math of quantum mechanics was a projection of our most sentient and subtle psychology. Now, tracking people’s most subtle processes and exploring the mathematical patterns behind quantum mechanics helped me discover new psychological techniques for understanding who we are.

Quantum Mind

I discovered that our mind’s essence is a “quantum mind”. Suddenly, I could reconnect my practice with my past education, and with other scientists. My everyday therapy practice became wider and focused not only upon everyday difficulties, but also upon the tiniest perceptions we normally don’t pay attention to. I became interested in “pre-signal” work; in the things we can barely feel and hardly talk about. This subtle dreambody work is described in my quantum mind books. For example, the “Quantum Mind and Healing” takes bodywork and therapy into the area between theoretical physics, alternative medicine, and shamanism.

Quantum Mind in the Body

It’s almost impossible to describe any mind and body practice briefly because this is very personal work and because there are literally hundreds of different process-oriented approaches to any one problem all of which depend upon the individual’s experiences and signals. But let me try to describe a simple body experiment you can try with yourself.

Consider one of your own symptoms, or a symptom you would like to understand better that you had in the past. What did that symptom feel like and who or what reminds you of that feeling? For example, if you had a heart problem, perhaps one of your symptoms felt like a vague sense of pressure. You might feel as if someone or something is pressuring you. Most likely, a recent dream shows this body experience. For example you might have dreamed of someone pressuring you.

In any case, this is an example of the dreambody phenomena. The dreambody appears in your symptoms, but in your dreams as well. Moreover, the same dreambody experience will appear in the messages and signals you send to others in relationship. Most of your spontaneous movements and double signals will also manifest that same figure personified by your experience of your body symptom. Perhaps others complain that you pressure them, or that you look pressured yourself.

The quantum level of your (pressure) symptom refers to your experience of the subtle, almost inexplicable background giving rise to that symptom. Just ask yourself, what your symptom energy might have been in its very early states, before it became so intense. What were its first impulses? Now you enter into a new and subtle world of “essence work.” For example if you are working on a pressure experience, the first “essence” of the symptom could be the tiniest impulse towards freedom, or creativity. Exploring the essence of that pressure could initiate a whole new life style.

“Quantum Mind And Healing”

In the Quantum Mind and Healing I go into details suggesting new awareness practices for finding the essence of all sorts of symptom energies and show how these essence are connected to nano and quantum phenomena.

Over the past thirty years, dreambody work has been meaningful and helpful to many hundreds of people around the world. But I needed to write this new book to explore open, perennial questions. I wanted to know more about symptoms, and also more about the nature of biological life. What happens to the body at the moment of death? Is there a relationship between awareness, the reversal of entropy and the rate of aging? Why have Aboriginal healing rituals involving vibrational experience always been so “healing” in the largest sense?

In the Quantum Mind and Healing I learned that finding the “essence” or the pre-signal experience of symptoms takes us to deep levels, to our subjective experience of the origin of life. The essence of symptoms reveals our “quantum mind”, that is a deep psychological and spiritual experience linked to the whole universe.

In the Quantum Mind and Healing, I show that the mathematical background to quantum theory is a metaphor for the rhythms, sounds and songs coming from our body. Since quantum thinking is so close to the psychology of mystical experience and so useful in physics, we must now encourage medical practice to move beyond its Newtonian underpinnings. After all, presently particles, waves, and quantum field theory are the most precise physical understanding of the universe. It’s time focus on the blessings of Newtonian chemistry, body mechanics and genetics and also nonlocality, consciousness and the world of dreams. The integration of shamanism and modern medicine, dreams and physics will deepen the bio medical tradition.

Though professional guidance is helpful, just about anyone can learn to use the vibrations, rhythms, sounds and songs imbedded in symptoms for personal growth. In this new book, I go further and focus on nonlocality. I show how to symptoms linked to troubled relationships, group and world issues can be used for the possible benefit of all.