Pagan Dreaming – Nimue Brown (Trigger Warning: sleep paralysis)
The review process is always a bit hair raising (because I always expect people are not going to like my work, and occasionally I do get really nasty reviews) but it can also be a bit of an adventure. My favourite reviews tell me something I didn’t know. Usually this means the book I’ve written gets placed in the wider context of someone else’s reading or personal experience. There’s always more to know, and the insights that come from finding out what other people do with my words, what’s useful, and where they go with what I’ve suggested, is always a fascinating process.
So, this is a reblog of a book review that introduced me to a topic I didn’t know much about. I’ve had a gut feeling for a long time that too much effort to get control over the contents of dreams, might be counter-productive, but this is the first time I’ve had some evidence for why that may indeed be very much the case…
Originally posted on adayinthelifeofawitch:
My dreams were in the process of returning from a long period of absence whilst I was reading this book, which was a strange but delightful coincidence.
For reference, I have a non-relationship with my dreams. I’ve suffered from sleep paralysis all of my life, but only in the last few years have I found out what exactly sleep paralysis is and that I’m not being violated by some hideous eldritch creature(s) invading my dreams.* Since every bout of my sleep paralysis is preceded by not one, but several horrible nightmares, so my instinct always is to open my eyes and be awake as soon as possible which is the worst thing to do in the situation.
For this reason I really appreciate the emphasis on healthy sleeping and dreaming over mere interpretation in Nimue’s book. I also appreciate the inclusion of scientific and medical findings on sleep and dreams. The…
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