June 25, 2025 • 36 mins
Dr. Bonnie Buckner joins Kelly to explore the untapped power of your dreams—not just as nighttime entertainment, but as a tool for healing, clarity, and even creativity. Bonnie shares insights from her new book The Secret Mind and breaks down the different kinds of dreams we have, what they’re trying to tell us, and how to interact with them in a way that actually moves the needle in our lives.
They also dive into why creativity levels are at an all-time low—and how dreamwork can reignite inspiration, intuition, and deeper self-connection. Whether you’re someone who always remembers your dreams or can’t recall a thing, this conversation will make you think twice about what happens while you sleep.
Book: The Secret Mind
Website: bonniebuckner.com or institutefordreamingandimagery.com
socials: @bonniebucknerdotcom
HOST: Kelly Henderson // @velvetsedge // velvetsedge.com
Follow Velvet's Edge on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/velvetsedge/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Conversations on life, style, beauty, and relationships. It's the Velvet's
Edge podcast with Kelly Henderson.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
So that's where Bonnie Buckner is here. Her books is
out today. Actually it's called The Secret. Well, the day
we're recording, I just say that for the listeners, it
is already out when you guys are hearing this, but
it's called The Secret Mind. Unlock the power of your
dreams to transform your life. And I'm so excited to
talk to you, specifically because I've been having very active dreams.
(00:32):
So this could not have come at a better time.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Great, So welcome, Thank.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
You for being thank you, thanks for having me here.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, so we were just talking before the podcast and
in the description of your book on I think it
was on Amazon dot com. Actually, it just talks about
how there were living in this time that I find
this to be such an interesting conversation. We're living in
this time where creativity is dropping rapidly, and you know,
I think a lot of my listeners have probably heard
(01:00):
about the effects of AI that are coming out now
on our cognitive abilities. We're constantly scrolling, which is something
you've talked about to and you talk about dreams really
being this force that we can tap into to get
back to our creativity. Can you talk about that just
as a start? I found that to be such a
powerful statement and such a powerful idea, and that's kind
(01:24):
of what this book is about.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yes, And thank you for asking that question, because I
do love to talk about that, because for me, when
we can tap into our inner creativity, then we can
move our whole our life, first of all, and our
communities in our world to new places, new being, new
things that we can imagine, new ways of being that
(01:47):
we can imagine. And so let's go back before AI.
Since nineteen ninety, creativity scores in America have been dropping,
and they've been dropping at such a rate that there's
papers written on it and things like this, and there's
a lot of different research around the why. You know,
(02:08):
back then it was a little bit technology, but a
lot more about just multiple choice questions and about schools
not having enough time for creativity in a whole host
of other reasons. But now it's compounded by AI and
all of these other things that you brought up. When
we sleep, in our night dreams, the part of our
(02:30):
brain that lights up is the part that is also
responsible for creativity and imagination. So not only does the
content of dreams sort of spark our creativity, we're literally
using that part of our brain that is the creative
part of our brain, if you will. Yeah, So so
(02:52):
many people tell me, yeah, but I don't have time
to write my dreams in the morning. I don't pay
attention to my dreams. The thing that starts to happen
if you just get a journal and you start to
write down your dreams and we'll dig into your dreams
here and just the crazy dreams you're talking about. But
if you just start to write those down and just
lay there for like five minutes without grabbing the phone,
(03:15):
without jumping into all those things, and just let those
sensations images resonate, it's amazing the amount of ideas and
really answers to things that have kind of been in
the back of your head will come forward.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Okay, that actually you've already answered some of my questions
about my own dreams. But right, so it's the writing
it down because one of the things that happens to
me often is I'll be waking up kind of you know,
you're still in that haze, and you're going what that
was the weirdest dream. And I swear to you, if
I do one thing like go make a coffee or something,
(03:53):
I can get back to my bed, even if I'm
just like going back into the same position and not
remember at all what it was about, Like, what did
I dream?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Like?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
It goes away? Why does that does? Well?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
We move to a different part of our cognitive processing. Okay,
so we have two powerhouse cognitive processing systems in our
brain and making this very simple, but there's the executive network,
and that's what we're doing right now because we're thinking
about what's the next question, what's the response? List, making,
adding up numbers, any of those things, goal oriented tasks.
(04:27):
But the dreaming part of ourself is called the default network,
and it's the creative part, the imaginative part. It's the
part that's responsible for understanding how our actions might have
affected another person. So I call that sometimes social cognition.
So really very simply put imagining stepping in the shoes
(04:51):
of somebody else. And these two are kind of like
on off switches if one is on, the others off
and vice versa. So when you're laying there in that
very you called it hazy, it's really just super productive,
but in a different way time for us. Then we're
(05:12):
in that part of ourself and it's still active and
we haven't switched over to the goal making. You said,
I wake up, go make a cup of coffee. Well
that's the goal. So you're out of it already.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah. So I got myself out of it by going
to make the coffee. I'm in the different part of
my brain and then now I feel like, Okay, I
got to get a going with my day exactly more
than the hazy remembering what happened in my dream.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah, but think about this. Have you ever been in
the shower or filing your nails and you're not thinking
of anything, You're relaxing, and suddenly you're like, oh, yeah,
that's what I need to write or that's what I
need to do, and an idea comes up. That's because
the executive network has gone quiet and the default network
(05:58):
is on. So it's really dreaming while awake.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Dreaming while awake. I'm processing that because I always thought
of that as your intuition. Same, it is the same thing.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
It's the same thing. There are distinctions. Dreaming while awake
is you know, if we want to be very academic
about it. It's the default network. Depending on the research
article that you read, it might be called mind wandering,
it might be called day dreaming, you know, actual scientific term.
And it's when we're in that part of ourself, of
(06:32):
our cognitive processing. Intuition For me is maybe probably that part.
I haven't like studied that what happens in the brain
and intuition, but I know that from a body sense, right,
it's a hyper perceptive state for me. It's the same
state as dreaming is being aware of what we're sensing
(06:55):
in the very most basic way.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I want to ask the questions about subconscious but I
have one other question before that. Was there something that
happened in your life that sent you on this track
of studying dreams, Like what was the catalyst for even
wanting to write this book to help people really tap
more into the dream work.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, And that's like two different questions. So the first
thing is when I was three years old, I had
had a series of nightmares and I just I was
really upset about it, and like I didn't want to
sleep anymore. I was trying to figure out how can
I not sleep? And one morning I was thinking about
this on our front steps and it just kind of
(07:40):
hit me, Oh wait, this is what I'm here to do.
I'm here to figure out how to master my nightmares
and teach that to other people. And it's not like
I had a straight line from there, but I had
it always in the back of my head. And then
I've worked in different things. I've worked in Hollywood, I
worked in media political research company before going back to
(08:03):
get my PhD to work in this work. And both
of those, whether it's you know, Hollywood or it's politics,
it's all about how do images move us? And that's
what I went to study very specifically, is what is
the cognitive neuroscience behind images? Why can they change behavior?
(08:25):
How do they move us so much? Because dreams are
composed of images. And then it was around this time
that I found my teacher of dreaming, who taught me,
doctor Katherine Schamberg, this very ancient lineage of dreaming and
I just sort of put, you know, insights from modern
(08:46):
science to that. So that was the sort of my
personal dreaming journey. Okay, this book. One of the things
I do is I teach this work in a coaching
program at George Washington Universe, and the person that I
work with very closely. There said to me at one
point right before COVID, you know, you should write a
(09:08):
white paper or something that we can use in the program.
So I started to do that. But then during COVID,
I started thinking a lot more deeply about the fact
that we need to come back to our imagination. There
are a lot of people who are feeling very shut
down about the future of us, as in really us
(09:29):
humans and not just their lives, but for all of us.
And I know that we can solve all of these
problems if we can see it. And there's been a
long list of science of songs, media, all kinds of
things that have come from dreams, everything from insulin as
(09:52):
a cure for diabetes to several of the elements on
the periodic table of elements. All these things have come
from dreams. It is theory of relativity. It is really
the space for us to get out of the pattern
thinking part of our brains, which is also part of
(10:12):
the goal what we're using to think with right now,
the executive network, and into thinking beyond that.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So this kind of leads perfectly into my subconscious questions.
So when you're talking about these two different parts of
our brain. We have this executive part in the what
do you call it, the pattern.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
The default network. The executive part is patterned, the network
is imaginative.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Imaginative. Okay, So when I think of dreams, I associate
them with my subconscious brain, like maybe I'm tapping into
something that I've repressed that isn't in the part of
my brain that I'm working with day to day to day,
you know, doing the activities like the going to make
the coffee and all of that stuff. Is that accurate
(11:06):
or is this a totally different Is that? Are they
related at all? Because I also know and I want
to get to some of these other things that I
was thinking about dreams, But like, are we working through things?
Like I know you're saying we can tap into creativity,
but are we working through traumas and things like that
while we're dreaming. I'm just curious about the neuroscience. But
(11:26):
behind all of that.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, so dreams are showing us all of our responses
to what we're living. Okay, So there's a whole lot
going on around us right now. There's a whole lot
going on all day long that is on our inside.
But we're so busy you know, we're making coffee, we're
making lists, we're doing podcasts, we're doing I don't know
(11:51):
stuff on the computer. We're busy. But inside of all
of these different things that we're doing, the really quick scrolling,
the email from somebody else, the phone call, we have
responses to all of these things, but we never pause
to listen to ourselves. We're busy, so it's not repressed,
(12:11):
it's not paid attention to, right, we just don't stop
and listen. So when we dream, all of that part
the executive at work, the list making, all of that
is literally taken offline. So all of these experienced responses,
(12:31):
which is image not verbal, image is front center. But
we can check into that during the day. If we
only stopped, paused, relaxed, fouled our nails, you.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Know it took a shower exactly, But we don't do that. No, Okay,
So that's where we have termed it, like we suppressed
whatever we were just not pausing to see. Okay, that
makes so much sense. So one of the dreams I've
been having recently, or that I had last week, was
very interesting for me because it's about a relationship that
(13:06):
you know, I feel like I've put it. It's way
behind me, like there's there's nothing that I feel emotionally
about it. It's resolved, I guess in my day to day.
And I was telling my current boyfriend about this dream
because I was like, it really threw me that this
came up, Like I don't think about this anymore, but
(13:26):
I basically retraced part of that relationship in my dream,
and in the dream we broke up, but then there
were amends made and we got back together to try
to work on it again. But then the same thing happened,
and so there was a lot of fear that came
up again and all of that stuff. And I was
telling him about it the next morning because there's been
(13:47):
a period of time too where I felt like I
haven't been dreaming, and then all of a sudden last week,
I was having dream after dream after dream, and this
one happened, and so it threw me. And I don't
really know where to put it. But what would you
say about that, Like, how do I tap into working
with that and figuring out what my brain or body
or whatever is trying to tell me through this dream.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
That's a great example, Okay, kind of put you and
your current boyfriend at ease. Yes, I'm not sure what
he was thinking when you told him that.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
But no, he knows, I think. So he was kind
of thrown to He was like, what, that's so not
like you, and I'm like, I know.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
So here's the thing. So, first of all, our dreams
are showing us in image feelings that we have feelings, emotions, understandings,
and they get all packaged into an image or a
sequence of images. Okay, and so each image is you know,
a picture is worth more than a thousand words. That
(14:47):
is super true because that ex boyfriend, you could probably
write a thesis right now about every single thing that was.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yes, and I've changed as a person too, So there's
like that's why I think gets so interesting. And you're right,
my poor boyfriend, but he knows about how I feel
about this, so it wasn't There's absolutely no desire for
me in my life to even contemplate getting back together
with that person. This is a way.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
I get that totally.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
That's why it was so confusing about it.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah. Then here's the thing. So whenever we have an
event like today, it generally reminds us of an event
we've had before. Okay, and so whatever that ex boyfriend is,
you can ask yourself. And this is a great thing
for people to do when they dream about somebody. And
(15:40):
you don't have to answer this on your podcast, but
when people have a dream about somebody they've known before
or they know right now, is to say so and
so is the kind of person who and whatever qualities
are the first things that come off of your tongue
are some of the qualities that are just sort of
want to be looked at at this moment in time
(16:02):
about the self and where the self is in relationship
to certain things. So this is something that is about
making amends without going into completely opening out that dream.
There's a new boyfriend, there's an old boyfriend that didn't work,
but there's some amends being made. So current boyfriend, there's
still this idea of just in general boyfriend, you see
(16:26):
what I'm saying, relationship in general. So it's about making sure.
And this dream is super interesting because there's four levels
to every dream. And the first level is just the story,
that's what you told us. The second level is pattern
So what are the patterns that's showing in me? And
if I have a fear of a pattern repeating, or
(16:48):
if I'm headed down the road where maybe my reactions
to something could lead towards that pattern if I don't
curb it and transform it in some ways, the dream
think about dreams is like road signs, you know, next
exit ten miles. They're kind of helping us to see, like,
here's where you are, here's where this could lead, but
(17:11):
here's how you change it.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Okay, that makes so much sense. I mean the other thing,
and I've failed to mention this, but we had been
watching a movie where something similar had happened, and so
obviously it had gone into my brain. I did not
associate the two in my actual living life, like I mean,
until I was asleep, my brain wasn't putting the two
(17:33):
together at all. But so I definitely know there was
a reason that part of my brain attached to that.
But what you're talking about with the pattern is so
interesting because even in the dream the pattern did repeat. Yeah,
so it's mostly but what was I think it was?
Like I even expected that in the dream, if that
makes sense. But really what was throwing me was the
(17:56):
buying into what someone was saying and not ended up
being true. Like and said, then that's making me kind
of reflect on, oh, where is that coming up in
my life now? Like who am I not believing in something?
Am I not believing myself in something? There's so many
questions that started that brought up. But really it's so
interesting because it has absolutely nothing to do with my ex.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
It doesn't end ultimately because ultimately it's not about the
ex is that person, but it is about the experience
of being with that persone and what that brought up
as an aspect of the dreamer. So all of us
have many different aspects to ourself, many different facets. Every
(18:41):
aspect of the dream is an aspect of the dreamer.
So you know, old boyfriend is an aspect of me,
and that can be in really big ways how I
was reacting at that time, my fears at that time,
my hopes at that time. So we asked that question.
So is the kind of person who to get an
(19:02):
idea of like what are those things that I need
to look at right now? And then what you just
did of saying there's so many questions. This is part
of the power of dreams. They're weird on purpose.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Okay, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
All day we ignore our inner self, right then when
we go to sleep, we have a very weird dream,
or we have a scary dream, or we have a
dream we're we wake up and we're super mad about
something or something that's our inside giving us a little
kick in the pants saying, you know, pay attention to me.
(19:36):
So when we just do that and we allow ourselves
to ask those questions, our own inside has all of
our answers. We just have to listen and ask some
questions and also just be courageous enough to see the
answers when they come up.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Well, you just that just made me want to cry
because you just summed it up. As we were talking
about the not STU to listen to what was coming up.
You know, when we're making the coffee, we're doing the list,
we're doing all the things. And then my listeners know
this because I talked about it. But I was very,
very busy before I went to see my boyfriend last week,
and last week was like my reset time, and did
(20:16):
I not just say? And then I dreamed all week
and I haven't been in a pattern of dreaming, so
that's crazy. So it was like I was finally my
body was like hello.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Pay attention exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
My brain, Yeah, I guess was telling me your body first.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Brain is always second. Everything comes from the body first.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Oh, because that's and that's like what I was asking
about intuition too, same thing about it.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
We're sitting here and we're processing what's happening with our brains,
but actually it's coming through our senses first. It's coming
through visual hearing. Right now, I can you know, there's
fresh flowers behind me that I can smell. There's all
kinds of sensory information coming in, and it's much bigger
(21:02):
than we are. We're kind of in focus lock right now,
but our perception is much more expanded than that, and
all of that is information. So it comes into our
body first, and then it makes its way to our brain.
It happens faster than we can put our finger on it. Yeah,
although we can learn to kind of slow that down.
(21:23):
And so intuition is when we are able to really.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Put our finger on it and listen to the body.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah. Yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
So what about when people are having reoccurring dreams. We're
the stories of people having this same dream over and
over where all their teeth fell out or something like that, Like,
why is that happening over and over and over with
(21:53):
the same story and something really weird like that.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, so let's start with the really weird and go
back to how dreams wake us up to ourself. Okay,
so there's seven kinds of dreams, and the first kind
of dream is a nightmare and teeth falling out. I'm
gonna say that's.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
A nightmare, yeah, not pleasant something.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, And counterintuitively, that's actually a good thing. It's our
friend because it's waking us up to a right now
emotional block, something that we need to deal with. Okay,
this is the thing about our bodies. Our bodies are
so amazing. They're constantly letting us know what's going on.
(22:37):
It's it literally is like the dashboard on a car,
like okay, you're running out of gas, you know, or
on our phone, like we're getting all this kind of
feedback information. But if we ignore that and we're like
I can go, you know, twenty five more miles, or
I won't run out of battery, I've got one bar left,
(22:58):
or whatever, we ignore the signals, then we have these
kinds of dreams that are like, you have a major
emotional block, wake up to it. That's our inside talking
to us.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
If I ignore that, then I start repeating that nightmare
because these energetic blocks are literally blocking our ability to
be more creative because there's an alarm bell going off somewhere.
You know, it'd be like if you were trying to
have a dinner party and the toilet is backed up,
(23:30):
You're not going to relax at the dinner party because
you're me thinking the whole time, I really hope somebody
doesn't go to the bathroom, right right, Yes, So these
emotional blocks were like I really hope this doesn't come
out when I'm in the middle of the meeting, or
I really hope whatever. And if we just take the
time to look at it and deal with whatever that
(23:50):
internal block is, then our energy is free to up
and then we're more creative. We can solve our problems
and move on.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Okay, well that makes sense. So you said there's seven
types of dreams. Yeah, what are the other six?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
So there's nightmare, there's a repetitive nightmare. If we don't
deal with those, then we get a busy dream and
that's really just an emotional pilon, like a multi car
pile up. Okay, because that's the thing about it, Like
this if I just have a basic fear dream, I
don't deal with it, it repeats, I don't deal with it.
(24:27):
Then I start piling on. I start thinking things like, oh,
I'm so, I'm such a coward, or I resent you know,
so and so for turning me down for this, because
now I'm a coward because of that. Like we just
start adding story, story, story on top of it, and
it gets almushed together. So those three kind of go
(24:49):
together in a way if we're not dealing with it.
But then there's also a clear dream, and clear dreams
are showing us both here's your block, here's where you're
on your presentence, here's your block, here's your potential. But
it's a potential that we're not really exercising at the moment,
and so it leaves us with choice, like here's your blog,
here's your potential, and here's the way over that. When
(25:12):
we do that, then we resolve that, we resolve that
energy and we can go somewhere else. So those four
dreams are the unresolved dreams, and then we have resolved dreams,
which are you know, the messages, great dreams, dreams of light,
those those experiences of wonder and awe which is also
(25:34):
part of the human experience and also part of something
that we don't spend a lot of time seeking out or.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Paying attention to. It's also interesting to me because you know,
we do so many podcasts about just getting in touch
with yourself, self care, all of the things that we
need for healing, and it's so fascinating to me because
when I really break down what they're all saying, or
what any sort of healing work is, it's really about
(26:03):
getting back in touch with yourself. And it's so wild
because we live in this culture that teaches us the
exact opposite, when really it's like, no, all the answers
are inside of each of us, and it's just about
us slowing down, believing in that touching base, even communicating
with ourselves. I talk about that a lot, like sometimes
(26:23):
I'll just start talking to myself because I forget to,
like I forget to pay attention to me. Obviously, as
my dreams are telling me. The fact that I could
dream every night last week is because I actually stopped.
I slowed down. I was like, I need to reset,
I need to rest. I said those words, and then poof,
I'm having wild dreams every night. It's just it's wild
(26:47):
to me, it's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, and you know, back to AI, because you kind
of started to say, yeah, that there's so many great
things I'm sure that come from AI or I hope
that they go find a lot of you know, protein
things that can help cure diseases and all of that.
But if I'm using AI because I'm being lazy about something,
I'm training myself that I'm not able to do this
(27:13):
as well, or I'm not as creative and I'm not
exercising it. It really is a muscle, just like sitting
there and that you know, you called it that hazy time.
It's a muscle to do that. And why it's a
muscle is because with all of this technology, it gets
harder and harder for people to just focus on one
(27:35):
thing or to not focus and stay in that hazy thing.
I mean, just holding one thing in your mind for
a minute is a very difficult task for most people today.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Oh yeah, I used to be one of these people
who said, oh I just can't meditate. But that's why.
It's because you have to sit and your whole job
is not I mean, it is to bring yourself back
to this one focus in this one place, even when
you start to drift off. And I was always like, oh,
I just keep drifting off, I keep going to a
million different places. I'm making a to do list, and
(28:10):
that's okay. In meditation, it's just about bringing yourself back
to coming out of you know, thinking of the million things,
to going back to the one thing. And that is
tricky with how we're wired because we don't build that muscle.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
It's so true. And also, you know, let's go back
to how cool we are when we do listen. So
last summer, there was a whole new genre of music
called hit Them and it was at a very different
number of beats per minted and had a bunch of
different particularities to it, and it came from this guy's dream.
(28:46):
And that's like one example. There's so many examples, so
many songs that we love, the Twilight series, all these
things that came from a dream. And sometimes the dream
sort of lays it out pretty good detail for us,
but more often than not, it gives us a lot
of very interesting things, images, sensations, feelings, maybe a sentence,
(29:10):
and then it's our innate creativity if we just sort
of get curious about it that puts all those pieces
together and comes up with a new genre of music
or a new invention or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Right, we're just not allowing ourselves to do that. So
if people do want to start working with their dreams,
what would you say? I know you talk about this
a lot in the book, so obviously go buy the book.
But what are good places to start? If you could
just give us, like one tip, Yes, get a.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Dream journal, write them down before you get out of bed.
Don't like, yeah, make coffee. Start writing it down, and
also write down whatever it is you wake up with,
because a lot of people say to me, oh, I
didn't dream, And then when I just start asking questions
of like what was in your mind when you woke up,
they say, oh, yeah, I woke up with the song?
And Dad, it's all a dream. Whatever you wake up with.
(30:03):
Is it a color, is it a snippet of a song?
Is it a thought? Just write it down. It's a dream.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
What about like some mornings I wake up just in
a great mood, and some mornings I wake up in
a terrible mood. I have no definition of why is
that part of your dream?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
It could be, So maybe if you just lay there
just a teeny bit longer and see, like, what's the
image associated with that? If you just kind of ask
yourself that question, you may see something.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Okay, So is there a particular study or is there
research that you've done about dreams helping heal people emotionally?
I know you also mentioned something physically, didn't you a
second ago.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
There's so many different studies that kind of triangulate at that, okay,
And I kind of put those together in the book
in Secret Mind. So one of the things that I
can speak about, and again I want to emphasize that
at the very foundation of what I teach is a
centuries old understanding of dreams. And that's, you know, centuries
(31:10):
and centuries of observation of seeing how intervening with a dream,
looking at a dream, working with a dream, and then
here's what that human did after that. I mean, that
is science. So I want to speak to that too,
because it's actually, in many ways further ahead than contemporary neuroscience.
(31:31):
That's interesting, it's super interesting. So to put it very simply,
everything that is abstract to us, emotions, feeling, love, you know, democracy,
all of these concepts that we have, they're super abstract.
(31:51):
The feelings we have super abstract, we give it a name,
but we also have images for how we understand that,
and so having an image for that and seeing it
in our dreams helps us to see Okay, So if
this is an emotion, I can transform it. If it's
(32:14):
a belief system and it's restrictive, I can enlarge it.
It's difficult to do that if we're just feeling stuff,
especially these days, because we feel a lot of stuff,
a lot of different stuff, all day and long. So
dreams give us these images in scenarios, just like with
(32:34):
the ex boyfriend dream, so we can finally like put
our hands around something and really understand it for ourselves,
and then we can change, right.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I mean, you changed the whole narrative I had about
what that dream was about, you know, as I started
going back into like is there some unresolved anger that
I have about this or you know, things like that,
and that didn't feel true to me when I really
started asking myself the questions. But when you kind of
reframed it as the pattern, it took the face of
(33:04):
him out of it, and I'm like, oh, right, that
is that is, you know going on in my life
in other areas that I could think about. That's just
such an interesting reframe. But it works to what you
were just saying. I guess that's where my brain was
going with that.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
If anyone is listening and they are really wanting to
work with their dreams, can you tell us a little
bit more about what they would find in the book.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yeah. So I start in the book with how to
remember your dreams, because this book is really for everybody,
and I need to say that every person dreams. We
dream every night, whether you remember it or you don't,
and remembering it is actually really easy. So the whole
first chapter is about how to remember, how to set
up a practice, and then I lead people through a
(33:49):
sort of step by step of how to understand the images?
How do we make the images that appear in our
dreams from our own subjective experiencing, and then how to
you know, go more deeply into it. What is this
dream telling me? How do I know that? How do
I work with the dream? And I have pieces of
dreams from clients that I've worked with my own dreams,
(34:13):
And then we kind of shift gears and look at
this thing called the life plan, which is a way
of understanding our body energies that we call emotions and
feelings is an energy first, and understanding what that is
and how that corresponds to dreams. And then I switch
gears again and we have a whole chapter on premonitory
(34:37):
dreams and intuition, because it's really important. We know way
more than we think we know, and it's really important
to tap into that. And from there looking at you know,
how can you use your dreams to make a big
change in your life? And then finally the impact that
using our dreams can have not just on us as individuals,
(34:59):
but really on whole communities and even the world.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Well, if you guys want to go get this book.
I'm actually so pumped to really dive into doing my
journal and stuff in the morning and working with this.
I think it's so interesting about the forgetting because I
do that and I'll think, oh, I just didn't dream
last night, But then you'll get a ping later of
something random and you're like, wait, did I dream that?
Where is this coming from? So I want to work
with that as well. But the book is out, it's
(35:24):
this podcast is going out June twenty fifth, and said
the book came out yesterday for you guys, so I
will put a link for that book in the description
of this podcast. But where else can people keep up
with your work if they want to keep up with you?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Yeah, you can find me at Bonnie Buckner dot com.
I teach classes as well and do one on one
sessions through The institute is Institute for Dreaming and Imagery
dot com. You can follow us on Instagram. My insta
is Bonnie Buckner dot spill it out dotcom or dream
with Idi Perfect.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
I will put that in the disc option of this
podcast as well. Bonnie, thank you so much for being here.
I am fascinated by this topic so I can't wait
to dive in in my own life.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Thank you guys for listening.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Thanks for listening to the Velvet's Edge podcast with Kelly Henderson,
where we believe everyone has a little velvet in a
little edge. Subscribe for more conversations on life, style, beauty,
and relationships. Search Velvet's Edge wherever you get your podcasts.
Conversations on life, style, beauty, and relationships. It's the Velvet's
Edge podcast with Kelly Henderson.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
So that's where Bonnie Buckner is here. Her books is
out today. Actually it's called The Secret. Well, the day
we're recording, I just say that for the listeners, it
is already out when you guys are hearing this, but
it's called The Secret Mind. Unlock the power of your
dreams to transform your life. And I'm so excited to
talk to you, specifically because I've been having very active dreams.
(00:32):
So this could not have come at a better time.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Great, So welcome, Thank.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
You for being thank you, thanks for having me here.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, so we were just talking before the podcast and
in the description of your book on I think it
was on Amazon dot com. Actually, it just talks about
how there were living in this time that I find
this to be such an interesting conversation. We're living in
this time where creativity is dropping rapidly, and you know,
I think a lot of my listeners have probably heard
(01:00):
about the effects of AI that are coming out now
on our cognitive abilities. We're constantly scrolling, which is something
you've talked about to and you talk about dreams really
being this force that we can tap into to get
back to our creativity. Can you talk about that just
as a start? I found that to be such a
powerful statement and such a powerful idea, and that's kind
(01:24):
of what this book is about.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yes, And thank you for asking that question, because I
do love to talk about that, because for me, when
we can tap into our inner creativity, then we can
move our whole our life, first of all, and our
communities in our world to new places, new being, new
things that we can imagine, new ways of being that
(01:47):
we can imagine. And so let's go back before AI.
Since nineteen ninety, creativity scores in America have been dropping,
and they've been dropping at such a rate that there's
papers written on it and things like this, and there's
a lot of different research around the why. You know,
(02:08):
back then it was a little bit technology, but a
lot more about just multiple choice questions and about schools
not having enough time for creativity in a whole host
of other reasons. But now it's compounded by AI and
all of these other things that you brought up. When
we sleep, in our night dreams, the part of our
(02:30):
brain that lights up is the part that is also
responsible for creativity and imagination. So not only does the
content of dreams sort of spark our creativity, we're literally
using that part of our brain that is the creative
part of our brain, if you will. Yeah, So so
(02:52):
many people tell me, yeah, but I don't have time
to write my dreams in the morning. I don't pay
attention to my dreams. The thing that starts to happen
if you just get a journal and you start to
write down your dreams and we'll dig into your dreams
here and just the crazy dreams you're talking about. But
if you just start to write those down and just
lay there for like five minutes without grabbing the phone,
(03:15):
without jumping into all those things, and just let those
sensations images resonate, it's amazing the amount of ideas and
really answers to things that have kind of been in
the back of your head will come forward.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
Okay, that actually you've already answered some of my questions
about my own dreams. But right, so it's the writing
it down because one of the things that happens to
me often is I'll be waking up kind of you know,
you're still in that haze, and you're going what that
was the weirdest dream. And I swear to you, if
I do one thing like go make a coffee or something,
(03:53):
I can get back to my bed, even if I'm
just like going back into the same position and not
remember at all what it was about, Like, what did
I dream?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Like?
Speaker 2 (04:00):
It goes away? Why does that does? Well?
Speaker 3 (04:03):
We move to a different part of our cognitive processing. Okay,
so we have two powerhouse cognitive processing systems in our
brain and making this very simple, but there's the executive network,
and that's what we're doing right now because we're thinking
about what's the next question, what's the response? List, making,
adding up numbers, any of those things, goal oriented tasks.
(04:27):
But the dreaming part of ourself is called the default network,
and it's the creative part, the imaginative part. It's the
part that's responsible for understanding how our actions might have
affected another person. So I call that sometimes social cognition.
So really very simply put imagining stepping in the shoes
(04:51):
of somebody else. And these two are kind of like
on off switches if one is on, the others off
and vice versa. So when you're laying there in that
very you called it hazy, it's really just super productive,
but in a different way time for us. Then we're
(05:12):
in that part of ourself and it's still active and
we haven't switched over to the goal making. You said,
I wake up, go make a cup of coffee. Well
that's the goal. So you're out of it already.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah. So I got myself out of it by going
to make the coffee. I'm in the different part of
my brain and then now I feel like, Okay, I
got to get a going with my day exactly more
than the hazy remembering what happened in my dream.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Yeah, but think about this. Have you ever been in
the shower or filing your nails and you're not thinking
of anything, You're relaxing, and suddenly you're like, oh, yeah,
that's what I need to write or that's what I
need to do, and an idea comes up. That's because
the executive network has gone quiet and the default network
(05:58):
is on. So it's really dreaming while awake.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Dreaming while awake. I'm processing that because I always thought
of that as your intuition. Same, it is the same thing.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
It's the same thing. There are distinctions. Dreaming while awake
is you know, if we want to be very academic
about it. It's the default network. Depending on the research
article that you read, it might be called mind wandering,
it might be called day dreaming, you know, actual scientific term.
And it's when we're in that part of ourself, of
(06:32):
our cognitive processing. Intuition For me is maybe probably that part.
I haven't like studied that what happens in the brain
and intuition, but I know that from a body sense, right,
it's a hyper perceptive state for me. It's the same
state as dreaming is being aware of what we're sensing
(06:55):
in the very most basic way.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I want to ask the questions about subconscious but I
have one other question before that. Was there something that
happened in your life that sent you on this track
of studying dreams, Like what was the catalyst for even
wanting to write this book to help people really tap
more into the dream work.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, And that's like two different questions. So the first
thing is when I was three years old, I had
had a series of nightmares and I just I was
really upset about it, and like I didn't want to
sleep anymore. I was trying to figure out how can
I not sleep? And one morning I was thinking about
this on our front steps and it just kind of
(07:40):
hit me, Oh wait, this is what I'm here to do.
I'm here to figure out how to master my nightmares
and teach that to other people. And it's not like
I had a straight line from there, but I had
it always in the back of my head. And then
I've worked in different things. I've worked in Hollywood, I
worked in media political research company before going back to
(08:03):
get my PhD to work in this work. And both
of those, whether it's you know, Hollywood or it's politics,
it's all about how do images move us? And that's
what I went to study very specifically, is what is
the cognitive neuroscience behind images? Why can they change behavior?
(08:25):
How do they move us so much? Because dreams are
composed of images. And then it was around this time
that I found my teacher of dreaming, who taught me,
doctor Katherine Schamberg, this very ancient lineage of dreaming and
I just sort of put, you know, insights from modern
(08:46):
science to that. So that was the sort of my
personal dreaming journey. Okay, this book. One of the things
I do is I teach this work in a coaching
program at George Washington Universe, and the person that I
work with very closely. There said to me at one
point right before COVID, you know, you should write a
(09:08):
white paper or something that we can use in the program.
So I started to do that. But then during COVID,
I started thinking a lot more deeply about the fact
that we need to come back to our imagination. There
are a lot of people who are feeling very shut
down about the future of us, as in really us
(09:29):
humans and not just their lives, but for all of us.
And I know that we can solve all of these
problems if we can see it. And there's been a
long list of science of songs, media, all kinds of
things that have come from dreams, everything from insulin as
(09:52):
a cure for diabetes to several of the elements on
the periodic table of elements. All these things have come
from dreams. It is theory of relativity. It is really
the space for us to get out of the pattern
thinking part of our brains, which is also part of
(10:12):
the goal what we're using to think with right now,
the executive network, and into thinking beyond that.
Speaker 2 (10:21):
So this kind of leads perfectly into my subconscious questions.
So when you're talking about these two different parts of
our brain. We have this executive part in the what
do you call it, the pattern.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
The default network. The executive part is patterned, the network
is imaginative.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Imaginative. Okay, So when I think of dreams, I associate
them with my subconscious brain, like maybe I'm tapping into
something that I've repressed that isn't in the part of
my brain that I'm working with day to day to day,
you know, doing the activities like the going to make
the coffee and all of that stuff. Is that accurate
(11:06):
or is this a totally different Is that? Are they
related at all? Because I also know and I want
to get to some of these other things that I
was thinking about dreams, But like, are we working through things?
Like I know you're saying we can tap into creativity,
but are we working through traumas and things like that
while we're dreaming. I'm just curious about the neuroscience. But
(11:26):
behind all of that.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
Yeah, so dreams are showing us all of our responses
to what we're living. Okay, So there's a whole lot
going on around us right now. There's a whole lot
going on all day long that is on our inside.
But we're so busy you know, we're making coffee, we're
making lists, we're doing podcasts, we're doing I don't know
(11:51):
stuff on the computer. We're busy. But inside of all
of these different things that we're doing, the really quick scrolling,
the email from somebody else, the phone call, we have
responses to all of these things, but we never pause
to listen to ourselves. We're busy, so it's not repressed,
(12:11):
it's not paid attention to, right, we just don't stop
and listen. So when we dream, all of that part
the executive at work, the list making, all of that
is literally taken offline. So all of these experienced responses,
(12:31):
which is image not verbal, image is front center. But
we can check into that during the day. If we
only stopped, paused, relaxed, fouled our nails, you.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Know it took a shower exactly, But we don't do that. No, Okay,
So that's where we have termed it, like we suppressed
whatever we were just not pausing to see. Okay, that
makes so much sense. So one of the dreams I've
been having recently, or that I had last week, was
very interesting for me because it's about a relationship that
(13:06):
you know, I feel like I've put it. It's way
behind me, like there's there's nothing that I feel emotionally
about it. It's resolved, I guess in my day to day.
And I was telling my current boyfriend about this dream
because I was like, it really threw me that this
came up, Like I don't think about this anymore, but
(13:26):
I basically retraced part of that relationship in my dream,
and in the dream we broke up, but then there
were amends made and we got back together to try
to work on it again. But then the same thing happened,
and so there was a lot of fear that came
up again and all of that stuff. And I was
telling him about it the next morning because there's been
(13:47):
a period of time too where I felt like I
haven't been dreaming, and then all of a sudden last week,
I was having dream after dream after dream, and this
one happened, and so it threw me. And I don't
really know where to put it. But what would you
say about that, Like, how do I tap into working
with that and figuring out what my brain or body
or whatever is trying to tell me through this dream.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
That's a great example, Okay, kind of put you and
your current boyfriend at ease. Yes, I'm not sure what
he was thinking when you told him that.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
But no, he knows, I think. So he was kind
of thrown to He was like, what, that's so not
like you, and I'm like, I know.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
So here's the thing. So, first of all, our dreams
are showing us in image feelings that we have feelings, emotions, understandings,
and they get all packaged into an image or a
sequence of images. Okay, and so each image is you know,
a picture is worth more than a thousand words. That
(14:47):
is super true because that ex boyfriend, you could probably
write a thesis right now about every single thing that was.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Yes, and I've changed as a person too, So there's
like that's why I think gets so interesting. And you're right,
my poor boyfriend, but he knows about how I feel
about this, so it wasn't There's absolutely no desire for
me in my life to even contemplate getting back together
with that person. This is a way.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
I get that totally.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
That's why it was so confusing about it.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Yeah. Then here's the thing. So whenever we have an
event like today, it generally reminds us of an event
we've had before. Okay, and so whatever that ex boyfriend is,
you can ask yourself. And this is a great thing
for people to do when they dream about somebody. And
(15:40):
you don't have to answer this on your podcast, but
when people have a dream about somebody they've known before
or they know right now, is to say so and
so is the kind of person who and whatever qualities
are the first things that come off of your tongue
are some of the qualities that are just sort of
want to be looked at at this moment in time
(16:02):
about the self and where the self is in relationship
to certain things. So this is something that is about
making amends without going into completely opening out that dream.
There's a new boyfriend, there's an old boyfriend that didn't work,
but there's some amends being made. So current boyfriend, there's
still this idea of just in general boyfriend, you see
(16:26):
what I'm saying, relationship in general. So it's about making sure.
And this dream is super interesting because there's four levels
to every dream. And the first level is just the story,
that's what you told us. The second level is pattern
So what are the patterns that's showing in me? And
if I have a fear of a pattern repeating, or
(16:48):
if I'm headed down the road where maybe my reactions
to something could lead towards that pattern if I don't
curb it and transform it in some ways, the dream
think about dreams is like road signs, you know, next
exit ten miles. They're kind of helping us to see, like,
here's where you are, here's where this could lead, but
(17:11):
here's how you change it.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Okay, that makes so much sense. I mean the other thing,
and I've failed to mention this, but we had been
watching a movie where something similar had happened, and so
obviously it had gone into my brain. I did not
associate the two in my actual living life, like I mean,
until I was asleep, my brain wasn't putting the two
(17:33):
together at all. But so I definitely know there was
a reason that part of my brain attached to that.
But what you're talking about with the pattern is so
interesting because even in the dream the pattern did repeat. Yeah,
so it's mostly but what was I think it was?
Like I even expected that in the dream, if that
makes sense. But really what was throwing me was the
(17:56):
buying into what someone was saying and not ended up
being true. Like and said, then that's making me kind
of reflect on, oh, where is that coming up in
my life now? Like who am I not believing in something?
Am I not believing myself in something? There's so many
questions that started that brought up. But really it's so
interesting because it has absolutely nothing to do with my ex.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
It doesn't end ultimately because ultimately it's not about the
ex is that person, but it is about the experience
of being with that persone and what that brought up
as an aspect of the dreamer. So all of us
have many different aspects to ourself, many different facets. Every
(18:41):
aspect of the dream is an aspect of the dreamer.
So you know, old boyfriend is an aspect of me,
and that can be in really big ways how I
was reacting at that time, my fears at that time,
my hopes at that time. So we asked that question.
So is the kind of person who to get an
(19:02):
idea of like what are those things that I need
to look at right now? And then what you just
did of saying there's so many questions. This is part
of the power of dreams. They're weird on purpose.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Okay, you know.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
All day we ignore our inner self, right then when
we go to sleep, we have a very weird dream,
or we have a scary dream, or we have a
dream we're we wake up and we're super mad about
something or something that's our inside giving us a little
kick in the pants saying, you know, pay attention to me.
(19:36):
So when we just do that and we allow ourselves
to ask those questions, our own inside has all of
our answers. We just have to listen and ask some
questions and also just be courageous enough to see the
answers when they come up.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Well, you just that just made me want to cry
because you just summed it up. As we were talking
about the not STU to listen to what was coming up.
You know, when we're making the coffee, we're doing the list,
we're doing all the things. And then my listeners know
this because I talked about it. But I was very,
very busy before I went to see my boyfriend last week,
and last week was like my reset time, and did
(20:16):
I not just say? And then I dreamed all week
and I haven't been in a pattern of dreaming, so
that's crazy. So it was like I was finally my
body was like hello.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Pay attention exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
My brain, Yeah, I guess was telling me your body first.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Brain is always second. Everything comes from the body first.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Oh, because that's and that's like what I was asking
about intuition too, same thing about it.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
We're sitting here and we're processing what's happening with our brains,
but actually it's coming through our senses first. It's coming
through visual hearing. Right now, I can you know, there's
fresh flowers behind me that I can smell. There's all
kinds of sensory information coming in, and it's much bigger
(21:02):
than we are. We're kind of in focus lock right now,
but our perception is much more expanded than that, and
all of that is information. So it comes into our
body first, and then it makes its way to our brain.
It happens faster than we can put our finger on it. Yeah,
although we can learn to kind of slow that down.
(21:23):
And so intuition is when we are able to really.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Put our finger on it and listen to the body.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
Yeah. Yeah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
So what about when people are having reoccurring dreams. We're
the stories of people having this same dream over and
over where all their teeth fell out or something like that, Like,
why is that happening over and over and over with
(21:53):
the same story and something really weird like that.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Yeah, so let's start with the really weird and go
back to how dreams wake us up to ourself. Okay,
so there's seven kinds of dreams, and the first kind
of dream is a nightmare and teeth falling out. I'm
gonna say that's.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
A nightmare, yeah, not pleasant something.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Yeah, And counterintuitively, that's actually a good thing. It's our
friend because it's waking us up to a right now
emotional block, something that we need to deal with. Okay,
this is the thing about our bodies. Our bodies are
so amazing. They're constantly letting us know what's going on.
(22:37):
It's it literally is like the dashboard on a car,
like okay, you're running out of gas, you know, or
on our phone, like we're getting all this kind of
feedback information. But if we ignore that and we're like
I can go, you know, twenty five more miles, or
I won't run out of battery, I've got one bar left,
(22:58):
or whatever, we ignore the signals, then we have these
kinds of dreams that are like, you have a major
emotional block, wake up to it. That's our inside talking
to us.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
If I ignore that, then I start repeating that nightmare
because these energetic blocks are literally blocking our ability to
be more creative because there's an alarm bell going off somewhere.
You know, it'd be like if you were trying to
have a dinner party and the toilet is backed up,
(23:30):
You're not going to relax at the dinner party because
you're me thinking the whole time, I really hope somebody
doesn't go to the bathroom, right right, Yes, So these
emotional blocks were like I really hope this doesn't come
out when I'm in the middle of the meeting, or
I really hope whatever. And if we just take the
time to look at it and deal with whatever that
(23:50):
internal block is, then our energy is free to up
and then we're more creative. We can solve our problems
and move on.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Okay, well that makes sense. So you said there's seven
types of dreams. Yeah, what are the other six?
Speaker 3 (24:05):
So there's nightmare, there's a repetitive nightmare. If we don't
deal with those, then we get a busy dream and
that's really just an emotional pilon, like a multi car
pile up. Okay, because that's the thing about it, Like
this if I just have a basic fear dream, I
don't deal with it, it repeats, I don't deal with it.
(24:27):
Then I start piling on. I start thinking things like, oh,
I'm so, I'm such a coward, or I resent you know,
so and so for turning me down for this, because
now I'm a coward because of that. Like we just
start adding story, story, story on top of it, and
it gets almushed together. So those three kind of go
(24:49):
together in a way if we're not dealing with it.
But then there's also a clear dream, and clear dreams
are showing us both here's your block, here's where you're
on your presentence, here's your block, here's your potential. But
it's a potential that we're not really exercising at the moment,
and so it leaves us with choice, like here's your blog,
here's your potential, and here's the way over that. When
(25:12):
we do that, then we resolve that, we resolve that
energy and we can go somewhere else. So those four
dreams are the unresolved dreams, and then we have resolved dreams,
which are you know, the messages, great dreams, dreams of light,
those those experiences of wonder and awe which is also
(25:34):
part of the human experience and also part of something
that we don't spend a lot of time seeking out or.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Paying attention to. It's also interesting to me because you know,
we do so many podcasts about just getting in touch
with yourself, self care, all of the things that we
need for healing, and it's so fascinating to me because
when I really break down what they're all saying, or
what any sort of healing work is, it's really about
(26:03):
getting back in touch with yourself. And it's so wild
because we live in this culture that teaches us the
exact opposite, when really it's like, no, all the answers
are inside of each of us, and it's just about
us slowing down, believing in that touching base, even communicating
with ourselves. I talk about that a lot, like sometimes
(26:23):
I'll just start talking to myself because I forget to,
like I forget to pay attention to me. Obviously, as
my dreams are telling me. The fact that I could
dream every night last week is because I actually stopped.
I slowed down. I was like, I need to reset,
I need to rest. I said those words, and then poof,
I'm having wild dreams every night. It's just it's wild
(26:47):
to me, it's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
Yeah, and you know, back to AI, because you kind
of started to say, yeah, that there's so many great
things I'm sure that come from AI or I hope
that they go find a lot of you know, protein
things that can help cure diseases and all of that.
But if I'm using AI because I'm being lazy about something,
I'm training myself that I'm not able to do this
(27:13):
as well, or I'm not as creative and I'm not
exercising it. It really is a muscle, just like sitting
there and that you know, you called it that hazy time.
It's a muscle to do that. And why it's a
muscle is because with all of this technology, it gets
harder and harder for people to just focus on one
(27:35):
thing or to not focus and stay in that hazy thing.
I mean, just holding one thing in your mind for
a minute is a very difficult task for most people today.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Oh yeah, I used to be one of these people
who said, oh I just can't meditate. But that's why.
It's because you have to sit and your whole job
is not I mean, it is to bring yourself back
to this one focus in this one place, even when
you start to drift off. And I was always like, oh,
I just keep drifting off, I keep going to a
million different places. I'm making a to do list, and
(28:10):
that's okay. In meditation, it's just about bringing yourself back
to coming out of you know, thinking of the million things,
to going back to the one thing. And that is
tricky with how we're wired because we don't build that muscle.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
It's so true. And also, you know, let's go back
to how cool we are when we do listen. So
last summer, there was a whole new genre of music
called hit Them and it was at a very different
number of beats per minted and had a bunch of
different particularities to it, and it came from this guy's dream.
(28:46):
And that's like one example. There's so many examples, so
many songs that we love, the Twilight series, all these
things that came from a dream. And sometimes the dream
sort of lays it out pretty good detail for us,
but more often than not, it gives us a lot
of very interesting things, images, sensations, feelings, maybe a sentence,
(29:10):
and then it's our innate creativity if we just sort
of get curious about it that puts all those pieces
together and comes up with a new genre of music
or a new invention or whatever it may be.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
Right, we're just not allowing ourselves to do that. So
if people do want to start working with their dreams,
what would you say? I know you talk about this
a lot in the book, so obviously go buy the book.
But what are good places to start? If you could
just give us, like one tip, Yes, get a.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Dream journal, write them down before you get out of bed.
Don't like, yeah, make coffee. Start writing it down, and
also write down whatever it is you wake up with,
because a lot of people say to me, oh, I
didn't dream, And then when I just start asking questions
of like what was in your mind when you woke up,
they say, oh, yeah, I woke up with the song?
And Dad, it's all a dream. Whatever you wake up with.
(30:03):
Is it a color, is it a snippet of a song?
Is it a thought? Just write it down. It's a dream.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
What about like some mornings I wake up just in
a great mood, and some mornings I wake up in
a terrible mood. I have no definition of why is
that part of your dream?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
It could be, So maybe if you just lay there
just a teeny bit longer and see, like, what's the
image associated with that? If you just kind of ask
yourself that question, you may see something.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Okay, So is there a particular study or is there
research that you've done about dreams helping heal people emotionally?
I know you also mentioned something physically, didn't you a
second ago.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
There's so many different studies that kind of triangulate at that, okay,
And I kind of put those together in the book
in Secret Mind. So one of the things that I
can speak about, and again I want to emphasize that
at the very foundation of what I teach is a
centuries old understanding of dreams. And that's, you know, centuries
(31:10):
and centuries of observation of seeing how intervening with a dream,
looking at a dream, working with a dream, and then
here's what that human did after that. I mean, that
is science. So I want to speak to that too,
because it's actually, in many ways further ahead than contemporary neuroscience.
(31:31):
That's interesting, it's super interesting. So to put it very simply,
everything that is abstract to us, emotions, feeling, love, you know, democracy,
all of these concepts that we have, they're super abstract.
(31:51):
The feelings we have super abstract, we give it a name,
but we also have images for how we understand that,
and so having an image for that and seeing it
in our dreams helps us to see Okay, So if
this is an emotion, I can transform it. If it's
(32:14):
a belief system and it's restrictive, I can enlarge it.
It's difficult to do that if we're just feeling stuff,
especially these days, because we feel a lot of stuff,
a lot of different stuff, all day and long. So
dreams give us these images in scenarios, just like with
(32:34):
the ex boyfriend dream, so we can finally like put
our hands around something and really understand it for ourselves,
and then we can change, right.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
I mean, you changed the whole narrative I had about
what that dream was about, you know, as I started
going back into like is there some unresolved anger that
I have about this or you know, things like that,
and that didn't feel true to me when I really
started asking myself the questions. But when you kind of
reframed it as the pattern, it took the face of
(33:04):
him out of it, and I'm like, oh, right, that
is that is, you know going on in my life
in other areas that I could think about. That's just
such an interesting reframe. But it works to what you
were just saying. I guess that's where my brain was
going with that.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
If anyone is listening and they are really wanting to
work with their dreams, can you tell us a little
bit more about what they would find in the book.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
Yeah. So I start in the book with how to
remember your dreams, because this book is really for everybody,
and I need to say that every person dreams. We
dream every night, whether you remember it or you don't,
and remembering it is actually really easy. So the whole
first chapter is about how to remember, how to set
up a practice, and then I lead people through a
(33:49):
sort of step by step of how to understand the images?
How do we make the images that appear in our
dreams from our own subjective experiencing, and then how to
you know, go more deeply into it. What is this
dream telling me? How do I know that? How do
I work with the dream? And I have pieces of
dreams from clients that I've worked with my own dreams,
(34:13):
And then we kind of shift gears and look at
this thing called the life plan, which is a way
of understanding our body energies that we call emotions and
feelings is an energy first, and understanding what that is
and how that corresponds to dreams. And then I switch
gears again and we have a whole chapter on premonitory
(34:37):
dreams and intuition, because it's really important. We know way
more than we think we know, and it's really important
to tap into that. And from there looking at you know,
how can you use your dreams to make a big
change in your life? And then finally the impact that
using our dreams can have not just on us as individuals,
(34:59):
but really on whole communities and even the world.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
Well, if you guys want to go get this book.
I'm actually so pumped to really dive into doing my
journal and stuff in the morning and working with this.
I think it's so interesting about the forgetting because I
do that and I'll think, oh, I just didn't dream
last night, But then you'll get a ping later of
something random and you're like, wait, did I dream that?
Where is this coming from? So I want to work
with that as well. But the book is out, it's
(35:24):
this podcast is going out June twenty fifth, and said
the book came out yesterday for you guys, so I
will put a link for that book in the description
of this podcast. But where else can people keep up
with your work if they want to keep up with you?
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Yeah, you can find me at Bonnie Buckner dot com.
I teach classes as well and do one on one
sessions through The institute is Institute for Dreaming and Imagery
dot com. You can follow us on Instagram. My insta
is Bonnie Buckner dot spill it out dotcom or dream
with Idi Perfect.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
I will put that in the disc option of this
podcast as well. Bonnie, thank you so much for being here.
I am fascinated by this topic so I can't wait
to dive in in my own life.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Thank you guys for listening.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Thanks for listening to the Velvet's Edge podcast with Kelly Henderson,
where we believe everyone has a little velvet in a
little edge. Subscribe for more conversations on life, style, beauty,
and relationships. Search Velvet's Edge wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Kelly Henderson
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