The Dream Journal

Author, chef, and literary arts advocate Priya Hutner joins The Dream Journal to share how a series of vivid nightmares helped her recognize that it was time to leave the spiritual cult she grew up in. In this powerful conversation with host Katherine Bell, Priya explores dreams, belonging, belief, spiritual entrapment, family allegiance, and the long path toward personal liberation.

Priya is the author of Chasing Nirvana: A Seeker’s Story of Love, Loss, and Liberation, a memoir about growing up in a spiritual community, becoming deeply devoted to a guru, and ultimately reclaiming her voice. She al...

How do ancient cultures understand dreaming? In this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell speaks with dreamwork professional Alejandra Perez Regura about Indigenous dreaming practices in Mayan, Huichol, Toltec, Mapuche, Totonac, and other traditions. Together they explore dreams as guidance, healing, community wisdom, and a bridge between waking life, nature, spirit, and the deeper self.

Alejandra shares stories from her research and lived experience, including a powerful childhood dream near a river in Chiapas, during a retreat in the Mayan-Toltec recapitulation caves. She talks about Huichol pilgrimages, collective dream sharing, dream incubation, sacred plants, obsidian...

Dreams after coercive control can be confusing, intense, and surprisingly healing. In this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell speaks with Gerette Buglion about reclaiming self-trust after cultic relationships, narcissistic abuse, manipulation, and other forms of coercive control.

Gerette shares how dream images can become vulnerable places where autonomy is either undermined or restored. Together, Katherine and Gerette explore nightmares, dreams of former abusers or leaders, violent or disturbing imagery, and the tender process of learning to trust your own inner authority again.

The conversation includes a listener dream about two babies, a...

Why do dreams matter, and how can we use them to support waking life? In this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell speaks with Canadian author and health journalist Karen Van Kampen about her book The Brain Never Sleeps: Why We Dream and What It Means for Our Health. Together they explore dream science, memory, mental health, dream sharing, nightmare rescripting, dream engineering, lucid dreaming research, and the emerging study of anesthesia dreams as potentially healing experiences.

Karen shares how childhood experiences in her father’s sleep lab shaped her fascination with dreaming, why dreams ma...

Now with the correct audio!! (Once it propagates through all the platforms…)

In this episode of The Dream Journal, Katherine Bell talks with Dr. Gayle Delaney about the origins of modern dreamwork, the early days of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, and Delaney’s practical Dream Interview Method. Their conversation also explores how curiosity—not imposed interpretation—can unlock the meaning of dreams, why sleep is essential for emotional and cognitive health, and how dreamwork can help people make better choices in waking life.

What do dreams reveal about fear, hesitation, identity, and transformation? In this episode of The Dream Journal, Katherine Bell talks with Lincoln Stoller about dreamwork, self-doubt, courage, neurofeedback, mindfulness, and how dreams can surface the questions we most need to face. A thoughtful conversation on inner change, psychological growth, and the hidden patterns shaping our lives.

#DreamJournal #DreamInterpretation #DreamWork #LincolnStoller #KatherineBell #Neurofeedback #Mindfulness #SelfAwareness #PersonalGrowth #Psychology

BIO: Lincoln Stoller followed his PhD in quantum physics by studying with prophets and shamans around the world. After two decades as a software entrepreneur, he trained in neuropsychology...

Lucid dreaming, dream art, dream characters, and consciousness all come together in this fascinating conversation with Dave Green, London-based artist and author of Doodles in the Dark: An Artist’s Guide to Lucid Dreaming.

Host Katherine Bell talks with G. William Domhoff about dreams, sleep, and consciousness through the lens of his book Dreams, Sleep, and Consciousness. Domhoff explains his neurocognitive theory of dreaming, arguing that dreams are not random nonsense, but a form of internally generated thought that reflects personal concerns, imagination, and the sleeping brain’s unique activity patterns.

The conversation explores several big questions: What are dreams? Why do we dream? How are dreams connected to mind-wandering, sleep stages, and self-awareness? Domhoff also discusses research showing that dream content often reveals recurring waking-life concerns, relationships, and emotional patterns. He share...

In this powerful episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell speaks with award-winning author Diane Hartman about the profound connection between dreams, depression, writing, and self-discovery.

Diane shares the deeply personal story behind her memoir, Getting Lost on My Way: Self-Discovery on Ireland’s Back Roads, and how a solo journey through Ireland helped her confront the “black dog” of depression, reclaim her voice, and rediscover herself through writing.

Together, Katherine and Diane explore how dreams can guide healing, illuminate emotional truth, and reveal the deeper patterns shaping our lives.

Diane opens up abo...

In this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell talks with Alira Solara about dream mapping, recurring dreams, dream loops, lucid dreaming, dream weaving, and dream interpretation.

Together they explore why certain dreams repeat, how dream symbols and landscapes can reveal deeper patterns, and how tracking dreams can support emotional insight, spiritual growth, and everyday decision-making.

Alira shares her approach to dream mapping—a practice of journaling dreams, noticing recurring images and locations, and identifying how dream patterns connect to waking life. The conversation also dives into dream loops, the unsettling experience of “waking up”...

What if the Sun is influencing your dreams?

In this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell speaks with Dr. Annani Kelley, researcher, poet, and founder of heliopsychology, about her groundbreaking work on space weather, solar flares, geomagnetic activity, and human consciousness.

Drawing on more than 70 years of heliobiology research and her own PhD dissertation, Dr. Kelley explores how solar flares, sunspots, and geomagnetic storms correlate with changes in sleep quality, nightmares, aggressive dreams, dream bizarreness, and extraordinary dream states—including lucid, psychic, and precognitive dreams.

The conversation moves beyond sleep into bi...

On this special episode celebrating 360 shows, Dream Journal host Katherine Bell (Experiential Dreamwork) talks with lucid dream pioneer Dr. Clare Johnson (Deep Lucid Dreaming) about healing dreams, lucid dreaming, and what Johnson calls the joy factor—those moments of bliss, beauty, and deep replenishment that can arrive in dreams and ripple into waking life.

Together they explore dream body intelligence, emotional processing in sleep, dream incubation, and practical ways to work with nightmares—plus how the “thought-responsive” nature of lucid dreams can support intentional healing.

In This Episode

In this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell speaks with dreamwork pioneer Robert Bosnak, founder of Embodied Imagination, about how to work with dreams, symptoms, memories, and trauma without forcing interpretation. Bosnak shares why “not knowing” can be the most skillful stance in dreamwork, how to re-enter a dream through flashback memory, and how shifting perspective—from the “narrator” to the environment or other beings—can unlock relief, agency, and integration.

Keywords: dreamwork, embodied imagination, Robert Bosnak, Katherine Bell, experiential dreamwork, flashback memory, non-interpretive dreamwork, trauma nightmares, somatic symptoms, neutral witness, psychedelic integration, imaginal realm, dual conscio...

What if dreams aren’t just personal—but meant for the community?

In this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell speaks with writer, healer, and Earth activist Deena Metzger about sacred dreaming, Indigenous wisdom, and what it means to live by dream in dark and uncertain times. Together they explore dreams as spiritual messages, ethical guidance, and acts of resistance—and listeners share powerful dreams of sanctuary, community, joy, and not dying alone.

This conversation invites us to imagine a world where dreams teach us how to live, care for one another, and re...

What if your brain is solving problems, strengthening memory, and shaping creativity while you sleep—without you even knowing it?

In this deep‑dive conversation, cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Ken Paller joins Katherine Bell on The Dream Journal to explore groundbreaking research on memory reactivation during sleep, lucid dreaming, dream engineering, and how ancient Tibetan dream yoga practices intersect with modern neuroscience.

Dr. Paller is a professor of psychology and director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Program at Northwestern University. His lab was among the first to demonstrate that memories can be reactivated and strengthened during sleep usin...

What if nightmares are not something to escape—but something to dance with?

In this episode, we’re joined by Lana Nasser, dreamworker, ritual facilitator, and creator of The Dream Hive, for a deep exploration of dreams, nightmares, embodiment, and collective dreaming. Together, we explore how dreams connect us to the more‑than‑human world, how ritual can transform fear, and why symbols like bees and snakes carry powerful intelligence for our time.

This conversation weaves together ritual dreamwork, ecofeminist perspectives, embodied practice, and collective healing, offering a grounded yet imaginative approach to working with dreams—n...

How do dreams support emotional health—and how can we use our feelings more skillfully in everyday life?

On this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell is joined by psychiatrist Dr. Loma K. Flowers, author of Catching Your Feelings, for a practical, grounded conversation about emotional competence and the role dreams play in mental health.

Dr. Flowers introduces her model of emotional competence—balancing thinking, feeling, judgment, and action—and explains why ignoring emotions can lead to stress, illness, and impulsive decisions. Through real‑world examples, listener call‑ins, and a live demonstration of the dre...

In this episode of The Dream Journal, host Katherine Bell talks with psychiatrist Greg Mahr and visionary artist/psychologist Heather Taylor-Zimmerman about how dreams—especially nightmares—can support healing, personal growth, and creativity.

They introduce the Dream Wisdom Oracle Deck, explore “befriending” difficult dream imagery, and share practical ways to re-enter and work with dreams through reflection, art, and intuitive tools.

Chapters: 00:00:23 — Welcome + what the show explores 00:01:26 — Catherine’s falling-elevator dream as an opening metaphor 00:03:12 — Greg on nightmares, trauma, and why meaning matters 00:07:11 — Heather on dream rescripting + “active agency” in dreams and recovery 00:10:04 — Using an oracle deck to clarify a...

Quantum entanglement? Time traveling information? What is behind the phenomenon of precognitive dreaming? Meet astrophysicist, oneironaut, and author Paul Kalas, who argues that precognition is naturally selected for because of its unmistakable evolutionary advantage.

Paul Kalas explains that precognitive dreams are dreams that appear to contain information about future events. Paul introduces the concept of the “Oneironaut” (a dream traveler) and draws from his personal archive of more than 300 recorded precognitive dreams.

The discussion spans personal anecdotes, neuroscience, evolutionary theory, and physics—particularly quantum mechanics and the many‑worlds interpretation. Kalas describes how some dreams feel “un...

How dreams cultivate intuition, mediate inner conflict, and connect conscious and unconscious life. Host Katherine Bell speaks with psychologist and author Athena Laz about the “medial” archetype, dreamwork as a bridge between worlds, and practical ways to engage intuition, lucidity, and meaning—especially during challenging times.

00:04 – Welcome & the Power of Beautiful Dreams Introduction to The Dream Journal and Katherine’s flying dream that highlights joy, connection, and the intrinsic value of positive dreams.

00:07 – Introducing Athena Laz & the Medial Archetype Athena Laz discusses her work and explains the “medial” (bridge‑making) archetype that connects inner and outer worlds, cons...

Dreams, Astrology, & Cosmic Downloads with Madi Murphy

From the studios of KSQD in Santa Cruz, host Katherine Bell welcomes astrologer and author Madi Murphy, founder of CosmicRx, for a powerful conversation on dreams as divine guidance systems.

In this episode, Madi shares how vivid childhood dreams, prophetic moments, and visitations from her grandfather led her from a publishing career in New York City to shamanic training and evolutionary astrology. Together, Katherine and Madi explore how dreams function as “cosmic downloads,” how astrology offers a blueprint for soul purpose, and why Pisces season is a portal for...

What if your dreams weren’t symbols to decode… but living encounters?

Celebrating seven years of Dream Journal episodes, host Katherine Bell welcomes natural dream work practitioner, artist, and druid priestix Laura Smith Riva for a fascinating conversation about rewilding the dream, animism, and reconnecting with the living intelligence within dreams and nature.

Together they explore how dream figures can be experienced as relational beings, how ritual and creativity help integrate dream wisdom, and how fear, vulnerability, and imagination open doorways to transformation and healing.

You’ll hear powerful dream stories, live listener dream...

Can we do more than talk in talk therapy? Our guest Dr. Michael Mollura speaks about some of his creative approaches to psychotherapy including music therapy, dreamwork, Jungian perspectives, and more!

03:03 — Dr. Michael Mollura’s Background: Music, Psychology, and Creativity

05:31 — Why Suppressed Creativity Can Cause Emotional Symptoms

07:54 — Setting Dreams to Music: The Acoustics of the Unconscious

08:31 — Jungian Dream Work and Depth Psychology Explained

10:52 — Why Symptoms Are Symbols in Dream and Depth Therapy

14:23 — How to Begin Interpreting Dreams: Start with Mood, Not Meaning

17:12 — Common Mistakes People Make When Analyz...

We are the dreams of our ancestors; we are their hopes for the future. But sometimes their trauma is transmitted to us through nightmares. Today’s guest, Dream Journal regular Linda Schiller, will be talking about how to heal that intergenerational pain and focus on the gifts of ancestral connection.

Linda talks about her own ancestors and how her grandfather, who she called Grandpa Joey, fled Kiev with his family at age of three because of the pogroms and how making borscht soup always helped her feel more connected to that side of her family. We talk ab...

Dream​s bring us back to our true self. ​Today’s guest, Dr. Bonnie Buckner, speaks about the visual language of dreams ​which awakens in us feelings​ which are the base of our inner knowing.​ Dreaming ​also reminds us of wonder and mystery​. By embracing mystery, we discover more of our own potentials and possibilities of transformation in the outer world. Bonnie starts by describing some of the competing pulls we have including the desire to fit in  vs the desire for connection. She says our true self is often crowded out by thinking, but that dreams bring us back to a visual...

Does a traumatic childhood doom you to unhappiness and dysfunction?  Meet Wendy Correa who overcame a horrific youth. Dreams were a key part of her recovery! Wendy’s debut book is memoir My Pretty Baby: Seeking Truth and Finding Healing. Wendy starts with a pivotal dream of a black jaguar which had her face then talks about how childhood trauma affects life-long mental health including addiction, depression, and even physical ailments like irritable bowel syndrome and heart disease. She says that 64% of people have experienced at least one of the ten traumas highlighted by the “ACE” scale which lists Adverse...

​​​How to really enjoy your dreams. Today Katherine speaks with Stuart Bailey, a British lawyer who has met Queen Elizabeth and sung with Elvis. His book is My Secret Life of Dreams: One Man’s Journey Into the Hidden World of Night. He says dreams are like movies starring ourselves so why not enjoy them?

Stuart starts by talking about his recurring childhood dream of flying down beautiful valleys, some of which date from before age 3 and a half. He speaks about how he might start to sink in those dreams but learned that by relaxing, he could ke...

We start the new years by welcoming Katrina Dreamer who talks about social justice dreaming and how we can start to dream up the kind of world we’d like to live in.

Here is a link to a short video clip of the conversation:

https://youtu.be/VPc75rnn3BA

Katrina starts by talking about harnessing the power of dreaming for social justice including using dreaming to build support and to find and connect with people. We speak about connecting to ancestors, mutual dreaming, and dream incubation. We then talk about dreaming up...

What is sacredness and how can I find more of it in my life? Rodger Kamenetz teaches us a spiritual practice that leads us toward a deeper experience of life. His latest book is Seeing into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter.

Short clip of the convo available here: https://youtu.be/rM8OGWNenhg

Rodger starts by talking about what’s changed for him since releasing his pivotal book in 2007, The History of Last Night’s Dream. He talks about dream images in the context of images in memory and perception and  about...

Winter Solstice is the time of year to go within. How have your dreams been nudging you into a new alignment?  Today is a rare all call-in show! No guest, just YOU. 

We host six dreamers on the show today starting with Sylvia from Ontario who describes a dream where a crow climbs into bed with her, comforting her. Then Steve shares about the latest in his evolution of journeying dreams where he has gotten to the ocean and is trying to go deeper, but the waves keep pushing him back.

We take a call fr...

Are you a narcissist? How would you know? Or maybe you are in a relationship with one.

We talk to Jungian analyst Dr Susan Schwartz about dreams related to narcissism and about how to be in relationship with those everyday narcissists in our life.

Dr Schwartz starts by defining narcissism as outer bravado and inner fragility. She lists some of the typical dreams narcissists have including dreams of being trapped or in a prison.

We talk about the myth of Narcissus and Echo and about how we can avoid becoming Echo who loses...

Animals in dreams always seem to have a special meaningfulness. Today we talk about how dreams of certain animals were viewed at the Asklepian Temple in ancient Greece where people could go to be healed by their dreams. Learn about a modern interpretation of this ancient technique from our guest psychotherapist, mindfulness teacher, and Dream Boat podcast host Laura Payne of the Dream Research Institute in London.

A short clip from the show can be found here:

After the break we hear from Steve Popp from Santa Cruz with a dream about a series of a...

Learn how dreams help us process trauma with our guest Gdansk Professor Wojciech Owczarski​ who studies the dreams of Auschwitz survivors, modern Ukrainian refugees, and nursing home residents. He finds that dreams help us cope with trauma, adapt to new life situations, and feel optimistic for a better future. Nightmares help us deal with unresolved waking life issues and to integrate past traumas.

A short clip from our conversation can be found here:

After the break we take two calls. One from Kathy from Corona CA who is wondering about how best to introduce new me...

There are many ways to open the door to the unseen world:​ sound or singing​, stillness​,  or movement​, nature immersion. We speak to Rachel Schafer about dreaming into love. Rachel speaks about body centered awareness and the value in turning toward what is uncomfortable in our lives.

Video short from this show: https://youtu.be/QjkTV5d94II

She talks about her journey with sleep paralysis and how she used the expression of sound to get out of it. She speaks of the Toltec practice of Dreaming Awake and of her difficult experiences with abusive male teac...

Aging through the lens of night dreams, living dreams, and earth dreams. Dr. Illana Berger guides seekers through life’s initiations through Zen practice, Indigenous wisdom, dreams, and soul-centered transformation. Dr Berger starts out by speaking about koans and how dreams are like them: things to ponder not riddles to solve. We talk about the art of becoming present and how this is true enlightenment. We then shift to talking about the difference between elderhood and simply being old and how we can learn to turn toward our lives with curiosity.

VIDEO short: https://youtu.be/3MtXWOAj6qc...

Dreams are crazy, but aren’t they also guidance? Our guest, Sandi Madison, helps us find sense in the nonsense of our dreams and argues that the best self-help book we can ever read is our own dream journal! We talk about the importance of keeping and reviewing a dream journal, and Sandi shares some of her recurring themes that show how she has matured over the 38 years she has been journaling. Sandi suggests we try to remember dreams as we wake up by focusing on the feelings we have when we wake up. We also talk about precognitive dr...

Meet Jesse Lyon, a clinical hypnotherapist with an extensive background in trauma, anxiety, dissociative disorders, and the neurodivergent community. He’s a viral social media influencer with over two million followers, captivating hearts worldwide. We talk start by talking about how dreams speak in the language of the subconscious mind and often reflect what he calls our core struggle. We then talk about neurodivergence and how dreaming shows up in people with ADHD, who are on the autism spectrum, or who have aphantasia.

After the break, we take three calls. The first is from Jacob in Florida wh...

Every night our dreams invite us to enter the mystery that is our soul, and they guide us toward wholeness, purpose, and destiny. Today we talk with Sara Saidy about the power of dream groups which she describes as alchemical containers. She calls dreams love letters from the soul.

Sara starts out by defining the imaginal realm and how we access it through dreaming or active imagination. She shares the results of her research showing that dream groups can provide places where people experience not just personal transformation, but also interconnectedness, enhanced empathy, and compassion. She gives...

​​AI dream interpretation platforms are getting ever more popular. ​We talk today with Harry de Bont, the developer of AUT-Dream,​ about how best to approach these tools and why his platform is an improvement over Chat GPT. We talk about what he calls the Anthropic Universe Theory (AUT) and argues that the primary purpose of dreams is to comment on what surprises us and then to help us shift our world model to something closer to reality. We also talk about how AI relates to an emerging collective awareness, and he shares some of his hopes for future ways AI might...

Today’s guest composes music to his patient’s dreams, capturing feelings and moods and deepening the psychotherapeutic process. In this replay from two years ago, we meet Dr. Michael Mollura who is a PhD licensed clinical psychologist and also an award-winning music composer for TV and movies. Michael started by scoring music to his own dreams and later found out how valuable the practice was in deepening the healing for his psychotherapy clients.

We play a clip of one such piece called Scary Path Dream. Michael describes the process of scoring the piece including using cello to r...