The Power of Dream Incubation
People often ask me, kindly and with understandable confusion:
Wait… what exactly do you do again?
I thought you did hypnosis.
Or tarot?
Or herbalism?
Now dreamwork?
The truth is, I have never fit neatly into a single box.
I am, and perhaps always have been, relentlessly curious about many things: about consciousness, about the nature of reality, about the strange and subtle ways mind, energy, symbol, language and intention shape human experience. My interests have taken me from poetry, to psychology, from hypnosis to dreamwork, from Tarot to plant medicine, from mythology to Western science, from Western occult and esoteric traditions to Eastern mysticism and back again.
At the same time, I have always remained deeply tethered to the living world: to the earth beneath my feet, to community, to the plants in my garden, the trees and wild places, to the intelligence of nature, to the unseen energies moving through landscape and season.
My professional life has undulated and pivoted like an earth serpent, following currents that do not always make sense in a conventional business model.
At times, I have struggled to explain it all; I never seem to find a tidy container for the many threads I have spent years cultivating.
The business experts, of course, advise otherwise.
“Nail your niche,” they say.
“Keep it simple.”
“Do one thing, and do it well.”
They are probably right.
And yet, each time I try to flatten myself into something more marketable, more singular, more easily understood, life gently refuses.
So instead, I have learned to follow the golden thread.
To trust the instincts and longings, the creative impulses, the signs and synchronicities, the obsessions that return again and again through both waking life and dreams.
And if there is one thread that has woven through nearly all of it, beneath the hypnosis, beneath the Tarot, beneath the healing work and the herbalism, it is this:
A lifelong fascination with dreaming.
I’ve always been a vivid dreamer. I have kept a dream journal since high school. I never considered formal study of dreams and dreamwork until I began to train in shamanic arts and later in hypnotherapy.
In my late twenties, my day-to-day work I was helping others heal and transform through hypnosis, what I often think of as guided dreaming. But it was through studying with teachers like Toko-pa Turner, Robert Moss, and Clare Johnson that I was introduced more deeply to the ancient art of dream incubation: the practice of intentionally seeking guidance, healing, or revelation through the dreamworld.
These teachers showed me how to relate to dreams, not simply to decode their symbolism. I learned to see dreams as living oracles. I became more conscious of the fact that dreams are responsive, relational, and capable of offering direct wisdom for waking life.
Over the years, dream incubation has brought me astonishing answers.
It has introduced me to tree and plant spirits, earth dragons, gods and goddesses, helping ancestors, and guides who arrived bearing messages, warnings, gifts, and revelations. Some of the dreams I have incubated changed the entire course of my life.
One in particular shaped my future in ways I could not have imagined.
At a time when I felt deeply lost; I was unrooted, unmoored, uncertain where I belonged. I asked my dreams a simple question:
Show me where I belong.
That night, I dreamed of standing on a hillside.
Before me stretched a meadow, sloping downward, crossed by stone walls. Behind me was a forest. Nearby stood an old oak tree. The land rolled in gentle, uneven hillocks toward open fields below, with mountains rising in the distance and a bright eastern horizon beyond them. The whole place radiated a feeling of home, a sense of family nearby, of belonging, of tending land and growing food, of building a life in a familiar and loving relationship with place.
When I woke, I was a little baffled.
The landscape was unfamiliar. It looked nothing like anywhere I knew, though the feeling of being there reminded me faintly of a beloved place from childhood—an old property near my home where I used to roam and play beneath the care of a kindly neighbor.
I wondered briefly if the dream meant I was meant to return home. Had I been wrong to leave so many years ago?
But no, it was impossible to go back. Instead, the dream awakened something else: a fierce longing to find a new home, in a place that felt like that.
A place to root.
A place to belong.
A place to build community.
That yearning led me to begin exploring intentional communities and cohousing.
Four months later, while visiting Cobb Hill for the first time, someone suggested we hike up to a place called Dana’s Bench—a lookout where the founder, Donella Meadows, loved to sit beneath an old oak tree.
The moment I reached the top of the hill and looked out over the landscape, an eerie wave of déjà vu washed over me.
The oak tree.
The mountains.
The rolling hillocks.
The exact curve of the land.
The eastern horizon.
The sun setting behind the western trees.
I had seen it before.
On the drive home, it struck me all at once:
My dream had brought me here before my waking life did.
That dream gave me the courage to trust what my rational mind could not yet know. It helped me overcome the fear of change, the doubt, and the resistance to letting go of what I had. The dream helped me trust that it was worth it to uproot my life, move to a new state, and begin again in a place that has shaped the person I am today. The dream showed me it was possible to feel at home somewhere else. I never would have taken the risk without the knowledge that it would turn out well.
This is the power of dream incubation.
Dreams can do far more than reflect the concerns of the day. They can guide us. Reveal hidden truths. Offer healing, insight, warning, and direction. They can show us what our waking mind cannot yet perceive.
And the beautiful thing is:
This is a practice anyone can learn.
Have you ever tried dream incubation? Have you ever asked your dreams for guidance?
On May 4th at 7 PM, I’ll be offering a free online workshop:
The Art and Magic of Dream Incubation and Dream Divination
In this introductory class, I’ll teach the foundations of this extraordinary practice, including:
How to ask dreams meaningful questions
Rituals and techniques for incubating potent dreams
Ways to improve dream recall and receptivity
How to begin interpreting dream guidance with confidence
The role of plants, symbols, and intention in dream divination
If you’ve ever longed for deeper guidance, clearer signs, or a more intimate relationship with the mystery moving beneath your life, I would love to share this practice with you.