Jen Sonstein Maidenberg

I am a morning person and a dreamwork practitioner, and still sometimes I don’t feel like writing down my dreams. It’s okay to go through a stretch when you don’t record your dreams, especially if it’s a stressful period, or if you’re struggling with getting high quality sleep. First and foremost, I very much encourage you to protect your sleep. That aside, writing down your dreams in a notebook or in a notepad app on …

A very common first response from individuals who learn I am a dreamwork practitioner and dream researcher is, “Oh, I have such vivid dreams.” Often the conversation may continue, and the individual will tell me how lifelike their dreams are sometimes — how colorful or rich with sensory experience. The person is typically amazed by this, or confused. The implied question is: Why do my dreams feel so real? In Natural Dreamwork (the method I …

For years, I was always surprised when friends or family would claim to not remember their dreams. I would be even more incredulous when someone would say to me, “Oh, I don’t dream.” What? How could that be? My dream life was always so active, rich, and plentiful. I had so many dreams, even as a child, and dreams inside of dreams. How is it that someone else had none? Since I started researching dreams, however, …

You may not want a cure for your nostalgia, and that’s okay. I’m not sure yet I want to “cure” mine. It’s served me well across many years and many stages of life. But I am strongly considering the possibility of giving it up. Like the other coping mechanisms we developed in childhood and adolescence that enabled us to survive loneliness, awkwardness, abuse, or cruelty, nostalgia allows us a respite from grief and from pain. …

Have you ever noticed how in dreams, we tend to “know” someone has told us something or we get “the idea” of a certain verbal exchange between ourselves and a dream character? It turns out, it’s actually quite difficult to remember word for word what a dream character said. Pay attention the next time you have a dream that includes dialogue or conversation. What words can you recall for certain? Would you bet something valuable …

As I have given more attention over the years to recalling my dreams, I’ve noticed changes in a few areas: Most notably, I remember more dreams, more details of dreams, and I can retain the memory of the dream longer. I’ve also experienced more lucidity in dreams, as well as more episodes of precognition. Another increased capacity has been my sensory experience. Or, at least, my ability to recall sensory experiences from the dream. In …

I don’t remember exactly when I first started experiencing the symptoms of anxiety, but I’ve suffered from panic attacks since the age of seven. I didn’t know that’s what they were then, nor did my parents, nor my doctors. Back then, I may have been described as “sensitive,” or “overreactive.” A doctor may have said once after examining me and finding “nothing wrong,” that I had a “nervous belly.”  It’s only looking back now that …

Have you had an airport dream recently? Did it leave you energized and excited? Or anxious?  My guess is that for many of us airport dreams are often stressful and highlight areas of our lives where we are highly reactive. It’s not surprising. Preparing for and checking in at the airport are not the most peaceful of activities, nor is navigating the airport. It’s understandable then that airport dreams, like airports, are often saturated in …

What does it mean when you dream of your teeth falling out? What does it mean when you dream of spiders chasing you? What does it mean when you dream you are pregnant? What does it mean when you dream of someone who died? Most people who come to the internet to learn more about dreams come to discover the meaning of a particular type of dream. It’s natural that once we start paying more …

Last night, another dream of water. This time, I was tossed a rope by my father and encouraged to hop along lily-pad-like buoys across a pond. From there, I swung on the rope like Tarzan and landed in a deep, clear pool. It was a backyard pool; perhaps it was even the swimming pool in the yard behind my childhood home. Except the pool water was very crisp and clear, and the deep end into …

In 2018, I interviewed scientist and author Dr. Dean Radin upon the publication of his book Real Magic. At the time, I was occasionally interviewing authors for a newspaper, but I was super excited for this one as it was the first time I would interview a parapsychology researcher. On a more personal level, I was looking forward to the opportunity to talk precognition and psychic dreams with Radin, who has studied the phenomenon and published papers with …

My children as of this writing are 20, 16, and 14 years old. All have reached puberty and have moved through the resulting bodily changes. What a ride that has been. When my oldest turned 16, I started having more dreams of him as a baby or a little boy. I would often wake up on those mornings whimpering or sobbing, my heart heavy with a feeling I have since termed “the almost unbearable ache.” …

Have you woken up from a dream curious about what it meant, only to go online to search for its “meaning” and find yourself reading material clearly written by bot? Or perhaps you have a trusted dream dictionary you bought long ago at Urban Outfitters, but the last few times you opened it to search for answers you felt uninspired, as if you could have come up with that interpretation all on your own? It …

Last night, about an hour after falling asleep, I woke up very shaken. There was a dream, I think. It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt real. I was both witness and participant. My perspective wasn’t first-person, but the intensity with which I felt the despair of the situation could only be described as psychic. Two people had just woken up from a deep slumber. Their eyes wide, I perceived their confusion. They looked …

My professional life in the field of dreams began with a strange dream. To be more specific, it began as a result of a strange waking life experience that was related to a dream. One day, while sitting in my daughter’s preschool class making challah bread for Shabbat, I found myself in the middle of an interaction with her and her little three-year-old friend that aroused in me a sense of deja vu. I’d had …