EP55: Dreams: Your Unknown Creative Potential with Pearl Gregor

This is winning with wellness, a podcast about inspiring the wellness warrior in you. If you are feeling lost or alone in your wellness journey, or are looking for new ideas and inspiration, you are in the right place, a place you can learn about all things wellness in business life and living. Your host Jenny Ryce, we'll be bringing you inspiring stories and practical tools to improve your overall wellness personally and professionally. Imagine what living a life of wellness would be like. Thank you for joining us today.

Hi, everyone, welcome back to winning with wellness, where education inspiration and connection hopefully inspires you to step into your own wellness warrior journey. I am really excited to have Pearl here with me today. Pearl Welcome to the show.

Thank you very much, Jenny. I'm very glad to be here.

Pearl is a wealth of wellness wisdom, we cannot wait to tap into what Pearl is going to share with us today. But before we do, I would like to share a little bit about Pearl and what she does so Pearl Gregor is an explorer and a seeker. She's a writer, Dream coach, storyteller, writing coach, author of the three books in the series dreams along the way, and an international public speaker. Pearl is a farmer nature lover environmentalists grandmother blogger and an elder crone of wisdom. I love that pearl is delighted to coach you, as your nightly dreams invite you to step across the threshold into a new and deeper relationship with your soul self. Pearl. Welcome again. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Thank you, Jenny. Well, I'm inviting everyone today to experience a very short, guided meditation to go looking for their own inner creativity. They have a wellspring of innate creativity, sometimes referred to fundamental or foundational principles. And if you're a writer, a coach, an artist, a painter, singer, musician, whatever you do in your creative self, perhaps you're creating a new business. That's where you go deep into your mentation. And you go deep into your dreams, and you go solving your problems. And we have not in the western world we have barely barely barely tapped into the wisdom of our dreams. If we were living in a different culture, we might get up in the morning, sit at the breakfast table with our family or with our spouse or partner and share our dreams. We don't do that in Western culture. And we're missing a whole wellspring of our innate creativity. So today, I want to take you on a short journey. I don't know maybe five minutes, we're going to talk about how to talk to the Goddess Sarasvati. Now you may not be familiar with her, but she is the goddess of speech, the goddess of wisdom and the goddess of music. She's a Hindu goddess so you can check her out. And if you want to come with me, on this meditative journey, sit back. Take three deep breaths. And don't worry if we can hear you breathing. Because we can't actually hear you. You can hear me breathe from the very pit of your guts deep. No, go in your imagination to a place where you can sit and meditate and close your eyes. Get ready to travel you find yourself standing on a broad flat plane. It's empty right now. This is the bedrock under which lies all the soil and loose material on the Earth's surface. Another definition of bedrock is fundamental principles. You are standing on the firmament of Earth. The bed from which Our principles arrive, you may be familiar with the wisdom and creativity that lies within Mother Earth. Suddenly, a voice speaks. The fundamental principle is creativity. And you look around, remember, you're in your imagination. As you look around, there's a four armed lady. This is Sarasvati. And she has her goose standing beside her are engaged in conversation. And both the Goddess and the goose are carrying books that are glowing as you look, they glow so beautifully they seem to be alive. You are sure that these must be marvelous books written by world famous feminist authors, and filled with wisdom and humor, you ache to read these books. And here we pause. And we wait while you look and you ponder and you admire these beautiful books and you begin to wonder When will I get to read these books of wisdom

I'll come back in two Minutes. I invite you now to return to the room. Stretch to make sure that you come fully back to the room. If there's someone with you while you're listening to this podcast, say hello to them. And we will continue our meditation when you join a dream circle. Thank you very much, Jenny, over to you.

For all that was lovely to take us through that transition of a meditative journey. Can you explain to people why those are beneficial?

Well, let me just give you my experience, Jen. I discovered meditation. When I was desperate, I can tell you're desperate, desperate because of clinical depression, and I was invited to a meditation. And out of that, that was in April 1998. By February of 1989 I'll count on your fingers how many months that is is not very many. I found within me that in complete release from clinical depression. I've never had another pill in my life. That's 30 years ago. That's incredible. So if you're looking for the the benefits of meditation, that's just one I've made on jobs I've meditated on being I've meditated on just to regain my energy. For example. I was very very ill that April, no energy whatsoever. And my mom was here visiting and I said I'm just going outside to meditate to get some energy mom. Because I mean I was at that point I'm the mother of three children. married my husband was was still alive then running a farm working full time as a consultant. I need my energy. So what in the front steps and I began to meditate. This is one of those meditations that the entire my entire yard lit up with his blue lights with a musical pine. I'm looking at the musical buying out my window right now. And my energy went through the roof Can I explain? Why can't we just have this innate wisdom that we're not tapping into? Why we aren't? Well, there's rules in our culture around meditation, not a good idea. I'm 35 years ago, that was very suspect. Right? It isn't anymore. Now it's quite becoming more and more widely known and popular. So I would say to anybody who's looking to meditate or meditate, there's tapes, there's books, I was meditating with some with a book called, was from Father John main, I'm Roman Catholic, by by background, my history. There is great meditations in in so many traditions. There's the Hindu meditations, there's Christian meditations, there's Buddhist meditations, there's all kinds of people that are doing this work. Inner peace I meditate with with Tara Brach, be our ACH. She's amazing. So, any other questions around meditation?

No, I think I think what's lovely is, is knowing that you can find what suits you and and step into it and, and see how it serves you and then expand on it, which is beautiful. And I know too, that you're very passionate about dreams and understanding your dreams. You shared that at the beginning about it's something that we I think it would be fascinating unless it's a very weird dream you You're right. It is a culture and we don't generally discuss our dreams. When when you work with somebody that that his brand new to trying to understand dreams. What are some of the couple, you know, how do you get people started? What's the best way to get started?

First of all, let me just take you up with that word weird. Because, ya know, I have yet to meet a person and talk about dreams. That doesn't say, I had this weird dream. I'm seriously should be breaded on my forehead. I had this weird dream. Dreams are in another language. That's why we think they're weird. Right? They are the language of the soul. And I'm not talking about wooden kind, I'm talking about the soul the essence of who you are. And so how do I begin with people? I begin by saying things like, Well, are you writing down your dreams? Here, here's the way I would like to to write them down with something called the Allman method. Doesn't matter what it's called. You only write the dream in mind dream. I am walking down the road, and I run into a polar bear. And the Polar Bear says to me, blah, whatever. And you just and then the dream ends. And people say to me all the time, but Pearl, it was only a sliver. It's just a tidbit. It can't mean anything. It means something. I once had a lady come to our workshop, pre COVID, of course. And she had Oh, just a sliver. She says give us the server. It was a screen door. That was all she had. By the time an hour was on the screen door had a deep meaning for her life. She was keeping out ideas that wanted to come in. She was screening them out if they didn't like if she didn't like them, she screened them out. One more fundamental dreamwork dreams come to unhinge. unhinge your fixed position. I am a 100% different person now than I was 32 years ago. It's powerful. I lost my Oracle Identity. And I became a raving radical feminist. I was described once on after I finished my dissertation and somebody read it who didn't like it as a feminist, Nancy? B. Oh, and the rest of it. And I said thank you very much. Because the Earth is feminine. You'll notice I took people to the to the earth as the as their fundamental principles on wisdom and gut and creativity. We went beyond the Earth. We didn't go on the sky. We went on the earth. So we the meditation I started you with was the part one of Tuesday January 8 teens dream circle, right? Okay. No, so I use this air, we do a short meditation in every dream circle, we do some writing in every dream circle. And everybody brings a dream, we don't get to all the dreams, because it's an hour and a half, at least get to one. And sometimes even two, there is no literal meaning in a dream. And if you dream of your mother, it's not your mother. If you dream of that next door neighbor, it's not your next door neighbor. They're symbolic of something. Our culture deals in literal terms, black is black and white is white. One in dreamwork, that's black might be white, black is usually has to do with, with, again, the feminine. And so interested in Europe, if you've ever planted a garden, I mean, I'm a farmer. So when I go out to plant something, to go under the soil, you don't plant stuff on the surface. Because it won't grow, it will just die it shrivels up and dies. So feminine and dark is darkness, Earth is feminine. And we look at all of those things in our dreams wires coming in your dream. My first dream was a descent to most people don't know who banana is. Banana was a mythological goddess, about the year 6000 BCE. We only discovered her in the 30s and 40s. She was hidden under the what I call the bedrock of fundamental patriarchy. Called feminism but underneath it. So next question.

Well, what I wanted to really tap into is you do dream work as a group. Do you do dream work for private? If so if say somebody is not comfortable doing public dream work? Because

Absolutely, because many people aren't comfortable doing dreammore Actually, sometimes even double booked myself for doing work.

You're human. And we're like, Oh, goodness.

Today, just as an example, I have an individual who lives in Vancouver. I have a lady who lives in Italy. This zoom has been an amazing boom to the existence of dreams with individuals, right? I have some local, most of them are in American United States, okay. People across, I mean, and I'm going to be 77 in a week. So I gradually work myself into an oblivion. Yeah,

you want to enjoy, you know. So, you know, one thing that you've shared with me that you're gonna allow her give our give it as a gift to our listeners is a, you know, a 30 minute dream consultation. And all they need to do is subscribe to your website and leave a comment

or my website, there's the within a few minutes, a subscription will pop up what it means if you put your name in there and make a comment. And it will come to me as a question to Dreamz along the way, and you will leave your name and address and I will contact you or please address a phone number and your name. Right. So they will have a 30 minute conversation about dreams

that is so generous. And would it help if they mentioned this episode, like winning with wellness podcast, so you know where they came from? Is that necessary? That

helps that degree because this podcast the winning with wellness, because it focuses so deeply on wellness. I often get new clients from because people are interested in all this material. But they need to talk to somebody personally dreams are pretty personal.

Yeah, they are. And you know,

just as a kind of a bit of a joke. I often say to people, if you dream of having sex with the next door neighbor, believe me, that's not the plan.

That's not what's coming up. Well, because people do have very, very unique dreams.

story as I taught at the university, and these were fourth year university students going on to edge are in education. And they're going out for a six week practicum to go into the schools. They went in for six weeks to practice teaching. And so I said to them one day I said so you're going out for six weeks. I want to know when you come back if you have the naked teacher during and then I need to know and you go Oh what is that? Teachers often feel very, very vulnerable. Yes, sure. going up in front of a classroom of kids naked is kind of vulnerable. You know, we weren't close so that we're not vulnerable, right? Anyway, they come back in six weeks and the first one of the guys says, Okay, Dr. Greger I had the dream I had the naked teacher dream. But interesting, didn't have a shirt on because pants on. They said, Well, I guess you're only half vulnerable, right? Everybody dreams, but they won't share some of them because they, but some think about symbolism of integration. That's what sexuality isn't. Sexuality is incredibly creative. Our culture just deals in objectivity. Right. And that's not where our wisdom lies in objectivity.

Thank you so much for being on the show. I think for those that are listening to understand your dreams as untapped wisdom, and pearls, an exceptional guide to show you the way or inspire you into trying and with such a generous gift of 30 minutes of her time, I encourage you guys to step in, because Pearl is a wealth of information. And I am again, happy birthday from all of us here at your holistic Earth and from those that are listening, that is incredible, happy, happy, early birthday.

That's why I'm an elder in grown.

I love that by the way. So those of you that are listening that want to reach out to Pearl, don't worry, we're going to put those contact information in the show notes. She is also an exceptional professional in our mazing group at your holistic earth if you want to search her that way. You just need to pop her name into the directory and she'll pop up and you can find how to reach her there. Pearl thank you so much for being on the show. It is always a pleasure. Thank you everybody who is listening, and sharing your time and space to learn about this new modality which isn't new to the world, but it might be new to us. So thank you so much for stepping in. We look forward to catching you on the next episode of winning with wellness.