Changing your mind.

Yesterday I attended the 2024 Dream Symposium at the Royal Institute in London. It was a fascinating day with presentations from leading sleep and dream researchers, writers and psychologists.

To Summarise, it seems that quite a lot is known about why we need to sleep, but really very little regarding the purpose and mechanisms of dreams.

One important reason for sleep is memory consolidation. The theory is that salient experiences from the conscious daytime are replayed and re evaluated by the unconscious mind, which sifts the chaff and retains what it considers contextually important information into the long term memory vaults.

This struck me as interesting because one of the ways that therapy fosters change is by a process called memory re-consolidation. In this process, memories and experiences that may have been formed in a traumatic context years before and that carry a valence of fear and anxiety can be transformed.

If such deep memories can be allowed to be present but now held in a new context of safety provided by the therapeutic relationship, a re-consolidation occurs whereby the painful implicit memory is integrated into the whole person but with a new contextual reference attached to it – one of safety. In other words the process ‘de threatens’ the memory, allowing the whole system to relax and become more flexible.

Memory re-consolidation is one of the ways Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy helps to allow you to be more resilient and feel better.