School of Shamanism

S1 EP22: Walking between worlds while you sleep

• School of Shamanism • Season 1 • Episode 22

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0:00 | 9:04

In this episode of School of Shamanism, Giada steps into one of the oldest and most mysterious gateways between worlds: dreams.

While modern culture often dismisses dreams as meaningless brain activity, shamanic traditions have long understood them as journeys into the invisible world. Places where guidance, symbolism, ancestors, spirits, and deeper truths can be accessed beyond ordinary waking life.

Giada explores the role dreams play on the spiritual path, different kinds of dreams we experience, from emotional processing to true spiritual journeys, and why modern society has become disconnected from dream work.

Throughout the episode, Giada shares ways to strengthen dream recall, because every night, whether we remember it or not, another doorway opens.

Connect with Giada Gaslini:

About the Host

Originally hailing from the vibrant city of Milan, I’ve spent the past two decades traversing the globe in a quest for spiritual and personal growth and combined with 25 years of international corporate work experience. From navigating the vast landscapes of Australia in a campervan to finding tranquility living in a Buddhist monastery in Nepal, my journey is nothing short of extraordinary. Along the way, I’ve delved deep into Buddhist teachings, yoga, and shamanism, becoming Shamanic Teacher,  Forest Therapy Guide, Esoteric Numerologist, Shamanic and Integral Yoga Teacher and Ikigai Coach. In 2013 I settled in Edinburgh, where  I founded the Art and Spirituality Centre, a social enterprise and the School of Shamanism, where I passionately help others on their own transformative journeys.

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Giada

The aboriginal Australians speak of the dream time not as something that happened long time ago, but as a parallel reality that exists right now, accessible through dreams and trance. And many indigenous cultures don't distinguish between waking and dreaming, both are real. Today I want to take you in a different uh world, the deem, the dream world. So every night you close your eyes and enter another reality. So you're walking in between worlds. You travel, you make beings, you experience things that feel completely real, and then you wake up and forget most of it. Or you just say, okay, it was just a dream. But for those of us walking between worlds, dreams are just more than a random brain activity. They are a doorway, a portal to the invisible world, and learning to work with them can transform your entire path. So, what are dreams really? Which is the big question. Modern science, as we know, will tell you that they are the brain processing information from the day. Actually, Freud defined them in this way. Neurons firing randomly, memories consolidating, nothing meaningful unless we need to interpret them. Part of that is true, but some dreams are processing, and the brain does need to sort and file and clear out. But that's not, of course, the whole picture. In shamanic traditions and actually in ancient culture, dreams are understood as journeys. Real journeys to real places, even if those places don't exist in this middle world reality. So when you dream, your soul travels, it leaves the body and enters other realms. The invisible world, the world of spirits, ancestors, guides, the world where time works in a different way, where symbols speak, where truth comes in images rather than in words. And the Aboriginal Australians speak of the dream time, not as something that happened a long time ago, but as a parallel reality that exists right now, accessible through dreams and trance. And many indigenous cultures don't distinguish between waking and dreaming. Both are real, both matter. So when I talk about dreams, I'm not talking about meaningless brain noise. I'm talking about a doorway to the invisible world that opens every single night. So if dreams are so important, why do most people ignore them? Same reasons that we have forgotten so much else in life, we've been trained out of it. We live in a culture that values only what can be measured and proven and explained rationally. And dreams don't fit in this category, they don't follow logic, they can't be controlled. So we dismiss them. We wake up, shake them off, and get on with the real world, the real day. And we might remember a fragment, uh, laugh about how weird it was, and then forget about it completely. We have also lost the practices. In traditional cultures, dreams were shared. Families and communities would gather in the morning and tell their dreams, and who has time for that nowadays? Elders would help interpret them. Dreams were guiding decisions where to hunt, when to travel, who to marry, what dangers are coming. We don't do that anymore. Dreams have become private, irrelevant, sometimes embarrassing, and so we have lost access to an entire dimension of guidance. But the doorway is still there. It opens every night, and you just have to start paying attention again. So not all the dreams, of course, are the same. Learning to distinguish between them is a part of the practice. Some dreams are processing, the brain is just basically releasing some activities of the day, some experiences. So some dreams are useful for psychological health, but they're not messages from the invisible world. And some dreams are symbolic. They use images, metaphors, stories to communicate something your conscious mind needs to understand. And they are more vivid, more emotionally vivid. They stay with you after waking, they want to be understood. Some dreams are visitation dreams. You meet someone, this person that passed away, a guide or an ancestor, and they have a different quality. They feel realer than the reality. So you wake up knowing you actually met someone. Some dreams are prophetic, they show you something that hasn't happened yet. And sometimes, literally, sometimes symbolically. Many people have had dreams that then later became true. But they just didn't recognize that at that time. And some dreams are journeys. You travel to other realms, other dimensions, you may meet teachers, receive initiations, retrieve lost part of yourself. And these are dreams from the shamanic practitioners that are trained to do this work. So learning to recognize what kind of dreams you've had is the first step to working with them. So the most common things that I hear is I don't remember my dreams. And dream recall can feel elusive. You wake up knowing you dream something, but it dissolves before you can grasp it actually, the memory of that. And so you can also, of course, train to uh remember dreams. It's a skill, you just start with an intention before you fall asleep. You say to yourself, inside yourself or out loud, I will remember my dreams tonight. And it sounds simple, but it works. You are telling your subconscious that dreams matter, that you want to remember. You can keep a journal next week or just record a voice note the moment you wake up, before you check your phone, before you get up, before you even move too much. Write down whatever you remember, even if it's just a tiny detail, a feeling, a color, a single image. Don't judge what comes, don't try to make sense of it immediately. That's very shamanically, don't interpret. And the more you do this, the more your practice will improve. You are just building a bridge between the dreaming and the waking minds. Some people find it helps to wake up slowly, and just being there in a natural space a few minutes before moving in general. And then once you start remembering your dreams, you will notice that they speak in symbols. A house might represent your psyche, water might represent emotions, flying might represent freedom, death might represent transformation. But symbols are personal. There are some universal patterns, but the universe to you with the images that speak to you. Because a dog in my dream might mean something completely different from a dog in your dreams. So be aware that the dictionary to interpret them doesn't have to be what you find in speaking with someone that can interpret dreams or what you can find online. You just need to refer to you. What does this symbol want to tell me? Notice what feelings arise, notice what memories of associations come up. And over time you will develop your own dream vocabulary. That's the same with shamanic journeys. The journeys speak to you in a very specific way. And of course, they can be your guidance. Because when you are facing decision, when you are stuck, when you don't know which way to turn, you can ask your dreams to show the way before sleep. Hold the question in your mind, say it out loud, just in an open way. What do I need to know about this situation? What's the right path forward? Show me. And then just being open. Pay attention to what comes. It might not be a direct answer, normally they answer in a cryptic way. It may be a feeling, an image, or a symbol that needs unpacking. But dreams often reveal what the conscious mind can see. Some guidance that I've received, especially before moving to Scotland or 13 years ago, I received the guidance to do that in my dreams. And if I had ignored it, I wouldn't be here today. So the invisible world is constantly trying to communicate with us. And dreams are just one of the clearest channels.