HAVE you ever wondered what your dreams mean, or why they often seem so strange? Students at an East Lancashire college are being encouraged to delve deeper into their dreams to help them explore and face up to problems in their lives. Reporter IAN McCAWLEY spoke to their course tutor, psychotherapist Leslie Davidoff, about the meaning of dreams and how they relate to our everyday lives:

THINK about a vivid dream you've had recently and you'll probably remember it was comforting, disturbing, confusing or even exciting.

Some people pay attention to their dreams, while others couldn't care less what goes on while they are asleep.

But some psychologists believe that the images in our dreams hold the key to our deepest desires and fears and offer a path to a more contented life.

Qualified psychotherapist Leslie Davidoff has brought his ideas about dream analysis to East Lancashire for the first time.

A six-week course has been taking place at Burnley College, where students have gained a greater insight into their own lives by examining images that appear in their dreams.

"The aim of the course is to give people some idea about how they can look at what their own dreams mean," said Leslie.

"Some people come to understand themselves a bit better and some are interested in using the skills in a counselling situation to help others."

Leslie, who lives in Skipton, qualified 15 years ago and is a member of the UK Council for Psychotherapists.

He is also a teacher and a professional writer.

His work, and that of other dream analysts, is based on interpreting and explaining metaphors - images and symbols - which appear in his clients' dreams. Leslie explained: "We all dream every night, even if we can't remember every dream we have, and they are obviously there to perform some kind of function.

It is suggested that dreams are a way of organising information to help us adapt to our environment and we do that each night.

"Dreams link things that are happening now to deeper elements that have been in our minds for a long time.

"Dreams fit in with the principle of pushing things away.

"People push things away that they don't want to see in themselves but this can become a problem and can ultimately make us ill. As with any kind of counselling, we encourage people not to avoid things that they need to confront in order to progress in life.

"Dreams are a very quick way of putting us in touch with the issues that we need to face and this is a successful type of counselling.

Once dream metaphors have been unravelled, the client is encouraged to deal with the issues in order to lay the ghosts which appear when they sleep.

"Dreams can, in a sense, suggest solutions, although we are not talking about Mystic Meg-style fortune telling here," added Leslie.

"Recurring dreams are important.

"Whatever is being dealt with as an issue in the dream is something that's serious enough for you to keep remembering. "It's not serious in the sense that you should worry about it, but important enough for you to keep having the dream.

"The fact that it recurs is because you keep pushing it away and the dream is tapping you on the shoulder, asking you to take a look at it.

"As soon as you deal with the issue by facing up to it, the dream should go away."

Nightmares often represent a memory which may be linked to some traumatic event in our childhood.

"The nightmare puts us in touch with stuff that was very frightening when we were six months old, which we had no way of controlling.

"At the time, we thought the terror was going to last forever, or at least until our mother made us feel better, and that comes back to us."

Leslie is planning to return to Burnley College this autumn to begin a longer dream analysis course.

Anyone who would like more information about the course or counselling can call Leslie on 01756 793549.

Leslie was invited to analyse the dreams of three people who contribute to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph - astrologer June Baker-Howard, restaurateur Ray Peake and reporter Ian McCawley.

RAY PEAKE, owner of Callums Bistro, Accrington: "I keep dreaming that I am having a meal in the bistro and I am being served by myself. I anticipate what the person serving me is going to say and I often say it before he does."

Leslie Davidoff: "A restaurant can be a metaphor for emotional as well as physical nourishment. Setting the dream in the bistro suggests it's about both your inner state and workaday world. "Perhaps you feel you can only get the nourishment you require by doing everything yourself. Knowing what you are going to say is a statement of self-awareness. You know what's going on and what the answer might be."

JUNE BAKER-HOWARD: "In the first dream, I am driving my car but there is ice and snow everywhere. Lots of other cars have crashed and I'm worried, but somehow the ice melts and I get through. In the second dream, I'm at a station and I have to get a train but I'm told there aren't any more coming that day. I'm convinced I'm going to get my train and sure enough along it comes. I always have some children with me when I get on the train and I am responsible for them."

Leslie Davidoff: "There is a sense of previous difficulties (crashes) in your dream, so there is a worry that the same will happen now. But you are in the driving seat and you get through because you have allowed your feelings to melt. This continues in the next dream. "You are now determined to start a new journey. You can't do this unless you take responsibility for the ungrown-up parts of yourself, represented by children."

IAN MCCAWLEY, reporter: "I often dream that I am back at primary school but the corridors are empty. Gradually people begin to turn up but they are people from my everyday life in the present day. I usually feel a bit scared."

Leslie Davidoff: "There is something about your childhood that represents a recurrent issue and situations today recall that time. The feeling of emptiness suggests something unfulfilled. What you should be full of - potential, meaning or relationships - is feeling empty.

"I would guess that the dream presents you with the situation which you are choosing not to deal with, though you are not far from being able to change the situation."

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