Based on ancient traditions and wisdom from around the world, In Focus Dreams teaches you how to understand your dreams and tap into their power in order to conquer your fears and improve your life. This accessible and beautifully designed guide includes a frameable poster of the most common dream symbols and their meanings. Dreams can titillate or terrify, but most of the time they baffle or bewilder. This must-have handbook explains their scientific and personal importance and offers the keys to unlock their secrets. An easy-to-use directory of symbols points to the true meanings of dream objects and includes modern items such as smartphones, computers, and other technology. To help you access the transformative power of your dreams, you'll discover: the history of interpreting dreams essential sleep hygiene principles how to create a sleep sanctuary effective relaxation practices the benefits of essential oils and aromatherapy how to work with a dream journal tips for better dream recall the power of lucid dreaming All of which will help you achieve better sleep, physical health, and emotional well-being. If you love thinking about and sharing your dreams, this book will give you all the tools you need to talk meaningfully about them. Combining elegance and expertise, this is your essential modern guide to an ancient tradition. The In Focus series applies a modern approach to teaching the classic body, mind, and spirit subjects. Authored by experts in their respective fields, these beginner's guides feature smartly designed visual material that clearly illustrates key topics within each subject. As a bonus, each book includes reference cards or a poster, held in an envelope inside the back cover, that give you a quick, go-to guide containing the most important information on the subject.

Two premier hypnotherapists collaborate on a new edition of this award-winning text, a collection of techniques and information about hypnosis that no serious student or practitioner should be without. A thorough and practical handbook of various hypnotherapeutic measures, it contains illustrative examples and logically argued selection methods to help practitioners choose the ideal method for a needed purpose. Section by section, it breaks out the various methods and phenomena of hypnosis into easily digested chunks, so the reader can pick and choose at leisure. An excellent practical guide and reference that is sure to be used regularly. The authors have a wide and longstanding experience on the subject and thus can stay on clinically approvable methods.

The Sower and the Seed explores the origins of consciousness from a mytho-psychological angle. The concept of immanence, a vast intelligence within the evolutionary process, provides the underlying philosophy of the book, presented as a creative-destructive spirit that manifests higher orders of complexity (such as life, intelligence, self-consciousness) and then dissolves them. The book explores the human psyche as immersed in nature and the realm of the Great Mother, showing how the themes of fertility and power, applicable to all life forms, saturate the history of humanity - most evidently in the period stretching from 40,000 years ago up to modern civilizations. The book examines in particular the transition to patriarchal religious consciousness, in which a violent separation from the world of nature took place.

'A fascinating account of what happens during the dark third of our lives, the time with which we are so familiar but about which we know so little.'
'Sunday Telegraph'

'Energetic and immensely readable, this is as good a popular science book as I have read…A timely reminder that we ignore sleep at our peril, 'Counting Sheep' will tell you why sleep-deprived people are shorter, why some blind people dream in pictures and others don't, and what dreams are actually for and it does this with such vivacity and infectious enthusiasm that by the end of this book you'll be racing to your bed to try out a few sleepy experiments for yourself.'
'Evening Standard'

'A masterpiece of efficiently and entertainingly delivered information, bracingly clear and thoroughly researched…whether you want to know about the half-brain slumbers of dolphins, the appalling disease of fatal familial insomnia, or how to cultivate lucid dreams.'
'New Statesman'

'A thoroughly engaging and passionate book…littered with fascinating experiments, titillating examples and offbeat asides.'
'Scotland on Sunday'

'A more gripping subject for a book than almost any other…Even if you don't buy into the dark side of sleep deprivation, Martin's mourning of the lost pleasures of languor might win you over. To me, it sounds irresistible.'
'Daily Telegraph'

We all dream, and 98 per cent of us can recall our dreams the next morning. Even in today’s modern age, it is human nature to wonder what they mean. With incredible new discoveries and stunning science, Why We Dream will give you dramatic insight into yourself and your body. You’ll never think of dreams in the same way again . . .

Groundbreaking science is putting dreams at the forefront of new research into sleep, memory, the concept of self and human socialization. Once a subject of the New Age and spiritualism, the science of dreams is revealed to have a crucial role in the biology and neuroscience of our waking lives.

In Why We Dream, Alice Robb, a leading American science journalist, will take readers on a journey to uncover why we dream, why dreaming matters, and how we can improve our dream life – and why we should. Through her encounters with scientists at the cutting edge of dream research, she reveals how:

- Dreams can be powerful tools to help us process the pain of a relationship break-up, the grief of losing a loved one and the trauma after a dramatic event
- Nightmares may be our body’s warning system for physical and mental illness (including cancer, depression and Alzheimer’s)
- Athletes can improve their performance by dreaming about competing
- Drug addicts who dream about drug-taking can dramatically speed up their recovery from addiction.

Robb also uncovers the fascinating science behind lucid dreaming – when we enter a dream state with control over our actions, creating a limitless playground for our fantasies. And as one of only ten per cent of people with the ability to lucid-dream, she is uniquely placed to teach us how to do it ourselves.

Sleep and Rehabilitation: A Guide for Health Professionals is a concise reference for the health professional looking to further understand sleep and how sleep science may impact particular areas of various rehabilitation disciplines. Dr. Julie M. Hereford and her contributors present Sleep and Rehabilitation: A Guide for Health Professionals in an easy-to-read manner by dividing the text into four main sections. The first section provides a review of the basic scientific understanding of sleep. While there are many other publications that present a basic scientific understanding of sleep, Sleep and Rehabilitation systematically gears this information toward the rehabilitation professional with commonly used terminology, descriptions of sleep architecture, and information concerning sleep hygiene. The final sections of Sleep and Rehabilitation describe disordered sleep and how it pertains to patients seen in the rehabilitation setting. It guides the health professional to recognise the manifestations and consequences of disordered sleep and teaches the rehabilitation professional how to interpret a sleep study in order to provide guidance in clinical decision making. Finally, Sleep and Rehabilitation provides the ever-important practical application of the theoretical principles in sleep rehabilitation. Features include: Discussion on the science of polysomnography Sleep and sleep dysfunction from a rehabilitation perspective Sleep dysfunction as it relates to the clinical needs of a patient undergoing the rehabilitation process Discussion on the particular concerns that sleep and sleep dysfunction can hold for rehabilitation patients and issues to be addressed by the provider Presentation of unique issues that disordered sleep may present in the rehabilitation process such as on pain, pain management, motor learning, and memory and performance enhancement Tools to assess quality and quantity of a patient's sleep Discussion on methods in which sleep may be manipulated in order to optimise a patient's physical performance Sleep and Rehabilitation: A Guide for Health Professionals is a one-of-a-kind reference that will help the health professional incorporate the science of sleep into the rehabilitation process.

The idea of a disjunctive theory of visual experiences first found expression in J.M. Hinton's pioneering 1973 book Experiences. In the first monograph in this exciting area since then, William Fish develops a comprehensive disjunctive theory, incorporating detailed accounts of the three core kinds of visual experience-perception, hallucination, and illusion-and an explanation of how perception and hallucination could be indiscriminable from one another without having anything in common. In the veridical case, Fish contends that the perception of a particular state of affairs involves the subject's being acquainted with that state of affairs, and that it is the subject's standing in this acquaintance relation that makes the experience possess a phenomenal character. Fish argues that when we hallucinate, we are having an experience that, while lacking phenomenal character, is mistakenly supposed by the subject to possess it. Fish then shows how this approach to visual experience is compatible with empirical research into the workings of the brain and concludes by extending this treatment to cover the many different types of illusion that we can be subject to.

A defining scholarly publication on the past and current state of research with psychedelic plant substances for medicine, therapeutics, and spiritual uses. Certain plants have long been known to contain healing properties and used to treat everything from depression and addiction, to aiding in on one's own spiritual well-being for hundreds of years. Can Western medicine find new cures for human ailments by tapping into indigenous plant wisdom? And why the particular interest in the plants with psychoactive properties? These two conference volume proceedings provide an abundance of answers. The first international gathering of researchers held on this subject was in 1967, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and U.S. Public Health Service. It was an interdisciplinary group of specialists - from ethnobotanists to neuroscientists - gathered in one place to share their findings on a topic that was gaining widespread interest: The use of psychoactive plants in indigenous societies. The WAR ON DRUGS which intervened slowed advances in this field. Research, however, has continued, and in the fifty years since that first conference, new and significant discoveries have been made. A new generation of researchers, many inspired by the giants present at that first conference, has continued to investigate the outer limits of ethno-psychopharmacology. At the same time, there has been a sea change in public and medical perceptions of psychedelics. There is now a renaissance in research, and some of these agents are actively being investigated for their therapeutic potential. They are no longer as stigmatized as they have been in the past, although they remain controversial. There still remains much work to do in this field, and many significant discoveries remain to be made. So, in June of 2017, once again specialists from around the world in fields of ethnopharmacology, chemistry, botany, and anthropology gathered to discuss their research and findings in a setting that encouraged the free and frank exchange of information and ideas on the last 50 years of research, and assess the current and possible futures for research in ethnopsychopharmacology. The papers given at the 2017 Symposium, organized by Dr. Dennis McKenna, in a handsome two volume boxed collectors set represents perhaps the most significant body of knowledge in this interdisciplinary field available. About Dennis McKenna: He is an icon amongst psychedelic explorers, working to inspire the next generation of ethnobotanists in the search for new medicines for the benefit of humanity and the preservation of the biosphere that produces what is apparent from reading these papers - a rich pharmacopeia of medicines. Essential for academic libraries, pharmaceutical and ethnobotanical collections.

This book is a collection of selected writings by Dr. Sidney Rosen that aim to demystify the work of the leading clinical psychiatrist, Dr. Milton Erickson, and illustrate Erickson's unconventional and life-changing hypnotic techniques and strategic therapy. An essential reading for those who seek to learn essential elements of psychotherapy, this collection elucidates fundamental aspects of Erickson's approaches and outlines factors effective in all forms of psychotherapy. It contains core teachings of many central elements in psychotherapy and stresses the importance of techniques such as therapeutic trance and hypnosis. As a student and close friend of Dr. Erickson, Dr. Rosen shares his own personal insights about Erickson's teaching methods in a direct and straightforward manner that allows readers easy access to Ericksonian philosophy and techniques. Many therapists, both psychoanalytic and others, will find both Rosen's and Erickson's approaches compatible with their own and far removed from their preconceptions about hypnosis. Providing guidelines for providers of individual and group therapy, this book is an excellent guide to Ericksonian hypnotherapy.

This book is a collection of selected writings by Dr. Sidney Rosen that aim to demystify the work of the leading clinical psychiatrist, Dr. Milton Erickson, and illustrate Erickson's unconventional and life-changing hypnotic techniques and strategic therapy. An essential reading for those who seek to learn essential elements of psychotherapy, this collection elucidates fundamental aspects of Erickson's approaches and outlines factors effective in all forms of psychotherapy. It contains core teachings of many central elements in psychotherapy and stresses the importance of techniques such as therapeutic trance and hypnosis. As a student and close friend of Dr. Erickson, Dr. Rosen shares his own personal insights about Erickson's teaching methods in a direct and straightforward manner that allows readers easy access to Ericksonian philosophy and techniques. Many therapists, both psychoanalytic and others, will find both Rosen's and Erickson's approaches compatible with their own and far removed from their preconceptions about hypnosis. Providing guidelines for providers of individual and group therapy, this book is an excellent guide to Ericksonian hypnotherapy.

Some mental events are conscious, some are unconscious. What is the difference between the two? Uriah Kriegel offers the following answer: whatever else they may represent, conscious mental states always represent themselves (whereas unconscious ones do not, at least not in the right way). The book develops this 'self-representational' approach to consciousness along several dimensions - including phenomenological, ontological, and scientific - and defends it from common and uncommon criticisms.

A lively collection of literature, science and art delving into the mysteries of human consciousness, with a new introduction by Mark Haddon, published to coincide with a major exhibition at Wellcome Collection in 2016 "The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?" Edgar Allan Poe Understanding the nature of consciousness continues to challenge even our leading scientists and psychologists. Yet we all experience some form of consciousness and make daily journeys between different conscious states as we sleep and wake. Through the eyes of writers, artists, scientists and philoso phers, States of Mind explores the meaning of consciousness and, in particular, the nature of interrupted or liminal conscious experiences, such as somnambulism, synaesthesia and disorders of memory. These diverse - even conflicting - perspectives pose fundamental questions about what it means to be alive, aware and human. This engaging collection draws on five centuries of thinking, probing science and the soul, language and memory, being and not being. It includes works by Jane Austen, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Arthur Conan Doyle, Francis Crick, Rene Descartes, Emily Dickinson, H L Gold, Franz Kafka, H P Lovecraft, Marcel Proust, Mary Shelley, Henry David Thoreau, Alan Turing, H G Wells and Emile Zola. WELLCOME COLLECTION Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death. Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, a global charitable foundation that exists to improve health for everyone by helping great ideas to thrive, funding over 14,000 researchers and projects in more than 70 countries. wellcomecollection.org

Why has sleep become increasingly politicized in contemporary society? This book provides an account of the politics of sleep in the late modern age. The future of sleep has become contested and uncertain: something to be defended, downsized or even perhaps (one day) done away with altogether.

"Know thyself," a precept as old as Socrates, is still good advice. But is introspection the best path to self-knowledge? What are we trying to discover, anyway? In an eye-opening tour of the unconscious, as contemporary psychological science has redefined it, Timothy D. Wilson introduces us to a hidden mental world of judgments, feelings, and motives that introspection may never show us.

This is not your psychoanalyst's unconscious. The adaptive unconscious that empirical psychology has revealed, and that Wilson describes, is much more than a repository of primitive drives and conflict-ridden memories. It is a set of pervasive, sophisticated mental processes that size up our worlds, set goals, and initiate action, all while we are consciously thinking about something else.

If we don't know ourselves―our potentials, feelings, or motives―it is most often, Wilson tells us, because we have developed a plausible story about ourselves that is out of touch with our adaptive unconscious. Citing evidence that too much introspection can actually do damage, Wilson makes the case for better ways of discovering our unconscious selves. If you want to know who you are or what you feel or what you're like, Wilson advises, pay attention to what you actually do and what other people think about you.

Showing us an unconscious more powerful than Freud's, and even more pervasive in our daily life, Strangers to Ourselves marks a revolution in how we know ourselves.

'John Bargh's Before You Know It moves our understanding of the mysteries of human behaviour one giant step forward. A brilliant and convincing book.' - Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink and David and Goliath How much of what we say, feel and do is under our conscious control? How much is not? And most crucial of all: if we understood how our unconscious worked - if we knew why we do what we do - could we finally, fundamentally, know ourselves? From checking a dating app to holding a cup of coffee or choosing who to vote for, our unconscious secretly governs everything we feel, think and do. In Before You Know It, Dr John Bargh - the world's leading expert on the unconscious mind - reveals the psychological forces that are at work behind the scenes as we go about our daily lives, and offers simple steps to improve your sleep, boost your memory and live better.

Contains dozens of images. Accessibly written. Contains explanation of key Jungian ideas relating to interpretation of images by children and adults.

In pre-Freudian society, what importance was attached to dreaming? How were dreams interpreted? Some of the best resources for answering these questions are found in the poetry and drama of the medieval and Renaissance periods. The answers they provide are intriguing and unexpected. Leading literary scholars from both sides of the Atlantic have collaborated to produce this book of seven new essays that range from Chaucer to Shakespeare.

For both students and practicing counselors, this book fills the gaps that exist between many current academic programs and practitioner's needs for focused training on how to better assist clients with dream interpretations. Its main focus is on dreams concerning family members and other major figures in the dreamer's life with whom he or she interacts. Readers will first learn how to understand and use their own dreams, and then how to apply this in order to facilitate their clients' interpretations of dreams. They will be amazed and fascinated by the issues, emotions, and problem-solving suggestions that are often revealed as they guide their clients' use of a personalized dream interpretation method developed by the author. Through the use of a detailed case example of a client and her dreams, the author shows how each step of this method can be applied and carried out in practice and is easily integrated with contemporary psychotherapies, especially cognitive behavior therapies.

A different and exciting form of self-care in the form of practical mind to body self-regulation. In the challenging times of the 21st century, looking after oneself and navigating the bumps in the road has become more difficult than ever. However, this fascinating book, written by two psychotherapists with many years of experience, provides a simple and reliable means of restoring the balance which is vital for the robust body mind system we need if we are to be able to bounce back from adverse experiences. It is this balance (homeostasis) that provides us with the highway to wellbeing and it is our body mind system’s innate capacity to self regulate which is at the core of this book. Using six key Autogenic Training exercises, the authors provide readers with the skillset to self regulate at any time or any place. These exercises target activating the parasympathetic nervous system and involve body scans, bodily awareness and respiratory and muscular relaxation.

Meditation techniques, including mindfulness, have become popular wellbeing practices and the scientific study of their effects has recently turned 50 years old. But how much do we know about them: what were they developed for and by whom? How similar or different are they, how effective can they be in changing our minds and biology, what are their social and ethical implications? The Oxford Handbook of Meditation is the most comprehensive volume published on meditation, written in accessible language by world-leading experts on the science and history of these techniques. It covers the development of meditation across the world and the varieties of its practices and experiences. It includes approaches from various disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, history, anthropology, and sociology and it explores its potential for therapeutic and social change, as well as unusual or negative effects. Edited by practitioner-researchers, this book is the ultimate guide for all interested in meditation, including teachers, clinicians, therapists, researchers, or anyone who would like to learn more about this topic.

"An ideal bedside book"
'Sunday Times'

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW THE SECRETS OF YOUR DREAMS?

You remember them, talk about them, worry about them, but how much do you actually know about them? Dreams are an important part of your life, and now this handy dictionary can help lead you through the maze of your psyche. Organised from A-Z, this accessible guide will let you know whether you are due a run of luck, or whether it would be better to just stay in bed!

"A practical, comprehensive guide"
'Cosmopolitan'

"Marvellously comprehensive"
'Daily Express'

"Addictive bedtime reading"
'Daily Telegraph'

The Dream Discourse Today offers an unrivalled view of key American, British and French papers on dream analysis in clinical practice. Offering the first historical and theoretical survey of its subject, it provides the reader with an informed sense of the range of perspectives and a confidence in the continued relevance of dream analysis to practice.
The Dream Discourse Today is not only valuable as a reference source, it will also stimulate renewed consideration of the mental event that Freud regarded as the cornerstone of psychoanalysis. For teacher and clinician alike, this is a thought-provoking collection, enhanced by an informative introduction and lucid editorial commentary to each essay.

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What is the nature of consciousness? How is consciousness related to brain processes? This volume collects thirteen new papers on these topics: twelve by leading and respected philosophers and one by a leading color-vision scientist. All focus on consciousness in the "phenomenal" sense: on what it's like to have an experience.
Consciousness has long been regarded as the biggest stumbling block for physicalism, the view that the mind is physical. The controversy has gained focus over the last few decades, and phenomenal knowledge and phenomenal concepts-knowledge of consciousness and the associated concepts-have come to play increasingly prominent roles in this debate. Consider Frank Jackson's famous case of Mary, the super-scientist who learns all the physical information while confined in a black-and-white room. According to Jackson, if physicalism is true, then Mary's physical knowledge should allow her to deduce what it's like to see in color. Yet it seems intuitively clear that she learns something when she leaves the room. But then how can consciousness be physical? Arguably, whether this sort of reasoning is sound depends on how phenomenal concepts and phenomenal knowledge are construed. For example, some argue that the Mary case reveals something about phenomenal concepts but has no implications for the nature of consciousness itself. Are responses along these lines adequate? Or does the problem arise again at the level of phenomenal concepts?
The papers in this volume engage with the latest developments in this debate. The authors' perspectives range widely. For example, Daniel Dennett argues that anti-physicalist arguments such as the knowledge argument are simplyconfused; David Papineau grants that such arguments at least reveal important features of phenomenal concepts; and David Chalmers defends the anti-physicalist arguments, arguing that the "phenomenal concept strategy" cannot succeed.