Water Dream Meaning
Water is the most frequently appearing element in dream reports across cultures. It takes many forms: oceans, rivers, rain, bathtubs, floods, puddles. The state of the water often mirrors the dreamer's emotional state a??calm water correlates with reported peace; turbulent water with reported anxiety. This is consistent enough across studies that some dream researchers use water imagery as a rough proxy for emotional content in dream analysis. The reason water is so pervasive in dreams may be neurological. The brain region that processes body-fluid regulation (the hypothalamus) is active during REM sleep. At the same time, the brain's emotional centers (the limbic system) are highly active while the prefrontal cortex a??the logic and restraint system a??is largely offline. The combination produces dreams where emotion and water imagery are deeply intertwined. I have kept a dream journal on and off for about four years, and water appears in roughly a third of my entries. The form it takes is rarely random. During a stressful work period, I dreamed I was in a submarine taking on water. After a good conversation with someone I had been avoiding, I dreamed of swimming in a warm lake at dawn. The correlation is not perfect, but it is there. From a Jungian perspective, Jung considered water the universal symbol of the unconscious. Just as the sea covers most of the Earth's surface while remaining largely unexplored, the unconscious covers most of the psyche while remaining largely unknown. The state of the water tells you about your relationship to your unconscious: calm water suggests harmony; stormy water suggests turmoil; murky water suggests that something is being hidden. Jung would ask: what is beneath the surface? Freud read it as Freud, once again, connected water to sexuality a??specifically, birth and amniotic fluid. He saw water in dreams as a return to the womb, a regression to the earliest state of safety. This interpretation has been largely set aside by modern dream researchers, though the idea that water dreams involve regression or a desire for comfort is still explored. In many religious traditions, water is purifying. Dreaming of clean water is considered auspicious in Islamic, Hindu, and Christian dream traditions. Dreaming of dirty or flood water is seen as a warning. In Chinese dream interpretation (recorded as early as the Zhou Dynasty), water in dreams is connected to wealth and fortune a??clear water means prosperity, muddy water means financial trouble. In many Pacific Islander traditions, the ocean in dreams is a direct connection to ancestral spirits. It most often appears Swimming in clear water suggests emotional openness. Drowning suggests being overwhelmed. A flood implies that emotions are breaching their normal boundaries. A calm ocean suggests peace. A tidal wave suggests an approaching emotional event that the dreamer feels unable to stop. Walking on water suggests a sense of mastery or transcendence.