The Breast Cancer Dreams Research Project described in the October 2013 Let Magic Happen newsletter was completed in 2014, and the linked Warning Dreams Preceding the Diagnosis of Breast Cancer paper was just published in the May-June Issue of Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. Background from the abstract: There are rare reports of warning dreams about breast cancer in the dream literature and even fewer in the medical literature. Anxiety about breast cancer is increasing due to uncertainty about conflicting guidelines regarding mammography screening.
I will be presenting a related dream/intuitive diagnosis workshop at the International Association for the Study of Dreams conference in Virginia Beach on 6/7/15 with one of the dreamers from the project, Kat O’Keefe-Kanavos, author of Surviving Cancerland: Intuitive Aspects of Healing.
The results and conclusions from the paper abstract are detailed below.
Results: The most common five characteristics of warning dreams in descending order of frequency reported in the survey were: a sense of conviction about the importance in 94%; the dreams were more vivid, real or intense than ordinary in 83%; an emotional sense of threat, menace or dread in 72%; the use of the specific words breast cancer/tumor in 44%; and the sense of physical contact with the breast in 39%.
Conclusion: Warning dreams of breast cancer were often reported to be life changing experiences that prompted medical attention leading directly to diagnosis. Further research needs to be done to determine the frequency of such dreams in women without known breast cancer in order to assess the predictive value of a warning dream. These preliminary results suggest that keeping a dream diary might be a useful adjunct to routine self-examination as part of a breast self-care program, particularly for women in a high-risk category.
