Four Baskets Dreamwork

Our dreams love to tell the stories of our experiences in the womb and birth!  Through the Four Baskets Healing Journey, we learn simple steps to work intentionally with these dreams. I was honored to work with a woman recently who said, like so many of us do, “I don’t remember my dreams.” Then as I described some helpful ways to ask for a Four Baskets dream and mentioned some of the common symbols that show up in these dreams, she recalled a dream that she had many years ago that has always stuck with her. Her story is a very powerful example of how working with our Four Baskets can transform our lives. 

Four Baskets and Common Dream Elements

The First Basket holds our experiences through conception; Second Basket holds our experiences in the womb; Third Basket holds our experiences through birth; and Fourth Basket holds our experiences in the first hours after birth. A Four Baskets dream can highlight one Basket or multiple Baskets and tells the stories of these earliest experiences in a symbolic way, helping us understand how we felt then and how what happened then is reflected in our relationships, projects and emotional patterns of our lives today.

Some common Four Baskets related dream symbols include: water- river, ocean, lake, pond, bathtub; vehicles- boats, cars, airplanes; bridges; your bedroom or childhood bedroom; tent or tunnels; rainbows; caves

Jenny’s dream

I am driving, my husband is in the passenger seat.  We get to a bridge in the morning.  There is some signaling there I am not used to, which puzzles me slightly, but I quickly work it out and manage to get through, no problem. In the evening we come to the same bridge. I am driving, my husband is in the passenger seat, and this time a young girl (my firstborn) is in the back seat. We get to this same bridge.  I think to myself: ha ha! I know exactly what to do here so I do the same as I did in the morning. I drive onto the bridge, but I suddenly realize that there is some fast-driving traffic about to hit us full on. I quickly put the car in reverse and narrowly avoid hitting a white car just behind us. I skillfully get us out of this lane and prepare to go onto the opposite side of the bridge, only to find this side is totally blocked off.  Nothing is going through. I am shaking because I almost caused an accident. I am racking my brain as to what's gone wrong here.  I turn to my husband for reassurance that I am not crazy and that we went past this bridge in the morning with no issue.   “It wasn't like that this morning, was it?” and he responded blankly, “Well, it's like that now.”  I repeat, “But it wasn't like that this morning, was it?”, and he responded the same again, he wasn’t looking at me his face was blank. I was so angry and so frustrated, I needed connection and reassurance, but he wasn’t giving me anything.

Here are the simple steps I use to support Four Baskets dream interpretations:

1) People: Identify who the people in the dream represent.

2) Feelings: Identify the feelings in the dream.

3) Baskets: Identify the Basket(s) of the dream. 

4) Rewrite: Rewrite the dream using these interpretations.

People

In a Four Baskets dream, the people who show up will either represent an aspect of yourself or a person who was present during your Four Baskets. You usually represent your Higher Self. When identifying who the people in your dream represent, you can do a simple word association, what is the first thing you think of when you bring that person to mind? Here is Jenny’s word association:

Husband- “My other half.” In your Four Baskets, who would you consider to be your ‘other half’?  “My mother.”  (In the birth world we often refer to the mother-baby unit as one being.)

First born daughter as a young child- “I always called her my mini-me.” Who would be ‘mini-me’ in your Four Baskets? “Oh my gosh, ME! Me as a baby.”

Feelings

I asked Jenny how she felt inside the dream.

First part of dream:

“I am puzzled, hesitation, maybe even a bit of caution- Be careful.”

Middle of dream:

“At first, I feel confident, I know what to do here. Then I felt horror, terror, I can still feel this right now. It was a feeling that we are going to die. Then afterward, I was shaking and felt scared because I almost had caused an accident.”

End of dream:

“I just wanted to stop and think this through… what happened here? I was looking for support, connection and reassurance … and felt frustrated and angry that my other half was completely absent, blank. I was so angry with my husband in the dream and continued to be angry with him for years after, whenever I felt he wasn’t supporting me.”

Baskets

Here is how we identified the Baskets in Jenny’s dream:

Crossing the bridge in the morning represents her First Basket (conception.) Morning represents beginning, the beginning of the journey. Bridges represent crossing a threshold or transition; in this case, coming into this life or literally entering the womb.

Attempting to cross the bridge in the evening represents her Third Basket (birth.) The evening represents the end of a journey or exiting the womb. Interestingly, her ‘mini-me’ appears in the dream here, this is consistent with it representing the Third Basket. Her baby self wasn’t present yet at the beginning of her First Basket, she grew during her First and Second Basket (not reflected in this dream) and of course is now in the ‘car’ with her as they navigate her Third Basket together. 

Seeking connection with her other-half and looking for resolution after the incident represents her Fourth Basket. The first hours after birth are our first effort to tell our birth story, to get clarity about what just happened and acknowledgment for what we just went through. The Fourth Basket is often marked by a return to or separation from mother.

Rewrite

Let’s rewrite Jenny’s dream and replace the People, Feelings and Baskets with their symbolic interpretations:

First Basket:

I am driving [my Four Baskets], my mother is in the passenger seat. As we cross into the womb in my First Basket, there is some signaling I am not expecting, which puzzles me slightly, I hesitate but quickly work it out and manage to get us through, no problem.

The First Basket holds our need to be seen. This part of the dream reminds Jenny and I of a ‘hesitation imprint’ that we had already been reflecting on in our Four Baskets work together. She shared that she tends to hesitate in various moments in her life - for instance, when it is her turn to share in a group and she finds herself hesitating slightly, then being skipped over, missed, and not seen- so having this show up here validates that this represents her First Basket.  I love how this dream illustrates so beautifully that we are in the driver’s seat of our Four Baskets, it isn’t something happening ‘to us’, but rather these are experiences happening ‘through us’, and ultimately ‘as us’.  Our Four Baskets show us not only how we respond to events in our outer world but often show us that we planned or agreed to these experiences in the first part of our First Basket – when we set our intentions for this life.  

Third Basket:

In my Third Basket, I am driving, my mother is in the passenger seat, and this time my newborn baby self is also with us. When the time comes {to exit the womb}, I think to myself: ha ha! I know exactly what to do here so I do the same as I did in my First Basket.  But while navigating my birth, I suddenly realize that there is something (fast-moving cars ~ perhaps blood) about to hit us, so I reverse and narrowly avoid hitting something (a white car ~ perhaps the umbilical cord) just behind us. I skillfully get us out of this lane and prepare to go onto the opposite side, only to find this side is totally blocked off. Nothing is going through.

Jenny shares, “Yes, this makes so much sense! My birth was blocked, the placenta was blocking the cervix and I was born through emergency c-section.”

It seems that the hesitation imprint in Jenny’s First Basket was there for a reason … it was there to give her a head’s up to be cautious at the beginning of her birth. It’s like it was saying, ‘Caution, watch out for this spot on your way back out.’  There was a reason for it to be there … There may have been other times in her life that the ‘hesitation imprint’ served her well, in addition to the times that it showed up in a disruptive way.

Fourth Basket:

I am shaking because I almost caused an accident. I am racking my brain as to what's gone wrong here.  I repeatedly turned to my mother for reassurance, but she wasn’t even looking at me, her face was blank.  I was so angry and so frustrated. I needed connection and reassurance, but she wasn’t giving me anything.

Jenny was shocked to discover that this dream wasn’t about her husband. “I’ve been angry with him for years feeling that he doesn’t give me proper support, but I see now that this feeling comes from a birth imprint.” She felt unsupported in her Fourth Basket. Because she was born under an emergency c-section, her mother was under general anesthesia, so of course she wasn’t available for her. But our little selves don’t always understand these types of circumstances. We are supposed to be reunited with our ‘other half’ after birth, to be held, nurtured and loved in our Fourth Basket, and when that doesn’t happen, it can be confusing, frustrating, and scary.  Jenny was able to recall a feeling in her body at this point, of laying in an incubator alone, crying and angry. This is a clear example of how the Fourth Basket holds our need to be loved.

Four Baskets dreams show us exactly how we felt during our Baskets. When there is an unresolved energy from that timeframe, Life brings that story up again as an opportunity for us to resolve it. One of the main unresolved energies this dream is telling us about is that Jenny blamed herself for the outcome of her birth. We are in the driver’s seat of our Four Baskets and so often we do not receive acknowledgement for all that we do to give birth to ourselves, which leads to the Third Basket’s need for acknowledgment. Interestingly, in Jenny’s case, this was internalized as self-blame for ‘nearly causing an accident.’ When working through the 4-step Four Baskets Healing Process, she was able to recognize that rather than causing the incident, she very skillfully navigated this dangerous situation and saved her and her mother from a potentially fatal situation.

Transformative Resolution

Using the Four Baskets Healing Process was a very powerful, transformational tool for Jenny. She shared that she used to get so angry with her husband and had been an angry person all her life. EFT tapping had helped her manage this in recent years, but now with the awareness and understanding of where that anger came from (and why she had a sensitivity to her husband’s flat affect) she doesn’t find herself getting angry at all. She says, “In my 40-year marriage, finally something is changing after all these years of struggling. {I see now that} marriage was like the womb, I was stuck in it and couldn’t get through, but now it is different, for the better!”

Jenny called me after her birthday this year, telling me that she has never enjoyed her birthday in the past. “There have always been issues on my birthday, some kind of upset, but not this time! I felt celebrated and loved… what a relief! I don’t ever recall feeling this way before.” 

When asking what her overall take away is from her Four Baskets journey, she said, “This tells me that I was meant to be here… I worked so hard and skillfully to be here!” The Four Baskets Healing Journey allowed her to re-story her life, rather than feeling that afraid that she will cause an incident and angry when she doesn’t feel supported; she now sees how skillfully she navigated herself through her birth to make it through to the other side… and she knows she can apply that same skillful navigation through her life.

Are you curious about your earliest experiences in the womb and through birth?

What are your Four Baskets holding for you?

What emotional patterns in your life are you ready to integrate and re-story?

You can begin with the Four Baskets Digital Course or by scheduling a private session with Four Baskets Facilitator.  We are here for you.