Dreaming and the Senses
How dreaming engages our bodies.
Posted March 11, 2026 | Reviewed by Davia Sills
Spring is coming. In the Northern Hemisphere, we are slowly waking from winter’s long, dark sleep. Spring’s very nature is creative. New growth is sprouting all around us, with birds building nests, trees budding, and flowers starting to bloom. The riot of colors, scents, sights, textures, and tastes awakens our senses once again. This brings me to dreaming .
When we talk about dreaming from an academic standpoint, we discuss brain function, evolutionary biology, different cultural symbols, and, of course, the ultimate chicken-or-the-egg discussion: whether our dreams are just a dump of the day’s overload or true insights from our deepest selves. We tend to stick to theory and stay in our heads.
Yet in my work, when people talk about dreaming, they recount dreams that moved their bodies, impacting them on a physical and emotional level. Clients describe dreams where the feel of a grandmother’s knotted, arthritic hands flooded their body with a sense of homecoming, or the loud sound of a typewriter inexplicably filled them with a cold and terrifying dread.
Nighttime dreams are sensory experiences, engaging our physical bodies as well as our intellect and emotions. It’s this physical aspect that lends dreams their power to shift our lives into new and more positive directions.
Dreams are heavy on visual imagery. But they also engage all of our senses. One client dreamed of a banquet with delightful scents, colors, and tastes. Another dreamed of hearing a foreign language and following it to discover a singing choir in a beautiful meadow. In both of these cases, these dreamers woke to a feeling of awe and wonder, having experienced something that made waking life more vivid and meaningful.
The perceptual geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, in his book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience , writes that it is our senses that ground our sense of what is real. When we touch, hear, smell, taste, and see, we are in direct contact with our bodies and the material world we are relating to. The squeak of an armchair, the sharp crack of a wooden step, make the abstract idea of home something tangible.
It’s exactly this sense of embodiment-as-reality that Kahn (2013) proposes makes our dreams capable of subtly expanding our sense of self on a nightly basis. In dreams, we maintain a connection to our body, which means that we maintain our sense of “I.” It is the “I” that moves through the dream, experiencing scenarios not found in waking life, taking us beyond the limitations of our conscious assumptions. Because dreams are felt experiences, not thought-based ones, when we wake up, we retain that expanded sense of self.
Like spring unfolding outside our windows, our nighttime dreams bring forth our potential by exercising the parts of ourselves that can transform, develop a more positive outlook, overcome challenges, or see a waking situation in a whole new way. It is our senses and the connection to our bodies that is key.
A client was facing a daytime challenge at work. She dreamt of being in a performance, anxious and stressed . She was the only one on the stage, carrying the whole performance by herself. Then she heard a song playing in the background. She looked up to find where it was coming from, but couldn’t see any speakers. Was it outside, or coming from inside herself? She sang along anyway—it was a joyful song, one from her childhood that was sung at parties. As she sang, she felt lighter and lighter, until, somehow, she was dancing in the air.
Recounting the dream, my client remembered the joy of doing something just because it was fun. Embodying this sense helped her to rise above her circumstances, literally. Equally important, she also remembered the feeling of singing along with others. The idea of being the only one on the stage gave way in waking time to reaching out to others on her team with whom she could collaborate to help solve her challenge.
Life is but a series of challenges that, when we look back, we see that we’ve overcome in one way or another. But in the middle of the storm, so to speak, it’s easy to forget that we are capable of doing just that. Experiencing a dropped thread of inner joy, lightness, or collaboration in a dream reminds us of our inner and outer resources. Because we experience it with our senses and feel it in our bodies, we know it to be true.
Tuan (2001) reminds us that in our modern world, while we prefer the visual, our other senses are capable of being developed and expanded. In this spring season, with nature inviting us to dive in with all of our senses, perhaps it’s time to explore with our noses and ears, to touch and taste, and to see—perhaps these will nurture a more sensual, expanded dream space.
Kahn, D. (2013). Brain basis of self: self-organization and lessons from dreaming. Frontiers in Psychology. Vol. 4, article 408.
Tuan, Yi-Fu (2001). Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press.
Share this post Facebook Bluesky Linkedin Email
There was a problem adding your email address. Please try again.
By submitting your information you agree to the Psychology Today Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy
Bonnie Buckner, Ph.D., author of The Secret Mind: Unlock the Power of Dreams to Transform Your Life , is the founder and CEO of the International Institute for Dreaming and Imagery.
Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service from Psychology Today.
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.