The Buzz: Sharon Kavanaugh
Posted on Thu, December 4, 2008
By Kristina Dorsey
Published on 11/29/2008
Who: Sharon Kavanaugh, 40, of Waterford
Why you should know her: Ever have some bizarre or head-scratching dreams whose meaning you can't quite decipher? She can help you figure out what they mean. Kavanaugh leads dream workshops and dream groups. She has a provisional cetificate and is completing a certification from the Institute of Dream Studies of Charleston, S.C.
Dreamgirl: Thinking back to when she was a kid growing up in New Jersey, Kavanaugh traces a bit of her fascination with dreams to then. “I was interested, I would say, always in kind of the hope and the magic of being a kid. Even as I was growing up, I always thought anything was possible, that there was some kind of magic in the world,” she says. “I think about that now because I work in a corporate and manufacturing world and got very busy with my life and tied up with stress and work.
”When I started to write down my dreams and learn more about my dreams, it made me realize there really was this hope and magic. I felt this same excitement that you do as a kid,” she says.
Analyze this: It was the recording of her dreams that led Kavanaugh to dream analysis. A friend told Kavanuagh she should write them down because she would learn a lot about herself. At that point, a lot of her dreams were searches - wandering through mazes and such. In one scenario, she was travelling up and down elevators and, at the end, finding a key in her pocket. A friend said to her: “Don't you see? You have the key yourself.”
Waking life: Kavanaugh has an engineering degree and worked for more than 15 years in quality engineering and manufacturing, most recently on the development of colors and finishes for a faucet company. Now, she is doing engineering consulting work but is focusing more and more on her dream business, In Your Dreams. That includes a workshop on Dec. 7 at Blissworks Yoga in New London and dream groups on Tuesdays at Home Wellness Center in Groton. (Contact inyourdreams@ymail.com.) “My goal is to teach people about dreams so they can use the insights from their dreams to impact their waking life, because it had such an impact on me,” she says.
So I had this nightmare ... You know how, when folks find out that someone at a party is a doctor, they will immediately explain a symptom and ask what disease they've got? Dream analysts experience a similar reaction. Kavanaugh says that people - especially when they're riding next to her on a plane - tell her their dreams and want to know what they mean. She says that some people do dream work very intuitively and could give a person an immediate, decisive answer. “The approach that I learned and practice is more about helping the dreamer learn their own dream language so they can get insight (into their own dreams),” Kavanaugh says.
Dream weaver: Kavanaugh says that the meanings of dreams are more complex than dream dictionaries can reflect. She says that dreams can have many levels of meaning. Dreams about chases, for instance, of course indicate that the person is running away from something in real life. But other details in the dream are vital in getting a true analysis of the overall meaning. As for why dreams are symbolic rather than literal, Kavanaugh says a theory has it that part of the brain - the logical thinking part - turns off when we are asleep.
- KRISTINA DORSEY
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