Latent Run Club Proclivities

How I’m Unpacking a Surprising Running Dream

It’s a crisp, early fall morning in the Colorado mountains, still dark. A hundred runners huddle close together in a timber picnic shelter, shuffling nervously from foot to foot as we do. Our breath hits the cool air, vaporizes, and rises into the glow of a single yellow flood lamp.

Lisa is by my side and we’re holding hands, giggling. She kisses me and drifts toward a row of waiting vans. Other wives are saying goodbye to their husbands, all climbing into the vehicles bound for … Colorado Springs, it seems. A spa retreat? I had known this was coming—it’s what I signed up for—but there’s still so much mystery.

Just us guys in the shelter now. I’m out of my comfort zone, but fifty years old and in possession of the tools to at least hold, and occasionally initiate conversations with strangers. Not like high school, when a situation like this would have spurred an instinct to flee.

Watch-like gadgets are being passed around. I receive mine and it’s not a watch, just a blue elastic band that secures a microprocessor to my wrist. The Monitoring Device. I slip it on and an azure light ignites against my skin, slowly modulating, faint-to-bright, faint-to-bright.

I’m making small talk, but not really tuned in. If you ask me later the names of the other runners or what any of these dialogues are about, I won’t be able to tell you.

The dull din rises to a buzz and we’re jogging, out of the shelter and onto patchy grass wet with dew. It feels good to be moving and my trepidation melts. The sinking moon shines faintly on an india ink landscape, the blue lights of Monitoring Devices swinging back and forth as we run together toward a block of abandoned warehouses.

A dystopian scene, you might think, but that’s not the feeling. I’m free and light.

We organize behind a runner who seems to know the route, snaking in and out of buildings through open garage doors,  past piles of scrap and rusted machinery. In and out we go, joking, laughing, making airplane arms. The head of this impromptu conga line loops back over the tail and I realize there is no route. It’s simply been play.

A group of coaches—the gray sweatsuits and whistles give it away—call us to order and, in unison, we sit obediently on a cold concrete pad.

The coach who looks vaguely like Steve Prefontaine says he hopes we’re enjoying the morning, but that it’s time to run the real course. “Partner up,” he announces through a golden mustache. “Find someone of similar ability and let’s get into the mountains.”

I awaken at three in the morning to a quiet bedroom. I’m smiling. Smiling?

Didn’t you say you prefer to run solo?

Yeah, that’s me. The same guy who, just a month ago, wrote It’s Okay to Run Alone had a dream about group running and woke up, not in a cold sweat, but with a grin.

I probably would have filed this one away with other forgotten stories, had I not been in the middle of—and thoroughly enthralled with—James Hollis’ luminous, “A Life of Meaning.”

In it, the Jungian psychoanalyst dives into all kinds of stuff that speaks to curious explorers of inner worlds. We’re challenged to poke at our most cherished narratives, reckon with fear, name our complexes, and recognize our souls’ callings.

Stick with me. It’s more relatable (and accessible) than it might sound.

Carl Jung believed dreams are a window to the unconscious, and therefore key to the process of individuation—becoming one’s true self by integrating conscious and unconscious aspects of the psyche. About this, Hollis writes:

Something brings dreams to us. An informing intelligence is looking at our lives, offering its perspective, and wishing to communicate with us. Would it not make sense from time to time to stop, pay attention, and listen to what dreams are trying to tell us?

Ever had a dream (running or otherwise) that seemed sent from a hidden Self? What did you do with the message? According to Hollis, we should consider honoring this part of our unconscious by listening to, and activating it.

But how?

Noticing

There in Hollis’ question “What are dreams trying to tell us?” is the first step: paying attention. To come closer to understanding a thing, we should first regard it without judgment. I like to think of the Taoist idea of wu-wei, or “non-action.” We want to witness our dreams without clinging or reacting.

The sentiment I often deploy is, “Isn’t that interesting?”

Taking non-judgement to the extreme, we could also choose to ignore our dreams. But, as Hollis says, the more we disown our inner lives, the more we experience a kind of self-estrangement.

People can, from an ego standpoint, dismiss dreams as gibberish, nonsense, or just processing daily life. Yet sleep researchers have discovered that if we live to eighty, six years of our lives will be spent dreaming. Nature must have some purposeful intent in such a commitment of energy. Nature does not waste energy.

So, if Pre shows up in my dream wearing a gray sweatsuit, I should pay attention, yes? Because disregarding the mystery altogether goes against nature. Do this enough, and the dark place where we hide uncomfortable things begins to overflow in unhealthy ways. Hollis writes:

Whatever is not addressed within us psychologically will show up in our patterns of greed, gluttony, anger, or destructive behaviors. Things never go away. They go somewhere else.

When I quit drinking, observing my “inner voice” and the rote patterns of my unconscious were key to ending the injurious cycles. Similarly, paying attention to the internal dialogue that surfaces around my running has allowed me to recognize and break free from the rigid expectations that once defined it.

We should consider committing these observations about ourselves to words (as I’m doing here). If we’re intent on growth, we might also take the next step and engage with our dreams. We’ll get to what that means, in the Jungian sense, in a moment.

First, a note on what it’s not.

Controlling

There’s value in dialoguing with the symbolic language of dreams rather than just passively receiving it. But, Hollis warns, we have to be careful not to let the ego take over by trying to shape or manipulate the unconscious to our liking.

I’m not particularly an advocate of so-called lucid dreaming, where people try to enter [and change] their dreams, because that’s defeating the whole purpose. That’s the ego reasserting its sovereignty. The whole notion of lucid dreaming is contrary to soliciting the wisdom of our nature. It’s seeking to control it one more time, one more subtle way.

We runners tend to thrive on discipline in training and racing. For us, letting go of the need to control is both discomforting and necessary. It requires the humility to accept what we cannot change. Hollis beautifully frames this in the context of addiction recovery:

I’ve often thought what is so impressive about the 12-step approach is the beginning. The first step, after working so hard to find a “treatment” plan, is your worst nightmare: You’re not in control, and your techniques are not working. They’re making things worse, digging the hole deeper.

Dreams, like recovery—and as I’m discovering, like sustainable, joyful running—call us to relinquish control and sink into the unknown. The key is to listen to our inner voice without an ego-driven agenda, and to integrate what we hear into our conscious lives, so that we might heal and grow.

Activating

Jung believed that consciously interacting with images, symbols, and figures from dreams facilitates a dialogue between the surface mind and deeper layers of the psyche. The techniques are collectively referred to as, “Active Imagination.”

"The method of Active Imagination can bring about an activation of the unconscious and confrontation with unconscious contents."
- Carl Jung, The Red Book

Here’s where it gets fun, because the key word is “active” (aka creative). Let’s look at a few approaches, using my Colorado run camp dream as an example.

• Visualization or Daydreaming: I could sit quietly and let the scene arise and unfold, patiently observing without judgment. I shouldn’t strain to recall things as they occurred in the original dream, just let the action play out as if watching a movie. Maybe it’s the same, maybe it takes a different course.

• Dialogue with Inner Figures: I might imagine speaking to the figures that appeared, asking them questions or simply witnessing their actions. In my run camp dream, I didn’t catch anyone’s name or pay attention to the small talk. Perhaps I go back and engage more intently. Maybe I pick up the story from where I woke up. I could raise my hand and ask Pre why we’re here.

• Artistic Expression: I could use drawing, painting, sculpting, or some other type of media to give form to the images and symbols I recall from my dream, or that arise during Active Imagination. This would help externalize the unconscious material. I recall the deep and glowing shades of blue from that cool mountain morning. Time to get out the big box of Crayons!

• Writing or Journaling: I might keep a notebook bedside and quickly jot down what I can remember from a dream as soon as possible on waking. Later, without overthinking or judgment, I could fill in the blanks by free-writing with the first images, figures, and feelings that come to mind.

In working through this article, I employed several of the Active Imagination techniques above—visualization, dialogue, and writing.

When you start engaging with your dreams, know the ego will get involved (it always does). Some details from the Colorado run camp were not recollections, but came about during free-writing, which my conscious mind tried to flag as disingenuous. It’s not. About this tendency, Hollis writes:

Maybe the first couple of times you try Active Imagination, you will feel as if nothing happened because the ego is still clinging to its conventional sense of reality. It doesn’t want to be in that room, or it says, Oh, I’m just making this stuff up.

Runners are familiar with voices of doubt. In the same way Active Imagination can feel like making stuff up, we experience internal resistance, often because results are slow to appear. The conscious mind might say, “You’re not improving,” or “What are you doing? This isn’t real training.”

As with creating a soulful, lifetime running practice, the key to activating the unconscious is patience. Simply stick with it. Because the goals—releasing material from the dark place and connecting with the wisdom of nature—are worth the effort.

The Finish Line

A book and a dream, both arriving at the same time and prompting me to question a long-protected story about the kind of runner I am. From the exercises of Active Imagination and writing this piece for you, no answers—only more questions.

But, as Hollis put it, “Answers tell us where we’ve been. Questions get us on our journey.”

Run lightly,
-mike

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