by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Dr. Steve Parker of Alaska tells this story of a chilling dream he had nine years ago:
“An airplane with a red, four-cylinder engine is leaking oil, and smoke is coming from the engine. The plane takes off, but then immediately crashes. I wake bolt upright at 5 a.m. and the first words in my head are: ‘I’m having heart trouble!'”
Although he says that he had no heart symptoms at the time of this plane crash dream, it turned out to be a far more accurate warning than he could have even imagined. He now believes that this dream actually foreshadowed his own severe heart attack.
He’s not only a survivor, he’s also a cardiac psychologist and author of the book Heart Attack and Soul: In the Labyrinth of Healing. He’ll be sharing the story of this dream – and maybe yours as well – when he speaks at the conference of the International Association for the Study of Dreams later this month. This is the story he’ll tell:
“My doctor and I could find no cause for alarm. But four months after having this dream, I had emergency heart surgery for a huge blockage at the widow-maker junction of the coronary arteries. A series of heart disease-related events continued, culminating in a severe heart attack four years ago.
“Since my recovery, I have wondered why the physician and I did not take the warning dream more seriously. It took me a while to recognize that the red four-cylinder engine in my dream is a symbol for the heart.”
But he also acknowledges, of course, that if he had told his cardiologists about this dream or others, they would have just rolled their eyes. That’s why he would like to hear from you if, like him, you have ever experienced these warning dreams.
“I would like to accumulate enough anecdotal reports of these kinds of dreams to convince medical doctors of their value in diagnosis.”
Interpreting dreams can be an intriguing therapeutic tool, and some believe that dreams may even be related to survival itself. Dr. Antti Revonsuo, a psychology professor in Finland, theorizes that dreaming is central to human evolution.
“A dream’s biological function is to simulate threatening events and to rehearse threat perception and threat avoidance. That is, our dreams can warn us of challenges ahead and give us a chance to rehearse efficient responses—including getting out of the way. I once dreamed of a car accident on a hill. Several weeks later, driving on the same hill, I found my view of a curve in the road obscured by a delivery truck ahead. I remembered my dream and slowed almost to a stop—avoiding a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler.”
Like Dr. Parker, Dr. Revonsuo believes that dreams can also alert us to dangers that are internal. He tells of a nurse who dreamed she’d traveled inside her body and found it was like a boiler room in danger of blowing up.
“Upon waking, she made a doctor’s appointment and learned she had an ulcer that needed immediate treatment. Other people have reported dreams that alerted them to illnesses ranging from breast cancer to heart disease. Dreams may tell us what is going on inside our bodies and what we need to do to stay healthy.”
Find out more from the International Association for the Study of Dreams about what our dreams can tell us.
Also visit Dream Currents, Dr. Steve Parker’s website all about dreams, or his Emotions of the Wounded Heart essay.
Heart Sisters 
I had a dream last night that I predicted myself getting a heart attack at exactly 11:11 pm and as the time came nothing happened and then I woke up. Is this something to worry about or am I safe.
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I had a dream that i saw my father was arguing with my sister in his room and then all of a sudden he started having excruciating chest pains. Holding his chest and falling to the floor, in the dream it was like i was hovering over, my father or my sister did not notice i was there and i could not intervene. I tried to shout for my dad my mouth opened nothing came out, all of a sudden i’m locked out of the room, i’m banging the door but nothing, no damage (like there’s an invisible force field) i cant open the door as i get angry. i wake up.
at the time this dream really scared me, i told my parents but they thought nothing of it, so i shrugged it off. A few weeks went by everything was great until my dad had a heart attack at work. All thanks to God and the paramedics who helped to save his life.
My father had a healthy lifestyle before the heart attack, he used to cycle to work, he gave up smoking 30 years ago & he doesn’t eat greasy food.
People have heart attacks all the time but what puzzles me is why do i get a nightmare of it before it happens. I’m grateful i recieved this message but where are they coming from and how do i change outcome of events in dream?
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Thank you for sharing this! Over a year ago I dreamt that my best friend’s neighbor whom we hung out with a lot, had a heart attack, and then several months later he was hospitalized and had heart surgery.
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I had a dream early this morning about experiencing a heart attack and nobody around me knew how to do CPR. I am diabetic plus my Mom died of a heart attack so I don’t know if that is what caused it! It was shocking though, as my sister also had a dream last night about another person having a heart attack.
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Hi Lisa – these “helpless” dreams (nobody around to help me) are really scary! After my heart attack in 2008, I continued to have one particular recurrent nightmare of flying on a plane, but when I looked around the plane, I realized I was the only passenger. There were no flight attendants either. And when I looked around further, I could see through the open cockpit door that there was no pilot or co-pilot flying the plane! I had had two severe cardiac events during a 5-hour flight the day before I was hospitalized for a heart attack, so I’m pretty sure I was reliving the terror of that fateful real-life flight in my dream.
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So I had a dream I just can’t seem to shake. For a week I kept dreaming I was dying. I don’t remember these dreams other than I was dying. The dream that is haunting me I remember. I was being chased by a pure white angel and when she finally caught up to me she stared me straight in the eyes and said I was going to die of a heart attack. I woke up right away. What does this mean!?
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Hi Rachel – what a terrifying angel dream! Perhaps, as the Finnish dream researcher Dr. Antti Revonsuo suggests, the purpose of such a compelling dream is to “….simulate threatening events and to rehearse threat perception and threat avoidance…” – in other words, to motivate you to take specific actions now to prevent what the dream is warning you about.
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Yesterday I had a dream that a close family member was diagnosed with “heart cancer” (didn’t even know that existed). I told her about my dream and she said she had been getting heart palpitations and had an appointment to see a cardiologist (unbeknownst to me, as she didn’t want to scare me).
How literal should I be taking my dreams? Meaning, if it’s an affected area, can we jump to the conclusion to test for cancer or could it be generally another illness? Also, can you have prodromal dreams of others and not necessarily yourself?
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Fashionista, check out this website for the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
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Fascinating stuff – reminds me of all the hospice patients who talk about trips and ask for tickets for planes, trains, ships, etc. I’m sure there is a lot to this – our minds know way more than we can even imagine.
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