Do you sometimes wake from dreaming with an unease you find difficult to shake? Is there one recurring nightmare that haunts you? Or do dreams bring you welcome relief from your waking life?

We spend around a third of our lives asleep, so it’s understandable that dreams have been intriguing and troubling humans for millennia. Some believe our dreams to be an expression of hidden desires, a cathartic release for our unconscious mind, or even crucial insights or predictions we can’t access while awake. Whatever their functions, our dreams are worth paying attention to. Yet with the demands and diversions of each day, it can be hard to find time to reflect on them.

This compact volume approaches dreaming with a mindful eye, asking us to spend time reflecting on our dreams to help us decipher their secrets and discover what our nighttime unconscious could reveal about our daily lives, needs and desires.

Interpreting Dreams is both an invitation to pay more attention to our dreams, and a toolkit for unlocking their hidden meanings. By bringing awareness to the time we spend dreaming, we can learn to become more present and fulfilled in our daily lives, and perhaps even alleviate some of our most persistent anxieties.

Clare Gibson is a writer and historian specialising in mythology, art history and how to interpret symbols. Her previous works include The Secret Life of Dreams (Sterling), How to Read Symbols (A&C Black), and The Hidden Life of Ancient Egypt, The Hidden Life of Renaissance Art, The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya and Symbols of the Goddess, all published by Saraband. She is also known for her informative social media as @MrsSymbols and for her popular blog, Seeing Symbols.