When we are asleep, our bodies are regenerating and what we dream is a direct perception of our unconscious mind. Everything that occurs in the dream is a part of ourselves even though we may associate it with the people or things we recognize in the dream from our conscious world. The unconscious is speaking in this language of symbols and the way it operates is how it is telling its story.
The dream can heal, because the body is always seeking to return to health, the homeostasis of its nature. In Ancient Greece, there was no separation between doctors and priests, temples and hospitals; Hippocrates is the healer we still remember today, because of the oath he took and which doctors in the West still take when they enter the profession of medicine. He was of a long line of initiates dedicated to the god of healing, Asklepios.
People made pilgrimages to the sacred places in nature where temples were built, slept within their precincts and reported to the initiate "priest/doctors" their dreams. As the Asklepiades understood the spiritual transformation process of the human lifespan, they could diagnose and prescribe remedies to help the body return to health, what in the East would be called the Tao, the Way of Nature.
