Frank Ancona enjoys dream interpretation and learning since it allows him to interact with other individuals.
“When someone tells me a dream, I can’t tell them what their dream means, I’d be a big fraud… (But) I could help them come to what it means to themselves,” the Village of Osceola Hills resident said. “When they find what it means to themselves, I find something in me.”
For more than 25 years, Ancona has been studying dreams and assisting others in interpreting them. During one of his doctorates, he studied classes in dream interpretation.
Professor Ancona has been teaching subjects like comparative mythology and English for more than 40 years. He earned a degree in arts from St. John’s University and was interested in comparative mythology and psychoanalysis at the time. He noticed a link between mythology and dreams while teaching and loved to know more about them.
He returned to Drew University for his Ph.D. in medical humanities, where he studied psychoanalysis and dream interpretation, the latter of which he has lectured on.
“I have just been loving it,” Ancona said. “I have been doing it for over 25 years. I’ve heard so many dreams you can’t imagine.”
When he assists individuals with interpretation, it sometimes prompts Ancona to reconsider certain elements of his life, he said.
Frank’s wife, Janet Ancona, regards him as “absolutely brilliant.”
“Everybody has to come to their own interpretation, but Frank helps you to do that,” she said.
People go into non-rapid eye movement sleep when they first fall asleep. In non-REM sleep, a person dreams, and in those dreams, they try to work out whatever issues they didn’t comprehend or couldn’t address throughout the day. They act out the diverse techniques they had in non-REM sleep in rapid eye movement sleep, according to Frank. As a result, dreams assist people in planning specific scenarios.
“Many analysts say dreams are the most important human survival tool that we have,” Frank said.
He added that good dreams and sleep can help decrease blood pressure and strengthen the immune system.
Dreams awaken a person to their inner self and aid in the mental planning of solutions, allowing them to deal with situations in a more balanced mental state when they awake. Dreams can also assist people to improve their cognitive skills, keep their thoughts busy and develop sharper memories, according to Frank.
Frank began teaching the “Yes You Can Understand Your Dreams” lesson through the Enrichment Academy around two and a half years ago. He enjoys assisting others in learning to decipher their dreams and wishes to continue teaching the subject in some way.
He covers a variety of themes related to dreams in the four-week session, including the significance of dreams, the language of dreams, dream theories, the role of sleep and the dream continuum, collective awareness and more.