doorways in dreams

for some reason, i was tagged by PZ myers to give 8 facts/habits about myself. as i started thinking about what i would share, i remembered this odd dream thing that i had as a kid. as i started writing about it, i thought it deserved a post of its own. i'll get back to the tag challenge, but for now...

i'm not sure what the significance of my dream thing is/was, but i'm interested in hearing thoughts from anyone about this intriguing part of my personal history.....

when i was about 10 or so, i became a very lucid dreamer. i was usually aware that i was dreaming and as an example, i would re-enact dream scenes several times until any given conversation ended as i wanted it! about this time i also started having a recurring theme in my dreams... i had difficulty walking thru doorways. the premise of a dream didnt matter, but if i had to walk thru a doorway... say from a living room to a kitchen... the entire dream would pause while i faced the challenge of walking thru the doorway.

to get thru the doorway, i would take each step very slowly and focus on watching the doorway going over my head and behind my body. if i made it into the next room, i did a little happy dance and then *poof* the dream started back up again without hesitation. but oftentimes, after i slowly walked thru the doorway, it would slingshot back over me and i was faced with the task of going thru it all over again. i would try several times. if the slingshot effect happened too many times, then sometimes i could visualize the roof lifting off the house so that my body could float above the doorway and land on the other side. then the roof would return and *poof* the dream would start again! if this method didnt work, then my dreaming mind determined yet another way to tackle the doorway challenge.... this was my favorite way, but it rarely occured..... the roof and floor would completely break away, leaving me, the doorway, and some broken pieces of wall attached to the doorway floating in space! the doorway and i would float together while the stars stayed fixed in the background of space. i would usually end up floating over the doorway in space, return on the other side and then the rest of the walls and roof would return and *poof* the dream would start back up again.

this became very frustrating because many dreams would abruptly end after i spent a long time concentrating on escaping the grasp of a doorway and i would end up wide awake in my bed! one day when i was around 15 (i cant remember my age exactly), i went shopping for the day with my grandma. on the way home, for some reason that i cant remember, i told her all about my strange dream thing, fully expecting the same reaction from her that i received from everyone else ("wow, that's really weird!"). but instead, she turned to me completely straight-faced and said "oh yeah, you know all you have to do it turn around and walk thru backwards." WWAAAA???!!!?? i couldnt believe she didnt have a grin on her face or anything as she sat there calmly telling me the answer to my problems like she couldnt believe i hadnt heard that solution before!

it took me several more months of doorway-impaired dreams before my dreaming self remembered.... "hey, maybe i should walk thru backwards!?" so i turned around and slowly walked thru, watching closely as the doorway passed farther over my head with each reluctant, blind step. when i was thru, i turned around and thought... ok, that worked! for the next month or so, i had to thoughtfully walk thru doorways backwards... but then it stopped happening. i have not had a single problem with doorways ever since!!??!!?

many years later i told my grandma about how she cured whatever problem i was having and she just smiled and nodded, innocently grateful that she had passed on some knowledge that she had acquired. i never asked her how she thought to walk thru backwards... i should!

so.... did the doorway thing in my dreaming life represent some facet of my waking life? could it actually represent anything if my maternal grandmother had faced this problem before and had overcome it? are dream tendencies genetic? WTF? has any study on this been performed? it's still as intriguing for me as it is confusing!