The Three Old Men: A Dream Teaching on Yoga

Image created by AI.

Post written by Michelle Kucera-Jewell

At The Nook, we approach healing as a layered, spiraling process. A returning. A deepening. A remembering. For many of us, that path winds through the quiet of the body, the symbols of the dreamworld, and the mystery of what lives beneath the surface of our waking mind.

Recently, I had a dream that has stayed with me like an echo in the bones.

It came as a black and white photograph. Three very old men sat side by side. They were triplets—identical in their age and presence. Long white hair, deeply wrinkled skin, ancient eyes. There was no movement, no narrative—just a still, steady image. And then, a message:

"Yoga is for every body."

The image was haunting in its simplicity, yet profoundly symbolic. Three old men—triplets—each a mirror of the other, each embodying a timeless, archetypal wisdom. In many traditions, the number three signifies wholeness: body, mind, and spirit; past, present, and future; creation, sustenance, and dissolution. These elders may represent the integrated self, not fragmented by time or identity, but unified in presence. Their age speaks to the long arc of soul wisdom—beyond roles, beyond performance. And the fact that they appear in black and white, like an old photograph, suggests something eternal, stripped of distraction, timeless in its clarity. They are not offering instruction. They are simply being. In their stillness, they transmit the core truth: that yoga is not for the perfected body, but for the lived body—for every body, every stage, every contradiction.

Since waking, I’ve been reflecting on what this dream was offering. It felt less like a scene and more like a transmission. A teaching. Not about physical practice, but about perspective—about non-duality, and the profound inclusivity at the heart of yoga.

I’ve also been sitting with the dance I often experience between love and resistance—toward teaching yoga, and toward modern tools like AI. Some days, I feel deeply aligned with these practices. Other days, I feel disconnected, ambivalent, even doubtful. The dream seemed to hold all of that with quiet acceptance. It asked nothing of me. It simply was.

This is the shared space where yoga and depth psychology meet—where we learn to listen to what emerges, without needing to categorize it as good or bad, right or wrong. Where we hold the tensions and contradictions, and lean into them with curiosity.

Both yoga and depth psychology invite us to slow down enough to notice what’s been waiting beneath the surface. To become intimate with our inner life. To feel the body as a storyteller. The dream as a mirror. The practice as a descent into the soul.

In Jungian psychology, dreams are understood as symbolic messages from the depths of the psyche. They carry the language of image, metaphor, archetype. In yogic philosophy, this terrain might be called the realm of samskaras—those deep-seated imprints or patterns that shape how we move through life. Both traditions understand that healing and integration arise not through force, but through attention. Through listening.

And what better way to listen than through the body?

When we come to the mat—especially with presence and permission—we enter a kind of waking dream. Sensation becomes symbol. Emotion becomes image. Our breath guides us into places words can’t reach. Sometimes we weep in a posture, and don’t know why. Sometimes an insight rises between breaths. Other times, all we feel is a blank space. All of it belongs.

Yoga, then, is not just about poses or flexibility. It’s a way of tending the unconscious through the body.

Dreamwork, too, is a kind of yoga. It invites us into relationship with our inner world, not to analyze it to death, but to be with it. To feel its textures. To let its messages unfold in the timing of the soul. And when we combine dreamwork with embodied practice, something profound happens—we begin to inhabit the wisdom that the dream carries.

The dream of the three old men reminded me that yoga isn’t just a tool for the young, the flexible, or the peaceful. It is a practice for the whole self: the confused self, the grieving self, the aging body, the uncertain heart.

It is for every body.

At The Nook, this is the kind of yoga we live into—one that welcomes the complexity, the paradox, the poetry of being human. Whether through movement, sound, dreams, or silence, we are always practicing a return to wholeness.

And the body always knows the way.