So storytelling has been used throughout history at least for as long as people have been able to tell
stories.
There were many cultures where they you shared dreams.
So the idea is that everyone in the tribe has to have a shared dream and that's how they know that they're
part of the tribe or you'll get transitional dreams in their dreams like going from childhood to becoming
a man.
So again there are cultures where the child will say I've had that dream I've had that dream and now
explain the dream to the elders and the elders will say when you've had the dream like this and you've
had that bit of the dream then come back and you be ready to move on to the next bit of the dream and
this dream this transitional dream will form and evolve until it's the full dream which at the point
where the person can now transition to adulthood.
People talk about having insightful dreams.
So it could be they've suddenly had a dream about something that they've been working on and they suddenly
get an insight into it like working on a song and then suddenly getting an insight into what that song
sounds like and then suddenly creating the song based on your dream or trying to invent something.
And suddenly dreaming the solution to what you're trying to invent.
So what often happens is that.
Things that are unfulfilled during the day.
So trying to solve a problem you can't quite solve it you can't quite finish that song you're working
on or you can't quite solve that problem.
You're working on or that invention you can't quite find the way of doing that invention.
And so because it's unresolved you brain likes completion to its patterns and so you end up dreaming
the solution to it.
Once the solution has been worked out unconsciously.
And dreaming is kind of like your own personal story telling.
So.
People having dreams caused for them by the elders or by some kind of a ritual.
Or dreams being used in some way within the culture has been quite a big thing through human history
prior to written texts prior to actually then moving on to oral traditions.
You'd have dreams and people would start sharing their dreams that they're having.
And some people obviously talk about having prophetic dreams so dreams that turn out to be foreseeing
the future or some future event.
And there's not necessarily the evidence strong evidence to back that up.
But it is something that a lot of people claim to have.
And I know there was some research done on people getting on aeroplanes that found that.
Statistically aeroplanes that crashed had fewer people on and more empty seats than aeroplanes which
flew successfully.
So one interpretation of that was maybe a lot of these people who say I just had a bad feeling and so
I didn't get on the plane or something happened.
That meant that I ended up missing catching that plane all these times where people just have certain
feelings and certain things happening that make them step back.
And make them change their mind and take a different course of action and not go through with one course
of action.
That maybe there is something to it that maybe somehow we can prophetically we can see the future in
some way and that that could be linked to the dream state.
So.
Dreams and stories off the back of dreams is probably the oldest form of storytelling then that moved
on to or traditions and then further on into written traditions of conveying information.
So you'd want to convey information perhaps about your tribe about the history of your tribe about what
different people some perhaps long gone and long deceased.
What they've done is you want to convey the historic information.
You also want to convey his information about for example where certain things are.
You want to convey information about where certain areas are to go foraging for certain things at certain
times of year where to go hunting at certain times of the year for certain different animals.
Where water holes are for clean drinking water.
So you've got lots of information you want to convey.
And if you just sit people down and say Right I'm going to tell you where to get this water I'm going
to tell you when to get the water I'm going to tell you about this and about that.
It can sound very dry.
And by conveying it in that way.
It doesn't necessarily sink in Whereas when you talk about that great battle.
Or that.
Incident that occurred or that drought that occurred that led to so and so the historic elder discovering
that water how.
And they followed this star and they followed that and they did this and you have it as a story.
Suddenly that information that's being conveyed is far more memorable.
People remember the story they remember the story about the battle and they remember who did what and
who won and who lost and and what was found during that battle or that famine or whatever it happens
to be that remember the story of it once people were obviously comfortably able to sustain themselves.
They were getting enough food and water and so they and perhaps were making fire and so they could then
get more calories out of food because they could cook the food.
Suddenly you're in a position where people could sit around a campfire and share stories with each other.
And storytelling was something more used for learning development and growth as well.
So you convey information but you can now talk about things that help you to develop certain attributes
for example.
Homer's Odyssey and Iliad are full of metaphors.
To do with personal development and to do with growth and to do with certain life lessons in certain
ways of being that are healthier more helpful ways of being and the pitfalls of.
Leading unhealthy ways of being.
And then beyond that once you've been doing learning and you've been developing yourself and your growing
as a being because of the stories that are being told and you're you're learning from these tales.
Then you can achieve some higher awareness.
So you get stories that had to do with connecting with the world around you to do with gaining some
kind of greater insight into reality and higher awareness.
So throughout history that's kind of how stories have been used.
And then there's also been people using stories in more recent history.
So once there was culture and that culture had started to really blossom and grow up like Babylonian
culture and Egyptian culture and Mayan culture suddenly people using stories for a healing purpose and
dreams were being used for a healing purpose you had dreamed temples.
Where people would go and they go into kind of a reverie or a trance and they'd have a dream instigated.
By the healers.
And these dreams would then teach them something about themselves about their problem and about what
they need to do and how they need to overcome their problem.
So storytelling from that kind of period also became something that was used for healing.
And then as TIME's moved on and we got to say the 1789 hundreds we started seeing far more people using
stories for healing within religious practices.
And people going out there and being healers in that context where they would go around and they would
tell stories to people to hear.
They would give sermons full of stories that are for healing the people who were in the congregation
and then they would you'd have people like friends and Mesmer doing mesmerism and that sparked the journey
into hypnotism and within hypnotism.
A lot of storytelling came out of that that you could use stories to lay down ideas.
And probably the most proficient storyteller in that sense was the psychiatrist Milton erickson who
used to do a lot of sitting down and just telling stories about nature about trees growing about journeys
that people take.
And he would use a lot of interesting people.
So someone for example was interested in farming and interested in growing tomato plants.
He would tell a story about someone growing tomato plants and they talk about the tomatoes and you talk
about how tomatoes develop.
And he would use the ideas around tomato plants that's familiar to the person he's talking to as a way
of healing them and laying down patterns for them.