Contributor: Misty McNabb

“You can’t have good mental health and bad sleep.” That’s what a preceptor once told me, and it’s never left me. Not because it was new, but because it described what I already knew. In the stillness of night, when the body surrenders to rest, something in the soul often stirs. For some, it wanders into landscapes of memory, fear, or brilliance but for others, it may never fully return. As a psychiatric nurse practitioner and a student of Rogerian nursing science, I’ve come to believe that our current models of sleep assessment overlook something vital: the energetic experience of rest.
In my practice, I often tell patients, “When I sleep, I sometimes feel like I’m awake in an alternate universe.” For patients with vivid dreams, who’s minds often experience bright, vivid colors and loud experiences while sleeping, they almost always pause when I share my analogy. They say, “That’s exactly it.” And in that shared recognition, something opens. It is not just trust but resonance, it’s an energetic knowing between two people who understand what it means to rest physically but remain unrested in spirit.

John Phillips discusses the flow between the human and environmental energy fields saying “There is no separation of energy fields” and how they overlap with the universe of energy. (Phillips, 2023) In looking at work done by Flores it is mentioned that “Certain complexities of the human field can move while the physical body resists movement.” (Phillips, Chapter Four Rogers’ Contribution to Science at Large, 2023)

Health is not simply the absence of illness, but a pattern of meaningful participation. This understanding is foundational to the emergence of soul-level nursing. Martha E. Rogers’ *Science of Unitary Human Beings* reframed health and nursing not as the treatment of symptoms, but as the care of human beings as energy fields in constant interaction with their environments. Rooted in principles of pandimensionality, pattern, and mutual process, Rogerian science holds that people are not linear, fragmented, or reducible to diagnosis. Instead, they are unitary beings who are infinite, irreducible, and always becoming.

Health, in this framework, is not a state to be measured, but a pattern to be witnessed. Change is continuous, energy moves in waves, and meaning often arises in symbolic, intuitive, or non-verbal ways. This opens space for what many clinical models dismiss: dreams, sensations, resonance, silence, and story. It is from this foundation that soul-level nursing emerges.

Sleep isn’t just about rest; it’s about return. And sometimes, about reentry. What if the mind that doesn’t sleep well isn’t just active but traveling? What if the vivid dreams, the physical sensations upon waking, and the unexplainable exhaustion that lingers through the day are all evidence of energetic motion and not dysfunction?
As nurses, we are taught to ask: How many hours did you sleep? Do you have nightmares? Do you feel rested?
But what if those questions miss the point? What if we asked instead: Where did your soul go last night? What did you remember while asleep? What reentered you as you woke?

These are real field experiences, described again and again by people whose mental health struggles are labeled as anxiety, trauma, or depression but whose stories point to something more profound. Rogerian science doesn’t dismiss experiences that resist measurement; it invites them into the discussion. It teaches us that humans are not static systems but living energy fields in constant interaction with the environment. In her theory of Unitary Human Beings, Rogers offered three principles of homodynamics that feel especially relevant to what we experience through sleep, dreams, and soul-level knowing:

• Integrality: There is no true separation between the human and environmental fields. They are in a mutual process, constantly shaping and being shaped by each other. When someone dreams vividly, perhaps what we’re witnessing is the human field immersed in a different frequency of the environment, an actual energetic contact. (Phillips, 2023)
• Resonancy: Energy fields shift in pattern and frequency from lower to higher vibrations. This might help explain why dreams can feel emotionally overwhelming, why some people wake in tears, or why others feel physically heavy after sleeping. The body may be still, but the field has been in motion and resonating at levels the conscious mind struggles to interpret. (Phillips, 2023)
• Helicy: Change is nonlinear, continuous, and unpredictable. This helps us understand why healing from trauma, or finding rest again after years of unrest, rarely follows a straight path. Dreams may offer glimpses of what’s trying to shift, what’s unraveling, or what’s becoming. In this sense, dreamwork is not a detour; it is data. (Phillips, 2023)

As Rogers wrote, “When we perceive humans as energy fields with a human field image perception of the pattern of the field, we move beyond the confines of the physical body.” These principles support a profound shift in how we might begin to see patients, not as problems to categorize, but as living maps of motion and meaning. Fields in flux, not cages to define.

In this emerging philosophy, language matters and your role as a nursing professional is crucial. When I say soul-level nursing, I’m speaking of care that recognizes energy, presence, intuition, and symbolic knowing as valid forms of clinical insight. It’s a way of nursing that listens not just to what is said, but to what is felt, what is sensed, what moves in the field. Your understanding and application of these principles are vital to the evolution of nursing practice.
Pandimensional reentry is the name I’ve given to that moment of waking after vivid dreaming when the soul feels like it’s been somewhere else, and something deep inside returns. It’s an energetic experience many people describe, often without knowing how to explain it.

When I say we need maps instead of cages, I don’t mean better diagnoses, I mean a different way of seeing entirely. Our assessments should honor movement, not just containment. We should trace the shifts in a person’s energy, their story, their sleep. A map leaves room for exploring. A cage insists on what’s fixed. In soul-level nursing, we learn to read the soul’s terrain, not just label its symptoms.

Resonance in the field is when a patient lights up because you’ve spoken something true. It’s the subtle energy between both of you. It’s knowing before you know. As the text notes, “Pandimensional awareness enables us to peer into unseen patterns to discover relationships and ideas in mutual process which gives new ideas and insights.” (Phillips, 2023)
I believe what we are experiencing, what many patients have been trying to describe for years, is not disordered sleep, but soul-level activity that nursing has not yet learned how to hold. These dreams, energetic reentries, and emotional surges that unfold in sleep are not random; they are patterned expressions of the human field.

This is where soul-level nursing begins. Not in trying to decode the dream or silence it, but in witnessing the field that speaks through it. Not in classifying patients by diagnosis, but in attuning to their resonance. Not in asking, “What’s wrong?” but “What are you returning from?”

Soul-level nursing asks us to slow down and sense what is being expressed not only through behavior but also through sleep, dreams, stillness, exhaustion, and the space between. It calls on us to read maps, not enforce cages. It requires a language nursing that has not yet fully developed or spoken. A language shaped by pattern, presence, intuition, and field. John Phillips said, “We must continue to explore the full potentials of the open-ended nature of the science of unitary beings to participate in creating optimum life for all, including transhumans wherever they may be, or as Rogers would say, Homo spacialis.” (Phillips, 2023)

This view challenges us to see soul-level nursing not as fringe or future, but as fundamental. If humans are unitary beings in a universe of expanding patterns, then dreams, energy, and reentry are not just symptoms or metaphors, they are evidence of the evolving nature of consciousness itself. In this view, even sleep becomes part of how we participate in shaping what life is becoming. If we accepted that humans are energy fields, if we treated sleep as sacred and dreams as data, how would that change our practice? What if the patient who “just isn’t sleeping” isn’t broken but is in the middle of a profound, energetic transition? What if we listened to the field, not just the chart? What if we asked better questions?

References

Phillips, J. R. (2023). Rogers’ contribution to science at large. In Bartzak, P., Butcher, H., Flanagan, J., Jones, D., Larkin, D., Malinski, V., Reed, S. M., & Smith, M. (Eds.), Evolving Rogerian nursing science: John R. Phillips’ unique contributions (pp. 49-62). Society of Rogerian Scholars.

Phillips, J. R. (2023). The open-ended nature of the science of unitary human beings. In Bartzak, P., Butcher, H., Flanagan, J., Jones, D., Larkin, D., Malinski, V., Reed, S. M., & Smith, M. (Eds.), Evolving Rogerian nursing science: John R. Phillips’ unique contributions (pp. 29-48). Society of Rogerian Scholars..

About Misty McNabb ,MSN, APRN, PMHNP-BC, PhD Student

Misty is a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and PhD student in nursing at Texas Woman’s University. With over a decade of experience in mental health and a personal history shaped by trauma and resilience, she brings a soul-level lens to her clinical work and scholarly inquiry. Her doctoral research currently explores complex trauma, language, and sleep as energetic expressions of the human condition. Deeply influenced by Rogerian nursing science, Misty is committed to reimagining assessment and diagnosis through pattern recognition, aesthetic knowing, and pandimensional awareness. She currently serves on the board of Grace After Fire, a nonprofit supporting women veterans, is adjunct faculty for Texas Women’s University, and sees patients in private practice.