What Does Dreaming About Your Nose Mean?

Psychologically, the nose is closely tied to intuition and instinct — we 'sniff something out,' 'smell trouble,' or have a 'nose' for things. So a nose dream often touches your instinct and gut sense: picking up on what's really going on, sensing what others miss, or trusting (or doubting) your intuition. To 'smell a rat' is to instinctively sense something is wrong.

The nose also carries perception and curiosity — 'nosing around,' poking your nose into things, prying or being pried upon, the curious or intrusive instinct to investigate. Because the nose is central to the face, it touches self-image, identity, and sometimes pride or vanity (how you appear, being 'led by the nose,' or things being 'right under your nose'). Smell itself carries powerful memory and emotional associations. Problems with the nose can mirror losing your instinct, or failing to 'smell' a problem. Whether you smell something, your nose grows or changes, bleeds, or you're nosey (or someone is nosey toward you) usually mirrors intuition and instinct, perception and curiosity, prying, self-image, and your gut sense about a situation.

A Freudian reading would attend to the nose as a prominent feature of the face — bound up with self-image and identity — and to smell as a primal, deeply associative sense, evoking instinct, memory, and the sniffing-out of what is hidden. The nose can carry the charge of instinct and perception, and of prominence, prying, and the sensing of what lies beneath the surface.

Its sniffing and prying carry the charge of seeking out the hidden, and the nose's prominence the charge of self-image. What the nose evokes — the instinct that sniffs something out, the curiosity that pries, the self-consciousness of a prominent feature — tends to point at the dreamer's relationship to instinct and perception: the gut sense that detects what is concealed, the curious or prying impulse, and the self-image bound up in how one is seen.

Scripture's nose and breath carry the image of life and of perception — God breathing into Adam's nostrils 'the breath of life'; and the idols who 'have... noses, but they smell not,' lifeless and unperceiving. The nose, the organ of breath and smell, touches life, breath, and the capacity to perceive — or its lifeless absence.

A nose dream, read this way, can touch breath and life, perception and discernment, or instinct. A biblical sensibility might weigh the nose gently — as the organ of the very 'breath of life' and of perception — perhaps a reminder to perceive truly and not be like the idols who 'smell not,' to use one's discernment and instinct rightly, and to honor the breath of life with which one perceives and lives.

In Islamic sensibility the nose touches the breath (a sign of life), the sense of smell (a blessing, the Prophet's love of good fragrance noted), and the perception of the good and the wholesome; humility, too, is bound up with the nose (the face and nose to the ground in prostration, the humbling of pride). The nose evokes breath and life, the blessing of smell, perception, and humility.

A nose dream, in this frame, might point to perception and instinct, the blessing of the senses, or pride and humility. Held with humility, it can invite gratitude for the breath and senses, the rightful use of one's perception and instinct, and the humbling of pride — recalling that the very nose touched to the ground in prostration is an emblem of humility before God, who gave the breath of life and the senses to perceive.

In a Hindu frame the nose touches the breath and prana — the vital life-force carried on the breath, central to pranayama (breath-discipline) and yogic practice — as well as smell (one of the senses, gandha, the element of earth) and perception. The nose evokes breath, vital energy (prana), the sense of smell, and perception.

A nose dream, in this frame, can point to breath and vital energy (prana), instinct and perception, the sense of smell, or self-image. The tradition's note attends to breath and the senses: the nose as the gate of the vital breath and of smell — an invitation to attend to one's breath and vital energy, to perceive and sense rightly, and to the awareness that the breath flowing through the nose carries the very life-force (prana) that animates and steadies the being.