What is Dreamwork?
“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.”
Black Elk
Dreams speak the language of soul.
They surface when we sleep, when our doing yields to being.
In the night or in a nap, they sprout from the fertile earth of our psyche (Greek for soul) and populate our inner world(s) with stories, fragments, textured with physicality and stirring emotional terrains.
Dream as Bridge and Revelation
Many cultures have held the dream world with special appreciation and reverence. Indigenous peoples saw dreams as a bridge to divine guidance and ancestral wisdom; dream sharing and discernment of their meaning was part of community life.
Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians built sleep temples where devotees would come with an ailment and receive healing or guidance from a night's dream. Religious texts recount how dreams shaped the lives of individuals and the course of nations. Scientists to artists have pioneered new frontiers based on intuitive leaps and synthesis inspired by their dreams: the theory of relativity, the speed of light, infinite Pi, the structure of an atom, the first science-fiction novel (Frankenstein) by a teenage girl in the 1800s.
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Even for people who say they never dream, it's more a matter of remembering, since sleep studies of brain wave patterns show that we have on average between four to six dreams a night, and humans sleep for about one third of their lifetime.
In both spiritual and non-theistic circles, dreams have been long linked to human vitality, powerful energies, and perceiving into the deeper nature of things.
When received with curiosity and self-compassion, the stories, symbols -- even fragments -- of a dream can take us on new pathways of conscious living with greater authenticity, empowerment, and healthier relationships with self and others.
Dreamwork as personal or spiritual practice follows in the footsteps of traditions that intuit the gift of a dream’s reconciling power, which bridges the known to the unknown, our outer and inner worlds, the earthly with the eternal.
Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, through his research and world travels, found repeating patterns of images, sacred stories and figures that appeared independently within cultures and religious-mythic systems across the globe, no matter how industrial, indigenous, or distant.
In our dreaming during sleep, these symbols materialize in versions that are unique to an individual, yet also tap into collective human experience – deeply personal and universal, simultaneously.
Perhaps it can be a comfort we’re not alone in our dreaming adventures that spark deep feeling and inquiry.
Dreamwork is exploration. With the proper support, it’s enlivening, rich with meaning, experimentation, play.
Depending on the person, the process may include active imagination, free writing, simple art-making or creative embodiment practices, whatever emerges organically from a client’s interests.