Dreamwork

Working with your dreams can be a deep journey in both counseling and spiritual guidance. I am not a fan of set interpretations, although resource books on dream images may be useful at times – to plant seeds and expand our horizons

Much of the guidance around dream interpretation comes from the work of C.G. Jung: the unconscious is at work, planting seeds, scattering images in our memories, evoking emotions and body sensations… 

We start with the assumption that there is meaning here. We explore with an open and intuitive mind. No right and wrong.

If you don’t easily remember dreams, there are strategies that can help. If you want quick and easy answers, you may be disappointed! But it’s a rich resource, bringing themes into focus, inviting contemplation and creative engagement….

Dream-Tending

Alexandra Hepburn, PhD, CC, Spiritual Guidance

Suggestions for working with your dream:
Begin with “I have no idea what this dream means.” 
Stay open.

Associations

  • Tell the dream in present tense.
  • Notice your body as you tell the dream.
  • Listen to the beginning, the landscape, the ending.
  • Elements to pay attention to: setting, characters, mood, action. How does the story unfold? Look for rhythms and patterns. 
  • Generate associations around all of these: what do they remind you of? What do your body sensations remind you of? Some images may be personal, others may be archetypal or world images.
  • Focus on images that seem the most significant – and also those that seem the least
  • Compare how the dream-ego responds and how the waking-ego responds to the dream.
  • What title would you give the dream?

Amplification

  • Work with a particular image: open it up.
  • Bring in stories, myths, other dreams you have had.
  • Open up the sound images, sensations, moods – make a sound or make music, explore movement.
  • Open up the sound images, sensations, moods – make a sound or make music, explore movement.
  • Give the image expression through drawing, painting, clay, poetry. If you use clay or play-dough, try working with your eyes closed and allow the image to come forth. 
  • Write a poem back to the dream; write the dream as a poem.

Animation

  • Allow the image to have its own life, to be present, here and now, as an embodied presence. “Who is visiting?”  “What does the image want?”
  • Allow the image to become vivid to your senses, to reveal its essential quality; it may change in form, develop, evoke a response in the dreamer.
  • Look into the eyes of the image (if permitted); enter a dialogue.
  • You may develop an ongoing relationship with certain figures; imagine a Dream Council, in which these figures become companions and advisors.
  • Create an “altar” where representations/symbols of these figures can be assembled.
  • Open up the sound images, sensations, moods – make a sound or make music, explore movement.