Dreamwork is still a little-known modality. I believe this is slowly changing, and I’m doing my best to communicate to a larger audience the benefits to our emotional and spiritual health of working with our dreams.
The people I meet who have heard about dreamwork, automatically think I “interpret” dreams.
This is not what I do.
I don’t have some rare ability to know what your dreams mean, and then tell you. What I do have is a strong interest in dreaming, dream experience, and the emotional weight our dream images seem to carry. (By images, I am including the characters, events, and encounters of your dream).
I also have some background education in symbolism and archetypal patterns which may inform our work. But I don’t believe that every individual who encounters a particular symbol — whether it’s an animal, a force of nature, a particular color, etc. — responds the same way. This is why dream dictionaries are of little help to the dreamer who wants to go deep.
I’m not trying to downplay my own experience and intuitive skills. Those exist, too: I have apprenticed with a senior dreamwork practitioner for many years. I am intuitive and empathetic. I may sense what a dream image means for a dreamer, and ultimately, find out I got it right. I do think there is a bit of psychic communication at play in any kind of good spiritual work container. In short, if I am a centered listener, if I care about the dreamer I am working with, and if I am mindful of my own biases and reactions inside a dreamwork session — yes, I might be able to successfully “read” a dream encounter.
But I don’t try to interpret dreams and I don’t recommend dreamers seek that out. Dreamwork is not a psychic reading. There is a responsibility for the dreamer to be actively engaged in the work, and for even the most intuitive dreamwork practitioner to leave space for that to happen. A big part of the work is the dreamer’s own journey toward self-awareness, seal-realization, and intuitively knowing for herself what a dream encounter holds for her.
I am humbled every single morning when I wake up from sleep and remember a dream that stumps me. This happens pretty much on the daily. (Last night, there were three that stumped me.)
I have greater insight into my own dreams and dream behavior since I started working them with a practitioner. I am much more able to engage with my dreams after I wake and work with the images and feelings. And yes, I understand some of them better than I would have years ago. I also am better at remembering more dreams, and knowing which dreams require closer attention because they’re continuing some important thread in my life that my deeper self wants me to work on.
However, I am still a human with many sore spots, blind spots, rough spots … just lots of spots. And, my dreams still stump me. Sometimes I’ll bring those dreams to my own personal dreamwork sessions. And other times I’ll bring the dreams I think I “understand” only to learn in a session — nope, still a blind spot, there! Inevitably, my practitioner ends up illuminating parts of the dream I never considered significant, but are. Sometimes in a session, I am the one illuminating the significant part, but I wouldn’t have seen it myself without a particular question from my practitioner.
I am obsessed with dreams and dreaming, and have been all my life. But I think what I love most about dreamwork is the relationship. I get more from my dreams because of relationship — not just the one between me and my practitioner, but also the ones between me and my clients, me and my fellow dream-obsessed, me and the world around me that acts ever-more dream-like since I started working intensely with dreams.
Even, the relationship between me and my dreams has strengthened and become more intimate these last ten years or so. It’s hard to describe what I mean by that but think of any relationship you’ve had in your life with a person that only deepens the more you listen, the more you respond with love, the more you respect the other.
I don’t mind that dreams still stump me. It keeps our relationship spicy, and it keeps me curious.
