Welcome to the Engaging with Dreams workshop!
As the title suggests, we'll be looking at ways of getting more out of dreams especially through recognising where our own ways of thinking and being can be used to special effect. The workshop involves sharing material from two dreams (one each week) and discovering how our own resources, other people's resources and published resources may be of interest to us.
I hope to show that dreamwork is not a dull, pretentious discipline limited to those with fixations about mothers, sex and tenuous symbolism. It is about how we can use our own resources - essentially our selves and our own experiences - to the mysterious unconscious world of dreams.
Dreams are generally considered to be the products of unconscious processes, by which we mean thoughts and feelings that occur outside of our conscious control. This has led some to conclude that we need to understand the language of our unconscious mind through the symbolism of dreams. Yet most have found that dream dictionaries constructed using these ideas to be highly speculative and probably flawed. Are there other ways of getting access to the dreamer's unconscious? I believe there is. But it is not straightforward, and for many of us we perhaps only get a sense of what's going on no matter how hard we try and find meaning. It is that 'sense' that Engaging with Dreams is about.
Through looking at our own dreams and the dreams of others, we'll share our observations, our emotional responses, our gut reactions and indeed anything that arises for us. In doing so we'll find our more about how we personally understand unconscious processes and how these are revealed in dreams. Dream work of any type is a highly inexact science so what each of us will take from the workshop will be different and personal, perhaps shaped by the kinds of people we have each grown up to be.
Engaging with Dreams runs from 1 to 15 February, in seven simple stages (which I will post each Monday, Wednesday and Friday). No previous experience required. The more the merrier!
If anyone is feeling particularly impatient or competitive, then by all means start a thread which will be your miniDJ/workbook for the next two weeks. e.g, "Burned up's mini DJ". More information to follow tomorrow.
Sweet dreams.
