This new workshop series offers an introductory point for those interested in apprenticeships with me It is a 2-year cycle of teachings that covers introductory and advanced shamanic path and practices, rooted in a heart-open and earth-honoring set of principles, grounded in the Medicine Wheel. This series brings a focus on personal healing and consciousness expansion, as training for shamanic healing, and counseling work with others. Shamanic dreamwork involves working with a wide variety of dreaming, including the classic shamanic journey method, which it integrates with working dreams of the night and active and lucid dreaming processes. Shamanic journey skills are intensified and richly developed through these shamanic dreaming varieties of experiences. The workshop will be highly experiential.
Working with Dreams, the creative Dreaming Field are crucial and universal forms of shamanic soul care practices. This aspect is not emphasized in the many books on shamanism. I have synthesized an approach informed by my own depth psychological tradition, modern dream research, and Jungian and post-Jungian dream methods (Hillman, Bosnak, Moss, Gendlin) with the indigenous dream shamanic practices I discovered in a variety of indigenous cultures, so that we might have useful insights into developing shamanic dreaming practices in our own modern culture.
Shamanic Dreaming is of much wider scope than current western models that are limited to sleep dreams and lucid dreaming. We will experientially explore many methods of dreaming that includes shamanic journeying, shamanic lucid dreaming, tribal dream practices, sacred breathwork™ working with the dreaming heart to find soul purpose and earth-honoring and community service; working with Nature- omens and syncronicities, and working with a wide variety of shamanic dream tools. You will learn how to open and work with virtually any dream or dreaming process, and many techniques will be offered as experiential practices during this series. You will see how the shamanic plants induce a form of shamanic dreaming in which you become your own shaman, and you will learn advanced shamanic counseling skills for working with clients trough dyadic and group process in the Crows Nest Community.
Shamanic dreaming can greatly stimulate and develop your imagination and capacity for innovation and vision. It can help you find your heart, the soul’s core, and the gifts and purpose you are put her to give in this life. Shamanic dreaming methods stimulate creativity and engender powerful authentic self expression through a variety of channels and media including mandala art, collage, drum making, trance dancing and sacred breathwork™.
We will explore the role of dream in initiation into soul, and explore Jung’s model of the Nekyia, making our own journeys into dreamtime, and engage the ritual of making our own version “Red Books” out of art materials (painting, collage, calligraphy) that capture and document our initiations into soul through the Dreamtime. By the end of the series you will have as a talisman of your initiation your own equivalent of an artful Red Book (by whatever name or color you give it).
You will want to gather your own preferred art supplies and media, and a paper size for your work. Some individuals may prefer to create and record music, choreograph and video a dance or mime, or dramatic enactment. Various alternatives are offered to suit individual predilections.
Each workshop will have a theme for focus to be woven into our experiential shamanic dreaming work, and to set the experiential and integrative stage. The workshops are rich embedded in sacred ceremony and rich community life, and enjoyment of the Crows Nest forest and campsites. Sacred Fire, Purification Lodge, and Sacred Breathwork™, Trance Dance are offered as various forms of shamanic dreaming, in addition to specific workshop themes. Because we will honor the Dream Maker, we will only list the material to be covered, not impose a linear curriculum—thus leaving room for creative organization and surprise. In this way we invite new dreaming, and new dreaming tools to arise.
Intentional Dreaming is Shamanic Dreaming
How Dreaming Wakes Us Up!
The Dreaming Field as the dynamic activity of the Sacred (Psyche, Spirit, Cosmos).
The Medicine Wheel and the Dreaming-Field Work:
Importance of Sacred Ceremony and Ritual Process in Shamanic Dreaming.
How the sacred widens consciousness and makes it easier and safer to work with the numinous depths and heights revealed in Dreaming. How the Medicine Wheel structure provides a grounding and safety for Shamanic Dreaming.
Shamans as Active Dreamers: In Dreams of the Night we all get in touch with our Shamanic potentials
Many Forms of Shamanic Dreaming: Use of Shamanic Journey is itself active dreaming, and learning how to use it to enter dreams, heal trauma and soul loss, heal culture and create art, poetry, story, and dance from it. Near Death experiences and plant medicines as forms of dreaming. Lucid and Shamanic Lucid Dreaming.
Sacred Breathwork™ and Trance Dance as forms of Shamanic Dreaming.
Shamanic Dreaming as a form of Medicine Dreaming.
Cherokee Dreaming and Hypnosis in Shamanic Healing Ceremony.
Atagahi; Underworld Markings: The Cherokee Magical Healing Lake / How the Shaman Stole Uktena Dragon’s Blood Quartz, (but did not survive unscathed.)
Your Dreaming Tool Bag; Techniques, Dream Catchers, The IASD method of “If it were my dream,” the Jungian approach of the three A’s : personal association, mythic amplification, and animation. Using Dream Cruxes and practicing in Shamanic Counseling dyads and Group.
Four Commitments Need: 1) Cultivate Imagination, 2) Observing Synchronistic events, 3) Incubate Dreaming, and 4) use a felt-sense.
Levels of Dreaming and Levels of Dream work.
Ending a Dreaming Dry-spell with Incubation tools: Dream Catchers and How to Catch Dreams: Establishing Your Dream Tools,Setting your Intention, Active use of Twilight States (hypnogogia and hypnopompia), use of felt sense to lay hold of a fragments, or follow feeling through felt-sense and sleep posture to recover your sleep dreams. Pay attention to synchronicity, use oracles like I Ching, Tarot, Astrology, casting bones, etc.
The Theatre of the Imagination: Systematically Exploring Imaginal Spaces and Memory Images, be they visual or somatic. Using unconstructed Dream Space to Create Dream Gates and Departure and Return Stations. Learning from surrealistic art and architecture.
Active Dreaming Architecture: Constructing Locales in the Shaman’s Cosmos: Your Shamanic Tree, and Your Safe Place so that you can move intentionally into various places in Dreamtime.
Shamanic Dreaming and Developing Creativity and Creative Self-expression.
Dreaming and Wounded-healer Initiation.
Red Book Making: Essentially an artistic-expressive Dream-Log that serves as a talisman for your Nekyia and Dream Travels.
Abaton, Dream Incubating & Dream Catching and the House of Healing
Mind as Dreamer, Heart as Dreamer, Body as Dreamer.
Nature, Cosmos and Psyche as Dreaming. “Everything living dreams of Individuation, because everything wants to become what it is.” –C.G. Jung
The Dreaming Heart, your Greater Self, and soul purpose.
Use of Power Animals and Spirit Guides in Active Dreamwork.
Dreaming the Ancestors and Healing the Soul loss of our culture through conscious, intentional dreaming.
Dreaming up problems and sickness. Dreaming up solutions and healing.
Tribal Dreaming, Community Dreaming, Spirit Boat Dreaming, Prophetic Dreaming…
The Dead and the Alien: Active Dream Dialogues: healing conversations and interactions with the shades of the departed, and various ‘transpersonal others’ who are not soul parts or self-parts, and who may show up in our dreams from time to time.
Integrating Dreaming Work with Shamanic Counseling Practices (Dyad and Group Experiences)
Trauma Healing and Shamanic Dreaming of the Soul Home: Self-soul recovery and helping others. (We may Dream the soul home directly, or breath it home, dance it home, sing it home.) How to facilitating this soul healing in shamanic counseling and workshops.