Embodied
Dream-Work
Discover Your Soul-Path By Listening To Your Dreams
“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking.” - Black Elk
Our night-time dreams are incredibly powerful awakeners of the innate wisdom that resides within us. Dreams can offer us relational, prophetic, and spiritual guidance, showing us new possibilities and pathways to address the conflicts, challenges, and deep questions we hold in our lives. Like mythic way-showers, dreams reveal to us where we need to grow and change, hinting at what we have repressed, disavowed, and buried beneath our conscious awareness. As we direct our awareness towards the energies, symbols, images, and archetypes that present themselves to us in our dreams, we have the golden opportunity to realize where and how we are out of balance and thus make important and aligned new choices in life. As dream-worker and writer Toko-pa Turner elucidates, when we choose to "treat our dreams as lovers," we are gifted with a life that blossoms with more creative lucidity, meaningful synchronicity, and aliveness.
However, for many of us, dreams are overlooked as the busyness of life takes hold and our daily responsibilities and habits dominate. Consensus reality and our external lives take up most of our focus, and the treasures within our inner, symbolic, dreaming life lie dormant. At its worst, this one-sidedness can oftentimes turn into bothersome body symptoms, energetic blockages, relationship issues, accidents, and psychosomatic illnesses that we try to get rid of or simply ignore, without tapping into the pregnant teachings or uncovering the deeper meaning of its origins.
When we engage in embodied dream-work, we are engaging in a holistic perspective - that is, we begin to cultivate the subtle awareness of our body, mind, soul, relationships, nature, and spirit connection in such a way that allows us to make more integrated and wise decisions in life. We enter into a stream of rich self-discovery and relational intelligence, learning how to embrace our shadows and fears, as well as how to embody our strengths and life-serving powers. Ultimately, embodied dream-work offers us a pathway to bring us closer to our true selves and our soul-path, where we may live more authentically, courageously, and in connection with the flow of life.
Dream Wisdom: Some Examples
“Dreams are messages from the deep” - Dune
Dream Example #1: "Blanket of Tobacco, Wise Self Observing"
“Alyona dreams that she is being covered by a blanket and it is suffocating her. She starts to feel intense fear as she finds it hard to breathe. As this is happening, she notices a wiser and older part of herself standing close by observing all of this calmly.”
[Insights & Guidance from Embodied Dream-work: When Alyona wakes up she realizes that the “suffocating blanket” was actually a thick layer of smoke, which she intuitively felt was a symbol of her growing relationship to the plant spirit of Tobacco. The dream revealed to her the different parts of herself and how they are interrelated: her ego-personality which was feeling fear and started to panic, barely aware of the wiser, older Self; her wise, older self who is holding space for the panic of the personality and is connected to the totality of the experience; and the spirit of Tobacco who carries a lot of power, energy, and strength in this dream. After working with this dream, Alyona uncovered an inner strength by re-connecting to her wise-elder self, and let the fear (that she was unconsciously holding) discharge from her body. As she realized that the blanket was the Tobacco Spirit in disguise, she soon decided to listen to the call from this ally Spirit, booking in a retreat to work with Tobacco more deeply.
Dream Example #2: "Leaving Behind Identity Wallet"
“Alexandre dreams he is on the way home, riding in a train and he greets two ‘gangster-friends’ sitting behind him from his younger life. When he steps off the train and watches it ride away, he realizes that he has left his “identity wallet” on the carriage. He calls up one of the gangsters using his mobile phone, and one of them responds saying that if he ever wants it back, to call them as they will keep it. He walks home leaving the “identity wallet” behind.”
[Insights & Guidance from Embodied Dream-work: Alexandre realizes in his waking life that it’s time to leave behind (and let die) certain parts of his old identity, symbolized by the “identity wallet” accidentally left behind on the train. Alexandre decides to create a ritual to enact the dream and consciously “leave behind” parts of his old identity that no longer serve his journey “home” (to his authentic life & mythopoetic identity); he does this by creating identity cards with art materials, drawing different personas of his old identity (that were still running unconsciously up to that point) and listing their characteristics, and finally, putting them in a make-shift wallet. He then gets on a train in waking life and consciously leaves this make-shift “identity wallet” behind with all the identity cards - making what was unconscious in the dream, a conscious and transformative act in his everyday life: a deeper commitment to living his wholeness and authentic identity.
Our Approach To Embodied Dream-Work
We utilize an integrative approach to embodied dream-work that weaves together process-oriented psychology (dream-body work), shamanic and animist paradigms, and depth-psychological perspectives. This means that, rather than attempting to interpret your dreams rationally (and thus prematurely and/or incorrectly), embodied dream-work focuses on engaging your body, mind, senses, imagination, intuition, and extra-sensory perceptions as a bridge between the dream-world and everyday reality. By bringing you into a direct experience of your dreams, and exploring them with all of your senses, you may gain transformative insight and revelation from the deeper wisdom within you.
As Dream-Guides, our role is to facilitate a space where you can learn to develop the capacity to listen to, understand, and work with your dreams, and ultimately, incorporate their messages into your life. We offer this support and guidance by giving you tools to be able to understand the language of your Soul that is being spoken through your dreams. Together, we will become curious about and receptive to what is unfolding in your dreams, whether it seems mundane, strange, powerful, taboo, or mysterious. Through cultivating this awareness and engaging meaningfully with your dreams, you will be supported to actualize your dream's important guidance and enrich your everyday life.
"Dreams show us with staggering clarity and genius what we most need to bring to consciousness. They guide us to not only make excellent decisions in daily life but, like an acorn to the oak tree, they prompt us in the overall direction of our soul’s purpose."
- Toko-pa (Writer & Dream-worker)
Details of Working Together
Our sessions will be held online via Zoom from our space in the Sacred Valley of Peru.
The price for a 60 min session is AUD$160 / USD$115.
We require that you have a dream that you'd like to work on prior to booking the appointment, as well as the dream written down in your journal so that we can dive straight in.
Prior to completing your appointment booking via Calendly, please thoroughly read through the information in the calendar which includes details about preparation, terms of service & cancellation agreement, fees & payment instructions, etc.