DANCE YOUR DREAMS: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Select a dream that has animated characters, animals or actions. Choose a 10 minute music track without lyrics – a pulsing African rhythm or a gentle new age wave. With eyes closed, imagine you are inside the body of one of your dream characters. Sway with eyes closed in a meditation or get up and dance!

Feel the push and pull between images. Feel the energy of the dream as it goes high or low, in and out, contracting and expanding. Move with alternating tension and relaxation. Is your dream image forceful, aggressive, vigorous? Or sluggish, lethargic, slow? Or demanding, storming, exhausting? Or powerful, determined, high octane?

Notice what feels good and what doesn’t. How does this feeling reflect a waking aspect of your life?

WORKSHOP: DANCE YOUR DREAM, SUNDAY AUGUST 1

DREAM INTERPRETATION THROUGH MOVEMENT AND DANCE

with Victoria Rabinowe and Danielle Reddick

Sunday, August 1, 2010    1:30-4:00 STUDIO NIA    851 W. San Mateo, Santa Fe    505/ 989-1299    www.studioniasantafe.com/    $35 advance, $40 door.

TRACES OF THE JOURNEY

Turning a dream into a dance invites us to distill emotionally charged themes in rhythmic, mythic form.  Our dreams feature images and language chosen for  sound and suggestive power. All we need to do is listen deeply.

Dream gestures and physical movements contain vast reservoirs of energy and wisdom. Together in a dream sharing circle, we will embody the energy of our dream images as we invite our dreams into cellular consciousness.

LET THE DREAM DANCE YOU!

HOW DO I PREPARE FOR A DANCE DREAMGROUP?

Bring a dream (or simply your curiosity) and a commitment to offer yourself an uninterrupted afternoon. Wear comfortable clothes to move in and soft-soled dance shoes or bare feet.

I’M NOT A DANCER, BUT I’D LIKE TO WORK WITH MY DREAMS. CAN I ATTEND?

You don’t need to be a dancer. Your intention to be “in attention” for an entire afternoon is the only requirement.

IS DREAM INTERPRETATION THROUGH MOVEMENT AND DANCE A THERAPY GROUP?

No. However, working with dreams can often feel therapeutic.

I DON’T WANT TO EXPOSE MY PRIVATE LIFE, BUT I WANT TO STUDY MY DREAMS.

Typically, dreams come to us in symbols. Our private lives are usually disguised in metaphor. We speak in terms of volcanoes, locked rooms, lions and tigers and bears, dark and stormy nights!

Although we may feel like we are revealing everything about ourselves, we generally aren’t. You will never be expected to answer any inquiry that feels too personal.

Notice what feels good and what doesn’t. How does this feeling reflect a waking aspect of your life?

SEEDS OF CHANGE: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Like the sprouting of a seed, each dream offers us a chance to wake up from a long deep sleep into a new reality. If we are patient gardeners, we can release tremendous growth and expansion from tending our dreams.

Like a seed, a dream must be nourished to fulfill its genetic promise. It needs caring, attention, moisture, warmth and light to set roots deep into the earth so that it may burst through its confinement from darkness into light.

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT…

Invite a dream image to sprout with associations that have been planted in your past. Then, bring your dream forward into a flower of new growth. What new ideas and abilities in your dream are waiting to be liberated? What is the creative force in this dream? Write without stopping. Let your words burst forth!

WORKSHOP: SEEDS OF CHANGE 7/27/10

A seed is a small, compact vessel;

a container of potential filled with the code of creation.

A dream is like a seed.

It carries the cipher of the past

and a blueprint for the future.

I DON’T DREAM, HOW CAN I BECOME A DREAMER?

Every sentient being dreams. Humans typically dream every ninety minutes. The first REM cycles are short. But as the night wears on, the length of the dream cycles get longer. The more rest we get at night, the more chance we have of having longer, more memorable dreams. Dream recall can improve by trying any of the following techniques:

• Make a conscious wish to remember a dream before you go to sleep.
• Write out a dream incubation (a question or a topic of concern) before going to sleep.
• Place a pen and a pad of paper with a tiny night light or a voice recorder beside the bed, so that you are ready to record a dream the moment you wake up.
• Avoid censoring or judging the merit of the dream.
• Record any fragment or wisp of a dream even if it makes no sense.
• Read a book about dreaming at bedtime.
• Try to wake up without an alarm clock. Avoid using a radio to wake up to if you must use an alarm.
• Join a Dream Group. Psyche tends to remember dreams when she knows she’ll be heard.

RISK: A DREAM JOURNAL QUOTE

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tightly closed in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom.

Anais Nin

THE LIFE FORCE: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Dream narratives point us to the vital life force within us. This force can be powered by emotion, memory, time, space and atmosphere. Energy within the dream can be animated or subtle;  blocked or resistant; growing or expanding.

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT…

Find one or more abstract images from art magazines that animate your dream’s fundamental vitality. Instead of searching for a literal picture from your dream, focus on a current of energy that emanates from it. Find a luminous, shadowy, impressionistic, surreal or wild field of energy to cut and paste into your dream journal – or paint it.

WORKSHOP: THE LIFE FORCE 7/20/10

Dreams mirror the life forces that flow through our mind, body and spirit. Through an exploration of their multiple images, dreams bring us into oneness with the animating power in the universe.

IMAGINE: A DREAM JOURNAL QUOTE

Imagine living in a culture that doesn’t value dreams?

Lee Irwin

THE DREAMER’S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all dreamers are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That, to secure these rights, dreams are given to dreamers, deriving their just powers from the consent of the dreamer’s psyches, that, whenever any dream becomes destructive, it is the right of the dreamer to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new dream, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Security and Healthfulness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that recurring dream themes long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes. Dreamers are more disposed to suffer than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations evince a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off the tyranny of such dreamings and to provide new models for their future health and well-being.

INDEPENDENCE: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

WRITE YOUR DREAM DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

Search in your journal for a dream character who is in need of emancipation.This character  can be you, the dreamer, or an animal or person in a dream.

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT…

Invoke the power to write your dream declaration without externally imposed restraints.

Write about the old laws, old restraints and old patterns that have governed your dream image.

Write a set of new laws for freedom and liberation that will release your dream image from judgment, restriction, domination and injustice!

Write for ten minutes without stopping:  LET FREEDOM RING!

WORKSHOP: INDEPENDENCE 7/13/10

Every dream holds the truth of our own capabilities, judgments and resources. No matter how perplexing or disturbing, each dream narrative points to our inalienable rights by offering images that either hold or withhold our freedom to act, to speak or to think. Independence day is a day of liberation from dependency and external control.

Tuesday’s Art of the Dream workshop 7/13 is a day for release from restrictive attachments. This is a day to exercise immunity from the authority of inner tyranny and self abuse. This is a day of rebellion!

About “THE ART OF THE DREAM” ™ WORKSHOPS

The Art of the Dream™ workshops invite dreamers to ponder the mysteries of the night in a way that brings a fluid wave of understanding, rather than a rigid, authoritative interpretation. I have been extremely careful not to pathologize the interpretation of dreams. I have eliminated the buzz words that categorize dream work as therapy, new age or pseudoscience. I don’t offer magic incantations or fortune telling. My brand of dreamwork is neither prophecy or analysis. I don’t tell individuals what their dreams mean. Instead, I offer a framework for self-discovery.

WORKSHOP: CONNECTIONS, MEMORIES, RECOLLECTIONS 6/29/10

Memory feeds imagination

-Amy Tan

KEEPER OF THE ARCHIVES: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Like a museum display, a dream is a repository of ancestral connections, memories, recollections, and reminiscences. Like a museum, a dream is filled with fragile relics, peculiar old stuff, things remembered and things forgotten.

Your Mission Should You Choose to Accept it…

Record memories, reminiscences and experiences that call to you from the images in the dream and  the dim recesses of the mind.

In which way does history repeat itself in your dreaming life and waking life?