Dreams: A Door to Imagination & Creativity: a Workshop by Victoria Rabinowe

San Diego Book Arts | Workshops

HARVEST OF DREAMS: A DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

The full moon at the end of the harvest season is a holiday of thanksgiving in which we reap the bounty of the year and the fruit of our dreams.

Your Mission Should You Choose to Accept It…

CREATE AN OUTOOR DREAM BOWER

It is traditional in many religions to build and decorate a bower with the branches of trees and the harvest from the fields. Create an outdoor dream shrine with the harvest of your autumn dreams made from leaves, branches, stones and found materials in a natural setting. Decorate your bower with symbols of your dream images, both positive and negative. Find a way to honor each guest in your dwelling.

THE CIRCLE THAT NEVER ENDS: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

Our nocturnal narratives whirl about as if we were revolving disks in a relentlessly moving machine. We circumnavigate around an orbit of adventures where we spiral in and out of control. We often find ourselves striving and struggling with unresolved repetition. Recurring dream images haunt us. Themes repeat and evolve. Familiar figures shift as they chase us or dance with us.

YOUR MISSION SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT:

Create a circular model of your dream. Rearrange your dream images within the circumference of a globe, a ring, a wreath, a sphere, a halo or a vortex. When you shift your point of view, notice how new patterns and variations emerge.

Dreams are like hundreds of forms

all pointing to the inner center.

Marie-Louise von Franz

WORKSHOPS IN THE BAY AREA: STORIES OF THE NIGHT 8/29 & 8/30

Our nightly dreams are the repository of our deepest memories and feelings. They call to us from the innermost center of our being. They touch us in our tenderest places with the depth of our longing, our joys and our sorrows. They enchant us with euphoria, they arouse our passions, they frighten us, they inspire us and they fill us with wonder. Yet, the dreams of the night are not easy to decipher. When we reenter the dream landscape through collage and creative writing techniques, we are meeting Psyche in her own language of metaphor and symbol. Guided dream journal techniques will unravel the riddles of the night and give voice to the yearnings, anguish and ecstasies of the paradoxical realm of the dreaming mind.

8/29 San Francisco Advance Reservations: Peggy Adeboi  (415) 337-6430  peggy@adeboi.com

8/30 Berkeley: Advance Reservations: Naomi Epel  (415) 377-1176 naomi@observationdeck.com

MASTER OF RIDDLES: WORKSHOP 8/24/10

Dreams come to us as riddles filled with enigmatic imagery, odd encounters, eccentric characters, obscure references and paradoxical imagery. They haunt us with reverberations of the unknown and the unfathomable.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. – Rainer Maria Rilke

— Rainer Maria Rilke

WORKSHOP: THE POETICS OF PARADOX 8/17/10

Are we traveling this road to the end?

Yes.

But you said the road has no end.

That’s true

How can it be true?

From a certain point of view, the universe seems to be composed of paradoxes. But everything resolves. That is the function of contradiction.

I don’t understand.

When you see everything from every imaginable point of view, you might begin to understand.

Ben Okri, The Famished Road

WORKSHOP:DREAM POWER 8/10/10

Creative Dreamwork is not about directing dream images to our will. It is about opening and descending into the roots of our own psyche to find our Power. We use this found power to expose and follow the energy released by “real”izing our dreams through writing, art, dance, and theater. When we renter a dream of Power, we honor what it feels like to step outside of the ordinary realm of self doubt or vulnerability where we can experience a sense of control and well being by manifesting a creative response to the dream.

CARTOGRAPHER: A 10 MINUTE DREAM JOURNAL EXERCISE

MAPPING THE DREAMSCAPE

Traversing the hemispheres of the night mind can be a daunting journey if we have no way to find our bearings. We awaken feeling lost and disoriented with no way to ground our experience in this sea of shifting tides.

A visual, symbolic depiction can speak more than words when attempting to define the strange upside down, inside out world of dreams.

By arranging coordinates to describe the dream narrative, we can navigate through the geography of time, memory and mystery.

Draw a map of your dream

• Diagram the twists and turns in the landscape as well as in the plot of your dream.
• Mark patterns of movement or migrations.
• Indicate the distances between places or events.
• Notice the placement of crossroads.
• Make notations about the points of interest along the way.
• Chart the boundaries, the short cuts, the detours, the alternate routes.
• Mark the edges, the obstacles, the dead ends.
• Create turnarounds and escape routes.
• Make connections. Create bridges.

WORKSHOP: DREAM CARTOGRAPHER: AUGUST 3

A dream is a personal atlas of where we are in our lives, where we have come from and where we are going. The dream takes us on a voyage beneath the surface of what is known and elevates us to peaks of what is possible. The territory of a dream can be a physical space, an internal realm or an emotional field.

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.

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.

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

WORKSHOP: THE PRESENCE IN ABSENCE 6/22/10

The empty spaces which give form to poetry; The negative spaces which give substance to paintings; The pregnant pauses between dialogue in a play; The silences between notes in music are often found in the world of the arts. Similarly, we experience the dream that doesn’t have an end, the room without a door, the faceless intruder, the message we can’t hear. The ambiguity of this paradoxical state is precisely the territory that expands our consciousness in dreamwork.

WORKSHOP: HOMECOMING 6/15/10

Home is that dwelling place where we are loved and cherished. Home is where we are accepted just as we are with all our weaknesses, imperfections and frailties.

Yet, many of us never feel at home.

Despite this, we dreamers recognize that dreams are the repository of our mythic home. They contain our deepest memories and feelings. They call to us from the innermost center of our being. They touch us in our tenderest places with the depth of our longing, our joys and our sorrows. Through our DreamTending practice, we find frequently that our dreams are often about the call to come home.