Dreamwalking – A 4-week (online) Course on Dreams

 art, consciousness, creativity, dream interpretation, dreaming, dreams, inspiration, myth, paradox
May 152012
 

 


In this 4-week online course, running from (May 28th – June 15th), you will be learning the Cornerstones of Dreamwork. Using an intimate blend of art, theory and practice, dreamers learn to understand the structure and language of dreams & develop the tools necessary to begin bridging their wisdom back to waking life.  This series is excellent for beginner and intermediate dreamers.

The weekly online classes will cover the following topics:

 

Dream Architecture

Dreamwork is an art as well as a science.  In this class we learn to approach dreams in the same way we would a work of literature, film or painting; appreciating its mechanics as well as its poetry.   We will learn how to recognize the dramatic structure of a dream, isolate its key elements and bridge their symbolism back to waking life.

Light in the Dark

Learning to actively dream involves finding balance between the light and dark sides of our nature.  In this class we will pay special attention to the Shadow and nightmares, learning how to read the warning signs of imbalanced attitudes.  We will explore the redeeming medicine of dark dreams and the importance of finding the light contained within them.

Inner Marriage

Each of us contains both masculine and feminine qualities within.  It is only our gender conditioning that engrains a bias towards one or the other.  What results, is an impoverishment of our opposite-gender qualities.  In this class, we will learn how to integrate both through dreamwork, so that we can recover our wholeness as individuals, correspondingly healing our larger community.

Dream Yourself Awake

Dreaming is a kind of archaeological process where we enter the landscape of the soul to unearth the forgotten or undiscovered parts of our selves.  As we begin to do away with unconscious, habitual behaviour, we awaken to a new way of being in the world.  We begin to walk the dream – turning inspiration into action. In this class we will learn techniques for engaging our co-creative abilities in both dreaming and waking realities.

 

How it works:

  • Once I have received your registration, you will be invited to join an exclusive Facebook Group with your fellow Dreamwalkers.
  • You will also be emailed the course materials and a schedule of our live weekly class times.
  • I will be creating videos for each lesson as well as hosting live group discussions.
  • We will be working on actual dreams as a group in each weekly class, so if you’d like to submit a dream, you will be invited to email it to me beforehand.
  • In the event that you are unable to make a class, you will still have access to all of the discussions which you can read at your leisure. You may also submit your questions at any time during the week.

 

Tuition:

Tuition for the course is on a sliding scale, $140-180. Due to the volume of scholarship requests, any amount above the base price ($140) will go towards a Scholarship Fund to help those in need. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at dreamquestion@gmail.com.

Click the ‘register now’ button and enter an amount between $140-180:

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Beautiful Things

 art, Beautiful Things, beauty, creativity, inspiration, music, Photos
Apr 162012
 

1.  We are blessed with a room full of hearts eager to listen to our big, round drums, secret chambered winds, ancestors summoned and stories sung.

2. Don’t you know that the real definition of bravery is being afraid and doing it anyway?

3. A fire roasting in the hearth, lanterns glowing on the path, stars freckling the night.

4. The afterglow of a performance well-received spills well into the next day, making everything exactly as it should. My heart drops down into place, laughs spring easily from my belly and even this exhaustion is felt as an honour.

5. In these illuminated hours, I remember Rumi’s teaching, “Each moment from all sides rushes to us the summons to Love.”

6. After the music, a sister comes very close to me and whispers that she sees now how much more she can open. Maybe that is all we are here for – to open, open, open until our petals fall off.

 

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Author Jenny Alexander interviews me

 consciousness, creativity, dream interpretation, dreaming, dreams, Dreamspeak, inspiration, Writing
Apr 112012
 

Recently, I had the delightful opportunity to be interviewed by dream teacher and author, Jenny Alexander. I loved her questions which prompted me to write about my own childhood  and how I was drawn into my work with dreaming. As always when engaged on the subject of dreams, I feel like a mountain creek in spring! I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing about my love of Dreamwork. Here is a small excerpt on “Giving & Receiving a Hello…”

There’s nothing more intimate, fulfilling or magical than ‘touching souls’ with another being. Most people walk around for years without ever receiving a proper ‘Hello.’ What I mean by that, is that most of us have been taught from the earliest age to suppress and discount the tenderest, most creative part of ourselves. And while it is certainly possible to survive in this way, underneath the daily armour is an unabating hunger to be seen.

To connect, being-to-being, with that thing which is tired of fitting in, which wants to feel alive, which has something authentic to offer. Giving a proper Hello is to hold a subtle, unwavering presence for that thing to feel safe enough to emerge. Dreamwork is all about nurturing trust, not just between the Dreamer and Dreamworker, but between the Dreamer and his/her own soul.  (Read the rest here.)

 

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House Concert on Salt Spring Island

 art, beauty, creativity, music, Posters  No Responses »
Apr 032012
 

 

Oh we are very excited to announce that we’ll be playing our first house concert on Salt Spring Island since moving here in the autumn! My beloved Craig and I are inviting you into our beautiful & inspiring home, where we will serenade you with your mystical heartsongs. Since we have more instruments than furniture, we are asking you to please bring your own pillow to sit on and any snacks you’d like to share at intermission. We’ll make a big pot of chai and stoke up the fire to keep you extra cozy while we journey deep into the music. We have limited seating, so please RSVP for details on how to get to our hidden forest palace.

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 Posted by Toko-pa at 7:45 am

Beautiful Things

 Beautiful Things, beauty, creativity, inspiration, Photos, Writing
Mar 292012
 

We make the inward spiral, remembering how Yin withdraws to enter, how healing is real.

Here are two selves, inner and outer. Each cares fiercely for the other.

We are surrounded by small generosities.

And great ones.

We find ways to be sweet to ourselves.

Delicate as the opening of petals to a receding winter.

There’s so much yet to come.

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All We Have is Art

 All We Have is Art  ambiguity, art, creativity, paradox, quotes  No Responses »
Mar 112012
 

We now know enough to know that we will never know everything. This is why we need art: it teaches us how to live with mystery. Only the artist can explore the ineffable without offering us an answer, for sometimes there is no answer. John Keats called this romantic impulse ‘negative capability.’ He said that certain poets, like Shakespeare, had ‘the ability to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ Keats realized that just because something can’t be solved, or reduced into the laws of physics, doesn’t mean it isn’t real. When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art.

- Jonah Lehrer, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, ᔥ brainpickings

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 Posted by Toko-pa at 8:25 am

March Newsletter

 beauty, dreaming, inspiration, Writing
Mar 022012
 

If you are wondering what kinds of things I’ll email you if you subscribe in the (top right) box, here’s a gander at my Newsletter for March. Just click on the image to see more.

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Bless these Bumps

 art, beauty, inspiration, Photos  No Responses »
Feb 282012
 

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 Posted by Toko-pa at 7:55 am

Beautiful Things

 art, Beautiful Things, creativity, inspiration, Writing
Feb 272012
 

1. Living on top of a mountain on an island in the sea in outer space is turning me into an online shopper! The old-timey part of me that yearns for ink-written letters sealed with wax delivered by carriage is getting very nearly satisfied by the things I’ve been receiving in the mail lately.

Like these gorgeous postcards! I’ve been a fan of Lupen Grainne’s vintage-inspired photography for a while, but finally decided to splurge on some of her Etsy prints. I love her gentle washes of colour, treated with antiquing textures. And her artful packaging with a translucent envelope, handwritten note and heart-sticker seal was pure deliciousness.

I like to use original art to decorate the covers of my generic journals, (especially if they are as symbolic as acorns before oak trees.) As for the leftovers, some lucky beloveds might get those by carrier pigeon from me one day.

2. It is amazing how soon after making the decision to take a break from Facebook,  my morning rituals have transformed. My yoga practice has deepened powerfully and through it creativity is tumbling.

3. Of the other wonderful things I’ve received in the mail, I finally got my second-hand Amazon copy of Marc Ian Barasch’s Healing Dreams. It is such a fantastic book, that I’m having to jot down notes in my journal every few pages. As well as being a great researcher and wordsmith, Barasch is a rare and intrepid spelunker of his own unconscious.

After a series of nightmares saved his life by leading him to a treatable cancer in his thyroid, he became a devotee of the Dreamtime. Though he published this book in 2000, I was only turned on to Barasch when Sun Magazine published this fantastic interview.

4. One of the highlights of my week now is a sacred singing circle called Ubuntu, which is an African philosophy meaning “I am what I am because of who we all are.” Indeed it is nothing short of ecstatic to offer my voice in traditional songs with others, feeling our harmonies rippling off in layers around us, our own hearts expanding with safety, re-memory of our oneness.

5. I’ve been having this amazing experience lately; once in my new moon Women’s Temple and once in Ubuntu – where a creative problem I’ve been working on comes vividly clear in the innate intelligence of the circle.

Getting into that interstitial realm is not something I do – it’s my undoing. Relaxing the rational mind is what allows the genius of the unconscious to express itself. The sacred circle, and really any practice or ritual, helps us drop down into that deeper level of imagination, away from the direct sunlight of our attention, where we become more subtly reflective like the moon.

6. Soon to shipped off to California to her new Mama, it has been a divine pleasure to live in the presence of Jolie-Coquille. After so many years of making ‘invisible’ art, like that of music and writing, it is an unremitting delight to find a 3D artform which feels, upon creation, to possess a life of its own. At nightfall, our livingroom becomes an otherworldly colony of these elegant light-beings.

7. The word solve comes from the Latin ‘solvere’ meaning “to loosen, release or free.” As in dissolving an individual ingredient into a greater whole.

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My Energy is a Precious Resource

 consciousness, creativity, inspiration, paradox, Rumi, Writing
Feb 262012
 

Now on the threshold of Spring, it is time to burn off the winter fog and get things moving again.

Like a bear coming out of hibernation, I am craving fresh foods, hankering for strong yoga and eager to participate in the many activities I love. But in order to find the energy to do all of that, I am noticing my need to commit strong boundaries around those places where I’m not using my energy mindfully.

What fuels you? What drains you?

So the other day I created two lists with each of these questions as my headings. On the Fueling side, I wrote things like connecting, yoga, nature, substance, creative expression, good food &  ritual. On the Draining side, I wrote exertion, isolation, too much media and over-extending myself.

I was amazed to discover that there was a great deal of crossover between the two lists. For instance, it fuels me to connect with others, but drains me to lack solitude.  It fuels me to practice yoga, but drains me to push through my physical limitations.  It fuels me to read/watch authentic media, but if it starts crowding out my own knowing, it drains me. It fuels me to do ‘karma work,’ but drains me to undervalue myself. You get the idea!

Dancing the Reciprocity

Dancing the reciprocity between the two is like walking a tightrope, always making minute adjustments to the right, then to the left. But the trick is never to wish for things to remain as they are, but to show up with as much presence for the constant motion of change. That is dancing. 

There is no such thing as the perfect middle, where our energy runs fiery all the time, only the perpetual opportunity to practice balance, yessing every subtle transition.  As Rumi writes, “Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birdwings.”

Because certain ‘negative’ emotions like anger and sadness aren’t acceptable at large, it can be challenging to affirm those emotional shifts within ourselves. If you haven’t yet heard me talk about Owning Your Destroy, do check it out. The gist is that anger, boredom, grief and irritability can be powerful agents of change, if we practice the art of allowing.

Boundaries

The Taoists say sometimes you have to withdraw to enter.

Pulling back your energy is like drawing the bow to find the aim before releasing an arrow with precision.

So I’m snuggling in with these questions of fueling and draining, noticing where I feel most alive and learning to protect my energy as a precious resource.

I can’t help but think we are so much like the earth, from whom we take so much and give back too little. Our own energy body has so much to give, but needs  to be harnessed sustainably. It requires subtle inquiry, careful listening, strong boundaries and sweet cherishing.

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