Healing Dream Work
“The dream shows the inner truth and reality of the patient as it really is: not as I conjecture it to be, and not as he would like it to be, but as it is.”
– “The Practical Use of Dream Analysis” (1934).
In CW 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy. pg. 30; Carl Jung
Healing Dream Work offers many opportunities to more deeply understand and process the significance of your dreaming. Healing Dream work is a time-honored tradition drawing on the wisdom of shamanism, the dream archives of the ancient world, the psychotherapist Carl Jung, and Gestalt Therapy dream work.
There are the sleeping dreams that most of us are familiar with, and then there are active waking dreams.
Dreams serve many functions. They can deliver healing messages, they can foretell our future, they can purely assist with processing material unfinished from our everyday lives, they can resolve and bring empowerment to situations from the past, we can meet deceased people in our dreams, we can meet parts of our self/Self in dreams, and particularly in active dreaming we can co-create a desired future and tap into spiritual and psychological resources.
These understandings of healing dream work can be located historically. The ancient Sumerians revered healing dream incubation, an ancient method of asking for guidance from the expanded dreamworld. The Egyptians, as did the Sumerians saw dreams as messages from the gods. These understandings influenced the Greeks where Delphi’s oracle of prophecy was based on dreams.
Greek philosopher Aristole stated that the purest form of human wisdom was only available during sleep. Hipposcrates (noted as the father of contemporary allopathic medicine) regarded dreams as bringing attention to physical and mental health.
The Romans were heavily influenced by the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks. They believed dreams were prophetic, that deceased ancestors could be met in dreams for guidance, and that dreams could unlock the keys for healing.
From a shamanic perspective dreams are always important as a vehicle for healing soul loss/separation. Dreams are regarded as sacred, and as real as what we may consider waking existence. In-fact many shamanic cultures regard that what we consider as waking reality is really the Dreaming expressing itself. We are being dreamed into Being.
When we come to honour our dreams as the alchemical force of the unconscious and transpersonal spiritual realms we truely receive the gift of wisdom and healing.
If you wish to deepen your understanding of your dreaming world we can respectfully work together to receive, understand, and integrate the gift of your dreaming.
“Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking”
– Black Elk
Contact Christina on 0422 648 243 via text, or email: christina.manfredi@iinet.net.au