In dreams, the soul may speak through the language of metaphor, image, and symbol. Exploring dreams in therapy is a poignant way into the vast terrain of the inner world/one’s being/the soul.
Elements of Dreamwork
There are several elements involved in this process, including attention, expression, engagement, associations, and amplification.
First, dreamwork in therapy includes recording (writing down) and sharing of your dreams. We give attention to the images, scenes, and figures that arise. We develop a symbolic attitude, becoming curious about possible meanings being expressed and what is still unknown. In the therapeutic space, we engage with the dream by exploring your personal feelings, associations, and memories that arise in connection. A further step is amplification – exploration of collective, cultural, and archetypal content (e.g., mythic, story, religious, spiritual) emerging in the dream. Some people also choose to respond to dreams through writing and creative expression.
Approach to Dreamwork: Rediscovering Wonder
Dreams are not merely approached as things to be taken apart, objectified, and codified. Rather, there is an approach of humility and wonder before the mystery, honoring and asking, playfully entering the story and engaging the imagination, letting oneself be affected and moved. Dreams may contain many possible levels and interweaving strands of meanings, opening us to the unconscious as well as touching into experiences of the numinous, the sacred. My approach draws upon Jungian psychology and ongoing studies in spirituality and anthropology.
Through tending to dreams with sensitivity, respect, and curiosity, we develop a relationship with the interior depths of the soul’s life. We can listen attentively and learn the symbolic ways that dreams may reveal psychological conflicts, deep feeling, soul stirrings, inner wisdom, and latent possibility.
Dreamwork is offered at Restore Psychotherapy & Wellness by Camille Mica. (Please link this to her provider page.)
“I slept, but my heart was awake.” – Song of Songs 5:2
These astronomical matters fade.
Another intimacy happens,
a sun at midnight,
with no east, no night or day.
The clearest intelligences faint,
seeing the solar system flickering,
so tiny in that immense lightness.
Drops fall into a vapor, and the vapor explodes
into a galaxy. Half a ray strikes a patch of darkness.
A new sun appears.
One slight, alchemical gesture,
and saturnine qualities form inside
the planet Saturn.
The sensuous eye needs sunlight to see.
Use another eye.
Vision is luminous.
Sight is igneous, and sun-fire light very dark.
– Rumi, “Sheba’s Gifts to Solomon”