Abstract Index Conference Index

ABSTRACT

Lucid Waking: Bringing Dreamwork Approaches to Waking Life

Zoe Newman, MFCC (Albany, California)
Email: znewman@juno.com

Zo‚ Newman, M.A., is a psychotherapist in Berkeley, where she
has been leading dream groups for the last fourteen years. She has
presented at previous ASD conferences, published in Psychological
Perspectives and other journals, and authored a book entitled Lucid
Waking: Bringing Dreamwork Approaches to Waking Life.

4. SUMMARY OF PRESENTATION: Bringing dreamwork approaches to waking life
can offer new perspective, insight and growth. In this workshop we'll
explore how to find meaning and creative possibilities, and facilitate others
in doing so, through exploring problematic experiences, situations and
relationships "as if it were a dream."

5. LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

1) To learn how one can find insight, or work with another in doing
so, through exploring an experience or situation "as if it were a
dream."

2) To explore how bringing dreamwork approaches to relationship
impasses can lead to insight and change.

3) To explore how one might apply lucid and Senoi perspectives to
everyday situations to change old patterns and respond in creative,
new ways.

CEU EVALUATION QUESTIONS:

1) How might you facilitate insight and explore issues with a client
through bringing dreamwork approaches to waking experience?

2) How might you gain (or facilitate a client in gaining) useful
insight by working with a relationship conflict from a dreamwork
perspective?

3) List two ways that bringing lucid and Senoi perspectives to
waking life situations can be of value.

8. ABSTRACT

"The nature of our entire experience is that of a dream."
-- Tibetan Buddhist teacher Tarthung Tulku

People have long turned to their dreams for insight, guidance
and growth. But sometimes individuals can't remember their dreams --
yet still want to connect with the guidance of their unconscious. Or
a disturbing daytime incident comes along that is so disquieting that
it demands attention the same way a nightmare does. Or we find
ourselves caught up in a recurring relationship pattern where we
begin to wonder if something's going on at a deeper level. By
approaching our waking experiences with the question, "If this were a
dream...," we may uncover powerful new perspectives.
The wisdom, growth urge, and guidance of our unconscious are not
confined to our sleeping hours. Outer events, our unconscious, and
the heightened sensitivity we bring to awareness in times of crisis
often seem to coalesce to create opportunities for insight, as rich
as any our dreams offer, in our waking encounters and experiences.
It can be useful and illuminating, at such times, to bring the same
techniques of exploration to these waking experiences as we might to
our dream life.
In many spiritual traditions, our waking experience is, in fact,
seen as a dream. This is particularly true in the Tibetan Buddhist
tradition, as articulated in the words of Tenzin Wangal Rinpoche:
"Throughout the day, continuously remain in the awareness that all
experience is a dream. Encounter all things as objects in a dream,
all events as events in a dream, all people as people in a dream...."
In the workshop Lucid Waking: Bringing Dreamwork Approaches to
Waking Life, we will look at how to bring the same approaches and
tools that work in exploring our dreams to our everyday life -- both
for ourselves, and if we work with others.
Exploring the metaphor and symbolism of a synchronistic event as
if it were a dream, for instance, can offer us rich insight and
guidance. Dreamwork dialogue and gestalt techniques for becoming
aware of the gifts and challenges of our shadow side, as another
example, are equally powerful when used in waking life relationship
impasses. Recognizing relationships as reflections can lead to
powerful shifts, new clarity, and growth.
And the spirit of exploration and adventure that lucid and Senoi
approaches bring to dreams can help us face our "waking monsters"
with new creativity. It's sometimes hard to remember we have
creative choice when we're caught up in the drama of the moment, just
as we get caught up in a dream before we remember it's just a dream.
Applying lucid dreamwork perspectives to our everyday life, we can
"wake up," and instead of repeating old familiar patterns, we can
experiment with different, more useful responses.
The workshop will include presentation, guided exercises and
sharing.