Let Me Out of
the Box!
Isobel McGrath, MS, CHt, a
counselor, dreamworker and hypnotherapist, has degrees from London
Guildhall University in England and Certification in Counseling
Skills, Groupwork, Clinical and Medical Hypnosis. Originally from
Ireland, she has a degree in Metaphysics (“Dream Interpretation”)
and an MS degree in Community Counseling from Western Connecticut
State University.
Nancy Weston, MA,
dreamworker and certified Inner Bonding® facilitator in private
practice, completed a 2-year training of the Institute for the
Enhancement of Dreamwork and has a certificate from the Institute
of Advanced Archetypal Studies. An experienced educator, she
conducts dreamwork classes and workshops, and specializes in
inner-child dreams.
Abstract
Playtime With Your Inner Artist
A
dream is a picture of a feeling, a snapshot of the creative
process at work. Dreams are, of course, primarily visual. They
arrive in the night through pictures, images, symbols. By the time
we tell or write the dream, not only is it over, but we are coding
it into verbal, linear language. We may get the gist of it, but
there is no way that we can present the dream in all its glorious
or frightening or just plain confusing panoramic detail.
However, collages with visual images from dreams can draw us into
our dream landscape, where paradoxically the terrain makes
meaningful nonsense, where people are illogically understandable,
and where events are dissociatively coalesced. In this workshop we
enter into the landscape of the dream and attempt to speak its
language, the language of images, packed with the power of the
metaphor, as we create dream boxes. You will be given a plain box
to embellish as your own “dream box.” You will be creatively
guided to choose and create pictures, words and images from
magazines and art supplies that represent your dreams’ symbology.
As you select and glue these images to your box, you may be gifted
with further insight into your dreams.
The
shadow in our dreams is often difficult to decipher and our dreams
are peopled with unrecognizable characters, masked within our
psyche. Trying to catch your shadow often feels like Peter Pan did
trying to sew it to his slippers. Thus, we will use the inside of
the box for shadow imagery. As we open the lid of our dream box,
we allow light to shine upon the darkness and thus allow our inner
shadow “out of the box” into consciousness.
All
hands-on activities have the potential to advance your ability to
develop an ongoing dialogue with the priceless contents of dreams.
Remember the folk motif of the bottomless pot, where no matter how
much soup was ladled out, was always full? Think of your creative
dreammaker energy as the riches in a treasure chest in your
unconscious. It is yours alone, it is full, and no dream depletes
it since it has no bottom. Yes, your dream box, your own personal
treasure chest, will have a physical “bottom” but it will be
symbolically open to the universal creative energy below that
constantly wells up through it.
