Living A Dream-Centered Life

August 13-15, 2004
in Santa Barbara, CA

The art of DreamTending offers a portal to the poetics of imagination. In tending dreams, images are vivified, the psyche animated. We become curious and open in the process. We befriend the archetypal imagination and are in turn welcomed into the presence of soul. DreamTending, for me, continues to reveal itself as a life path—a dream-centered life. The curiosity, wonder, and mystery with which I approach the dream is also the attitude that I wish to carry into personal and community engagements—bringing a "witnessing presence" to what life offers. The mode of tending dreams at night becomes a practice during the day—Stephen Aizenstat

In this three-day introductory seminar, Dr. Aizenstat will help the dreamer find relationship with the archetypal imagination—describing traditional and emerging methods of dream work that explore common dream themes, nightmares, archetypal images, and the recurring dream. Seminar topics include:

THE PERSONAL UNCONSCIOUS: Dreamwork methods drawn from Freud and the post-Freudians assist us in hearing the voices of the dream in relation to personal history and experience.

THE COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS: Archetypal methods of dream analysis based on the work of Jung, Hillman, Woodman, Lockhart, and others aid in connecting to the dream in light of the shared stories and archetypal images of the collective human psyche.

THE WORLD UNCONSCIOUS: Dr. Aizenstat will demonstrate emerging methods of DreamTending which animate the living ecology of the wider landscape, reconnecting us to the realm of imagination and nature.

ONGOING DREAM COUNCIL: Participants will meet daily in ongoing dream councils of 4-6 persons to apply material learned in the seminar. This provides an opportunity for each member to work with his or her own dreams.

Day One:
Introduction to Dream Work
Orientating Principles of DreamTending
Tools for Remembering Dreams
"Getting Started"—Methods of Association,
The Personal Psyche
Exploring Common Dream Themes
Demonstration and Experiential Work

Day Two:
Mythic Imagination and The Archetypal Image
Listening to the Symbolic Language of Dreams
Tools of Working with Puns, Metaphor, and Symbol
"Moving Forward"—Methods of Amplification,
The Collective Psyche
Befriending Angels, Ancestors, and Animals in Dreams
Demonstration and Experiential Work

Day Three:
Translating Dream Work Into Awake Life Experience
Living a Dream-Centered Life as a Form of Archetypal Activism
Tools for Working with Nightmares and Night Demons
"Tending the Living Image"—Methods of Animations,
The World Psyche
Attending to Psyche and Soma, Body and Soul
Demonstration and Experiential Work