Dreamwork means…

Integrating your dreams into your life and being guided by them to manifest positive events more rapidly, avoiding difficult ones or be prepared for unavoidable challenges. It can help heal others and ourselves. It can boost our creativity in addressing problems or bringing projects to fruition. When we integrate our dreams into our waking reality, we enrich and transform our life.

The practice of shamanic dreaming also known as Active Dreaming™ includes being awake, with your eyes open or closed, and going on a dream journey. This process may be facilitated by drumming. Using an image as a starting point, you play with the scene in front of you. Just like children use their imagination, you can move around, interact with objects or beings, ask questions and imagine the answers. And, because you are using your waking consciousness, you control the experience. It’s like daydreaming but with intention. Whereas few people actually achieve lucid dream (i.e. becoming conscious that one is dreaming in their sleep), everyone can practice active dreaming.

The benefits are many. For instance, through active dreaming, you may remember your sleep dreams again. You can grow dreams or images for healing purposes. Shamanic or Active Dreaming brings colour to your life. It may help you clarify your life’s purpose and meaning. It will definitely bring creativity and amusement to your life, perhaps even a richness unbeknownst to you so far.

There are many use for shamanic dreaming. A cool one is to re-enter a dream. When done in a group, you can receive valuable feedback from others that you invited to accompany you back in the dream.

One key ingredient is imagination. We all have that naturally. It's innate in all of us. It's a normal function of the brain. What we don't realize is that often we use our imagination to create fear within us. That's because of the reptilian part of the brain that is always watching for the Saber-Tooth Tiger out there. So, often we make a problem worse in our mind. But, using shamanic dreaming, we can harness the power of imagination and creatively solve problems, distract ourselves from anxiety provoking life situation or simply go on an adventure even if we can't sleep. What's more, it may even help us go back into sleep!

Many indigenous cultures recognize the power of shamanic dreaming. My mentor, Robert Moss, learned from an Iroquois Medicine Woman who came in this sleeping dreams to show him that the dream world, the world of imagination is the real world and our waking reality is the unreal world. Through shamanic or Active Dreaming, we can bridge the gap between worlds and be guided in what I call this waking reality to make our life easier, smoother, richer and perhaps even transform our life for the better!