shamanicdreaming

Shamanic Dreaming

What is Shamanic Dreaming?

Shamanic dreaming is an ancient and powerful spiritual path that honors dreams as both wishes and experiences of the soul. We learn to create a safe space where we can share dreams, journey inside each other’s dreamscapes, and draw healing and insight from the dreamworld into physical reality. In the workshops, we use shamanic drumming, guided visualization and relaxation techniques to facilitate the shift in consciousness that enables us to enter a deeper reality and embark on conscious dream journeys.

Core techniques include:

Dream reentry: We use personal dream images as portals into a deeper reality. We learn to travel back inside a dream to clarify its meaning, dialogue with dream characters (who may be spiritual guides or ancestors), and have wonderful adventures. This is one of the easiest ways to master the art of conscious dream travel, the most rewarding of all forms of travel.

Shared dreaming: We embark on shared journeys with one or more partners, and bring through healing and guidance for each other.

Timefolding: As dream travelers, we can explore the possible future and bring back information that can help to change the future for the better, for ourselves or others. We can also travel to previous times and parallel worlds.

Working with dream allies: We draw on the healing energy of the dream animals, and journey to communicate with spiritual teachers on the highest levels we are able to access. We open channels for deepening encounters with the Higher Self.

Dreamgrowing: We become dream creators, using the energy and inspiration of dreams for artistic expression and for living more creatively.

Dream transfer: We learn to bring a dream - a healing image, a life vision, perhaps a path to the next world - to someone who may be in desperate need of a dream.

Becoming a Dream Shaman
I have been an active dreamer since my early childhood in Australia. Between the ages of 3 and 11, I had pneumonia twelve times and survived a series of near-death experiences. The gift of all the solitary time in the half-light of sickrooms was an interior life that was rich and fascinating. I had frequent dream encounters with ancestral figures and with spiritual guides. The first person I met to whom I could talk safely about these experiences was an Aboriginal boy who came from a dreaming tradition. He was quite matter-of-fact about experiences such as dreaming the future and having dream encounters with the departed. He confirmed for me that dream experiences are real experiences – sometimes more "real" than much of what goes on in waking life, where we are so often in the condition of sleepwalkers, fitting into the roles that others create for us.

I have been working with my own dream journals, on and off, for more than 30 years, and I am still learning about the treasures that a dream journal contains. I have learned from shamans and dream explorers in many parts of the world, but what I know about dreams is, first and last, the gift of my dreams – and of the many active dreamers who share their experiences with me.

One of the most important things I know about dreaming is this: the only expert on your dreams is you. Don’t give your power away by appointing someone else to interpret your dreams – or your life! Of course, we can all benefit from the insights of other dreamers, especially the "frequent flyers" who have traveled a lot of territory and can tell us about the conditions. I am a frequent flyer, and I have learned from my travels that we need to do far more with dreams than merely interpret them: we need to use them as gateways into a deeper reality, and we need to take action to manifest the energy and insight of dreams in waking life.

I work with dreams the old-fashioned way, the shaman’s way. A shaman, by definition, is a "strong dreamer": someone who dreams profusely, dreams for others, dreams the future, brings gifts of dream healing, and works with dream allies. In the Western Hemisphere, the most common term for "shaman" means literally, "one who dreams". In the Mohawk language, the word is ratetshents. The Kagwahiv, a shamanic people of Amazonia, say that "anyone who dreams is a little bit shaman."

Shamanic dreaming involves learning to make conscious dream journeys across time and space and into other orders of reality: to scout out the possible future, to encounter spiritual teachers and protectors, and to seek keys to healing.

In hunter-gatherer societies, the shamanic dreamer’s ability to dream travel across time and space and bring back accurate information about the movements of the enemy or of the deer in winter was crucial to survival.

The shaman also journeys to recover vital energy that has been lost through pain or trauma or addiction, and to guide souls of the departed on the paths to the afterlife. True shamans are intimately familiar with death. In some sense, they have died and returned, and can guide souls along the roads of the Otherworld because they have traveled these paths themselves.

I call my approach to dreams Active Dreaming. It is the bridge between modern dreamwork and primal shamanic techniques. It implies a proactive, rather than a passive, attitude towards dreams. We should actively seek dream guidance on our major issues – by asking for dream help on going to bed, or by learning to embark on conscious dream journeys to sources of wisdom – and we should take action in waking life to honor our dreams, bring the gifts of dreaming into our communities, and create better futures. This approach includes learning to navigate by synchronicity: using the play of coincidence, chance encounters and the symbolism of everyday life for guidance on your path. In my workshops, we practice techniques for dreaming our way to a better relationship, a better job, a better home – and creative fulfillment.

Core techniques we practice in my workshops include:

Creative dream journaling
The most important book on dreams you will ever read is your own dream journal. As you record your dreams and give them titles, you will find yourself developing your gifts as a storyteller – and you will start to recognize the deeper story of your life. As you track your dream imagery, you will discover that you are creating a superb personal dictionary of symbols, far more useful than anything you can find in a shop. (The snake in your dream is not necessarily the snake in my dreams.) You will notice recurring themes and locales, and you will see that some dreams do not deliver their message in a single installment but need to be tracked through many episodes, like a long-running television drama.

When you record your dreams and compare them with later events in waking life, you will discover that you are dreaming things, large and small, before they happen in physical reality. Sometimes it takes months, years or even decades for waking events to catch up with a dream – at which point the "old" dream can offer vital guidance, if you have kept the record. Keeping a dream journal is a way of developing your dream intuition and using it to navigate the challenges of everyday life.

Timefolding
In our dreams, we are all psychic. We see round the corner – sometimes far into the future – and are constantly rehearsing for challenges that lie ahead in waking life. Whether a dream is humdrum or bizarre, we should always start by asking, "Is it remotely possible that this dream will be played out in waking life?" When we wake up to the fact that we dream the future, maybe all the time, we’ll be ready to practice the creative art of changing our future for the better.

The futures we perceive in dreams are possible futures. By taking wise and appropriate action in waking life, we can alter the balance of probability that a particular scenario will be played out. This is quite easily demonstrated in relation to our physical health. Our dreams show us possible health problems – and what our bodies need to stay well – long before we develop physical symptoms, and if we pay more attention to those messages, we may be able to avoid the need for intrusive medical attention.

But the old shamanic understanding goes deeper. Some shamans believe that nothing happens before it is dreamed; that events and situations are shaped in the dreamworld before they manifest in physical reality. There are parallels for this shamanic insight in David Bohm’s scientific speculation about the "implicate" and the "explicate" order as well as in Kabbalist and Platonist theories of emanation – that the process of manifestation flows from subtler orders of reality to the gross material environment.

I think it is like this: If you don’t know where you are going, you are liable to end up where you are headed. In dreams, you are constantly rehearsing the probable outcomes of your present actions and attitudes. If you don’t like what you see, you can change your path and hope for a better result. You can do this not only by action in waking life but through conscious dream navigation. This is really extraordinarily exciting. Think how many mishaps and heartbreaks and disasters we might be able to avoid if we consciously rehearsed our future moves through dreaming.

I think many of our most creative and successful people have always operated this way. I think of a surgeon who rehearses difficult operations in conscious dream states, and Olympic skiers who have learned to rehearse for difficult slopes, and a general who rehearsed command decisions in a major campaign.

Working with dream helpers
Spiritual guides and teachers reveal themselves in sleep dreams – often in unexpected guise – and we can learn to contact them in conscious dream journeys. Shamanic dreamers work with power animals: dream helpers who reveal themselves in the shapes of birds and animals. In the workshops, we journey to connect with these spiritual allies, who may reflect aspects of our own energy – and the natural path of our energy.

In traditional dreaming cultures, contacting and working with your power animals is as matter of the highest importance. Dreaming, the shaman shapeshifts into the forms of his closest animal or bird companions or sends them to conduct errands on his behalf. By learning to dream with the animal powers, we can draw on powerful and reliable sources of healing and psychic protection, and facilitate easy access to conscious dream experiences beyond the physical body.

Dream reentry and tracking
The meaning of dreams is inside the dream itself (the full dream experience, as opposed to the fragmentary or garbled dream memory). By learning to go back inside our dreams, we can harvest life-supporting messages, resolve unfinished business and dispel nightmare terrors.

In the workshops, we practice dream reentry while fully awake and conscious – even hyper-aware. We learn how, through dream-sharing with a partner, we can lead each other gently back inside the dreamspace. We use shamanic drumming as fuel to dive into the dreamscape more deeply. We practice dream reentry and tracking, in which the dreamer goes back inside her dream accompanied by one or more partners. This often produces stunning experiences of telepathy and shared dreaming, and is a very powerful method for dispelling nightmare terrors.

Learning the art of dream travel
With the help of shamanic drumming and the deepening energy of the circle, we learn to embark on conscious dream journeys to sources of healing and insight, and places of fun and adventure in non-ordinary reality. Would you like to meet your dream lover? Or study with a master teacher in an area in which you are passionately interested? Would you like to meet members of your spiritual family who may live in other times or other dimensions of reality? Dream travel is the key.

Monotonous heartbeat drumming is a marvelously effective tool for shifting consciousness. If the intention is clearly framed, in a drumming session of only 15 minutes or so, the typical Westerner is able travel beyond the left brain and beyond spacetime into rich and vivid experiences of dream journeying. Our adventures extend to shared conscious dream adventures with partners. For example: with the help of the drumming, you might invite a partner to travel with you into a dream to gather more information, dream the dream onward, or simply have fun. When you have had the experience of entering a shared dream with another person and visiting locales that may be new to both of you and of being able to confirm each other’s impressions afterwards, your view of reality will be expanded tremendously.

Celebrating and honoring our dreams
We need to do something with our dreams, to bring their energy to work in our everyday lives. In the workshops, we celebrate our dreams through spontaneous storymaking drawing, dance, song and dream theatre – which is the pinnacle of improv! – and evolve personal rituals to honor our dreams and the powers that speak through our dreams.

Active Dreaming is a ticket to a limitless adventure. It is also a simple and tremendously powerful everyday practice almost everyone is able to learn, providing they are willing to listen to their dreams and expect the unexpected. These techniques provide remarkable navigational guidance in waking life as well as access to deeper sources of insight and healing. I confess I am a man with a cause: I want to help our society become a dreaming culture again: one in which dreams are shared and celebrated every day in the family, in the workplace and throughout the community.

May your best dreams come true – and may you remember them!