Working with Dreams – Series 2

Speaker: Lewis Mehl Madrona

In this live webinar, Dr Lewis Mehl-Madrona will offer his perspective on multidimensional dreaming in indigenous cultures, and how this might inform how we hold and think about dreams in the context of psychotherapy.

Among Indigenous North American peoples, dreams are central to spiritual, cultural, and practical life, functioning as profound sources of knowledge, guidance, and healing. Dreams are not merely private, subconscious experiences; rather, they are considered authentic channels through which individuals receive insights from the spirit world, ancestors, or the broader universe. Many nations, including the Ojibwa, Dunne-za, Huron, and Sioux, hold that the dream world is as real and consequential as waking life. For example, vision quests – a key rite of passage – are often undertaken to access guidance and spiritual power through dreams or visions, requiring fasting, solitude, and ritual preparation.

The content of dreams can be prophetic, directive, or offer warnings; for instance, dreams might foretell important personal or communal events, provide solutions to problems, or bestow songs, names, or healing knowledge from animal spirits. Some groups, such as the Huron and Menomini, believe that dreams must be publicly enacted or honoured for their power to manifest, and respect for an individual’s dreams within a community grows as those dreams prove true in waking reality.

This close relationship between dreams and reality means that dreams play a vital role in shaping individual identity, social structure, and cultural continuity. Far from being passive experiences, dreams are acted upon, discussed communally, and integrated into ritual, healing, and social decision-making, reflecting a holistic worldview that recognises all realms of existence as interconnected.

Speaker: Sheldon Lewis

“Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly.… I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon I awakened.… Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
— Taoist story

Ancient wisdom from across generations, and around the globe, illuminates dreams beyond psychology and analytical thinking. Delving into teachings from different traditions such as Yoga Philosophy, Jewish Mysticism, and Taoism, we will explore a range of contemplative practices. These include Meditation, Self-Inquiry, Breathwork, and Imagery, which we can both perform on our own and share with clients and colleagues.

The Upanishads, foundational texts of Indian philosophy, delineate four major states of consciousness:

• The Waking State, in which we engage with—and navigate—the world around us.
• The Sleep or Dream State, which opens a gateway to the inner realm.
• The Deep-Sleep State, where we are immersed in stillness, beyond both internal and external realities—free of thought and sensory experience.
• Turiya, a state of pure awareness, or Witness Consciousness, that underlies and transcends all the other states.

We will apply teachings from mystical paths to set healing intentions before going to sleep; to reflect on, and contextualise, dreams after we wake; and to record dreams as starting points for meditation, personal insight, and prophetic visions.

Speaker: Leslie Ellis

While everyone has nightmares on occasion, trauma-related nightmares are in a distinct category that warrants clinical attention. Dreams about actual traumatic events are linked with both health and mental health concerns, including PTSD, elevated suicide risk, cardiovascular disease, and even lower life expectancy (due to the combination of chronic stress and poor sleep quality). If trauma dreams are frequent and distressing, treatment is advisable, yet few clinicians are aware of how to treat nightmares. Fortunately, well-researched, effective treatments exist, and these are generally quick and simple to implement. In this talk, you will learn about:

• the key features of traumatic nightmares
• current research linking these dreams to health and mental health concerns
• simple steps to implement treatment, and
• how to look for specific features in dreams that point to trauma recovery. Dr. Ellis will provide you with current best practices for treating nightmares, and offer a clinical example so you have a clear sense of how to apply these steps.

You will also be guided through a brief experiential practice to get an embodied sense of how to ‘rescript’ a dream, which is a core element in most modern nightmare treatment protocols. You will leave this talk with a clear idea of why and how traumatic nightmares should be treated.

Speaker: Alicia MacDougall

Across our lifespan, our dream world is ripe with expression of unconscious content. As we move through the different stages of physical and psychological development, our understanding of this world evolves. While there may continue to be common themes such internal drives and repressed emotional states, the nuances of each theme expand.

As clinicians, we often find ourselves tasked with translating these nuances. Together with our patients, we interpret unconscious fragments of internal worlds into ego-syntonic representations of self. How we do this, however, varies incredibly as we transverse the realm of physical and psychological development.

In this webinar we will explore working with dreams across the lifespan. We will review the dreams of children, adolescent, adult, and geriatric populations. We will discuss how these dreams differ, as well as how our approach to working with these dreams differ.

We will employ a relational psychodynamic perspective for exploring dreams presented. The webinar will be conversational in nature and attendees are encouraged to bring de-identified dreams to share during the presentation.