Working with Dreams – Series 2
4–part interactive online cpd series
Key Info
Dreaming in
indigenous cultures
Lewis Mehl Madrona
Fri 07 NOV 2025
17.00 – 19.00 GMT
Live: Yes
Recorded: Yes
Standard £45
Trainee £35
Mystical dimensions
of dreaming
Sheldon Lewis
Fri 14 NOV 2025
17.00 – 19.00 GMT
Live: Yes
Recorded: Yes
Standard £45
Trainee £35
Working with
PTSD nightmares
Leslie Ellis
Fri 28 NOV 2025
17.00 – 19.00 GMT
Live: Yes
Recorded: Yes
Standard £45
Trainee £35
Dreams across
the life span
Alicia MacDougall
Fri 05 DEC 2025
17.00 – 19.00 GMT
Live: Yes
Recorded: Yes
Standard £45
Trainee £35
Overview
In our second live webinar series on dreams, we will continue to explore a range of perspectives and approaches for understanding and working with dreams in psychotherapy.
This series will look both at and beyond western conceptualisations of dreams, with the first two sessions offering perspectives from indigenous cultures and ancient wisdom, drawing from Judaism and Buddhism. The third session will introduce recent psychological research that explores how PTSD can present through nightmares, and offer strategies and techniques for working with this therapeutically.
The final session will explore dreams across the lifespan, returning to a relational psychoanalytic approach, which is central to our clinical outlook at the Inner Citadel Institute. Each session will have an experiential dimension with space to think and discuss dream material together.
Seminar Content
PART 1 – Multidimensional dreaming in indigenous cultures
Speaker: Lewis Mehl Madrona
PART 2 – Mystical dimensions of dreaming
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.
PART 3 – Working with PTSD nightmares
Speaker: Leslie Ellis
PART 4 – Dreams across the life span
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.
Who is this training for?
The series is open to counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and psychiatrists who work therapeutically. It aims to build clinicians’ confidence and skills for working with dreams in psychotherapy, as therapists today may receive little or no teaching on them in their primary training.
Learning Objectives
- To consider the significance of dreams to depth psychotherapeutic work from a range of epistemological perspectives
- To build an understanding of how to integrate dreamwork into clinical thinking
- To develop skills and techniques for working effectively with dreams in therapeutic practice.
Speakers
Lewis Mehl Madrona
Sheldon Lewis
Sheldon is a longtime Mind-Body Practitioner, Integrative Health Coach, and Meditation Teacher, at The Center for Functional Medicine in Ridgefield, CT; and in private practice in New York City.
Skilfully weaving teachings and practices from ancient wisdom with contemporary science, his aim is to inspire others to initiate and deepen their spiritual practice, cultivating resilience, equanimity, and wholeness.
Sheldon has taught hundreds of meditation classes as well as leading popular Change Your Brain with Meditation workshops at The Center for Mindfulness (Makom), at JCC Manhattan. He also led Meditations in health education groups offered by Functional Medicine practices.
A pioneering journalist in Integrative Healthcare, Sheldon was Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, a Contributing Editor for Spirituality & Health magazine, and co-author of the books The Human Side of Cancer, Stress-Proofing Your Child, and Integrative Medicine in America.
Sheldon has trained many healthcare professionals in Mind-Body-Spirit practices, including Contemplative Meditation, Self-Inquiry, and Guided Imagery. He has also presented at professional conferences for health practitioners, including the Integrative Healthcare Symposium.
Sheldon Lewis has an MA in Performance Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Leslie Ellis
Alicia MacDougall
Alicia MacDougall, PsyD, ABPP, is a clinical psychologist, Board Certified in Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychology. She received her doctorate from Antioch University New England and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School, working on child and adolescent psychiatric inpatient units.
She holds multiple leadership positions, including Academy Coordinator, American Board and Academy of Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychology; Early Career Representative, Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Psychology and Psychoanalysis Specialty Council; and Co-Chair of the APA Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (Division 39) Early Career Committee.
Currently, she is in private practice in Keene, New Hampshire, working with children, adolescents, and adults presenting with severe and persistent mental illness, mood and personality disorders, and complications from emergency medical events, pervasive medical diagnoses, somatic symptomatology, and various forms of psychological and physical abuse. She also provides support to parents with children with current or past NICU experiences and provides psychotherapeutic services for perinatal and postpartum concerns.
Alicia provides consultation and assessment services to schools from a relational psychoanalytic perspective. She is Affiliate Faculty, Department of Clinical Psychology, Antioch University New England, where she is an instructor and clinical supervisor. Book author of The Relational Interpretation of Dreams: When it’s About More Than Your Mother, Dr. MacDougall is a firm believer in the synergistic quality of dreams and relationships and utilizes dreams as tools for enhancing the intersubjective spaces of the many worlds in which her work encompasses.