Wild Mind Dreamwork Training – March, 2023

This program is designed and primarily intended for trainees in Animas’ Wild Mind Training Program, but other guides and human development facilitators are warmly invited to apply. The Dreamwork Intensive is a prerequisite for this training.

Our focus will be on learning techniques for providing soulcentric nature-based dreamwork in the Animas style. If you are more interested in deep exploration of your own dreams, please consider participating in the Dream Intensive.

There are many methods of working with dreams. Soulcentric dreamwork holds the view that the soul wants to initiate us into the next step in our soul path by familiarizing the ego with the nightworld or underworld. Other forms of dreamwork might attempt to import some images from the nightworld of soul into the dayworld of personality — to support the ego’s healing, therapy, self-understanding, or entertainment. But in Soulcentric Dreamwork, we commit ourselves to an extended stay in the soul’s mysterious domain, permitting the dream to do its formidable work on us rather than the more common approach of doing our work on the dream. For further information about soulcentric dreamwork, please see Bill Plotkin’s book Soulcraft, chapter 7.

During this training, we apprentice ourselves to the mystery held within dreams. With a variety of modalities — including direct dialogue with the dream itself, expressive arts and movement, deep imagery, and wandering on the land with (and in) our dreams — we will seek the “underdream” that lies beneath the everyday conscious self.

We’ll employ lecture, discussion, experiential demonstrations, and — most importantly — lots of supervised dyadic and small-group practice in dreamwork guiding.

We’ll explore several themes and principles including: guidelines for individual and group dreamwork, soulcentric attitude, intuitive abilities, understanding archetypal themes and dream characters, working with sub-personalities, accessing archetypal facets of Wholeness, subjective (Jungian), archetypal (Hillmanian), and other approaches, identifying specific middleworld work to be done in preparation for underworld journeys, incorporating dream elements in the design of ceremonies, designing nature-based invitations to deepen into a dream experience, employing the four windows of knowing: imagination, feeling, sensing and thinking, identifying Sacred Wound themes, working with dark or shadow figures in dreams as possible reflections of disowned or repressed elements in the psyche, use of poetry and expressive arts in dreamwork. We will consider dreamtime indications that the dreamer may be approaching a journey to soul initiation and discuss what support a dreamer might need in that case. This training is not designed to teach the art of soul initiation guiding, but will explore dreamtime clues that the soul initiation journey may be imminent.

ARAVAIPA CANYON RANCH

Nestled at the foot of Brandenburg Mountain, Aravaipa Canyon Ranch invites you to a quiet getaway for reflection, healing and spiritual renewal. Miles of secluded, ever-changing terrain in the midst of natural, pristine beauty unfold to the accompaniment of the singing waters of Aravaipa Creek, one of Arizona’s all-year-round streams. For more information, go to http://www.aravaiparanch.com/