In this excellent course Dr. Leslie Ellis, an expert in focusing and dreamwork, shows you how to sense into your dreams and find help in them. Leslie reveals, one step at a time, the great power of this gentle way of feeling into a dream, and through it, your own life.
Dreams begin in the body. With their own language they give us an honest picture of what’s unlived or off balance in us and our world. They also show us a world of possibilities where anything can happen. With somatic dreamwork we learn to find help in unexpected places in a dream. We begin to get a feel for where our next growth step might be.
Eugene Gendlin developed a pioneering method of getting a sense of yourself from the inside called “focusing”. Gendlin also created an experiential approach to dreams that synthesizes the work of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Fritz Perls. Dreamwork and focusing are both doorways to the body’s immense and subtle implicit knowledge.
Dr. Leslie Ellis has decades of clinical experience integrating Gendlin’s focusing and dreamwork methods with the work of other contemporary pioneers in the field of dreamwork. She incorporates the latest research on somatic trauma therapy and rescripting nightmares into her work.
In Leslie’s classes we witness how life changing it can be to sense inward, find what’s present and that “something new” that wants to come forward. Join Leslie as she digs in deep for the clinician, and at the same time offers simple guidelines that anyone new to working with their dreams can use with great results on their own.
Course Overview:
Class 1. Short course in Focusing
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In this class Leslie takes us through the steps of a focusing session, and explains how it is a unique path to dreamwork.
Focusing looks for a felt-sense in the body, this is the body’s take on any aspect of our lives. Focusing develops an ability to be in touch with something that’s still outside of our awareness.
Following this nebulous sense as it evolves into something recognizable is an ideal way to explore dreams as they unfold.
Class 2. An overview of Gendlin’s philosophy
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In this class Leslie discusses the more theoretical aspects of Gendlin’s work. She presents a segment from his book
“Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams”.
We learn that a dream is an altered state that is not fully embodied, that’s why we need to work with the dream when we’re awake. Focusing brings the new possibilities of the dream into our full-bodied lives. If we don’t work the dream we may not bring that new life into actuality. Embodying the life energy in dreams is the main point of working with dreams.
Class 3. Gendlin’s 16 questions to guide dreamwork
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In this class Leslie explains the 16 questions developed by Gendlin that synthesize the ideas of different schools of dream work of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Fritz Perls. The questions are grouped around the themes of associations, elements of the drama, decoding, working with characters, and dimensions of development.
These questions form the core of experiential dream work. Leslie encourages us to play with them as pathways back into the dream. Leslie gives us examples of how to take these questions into your body, and see what the body does with them.
You’ll need to try them for yourself and see which questions work for you and which don’t.
Class 4. Finding the help in a dream
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In this class Leslie shares several poignant stories of finding help in unexpected places in a dream. You’ll hear inspiring examples of how dreamers located helpful elements that weren’t clear at first glance. Sensing into these elements the dreamers found new energy in their bodies that became new ways of moving in their lives.
Class 5. Embodying dream characters and elements
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Embodying dream characters and elements is a powerful experiential practice. Leslie gives examples of dreamers who accessed sources of vitality and adaptability that had in fact already protected them in their lives without their awareness.
As Gendlin said: “What is split off, not felt, remains the same. When it is felt, it changes!” In Jungian terms, this is the shadow work of reowning projections and facing what’s been rejected. This feeling work of integration brings new colors, resilience and emotional range within your reach.
Class 6. Allowing the dream to continue
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In this class you’ll learn how dreams and even nightmares can offer practical, hopeful ways of dealing with hard life situations when you carry the dream forward.
Leslie talks about ways of rescripting dreams and nightmares. She follows Jung’s view that dreams are alive and on-going, even after we wake up. You’ll also learn in this class how dreaming the dream on is a very effective way to treat nightmares and PTSD symptoms.