one-on-one...heart-on-heart...soul-on-soul
As a practitioner of Natural Dreamwork, offering presentations, workshops and dream circles are great joys for me. I have this incredible privilege to share with groups of people what I love…what I hope some of them may come to love…the beautiful invitations and healing found in our dreams. I have fun planning group activities and hopefully create a meaningful experience for participants. I am at ease with groups, can make them laugh, can laugh at myself. It is a sweet and natural way for me to bring dreamwork into the world. Group work has an important role. It lets us learn about new ideas and inspirations before we decide to step in more deeply. Group work can build new relationships, friendships, even communities with people who share our same interests.
Yet underlying it all is something quite different…quite vulnerable and heart pounding…my one-on-one dreamwork…the heart and soul of my own work and my work with others. Being with another in their dream, exploring it together is so very different from speaking to a group or facilitating a workshop.
I step into another reality…the intimate reality of the dream…some of with which I am familiar…so much of which is still unknown….the mysterious world of another’s soul experience. In the session we are in the dream field, the threshold between the inner and outer world, the threshold between conditioned ego and soul.
I step into another’s reality…their unknown…and the beginning few moments as I step into session I am aflutter with butterflies. Are they the butterflies of anticipation? the fear of not knowing what will unfold? Is this the process of acclimating myself to another’s personal energy field?
Each dream session, after a short outer world check in and before the dreamer and I explore their last dream medicine, we do a brief opening meditation, a slowing down. Taking a couple breaths, pausing between each seems to acclimate me to the dreamer’s space…now butterflies settle…sometimes my eyes get wet as I enter their tender dream alongside them…
I don’t interpret dreams. I don’t tell the dreamer what their dream means. My presence in another’s dream is to help them explore through open ended questions which can help them discover what their dream might be wanting them to know, moments they will know for themselves the dream’s unique intention for them. I bring my curiosity and my vulnerability…and my willingness to not know…the stuff of butterflies…
(Image: Butterfly Girl by Christian Schole)
Mary Jo Heyen is a certified Natural Dreamwork Practitioner working with clients in person, phone or Skype. Learn more about her work with dreams at www.maryjoheyen.com.