C.G. Jung Society, Seattle C.G. Jung Society, Seattle
Lecture: Friday, November 7, 2003, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
University Unitarian Church, 6556 35th Ave. NE, Seattle (see Directions)
$10 members, $15 nonmembers
Dr. Aizenstat presents an ecological view of psychological life and offers a way of working with dream that attends mindfully to the particularity of each image—discovering its nature, wondering about its activities, and listening to its experiences. DreamTending is an ecopsychological approach to the dream, offering something valuable to each of us. In DreamTending, we too, are imaginal beings hosting the very images that, in turn, imagine us.
So many of us have split ourselves off from the timeless mosaic of nature ecology. This harmonic is no longer active in our lives, and this creates illness. DreamTending reconnects us to the universal pulse of life, uniting us with a broader ecology and, potentially, restores health.
In an increasingly ego-centric, human-centered world, the well-being of the planet may depend on our ability to hear and respond to the many voices of nature's other beings. In tending the dream, we are tending the world.
Workshop: Saturday, November 8, 2003, 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
University Unitarian Church, 6556 35th Ave. NE, Seattle (see Directions)
$30 members, $40 nonmembers, $25 student/senior members, $35 student/senior nonmembers
To learn about preregistering for the workshop, see Preregistration Policy and Form.
One place where the voices of the earth are speaking to us is in people's dreams. When people, talking and listening together responsively, tend an image from a dream or an awake-life experience, the "third"—the imaginal dimension—comes to life. The voices of the world come through the imagination, the image, the dream. In the Saturday workshop, Dr. Stephen Aizenstat invites participants to practice DreamTending, an ecopsychological approach to dream.
In DreamTending the purpose is not to fix images in static explanations nor to identify with them as aspects of ourselves. Instead, to tend a dream is to attend to the images by giving them time and place to present themselves on their own behalf. These visitations by the images, through their presence in the room, affect the dreamer and the dream therapist. It is the impact that they make on our experience which is noticed first--rather than the demands for meaning that we would impose on these images.
Essential to the process of DreamTending is attention to location. Perhaps most unique to this way of working is an emphasis on the specificity of landscape. Tending the dreamscape means first examining the landscape. The dreamer spends considerable time looking around in the dreamscape, becoming increasingly attuned to the landscape. The dreamscape comes to life. The dreamer experiences the living presence of the psychic ground underneath. As the dreamer realizes where he or she is located, the spirit of place reveals itself and becomes present. Just as an awareness of the persons within our lineage connects us to our ancestral inheritance, so too does the revelation of location return us to the patternings and rhythmic energies of our geographic heritage, our sense of place. To know where we are located is to know who we are. During the workshop, Dr. Aizenstat will demonstrate DreamTending in work with the dreams of participants, offer tools and techniques to assist participants in their own dreamwork or their work with clients, and guide participants in small group practice of DreamTending.
Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founding president of Pacifica Graduate Institute, a private school offering M.A. and Ph.D. programs in psychology and mythological studies. He is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and received his Ph.D. in that field from Fielding Institute in 1982. His areas of emphasis include depth psychology, dream research, and imaginal and archetypal psychology. Dr. Aizenstat's original research centers on a psychodynamic process of "tending the living image," particularly in the context of dreamwork. Dr. Aizenstat has conducted dreamwork seminars for over 25 years throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. He recently recorded "DreamTending," a six-cassette series of audiotapes. His other publications include, "Dreams are Alive" in Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field, edited by D. Slattery and L. Corbett, and "Nature Dreaming: Jungian Psychology and the World Unconscious" in T. Roszak, M.Gomes, and A. Kanner (Eds.) Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind.
For articles on DreamTending and more information on Dr. Aizenstat, see www.dreamtending.com.
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Updated: 19 September 2003
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