Symbolically and otherwise, the San Francisco Bay is a magnanimous locale for holding an international conference on dreaming. The International Association for the Study of Dreams will once again be holding their “Pow-Wow” for Dreamers, Dream Artists, Dream Work Practitioners and Dream Researchers in 2014 at the Double Tree Hotel in Berkeley CA.
Viewed from the lens of dreaming awareness, the gathering brings together a cornucopia of supportive elements, drawing on the soul of place as a spirit-fuel of deep and expansive exploration. The “Dream of the Conference” takes place on the edge of the place Indigenous People have called Turtle Island, aka North America. ‘Berkeley by the Bay’ is the land of the setting sun, the furthest reach of land describing the vision of the western horizon, a kind of waking portal into ‘the World Beneath the World’.
Across the calm waters of the Bay lie the legendary Gates of Gold, also known as the Golden Gate Bridge. Bridges stretch between disparate locales and connect them, born out of a spirit of vast creativity and an inclination to bring together formerly split apart geographies. People have gathered here in multitudes, magnetically pulled towards the vast beauty of this place near the water, at the edge, where the sun forges its occasional mighty announcements of glory and splendor mere moments prior to descending into the eternity of night. In Buddhism, as I understand it, “the golden gate” is a symbolic, actual, and metaphoric name for an experience, a moment and an illuminatory passage towards enlightenment. What better images and realities to accompany us as we dreamers and conference-goers coalesce to share, learn, dream, teach and enter the realms of the great unknown together?
One of the many aspects I have come to love and appreciate about the IASD Conference, and the organization itself, is the way that multitudinous aspects of dreaming are highlighted and explored. When I attended and presented at the conference in 2012, I was witness to the diversity of topics, presenters and subjects on offer. At the conference one can easily meet and learn from neuro-scientists, sleep researchers, therapists, poets, painters, sculptors, writers, ministers, business-people, and dream-fans.
This feels “true” to me. A diversity of ideas and theories, practices and teachings about dreams reflects the actual multiplicity of dreaming itself. No one theory or experience is necessarily more valid than any other. Like dreams themselves, the conference operates on the experiential and philosophical premise that dreaming and waking reality mirror to us each day and every night showing us how varied, full and expansive life really is and can be.
In my experience working with and tending dreams over the past twenty years, dreams are physical, spiritual, emotional, creative, nonsensical, deeply instructive, soulful, mythic, biological, time-specific, quizzical and eternal – “all of the above” and so much more.
This year at the conference I will be presenting on my own work with sound and dreams, from a projective-style standpoint. My presentation will illustrate how my work with dreams and dreamers focuses on how the imagination – a very real, and most vital creative ability which even scientists draw upon – is at the root of our experience of dreaming. Through the invoking of sound and music, it’s possible to enter the energy of dreams and the imagination via the universal resonance that felt frequencies vocalize. Using a variety of instruments that are made from organic and wild materials, such as Didjeridu, Native American Flute, Tibetan Singing Bowls, Shamanic Drums and Rattles, I will present on ways to incubate dreams while we’re awake and invite a depth of dreaming while we’re asleep. We’ll also practice the group model for sharing dreams that I teach in on-going group meetings and individual work with folks that Jeremy Taylor has written about (in his “The Wisdom of Your Dreams”) and taught throughout the world for the past fifty years – “Projective-style Dream Work”.
For anyone interested in learning more about dreams, the conference this year will not fail to deliver. There are a bevy of great discussions, networking opportunities and presentations on a wide variety of topics from clinical to poetic views and practices for working with dreams. There’s even a Dream Art Display and a Dreamer’s Ball!
To find out more, please check out the IASD website:
http://www.asdreams.org/2014/registration/
May Your Dreams Find You and Gift You with a True Inner Gold!
All Blessings, Many Thank Yous, Travis Wernet