Turning Season: Conversations with Changemakers in Our Adventure Toward a Life-Sustaining Society

Turning Season: Conversations with Changemakers in Our Adventure Toward a Life-Sustaining Society


Dreamers' Den Series Ep 10: How Dreams and Embodied Imagination Support us through Illness (with Katherine Lawson)

August 03, 2020

Katherine Lawson speaks from experience about how dreams offer support during cancer treatment. She's been both a patient, and a practitioner. In this episode, she shares her journey with dreaming: her academic work at Pacifica Graduate Institute; the study of Dream Tending and Embodied Imagination; her own cancer diagnosis, treatment and recovery; supporting other cancer patients at the Charlotte Maxwell Clinic; and a respectfully slow curiosity about dreamwork traditions in other cultures.

I love the glimpse Katherine gives into the process of Embodied Imagination (developed by Robert Bosnak). She describes how dreamers go into a hypnogogic state and experience the embodied sensations of a potent dream image. You'll hear about “anchoring the embodiments” offered by a dream, creating "something new" within the dreamer: the gift from the dream.

Embodied Imagination is a one-on-one process with a completely different flavor from group dreamwork. I think you'll enjoy hearing about another of the many ways to engage with your own dreams. You'll also hear one of Katherine's own dreams. It's an example of a dream with a “helper” showing up during cancer treatment. Toward the end, we talk briefly about Katherine's interest in indigenous, mystical, and shamanic approaches to dreamwork.

Click Play now and enjoy the conversation.

Click here for show notes.