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)
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.