How we “dream ourselves” may seem like an odd phrase, because as children we begin with our parents dream for us. Then we grow and as we are socialized the family dream for us expands into our community, religion and culture. It often takes a rude awakening in the form of an illness, a loss of a relationship or job, or even death before we wonder if the dream we are living is actually our own dream or somebody else’s nightmare. It is no longer enough to live up to someone else’s dream for us. Most of us will eventually wonder who we are and what our purpose in life is. One of the quickest ways to get to know ourselves is through our dreams.

I work as a practitioner of the Rubenfeld Synergy Method ® (RSM), a body-centred psychotherapy, where I both talk to my clients and touch them. When I touch my clients or lead them mindfully in connecting with their body through touch or movement, pathways of connections begin to open up. These connections become a “conversation” between body and mind, heart and soul that leads to an integrated, holistic approach to healing and life. It might be said that I help my clients dream themselves. As a Synergist (that’s what the practitioners of RSM are called) who works extensively with dreams, I’ve witnessed that the body, mind and emotions are all present and reflected in my client’s dreams. We awaken from a frightening dream and our body is tense, our heartbeat is rapid and our respiration is elevated. Dreams have the ability to produce strong emotional reactions and express the passions, joys and fears of our soul that we may not be consciously aware of.

What is often hardest to put into words is the way our work connects with Spirit. I am in awe when my clients have numinous moments and seem to drop their shackles and take flight. In my experience, this process does not unfold in a linear way, nor is the appearance of Spirit in this work merely a wonderful by-product of the body-mind-emotional work my clients do. Like a hologram, the body-mind-emotion-spirit (and dream) experience is each a facet that contains the whole. Viewed separately, body, mind, emotions, spirit are all starting points or gateways, any of which lead to the whole person hiding beneath the surface of our behaviour or the masks that we wear. We can begin to understand ourselves by walking through any of those gateways. So now we return to the question how can we, as women, dream ourselves, which really asks “How can I live in a way that is congruent with my authentic Self and my Spirit? The answer is pay attention to your dreams!

In the work of Connie Cockrell Kaplan, the Woman’s Book of Dreams we learn about a shamanic, woman-centred approach to dreaming. Kaplan says that women dream from their wombs and that “The relationship between the womb and the moon controls every aspect of dreaming. A woman’s cycles and her dreaming are inextricable. Even women who have had hysterectomies, or for any other reason no longer bleed, still have the cyclical relationship to the moon….” So, according to Kaplan, learning the rhythms and cycles of our own body is the key to manifesting our dreams and unlocking the patterns and meanings of our dreams. She writes “In the white man’s world, we believe we dream about our waking life at night, and through dreams we gain understanding. This is backwards. In women’s teachings, first we dream the dream, then we bring the dream into manifestation, and then comes understanding.” This turns everything we might have thought about dreams, including the last one hundred years of psychotherapy, on its head! And yet…..perhaps as women dreamers this resonates somewhere in our “knowing”, our deep ancestral understanding of ourselves.

Twelve years ago, in Fire in the Soul, author Joan Borysenko began with a “Parable: Safe Passage Home.” In it she wrote, “The fledgling souls took many roads Home. Each Way had its own Story with the gift of free will, embroidering new stories of the dream-tapestry of the One Great Dreamer.” So listen to your own “bodymind” for its wisdom and follow your own rhythms and cycles as you pay attention to your dreams. Trust them and find your way home to yourself, and to the Great Dreamer who dreams us all. If we are created in the image of the Creator—or the Great Dreamer—then we have no choice but to dream. But how you want to dream yourself….that choice is yours.