Episode 19: Hosting the Dream (a conversation with Claudia DeBorde)
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“My favorite part is when you and the guest talk about example dreams.” ← If you’re one of the listeners who’s said that, this episode is for you. This New Moon, I work one of my own dreams live with guest dreamworker Claudia DeBorde. She takes me on a Dream Tending walk through a dream I titled Time Travel.
We talk briefly about her approach to dreams, our love of stories, and how we can play “host” to the figures in our dreams. Then, rather than keep talking about dreamwork, we get right into doing dreamwork with one entire dream.
Claudia has a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and has been studying Dream Tending with Stephen Aizenstat for 25 years, so she brings a wealth of experience to this. Her work is based on the concepts of Carl Jung, James Hillman, Marion Woodman and many others in the field of Depth Psychology. She believes that dreams are alive and asking something of us in return.
As you listen, I invite you to notice Claudia’s gentle, curious way of walking through the dream with me, pausing me a couple of times to sink into a particular moment or description before the action of the dream continues. After the dreamwork, I conclude this episode with some more reflections I’ve had since talking with Claudia. Re-listening to this recording helped bring home more of the ah-ha moments: about the relationship between my past and my present, taking note of when I’m in a state of “high alertness,” why we label things “good” or “evil,” and what I hope to hand over to the future when I become part of the past.
After you listen, leave a comment here or in the Dreamers’ Den Free Facebook Group. Anything come to mind for you about this dream? Or about Dream Tending?
Next week, I’ll be starting a 2-week holiday-time break. We’re heading toward the Winter Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere, a time for longer nights and deeper rest. So, the next new podcast episode will be on the New Moon in January 2021. Until then, wishing you restorative sleep, and deep dreams.
Books mentioned by Claudia:
When a Toy Dog Became a Wolf and the Moon Broke Curfew by Hendrika de Vries
Dream Tending by Stephen Aizenstat
For the Love of Dream by Marilyn O’Brien
Contact Claudia through her website: www.letsexploredreams.com
Music by East Forest
I enjoyed listening to the conversation. IIWMD I related the progression to current circumstances in our red white and blue country, as related to COVID-19. Wanting to live life with purpose and with others being inhibited as we social distance, different from how we have been able to live and move in the past. Trying to avoid exposure and escape by stealthily moving through our daily lives while facing the possibility of coming face to face with the ultimate threat, whose character can’t really be considered evil as it is what it is, and feeling our fear and mortality. Knowing we will survive, doing a 180 in order to live life under these circumstances, while envisioning a more pleasantly colored and at this time unknown future. While it may relate to your waking life in other ways, IIWMD it would also be related to feeling at risk and not knowing what is to come.
Thanks, Kat! I like this take, too, especially the idea that this virus “can’t really be considered evil because it is what it is.” Harmful, dangerous, threatening, but not necessarily evil. Voldemort is characterized as unquestionably evil, yet I question that; and sometimes I see the idea of “war” with the virus, but I question that perspective too. Thank you for listening and sharing!