Dear Dream Tending Community,
Welcome to this week’s Tending Tuesdays offering! Tending Tuesdays was inspired by a pull to sustain the value of what happens when we come together as a community. Each Tuesday, an email will come to you with a new video on a Dream Tending and/or depth psychological topic in the form of current writing and research, interviews, discussions with colleagues, and clips of tending dreams.
Last week I spent time in the old-growth redwood groves along the Lost Coast in
Northern California. In that resonant landscape, my “walkabouts” opened my heart and touched my soul. Both physically and psychologically, the generative healing power of nature’s innate genius flowed through me. When I led with open curiosity, rather than narrow rationality, the trees, creatures, and places vivified. They came to life inside of me! The same happens when we “animate” a dream rather than interpret it. Dreams have a life of their own making. Dream Tending offers an approach to accessing the timeless wisdom in each dream.
Tending Tuesdays is about supporting one another in listening to dreams in a different way. Together, let’s discover what is being asked of us now. Let’s listen to the stories embedded in the living images of dreams. As in my time among the old-growth redwoods, let’s offer back to the world the generative sparks embedded in the living images of dreams. Until next Tuesday…
In the dreamtime,
Steve

 


Dream Tending Skill Set:

1. First listen and see/hear the many presentations in the dream before making
interpretations of meaning.
2. Pay particular attention to the landscape in the dream. View this as the ground upon which all else constellates.
3. Allow time and space for dream figures to “animate,” to vivify, and come into
embodiment.
4. Tend to dream images “body to body.” Discover the somatic attunement between
you and the dream image.
5. With frightening images, first connect with support and protection; then, step by
step and with appropriate distance, discover the details of the image, its
particularity. This will help de-potentiate the power of the frightening figures.
6. Get curious. What stories are inhere to the images that captivate your curiosity?

Inside The Curious Mind

A quote that resonated with me this week…

“A life truly lived constantly burns away veils of illusion, burns away what is no longer relevant, gradually reveals our essence, until, at last, we are strong enough to stand in our naked truth.”
— Marion Woodman

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Stephen Aizenstat

Stephen Aizenstat, Ph.D., is the founder of Dream Tending, Pacifica Graduate Institute, and the Academy of Imaginal Arts and Sciences. He is a world-renowned professor of depth psychology, an imagination specialist, and an innovator. He has served as an organizational consultant to major companies and institutions, and as a depth psychological content advisor to Hollywood film makers. He has lectured extensively in the U.S., Asia, and Europe. He is affiliated with the Earth Charter International project through the United Nations, where he has spoken. Professor Aizenstat is the Chancellor Emeritus and Founding President of Pacifica Graduate Institute. He has collaborated with many notable masters in the field including Joseph Campbell, James Hillman, Marion Woodman, and Robert Johnson.