Learning to work with dreams - using dreams to decode and shape ourselves and the context we live in

Dreams are creative agents of the Unconscious. Learning to befriend our dreams and being able to work with them brings to us a deep resource, a treasure-chest, that can help us live more choice-fully, meaningfully, and effectively in the world.

The Institution for Wholeness and Integration (IWI, www.iwi.org.in) brings to the world a “dreamwork laboratory” through a series of eight webinars, the second in this series since 2020.

This laboratory has two focal objectives. One is to help participants understand and learn how to consciously work with, explore and understand their dreams. And through that learn to make the Unconscious an ally in their lives. The other objective is to work with the raw material of the dreams that come up for participants and explore the theme of this webinarseries, “Compassion unto self & others in the context of transitions” which is, we believe, a key aspect of one’s integrative unfolding towards a state of lasting wholeness and psychological health.

The Laboratory Theme – Compassion unto self & others in the context of transitions

We are in an age of remarkable and sometimes abrupt, even catastrophic changes in our lives, families, workplaces, society and nature. Radical changes are occurring rapidly at tipping points where known thresholds have been crossed. Some of us get pushed into survival mode, hunkering down, and trying to stay afloat. Some of us try to whip up energy to stay ahead of all of these and often find it difficult to sustain the pace. And there can be several other coping mechanisms or approaches that people may use to deal with all of these. Feelings / states of mind commonly experienced are anxiety, stoicism, fear, uncertainty, grief, anger, resoluteness, and so on.

Our view is that an essential ingredient for any person that is dealing with the demanding and turbulent forces of transition is, quite simply, compassion. Compassion for oneself first would be a required step to soften the voice of one’s inner critic (who frequently takes the form of the ‘Shadow’ within), to re-kindle hope, and to provide a fertile ground for beginnings and endings one has to make in oneself. And compassion for the other would involve allowing ourselves to be moved by the experience, perhaps the suffering, of the other and be able to offer one’s resources of any nature to help them through their trying times. Feelings / states of mind that often come with compassion are patience, wisdom, kindness, perseverance, warmth and resolve. It may be more than just quaint to state that these may be process of ‘hope’ as contrasted with process of ‘cope’!

Symbols and narratives from our rich dreams can provide several pathways to explore this theme in our individual lives, and indeed help us hypothesise about what may be pointers for communities, societies, the planet, and the world to consider.

The Webinar Process

Zoom will be used as the interface for the webinar calls (you do not have to pay to use Zoom separately). The calls will be held as per the schedule given later in this document and will be of 90 minutes each. Prior to each webinar, there would be pre-work which would typically require the participants to go through a learning video to understand a technique to work with dreams, or read up an article / book extract which will be provided. Participants would work in a ‘laboratory’ mode in the webinars to apply the learning to themselves and other co-learners. The calls would follow a “dreamwork pattern”. In each webinar, to start, there would be about one hour of sharing of significant recent dreams by participants (who would also be invited to start and maintain a dream journal). These would be explored collectively using specific techniques for which material will typically be circulated in advance. This would be followed by 30 minutes of collective sense-making of what the dreams and the collective explorations / interpretations are saying to us about the theme of the laboratory. Small amount of homework will also be offered at the end of all sessions upto the final one. While there are several technologies of dreamwork available in the world, the approaches /techniques that would be used and taught by us are – The Association Method, Gestalt approaches, and Jungian Dreamwork (the Shadow, Anima, Animus, the Self, etc).

Inspirations for this work

The webinar series will draw from the pioneering work of several authors and thinkers such as (but not limited to) - Angeles Arrien, Carl Jung, Fritz Perls and Robert Johnson, as well as the facilitators’ own intensive and long involvement in several group process-work traditions in facilitator / staff roles.

Facilitators for the laboratory: The laboratory will be directed by Kartikeyan V, and jointly facilitated by Haritha Sarma, and Rachna Nandakumar. All three are Trustees of IWI, besides being qualified ‘process-workers’ from known traditions in India.

The fees for the webinar-series would be Rs.12,000/- per participant, payable

in advance (bank transfer details below). Intending participants are requested to fill in an online application form here with their payment details. Registration will be confirmed by a mail from the Director.

Bank Details - Account No: 50200045400769

Name of the Bank : HDFC BANK

Branch:SADASHIVNAGAR, BANGALORE

IFSC/ NEFT :HDFC0004823

Eligibility - Any adult human being (age 18 years and above) interested in learning technologies of working with the Unconscious through dreams is both eligible and welcome. Besides, people from all walks of life who wish to use dreamwork to take stances to be effective in their lives and today's world are welcome. For this series, a max of 10 people will be taken in.

Financial Support – To a limited extent, IWI would be willing to support persons desiring to

participate or institutions desiring to nominate, and needing financial support. In such cases,

intending participants are requested to write a mail to the Laboratory Director at

Kartikeyan.v@gmail.com or whatsapp at +91 9845123080 with a brief on their context and the extent of financial support required, PRIOR to filling in the application form.

Dates and Time for the Webinars

All the webinars will be conducted on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month – except for the starting session which will be on March 30th which happens to be the rare fifth Wednesday in a month. March 30th through July 13 is thus the timeframe for the laboratory. Detailed schedules will also be communicated in a mail to the participants registered. The time of each webinar will be from 7 to 8:30 pm IST