Dream workshop report

I had been refusing to do any kind of therapy or group workshop related to dreams. Also I have been refusing reading books which telling the meaning of the dreams or analyzing using dreams.

The reason I had been refusing them was very simple. I just want to enjoy my dreams, it is so much fun. If I knew the reason or any meanings behind of my dreams, I would loose my joy to enjoy them. Like I can say, movie director can not really enjoy movies, they must think of things behind. It is another way to enjoy movies or dreams, but I wanted to take the “pure” entertainment.

So I have been reading about physical or scientific stuff about brain, but never read super famous books like Freud or Jung etc yet, which must be super interesting for me though.

Today, first time in my life, I joined a kind of group workshop about dreams. Even during the workshop, I did not want to know the meanings of my dreams, but I strongly believe that dreams are related to my “awake” life. But I just want to enjoy it.

The workshop started 10:00 am and end 17:00, i thought it might be long, and there must be lots of stuff I already know about dreams or brains, yes there were, but still I really enjoyed it. because most of the part of workshop was real activities with other participants, which I can not do on my own.

Simple exercise to activate brain

This was like what I do everyday – recall dreams, but it made me to recall more detail about it. It is a pair exercise, one is asking, another one is answering. The questions can be triggers to recall more details.

Here is the steps, which i write little simple – sorry.

1. Think of an issue you would like to work on.
2. Think of a dream, if possible a recent dream.
3. Tell your dream in the present tense, go into details.
4. Find the most unusual part of the dream.
5. Describe the part in detail.
6. Pretend to “become” that  part of the dream, how does that feel? it should be something not human.
7. Tell the story of the dream from this point of view.
8. Tell whatever pops up in your mind, anything.
9. How does this part/whole dream relate to your life today? does the dream contains the answer of step1?
10. What do you need now?

We made pair or 3 people group to asking each other. Actually, for me, to enjoy my great entertainment, I want to ignore step 1, 9 and 10. I just want to do this to get more detail of my dreams. As I am addicted dreaming, and love keeping dream diary, I do not want to put something I made up during “awake” life, I can not explain the difference though.

However, even I still want  to refuse “making up” dream stories, but the step 6 was interesting. Sometimes, or actually many times, I have some different point of view. I see myself from behind, or top or wherever but at the same time I have my point of view as a first person. Sometimes, I am talking to another me and I have both of thems point of view at the same time. So this was “pretending” but actually happen in the dreams.

Anyway, it was fun. I can do this everyday. And I am sure this will work well to make my dreams more vivid and clear.

Group workshop – into someone’s dreams

This was actually very interesting. There were about 15 people, but we picked only one person and let the one to tell her dream story. Then everybody asks her questions, such as….

What kind of material is your dress?
Is there anybody else?
How you feel on your feet when you walk?

Anything like these. It makes the dreamer/speaker to recall the detail more and more. Then next step is that other people think of the dream “If it was MY dream”… then tell.

While we are doing this, in my mind, I had my own dream world of the dreamer’s dream, her description, other’s questions and the dreamer’s answer made my imagination rich and rich. Finally I was almost feeling the leaves on the ground.

It was more like imagination training, into someone’s dreams, or get other’s point of view to make the dream more clear and detailed.

There are always questions, what does this mean? what is the things behind? I believe it must be related to the “awake” life, but even after this workshop, I still do not want to know the meanings.

These exercises are so much fun. Dreams are happening in my brain, not others’. Dreams always surprise me that I have such a great imagination, I love dreams.

From tomorrow, I will try to write my dream diary in “present tense”, also when I could recall more detail, I might edit the stories. I try not to made it up – from the workshop, I got “making up” is not actually bad, but for myself, I want to keep and seal my dreams as it is. Maybe what I can do is that add notes if some part are edited after several times recalling.

Well… I really love dreaming so much.

By the way, here is #dreamstock which is the website I am running with some people. This is a group blog – but specified only dream diaries. Anybody has wordpress account can join it. I really want to collect human’s dreams, not only mine. On dreamstock, I categorize and tag all dreams, it must be very interesting to know many people’s dreams, everybody has different background, culture, religion or anything.

Let’s share dreams :]