Daytime Dreaming Practice Instruction For
Dreaming/awake: embodying the threshold
Please read through the following set of instructions before our gathering.
Preparation/Set Up:
Alarm
Journal: (a dream journal separate from your daily journal is ideal)
Before you begin, set up your dreaming space - it may be your bed, in a garden, in your studio or by your altar. But allocate it as such and prepare it with what feels ceremonial so that your system knows that you are not just going for a nap.
(Please note other preparation in the body of the email. This includes an altar and a totem item as well as a set up for zoom)
Instructions for the Practice:
Moving from Dance to Dream: Once the movement section of the practice is complete (this will be introduced clearly in the session), use your intention to very strongly hold onto the thread that leads from the dance part of the practice into the dreaming part as you sign off from Zoom and turn off your computer.
Stay in dream state: Do as little as possible between the dance and the dreaming - if you need water or a pee of course do so, but try not to engage with anything ordinary - you want the gap between sections to be as small as possible.
Working with your totem: The intention is to carry your totem from the meditation at the beginning, through the dance, through the dream and back into ordinary reality so that it becomes saturated with the dreaming trajectory of the whole practice and is a ‘bridging’ item. Even if your totem is your body, the intention is the same.
The method of collecting dreams: Set your alarm for one hour’s time. Have your journal by your bed. If possible, do not journal as you go along, but trust that you will remember what is important after the hour has passed and note it all down at the end. Caveat: It may be that you do not need to journal anything at all. What is important is that the practice is done and that energy of the dreaming is imbued into your totemic item and that you hold the intention to be a fissure for dreaming threads to come through.
Entering the dream: As you lie down, hold an awareness of the other people doing this practice at the same time as you - you may imagine them sleeping around you. As you lay there, hold your totemic item in your hand and see/imagine/know yourself to be walking a pathway into the dreaming state. See yourself dressed as you are, looking as you look now (especially if working with the body as your totemic item) and carry your totem with you and seek to see this totem in your dreaming. This is not an obligatory part of the practice and is considered advanced work, but we offer this suggestion as something to experiment with.
Say to yourself three times so that you feel it resonate on your cells:
‘My intention is to bridge the dream with this totemic item as I bring through dreaming medicine.’
Open up to whatever comes.
If you cannot sleep: This is very natural. If you do not fall asleep, choose to know that even as you lay awake or dozing that you are in the dreaming space allowing the medicines to come through. You can even intermittently use the mantra ‘I am sleeping whilst awake’ or ‘I am in the dreaming space.’
Anything that literally happens in the room, that pops into your head (snatches of songs, memories, sounds from outside ), a phone ringing, nothingness, an itchy face, etc all are medicines from the dreaming state. You may get physical sensations or directives as to what to do with as you lie there. When the time is up, imagine yourself walking out of the dreaming state and back into your bed in the space you are in and note anything down you feel you need to or instructions received. As said above, it may be that your work is done and nothing need be noted.
Further, if your mind refuses to settle in, it is useful to simply return to your intention to become a fissure for medicine to come through.
Upon waking:On the other side of dreaming when the alarm goes, take a moment to imagine yourself walking out of the dream and back into your bed in the space you are in carrying your totemic item with you. As you go in, so you come out. Be aware of the other participants in the dream space waking up too.
Gathering it all in: In dreamtime anything may happen - trust what you get even if it seems unconnected! You may see the other dreamers, a spirit may do something to your totemic item, you might see it appear as something else. You might receive instruction from the spirits as to action to take, something to note down, a practice to do - this may be an immediate action, something to do with it when you wake up, or something to do with it in the days and nights to follow. Trust that you will remember this when you awake. It is all information to anchor the medicines from Dreamtime.
Dream Recall: If you have trouble remembering dreams, lay very still when you wake up and start to speak your dream aloud, this can help log the recall. If you do not remember your dream, simply use your breath, will and imagination to know that all the energy from the dream has entered the waking space. You may also gather the energy of the dream in your breath and literally blow it into your totemic item or into the room.
Rejoining the Zoom Call: After the dreaming portion of our work, we will be gathering back online via the same zoom link we sent out to join the first portion of our call. We will send the link for the call again during our off-screen time.