If you’ve been recording your dreams for a while and want to get some insight into what your dreams can teach you, you might consider taking a class. Community colleges, churches, and adult education centers sometimes offer classes on working with your dreams. What might you learn from doing this? Of course each class will be different, but to give you the flavor of a class I’m going to use as an example a San Francisco Bay Area dream class taught by Lisa Rigge.*
This class covers techniques for remembering and recording dreams, and puts dreams into an historical context—for example, what role have they played on the world stage? Students become familiar with common dream symbols, learn to identify dream themes, and learn techniques and exercises to better understand dreams, such as mapping dreams and learning what questions to ask of them. In order to expand on what they’ve learned from the initial exercises, students take a dream forward through what Jung called “active imagination” techniques. One of these has the dreamer dialogue with characters or images in the dream. Others uses artistic devices—such as drawing, poetry, and creating a mandala—to further explore dream messages. To sum it up, the class introduces and explores ways of getting to know your dreams.
*Taught through the Las Positas Community Education Program in Livermore, California on two Saturdays, Oct. 23rd and Oct. 30th from 12:30 - 4:30 p.m. The class fee is $79.00. To register click here.
