Interview With Travis Wernet

Every so often The Daily Dreamer interviews a dream worker with the hope that readers will get a sense of the many different ways that people can learn about themselves from their dreams.  Today's interviewee, Travis Wernet,  specializes in sound healing. Starting in February he will be leading a tele-conference dream group.

DD: You have said that music is medicine. Did a particular event in your life inspire you to look at the connection between sound and healing?

TW: I can actually think of many instances of inspiration, but I'd have to say that one which stands out relates to my first trip to Egypt in 2010. I was invited to join a group of travelers from diverse backgrounds and to play Didjeridu in a ritual-ceremony for 24 folks in the Kings Chamber in the Great Pyramids at Giza. We gathered quietly in the space and each individual was supported to lie down in the sarcophagus as I played over their bodies and created sound in the room. The energy of that and the experiences people shared following this experience, as well as my own feeling afterwards, deepened my interest and commitment to finding more ways to knit the experience of listening to certain kinds of sounds together with the intention for finding and receiving healing.

DD: Have you ever tried sound healing with someone who was not particularly musical? Did it affect her response to the technique?

TW: Most definitely. I have found that folks who are less exposed to or involved in music of any sort have quite strong responses and feel very affected by the music and tones. It's almost as if these folks easily enter into what the Buddhists call 'Beginners Mind' and are usually deeply and wonderfully impacted by the musical element of the work. The beauty of sound healing is that the actual tones and vibrations of the instrument have a foundational effect, so it's like taking vitamin C, in a sense, in that the sound will always create an outcome that is related to the properties of the resonance and the frequencies of the tones. It's possible to build on this foundation with further intention and surrender or release into the experience.

DD: When we work with dreams it's often a highly verbal process: in other words, we talk or write about our dreams and try to untangle, and perhaps rationalize, their symbolic messages. Does  your non-verbal, musical process supplement this verbal one? How do the two techniques work together in your dream groups?

TW: This is a great question and describes the crux of the approaches I take to doing both forms of work. I find that the verbal and non-verbal elements gracefully support one another. We do engage in quite a bit of discussion in the groups I lead. I consider this a sort of contemporary oral tradition. The music and sound enter in as tools for sinking into the feeling-scapes and images of the dreams, and provide a lovely counter-balance to the verbal experience. We also do incubatory practices to support the recall and invitation of our sleeping and waking dreams. So, I tend to seek to create a balance of sound and discussion in the groups, often by starting out with some chanting of Sanskrit seed syllables (like 'Aum', but there's more than this one sound - in fact there are chants for each chakra center in the physical-spiritual body) or I will play the Didjeridu, Native American Flute or Tibetan/Toning Bowls. After we've worked a dream, we'll also often take some time at the end to bring some pure sound to the work upon closing that piece by also playing and listening to the above instruments. We also close the meetings with grounding tones and I always make the effort to create some space where the talking can branch out into a less mental or thought-oriented domain and this is where we can enter the universality of sound and feeling as a punctuation or new opening to further felt layers of the work. Dreamers have reported that this often has the effect of inspiring further dreams and recall as well as varying non-spoken levels of insight.

Guest Dreamer: First Encounter

Today’s Guest Dreamer is Arcadian, who recounts a powerful dream he had as a youth.

The Dream: I had a truly bizarre dream once and I'm baffled as to its meaning. When I was a youngster I dreamed I was in a treasure room and there were valuables of every kind piled up in a pyramid-shaped stack. As I stood and admired the wonder of it all, the most beautiful blond-haired girl, robed in splendor, appeared--standing at the very top and glaring at me.

I told her how amazing the pile was. She lifted an arm and pointed a finger at me, out of which shot a bright beam and I feared for my life. Before the beam reached me I felt myself moving at lightning speed and the next thing I knew I could feel myself returning to my body.

Interpretation: Arcadian has asked me to interpret his dream. As my regular readers know (sorry for being repetitious, regular readers), I follow the guidelines of projective dream groups when I comment on someone else’s dream. In other words, I take on the dream as if it were my own, and tell you what it would mean to me if I had dreamed it. This may or may not be relevant to Arcadian; but perhaps it will spur him to think of his dream in a new light. And of course I hope he will leave us his thoughts after he has read what I’ve written.

In my version of Arcadian’s dream, I feel that I am encountering the figure Carl Jung called the Anima, which represents my soul. First I see a great treasure stacked into the form of a pyramid. The treasure represents spiritual enlightenment, much as the gold on an icon represents divine radiance.  Pyramids (like church steeples) are symbolic mountains, and many religious traditions associate gods or divine wisdom with mountain tops: for example, Zeus and the Greek gods lived on Mount Olympus, and Moses went up a mountain to receive the 10 Commandments. My own personal spiritual truth is embodied in my soul, represented by a beautiful blond-haired girl, robed as a goddess would be, in splendor.

She glares at me, challenging me. I tell her I am amazed by the treasure she seems to guard. I am young, and not ready to grapple with the intensity of my own spiritual truth. Her light (revelation or truth) is too bright for me. I return to the more earthly, material state of my body. But I know from this encounter that my soul is a beautiful and fierce thing, and when the time is right for me to see her again I will not be frightened.

Here is how Jung describes his first encounter with his own Anima: “I spoke to a loving soul and as I drew nearer to her, I was overcome by horror, and I leaped up a wall of doubt, and did not anticipate that I thus wanted to protect myself from my fearful soul.” *
* C.G. Jung, The Red Book Liber Novus, edited by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani, (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), 235.

The Fortune Tellers

Dreams do their job whether or nor we’re aware of it, and whether or not we remember them. It’s interesting to watch this mysterious and powerful psychic force at work in those dreams we do remember. The next three posts are good examples.

The Dream: I am in a group of four. The others in the group are my younger brother and two children. We are performing some sort of ritual which the local people think will foretell their future. We feel like charlatans; our scientific backgrounds tell us this is hokum, but the people are lined up as far as the eye can see, awaiting our pronouncements. We look at one another knowingly and hopelessly. We can’t get out of it, so we proceed.

There are some odd implements involved in our process. One is a long pipe, red with rust. Another is a nondescript, passive, slightly plump brown-haired girl. She uses the pipe as a catapult, and we foretell events depending on where she lands.

Interpretation: A younger brother and children are both symbols of vulnerability, emphasizing its importance in this dream. The two children also suggest the possibility of growth. Four is a significant number for Jung, who sees it as representing a kind of completeness, as in the four corners that make a square, the four directions (North, East, South, and West) or the four seasons.  So what do I have so far? Some phase of my life is complete (the number four). I am vulnerable, and it’s time for me to grow. I’m being asked to do the impossible: foretell the future, and there is considerable social pressure that I do so, even though I know I can’t. The rusty pipe (pipes connect things; rusty implies old) tells me that this is a conundrum from the past, perhaps the feelings of a child who thinks she can’t fulfill parental expectations. There’s some hope I’ll grow past this feeling of inadequacy by jumping (catapulting) beyond it. But how it turns out will depend on where I land.

Working on Your Dreams: Step 4 - Dream Group

Dream groups are a marvelous way to explore your dreams. If you are new to dream work it would be best to look for a group with some experience. You might find one by taking a class on dream work: many universities offer these in their extension programs, and some community centers and churches do as well. If you would rather start your own group with friends, take a look at the helpful advice offered by these websites:

Jeremy Taylor has devised a “toolkit” for group dream work: Jeremy Taylor's Dreamwork Toolkit

And for more about Jeremy’s approach to dream work: Jeremy Taylor on Starting a Dream Group

For some more information about the do’s and don’ts of group dream work see: Working with Dreams in a Group

Today’s illustration intermingles three dreams from three different people in my own dream group, and I thought it made a nice little comment on the synergy dream groups create.  Bev’s horses, each with one prosthesis, gallop down the stairs of a hotel lobby. The illustration is set on one of the pieces of white paper from Linda’s dream. The aliens from my dream interact with the white stones from Linda’s. The black area above the aliens represents the unknown that each dreamer seems to be rushing toward.