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: Well Armed

Guest dreamer Openfoot has contributed today's dream. You can read more of his dreams and see how he illustrates them by going to his interesting website here.
The Dream: I'm working in a trench. I've clearly been engaged on a plumbing job. I've also put in some electrical cabling and perhaps some fibre-optics too. It's all infrastructure work. I look up to see a group of friends arriving. They look surprised and I immediately know, without previously having been aware of the relevant facts, what they are surprised about. As if in answer to their questioning looks I shout out "Yes! My arms are fine! Look they work well! Just see all this work I've been doing! And look at the scars! They are well healed and translucent!" I show my friends my forearms. Just below each elbow a clean scar about 0.5 mm wide and slightly raised can clearly be seen. Each scar completely circles its respective forearm. Its obvious, I've had a forearm transplant on both my arms and things have worked out well.

Carla's thoughts: If this were my dream I'd think that something in the preceding couple of days has triggered my defenses. By paying attention to my dreams and feelings I've been plumbing my own depths, and my unconscious has brought my adaptations to the fore. My new awareness is around something I've been reluctant to change: I've dug in; I'm entrenched in my position. I've defended my vulnerabilities by building up my infrastructure with cabling and fibre-optics: this hints that I've been remote (both communicate over a distance) and protective (both, especially fibre optics, are encased).

My friends (other parts of my psyche) are surprised over my re-arming, but I explain that the work I've been doing has healed old wounds. The scars are there—but I've been healed and I am beginning to have some clarity (the wound is translucent) about a past difficulty. My dream forewarns me about my forearming and tells me that I am now sufficiently strong. All is well; I am now safe to back off from my entrenched position.

Guest Dreamer: My Inner Light

Today’s guest dream comes from artist and writer Gail Gray who has recently published Shaman Circus. She had the dream the night before her 61^st birthday.

The Dream:  I was at the Burgholzi Clinic in Zurich and Dr. Carl Jung was there.  He had asked many of us to bring our “patients” into a room so he could see how we were doing with their analyses.  At first we were all worried, what would these unusual people do with each other?  Would there be trouble?  Would they get along?

So I left and got my patient (I never saw myself in the dream, I just know it was me in my own skin walking around and doing things. I never talked.  I came back with my “patient” who was a large teddy bear sort of man, mute, who carried a large mason jar full of lightening bugs.  He moved very slowly--as if in a dream within my dream, sort of “not with it,” - a lumbering giant. The man himself was sad and poignant, not quite sure what to do. I was uncomfortable and feeling bad because I hadn't made much progress with my giant and had not come to know him very well. There wasn't much action after this, even when other people brought in their “patients,” except that we were all rather mesmerized by the beauty of the light in the jar, but also the bittersweet sadness of them being trapped in a jar. 

When I woke on my birthday I was elated, even though in the dream I'd been uncomfortable because of the remarkable appearance of Jung.

Carla’s thoughts: As usual when interpreting a guest dream, I’ll react to Gail’s dream as if it were my own. (If you would like to know why, read this post: Cement Men of Mars.)

Here’s my take on Gail’s dream: Dr. Jung has asked me (the dream ego) to produce my patient (a part of myself that I don’t entirely accept) so that he can assess my progress in analyzing (understanding and integrating) him. My concern about whether or not my patient will get along with the others hints at a social discomfort: I am afraid of conflict or some sort of disharmony if I allow this part of me out in public. The fact that I’m not talking in the dream tells me that I’m dealing with something that is unconscious: it can’t be “verbalized” or discussed—at least not yet.

Because my patient evokes a “teddy bear” he symbolizes my vulnerable inner child, possibly the Divine Child archetype (he carries light). That he is large tells me he represents something that is very important to me; and that he’s mute emphasizes the nonverbal, unconscious element that my own silence in the dream alludes to. This child has not been able to get through to me (he’s not quite sure what to do, and I feel bad because I don’t know him very well). The crux of the dream, however, lies in this unusual detail about the figure:  He is the source of a mesmerizing--if confined--light.

Dr. Jung represents my healing journey toward getting in touch with this source of light within me. The word “patient” is repeated four times in this relatively short dream, hinting that I need to be patient in order to understand the spiritual truth of the light I carry. My light is carried in a Mason jar; a mason works with stone; revealing this light is hard (as stone) for me.

The timing of this dream is significant. Because I had this dream on the eve of my birthday, it symbolizes the birth of a new understanding. I am elated because I’ve begun to experience my own inner light, and I can anticipate freeing it from its previously limited existence (in the mason jar).

The dreamer always gets the last word, so I encourage Gail to leave us her thoughts in a comment.

The Divine Child

Jung discovered that some symbols are what he called archetypal. He felt that these were so basic to human experience that all cultures created myths about them. One such prevalent symbol is the Great Mother; another is the Divine Child. Often dreams refer only to our day-to-day activities, but the occasional dream touches a deeper level, as I think this one does.

The Dream: A friend has recently had a baby. Since she has several other children and is very busy she gives me the baby to care for. Although the baby is a newborn, she can talk and walk. I’m very entranced by this child. I tell her that she’s as intelligent as a 3-year-old, although in fact she seems far more intelligent than that. I don’t feel the parental anxiety my own children engendered, and I find myself becoming quite attached. The dream details are foggy, but I do remember a lot of discussion about giving her a bath. At one point her arms break out in a rash. The child explains why and pulls out a salve which cures her the moment she applies it. There’s a lot of moving around from place to place, sometimes up and down stairs.

Interpretation: This dream is a visitation from the Divine Child, the part of me that holds my untarnished, limitless potential. The Child is self-healing, representing my ability to heal myself. We move together through various levels of consciousness, shown by our movement from place to place and up and down stairs. The bath is symbolic of my baptism into a new life: some sort of transformation is at hand.