Dream Groups

Have you ever wanted to explore your dreams in greater depth? Perhaps you are stuck in a rut in your life and looking for inspiration. Maybe you have vivid dreams and feel called to deepen your relationship to your dreaming-mind. You might be working through something and looking for new avenues to further your insight into your Unconscious.

Working with Dreaming in a group setting offers an intimate way to foster your connection with the depths of your mind and heart. Dreams connect us to hidden powers and aspects of ourselves. They give us fresh angles on our experience as human beings and can offer great insight into the nature of our conflicts.

Dr. Scott has extensive experience working with dreams, including participating in a year-long training on Embodied Experiential Dreamwork with dream researcher, clinician, and author Dr. Leslie Ellis.

Dream Groups led by Dr. Scott emphasize the experiential nature of Dreamwork. Each member of the group will have an opportunity to share a dream and have it be worked with in the context of the group. These groups will be relatively small in order to foster intimacy and depth, and so that each member will have an opportunity to share their dreams on a regular basis.

Dream Group Process

  • Group Size

    5-6 People

    (plus Dr. Scott)

  • Process

    Each meeting we will work with at least one dream experientially. A member will share their dream and Dr. Scott will facilitate requesting feedback from group members during moments in the process. There will be guided meditations and opportunities to develop your imaginal body.

  • Meeting Length

    2 hour groups

  • Fee

    250$/month for bi-monthly meetings

    (2 x Group meetings a month @ 125$ each)

    *limited number of sliding scale openings

  • Commitment

    - 3 month initial commitment

    - 1 month fee deposit (300$)

  • Requirements

    - Honor group guidelines

    - Have experience in therapy and/or meditation

    - Have initial meeting with Dr. Scott to determine fit

Summary of Guidelines

Guidelines for our group will be discussed in more depth during the first session of every new group as well as on your intro call. The essence of the group guidelines can be summarized by an excerpt from hexagram 57 of the I-Ching (Ming, 2005).

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

57 - Xun - Compliance: small offerings:: Auspicious for traveling and seeking counsel

Xun is divined when it is important to simply let the mysterious unknowable penetrate and shape you.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Confidentiality

Our group process is a closed, private process. We don’t share other people’s identifying information outside of group. Furthermore, we don’t share content of any other’s dream in any public way without prior consent.

Honor the Dream and Dreamer as Sacred

In order to create depth, Dream Groups need to have a container. In order to have a container, there needs to be safety. In order to have safety, we must understand each other and the process of dreaming as sacred.

Practice Not-Knowing and Curiosity

It can be tempting to think we know something, especially for leaders of groups or clinicians. This kind of knowledge often blocks spontaneous wisdom as it is directly expressed from the Unconscious. Let’s get out of the way and let Psyche work her magic.

Practice Open-Hearted Listening; Let Our Bodies and the Group Body Lead

When we listen with open hearts, our whole body participates in the process of dreaming. Our individual body can also express the Group Body. We learn to attune to this. We share with each other from it with generosity.

We Aren’t Focused on Interpretation of Others’ Dream

When interpreting another’s dream, we see through our own limited lenses. In this group we practice offering our reactions without needing to conclude anything about another’s dream. We are never trying to solve for x.

Go Beyond Ego; Welcome Altered-States

The endeavor of this dream group is transegoic. In other words, we eschew the need to know the answer to everything, to be right, to have everything be logical, to need to be perfect, to need to fit into our self-concept.

Embodied dreamwork by nature takes us out of our ordinary patterns of relating to self. This is where our edges of growth are.

Dreaming itself is an Altered State, and when we re-enter the dream, letting go of our habitual sense of self, we practice going beyond our ego.

✺ Frequently asked questions ✺

  • Not at all. In working with dreams, a beginner’s mind is best. Embodied dreamwork does require an ability to recognize felt-sense or bodily sensations. Prior experience in therapy or with meditation can be helpful with this.

  • From the embodied dreamwork perspective, a dream dictionary is actually not very useful. We aren’t looking to discover some universal meaning for a symbol, rather we are discovering the experience that you have with that symbol or image

  • An archetype is a concept from Jungian psychology which pertains to patterns as they exist in the Unconscious. They are represented often through symbols. In experiential dreamwork, symbols are not static, rather they are living. That means we don’t just try to say “A dog in your dream means x.” Rather we move into your lived experience of the dog in the dream.

  • I offer groups both online and in-person in my office in Petaluma, CA. As of right now, there is a wait list for both groups

  • We typically walk around experiencing what we might call “consensus reality.” That is shorthand for the reality that is common to the culture we currently exist in. Dreams by nature do not exist in consensus reality, and therefore when we work with them experientially, we are working within an altered-state of consciousness

  • You’d be surprised how much intention matters in this one. Sure there are some people who truly struggle to remember their dreams even with effort. I find most often that when we have a strong intention, take practical action (such as leaving a journal by our bed) we are very likely to remember aspects of our dreams. In the context of working with a dream experientially, we only need a snippet!

Join The Waitlist

Join The Waitlist

Join the Waitlist or Schedule an Initial Call!

scot@scottmenasco.com

720 South Point Blvd, Suite 214

Petaluma, CA 94954