Program overview
OUR SEPTEMBER 2026 COHORT IS SOLD OUT.
The next cohort is scheduled for September 2027.
On the first day, we focus on building connection and creating a sense of camaraderie. We begin by exploring what it is to experience a dream. A dream is not a series of fleeting images. It is a world we find ourselves in during sleep. We move through it, interact, and are awake within it. These dream worlds exist alongside the world of daily life.
We will learn the useful skill of re-entering in an embodied way in the dream. It is a very effective way of exploring the dream. This is also a foundational skill for many other forms as dreamwork later in the program.
We continue to practice the Dream re-entry skill so that at the end of the class you have the skill down.
This class focuses on a Jungian approach to dreams. We begin by exploring key Jungian ideas, including the individuation process and the psyche’s structure. Our dreamwork and skill-building center on Jung’s view of the dream as a theatre play.
We continue practicing Jung’s technique of working with dreams as a theatre play. We will explore his method of amplification. Then we bring together the key building blocks of Jungian dreamwork and apply them through practice in dream interpretation.
In this class, we will explore the practice of dream incubation. This is an ancient and powerful method to receive guidance from dreams, it comes back in almost any dream tradition around the world. Dream incubation is the art of asking a question before sleep, inviting the dream to respond. You will learn how to craft a clear question, create a ritual, and open yourself to the wisdom that may come through the dream that night.
This class focuses on you as the dreamworker. What attitude, presence, and skill are needed to support someone else’s dream? We explore how your body can serve as an instrument in the process. How do you meet the dreamer—and the dream figures? We also look at how to begin a session, create a safe space, and stay open rather than rushing to interpret. You will learn a structure for short-term work: eight dream sessions around one theme. This is called brief depth dreamwork. The goal is to deepen the dreamer’s relationship with their inner world.
We explore a Shamanic approach. In these traditions dreamwork and ritual offers an experiential path into the world of dreams, where each image or figure may carry the voice of an ancestor, a spirit, or an unseen ally. Drawing from the teachings of Malidoma Somé, as well as personal initiations into South African dreamwork and healing, we learn to listen to the messages of the dream beings and respond with reverence.
A core focus of the class is learning to create ritual prescriptions: meaningful, symbolic actions that help shift habitual patterns and open new paths of transformation. Inspired by African traditions and the guidance of dream figures themselves, you will learn how to craft rituals, for yourself and others, that honor the dream’s message and activate change. Through practice, you will begin to sense how ritual invites the sacred into the everyday and how dreams are living invitations to reconnect with soul, nature, and the unseen world.
Active Imagination is a powerful technique developed by Carl Jung to consciously engage with the unconscious through direct dialogue with dream figures. Rather than interpreting from a distance, this approach invites you to return to a dream image and enter into a living conversation with it. This method bridges waking consciousness and the deep psyche, allowing a figure to speak in its own voice. Jung considered it a vital tool for individuation, and scholar Sonu Shamdasani has called it his greatest contribution to psychology. The technique also echoes how indigenous healers relate to beings in the Other World.
In the tenth class of this course, we are exploring lucid dreaming; being aware while in the dream state. Lucid dreaming offers space for exploration, co-creation, play with, healing in the dream. Lucid awareness allows for profound exploration of the dreamworld and its close relationship to the waking world. Lucid dreams can be very helpful to treat nightmares.
On this last day, a shorter class to celebrate and say goodbye. We will be reflecting on the course’s end and new beginnings ahead. We will be celebrating our achievements in a certificate ceremony.
- Keep a dream journal and engage in your own dreamwork to deepen the practice.
- Pair with a classmate for weekly practice sessions (flexible for a bit more or less).
- Required and suggested readings and videos will be provided. (Dedicate at least a few hours per week to these materials, or dive deeper if you wish).
- Dreamwork assignments during classes.
- Dreamwork assignments between classes.
- There will be supervision sessions with Machiel.
- Toward the end, write a report on two dreams you worked with.
- In the last class, you will make a 5 minute presentation about your journey.
