Focusing and Dream Work

Course Description

In this excellent course Dr. Leslie Ellis, an expert in focusing and dreamwork, shows you how to sense into your dreams and find help in them. Leslie reveals, one step at a time, the great power of this gentle way of feeling into a dream, and through it, your own life.

Dreams begin in the body. With their own language they give us an honest picture of what’s unlived or off balance in us and our world. They also show us a world of possibilities where anything can happen. With somatic dreamwork we learn to find help in unexpected places in a dream. We begin to get a feel for where our next growth step might be.

Eugene Gendlin developed a pioneering method of getting a sense of yourself from the inside called “focusing”. Gendlin also created an experiential approach to dreams that synthesizes the work of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud and Fritz Perls. Dreamwork and focusing are both doorways to the body’s immense and subtle implicit knowledge.

Dr. Leslie Ellis has decades of clinical experience integrating Gendlin’s focusing and dreamwork methods with the work of other contemporary pioneers in the field of dreamwork. She incorporates the latest research on somatic trauma therapy and rescripting nightmares into her work.

In Leslie’s classes we witness how life changing it can be to sense inward, find what’s present and that “something new” that wants to come forward. Join Leslie as she digs in deep for the clinician, and at the same time offers simple guidelines that anyone new to working with their dreams can use with great results on their own.

An extensive companion guide recapping each class is provided.

The classes are available now.

This course is ideal if

• Experience how to access the knowledge your body has about your life situations and new possibilities
• Learn the basics of how to approach a dream or find more vitality in the dreamwork you’re doing now
• Know practical questions to help yourself or your clients reenter the dream and experience it from inside
• Feel into new ways of being and sense where your next step is ready to move into action
• Understand how to find the help every dream offers

Course Overview

Class 1. Short course in Focusing

Available now

In this class Leslie takes us through the steps of a focusing session, and explains how it is a unique path to dreamwork.

Focusing looks for a felt-sense in the body, this is the body’s take on any aspect of our lives. Focusing develops an ability to be in touch with something that’s still outside of our awareness. 

Following this nebulous sense as it evolves into something recognizable is an ideal way to explore dreams as they unfold.

 

Class 2. An overview of Gendlin’s philosophy

Available now

In this class Leslie discusses the more theoretical aspects of Gendlin’s work. She presents a segment from his book

“Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams”. 

We learn that a dream is an altered state that is not fully embodied, that’s why we need to work with the dream when we’re awake. Focusing brings the new possibilities of the dream into our full-bodied lives. If we don’t work the dream we may not bring that new life into actuality. Embodying the life energy in dreams is the main point of working with dreams.

 

Class 3. Gendlin’s 16 questions to guide dreamwork

Available now

In this class Leslie explains the 16 questions developed by Gendlin that synthesize the ideas of different schools of dream work of Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, and Fritz Perls. The questions are grouped around the themes of associations, elements of the drama, decoding, working with characters, and dimensions of development. 

These questions form the core of experiential dream work. Leslie encourages us to play with them as pathways back into the dream. Leslie gives us examples of how to take these questions into your body, and see what the body does with them. 

You’ll need to try them for yourself and see which questions work for you and which don’t.

 

Class 4. Finding the help in a dream

Available now

In this class Leslie shares several poignant stories of finding help in unexpected places in a dream. You’ll hear inspiring examples of how dreamers located helpful elements that weren’t clear at first glance. Sensing into these elements the dreamers found new energy in their bodies that became new ways of moving in their lives.

 

Class 5. Embodying dream characters and elements

Available now

Embodying dream characters and elements is a powerful experiential practice. Leslie gives examples of dreamers who accessed sources of vitality and adaptability that had in fact already protected them in their lives without their awareness. 

As Gendlin said: “What is split off, not felt, remains the same. When it is felt, it changes!” In Jungian terms, this is the shadow work of reowning projections and facing what’s been rejected. This feeling work of integration brings new colors, resilience and emotional range within your reach.

 

Class 6. Allowing the dream to continue

Available now

In this class you’ll learn how dreams and even nightmares can offer practical, hopeful ways of dealing with hard life situations when you carry the dream forward.

Leslie talks about ways of rescripting dreams and nightmares. She follows Jung’s view that dreams are alive and on-going, even after we wake up. You’ll also learn in this class how dreaming the dream on is a very effective way to treat nightmares and PTSD symptoms.

 

Class 7. Last Class

In this last class Leslie interacted with participants, took their questions and explored what participants wanted to share.

Available now

By the end of this course you will

• Have a road map for how to do embodied dream work with clients or with your own dreams
• Have new ideas about where to find the inner resources in your dreams that help you take your next step in the world
• Know the steps of Gendlin’s focusing method and have experienced a focusing exercise
• Recognize that difficult parts of dreams often hold potential growth steps
• List the 16 most practical questions to use in dream work
• Have a dreamwork protocol for dealing with nightmares and PTSD symptoms
• Feel the possibility of finding life-changing help in your dreams