Leslie Ellis
Dr. Leslie Ellis, PhD, is an author, teacher, speaker and clinical dreamworker. Her book, A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy (Routledge, 2019) offers therapists a primer in modern, experiential dreamwork. She has written numerous book chapters and articles on experiential focusing and dreamwork. Her award-winning PhD research developed a nightmare treatment process for refugees. She developed her somatic, experiential focus through extensive study of focusing. She is currently president of The International Focusing Institute. She studied depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute and her practice is a hybrid of Jungian and focusing-oriented approaches. She is also an expert in treatment of complex trauma and post-traumatic stress injury and developed and taught trauma work at Adler University in Vancouver.
Leslie is a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
Courses and Lecturesby Leslie Ellis
15 Teachers 
12 Teachers 
Articlesby Leslie Ellis
Crossing Focusing and Jung: Embodied Inner Journeys
In any conflict between mind and body, follow the body’s wisdom. This is something I have come to trust after almost three decades of practicing as both a Jungian and…
Do We Benefit from Dreams?
There are varying schools of thought from, at one end of the spectrum, the notion that dreams don’t do anything for us at all to the idea that dreams are a piece of unfinished process that moves us forward only when we revisit the dream and allow it to complete. The middle road is the notion that dreams are useful in and of themselves but are more beneficial if you work with them in some way.
Experience What is Implicit
In any good crossing, the cumulative effect is always greater than the sum of its constituent parts, and I have found this to be the case in combining Jungian and Focusing-oriented therapy. The methods complement, enrich and deepen each other: Gendlin brings experiential depth and ‘life-forward’ movement with his focus on the body, while Jung brings imaginative richness and numinosity with his deep fascination with the image.
Focusing, Dreamwork and Zebra-Striped Shoes
Imagine you have just awakened from a delicious dream. Before you get up and start your day, might you be tempted to linger in the dreamscape a little longer? This may be exactly what the dream is asking of you – to savor the embodied experience the dream brings as it envelopes you in the felt sense of its world.’ What happens when we attend to this felt sense? Read more.
How to Work with Traumatic Nightmares
Taken together, the nightmare studies presented at the recent (June 2019) conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) offer compelling reasons for those who suffer from nightmares to seek any kind of treatment, and as soon as possible. The studies suggest that virtually all nightmare treatments are effective.
Nightmares Are Treatable
Taken together, the nightmare studies presented at the recent (June 2019) conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) offer compelling reasons for those who suffer from nightmares to seek any kind of treatment, and as soon as possible. The studies suggest that virtually all nightmare treatments are effective.
The Practice of Dreamwork Has Changed
If you are like most therapists, you may dabble in dreamwork but without much confidence. Most often, it is your clients, not you, who initiate dream discussions. You may even dread the moment a client brings you a dream, worried you will have no way to help your client figure out what this nonsensical, nocturnal vignette actually means.
Why Work with Dreams?
I will begin with a personal example that demonstrates how dreams can facilitate more efficient therapy by bringing the conversation right to the heart of matters that concern us most deeply. This story will show how dreams can reach far back into our personal history and weave together experiences that have important features in common.
The Nocturnal Therapist: Turning Toward Our Dreams
Dreaming is therapeutic. Is there a way to make it more so? Unequivocally, yes. Much like therapy, the more we invest our time and energy into our dreams, the more helpful they will be. This is not a new idea, but one that is gaining a broader spectrum of supportive evidence, moving beyond clinical case studies to include the realms of neuroscience and traumatology.
Turning Toward Our Nightmares
The surprising thing about nightmares is that there is nothing to fear. This is not to dismiss them. They feel absolutely real, and our heart-pounding response to them is also very real.