Dreamwork 101 // What is Dreamwork and How to Get Started in 5 Steps
Dreamwork is the practice of tending to our relationship with our dreams. We’re dreaming every night, but many of us barely remember our dreams, or if we do, don’t spend much time thinking about them or working with them.(How often have you dismissed a dream as, “oh, it was just a dream?”)
Dreamwork is the practice of tending to our relationship with our dreams. We’re dreaming every night, but many of us barely remember our dreams, or if we do, don’t spend much time thinking about them or working with them.
(How often have you dismissed a dream as, “oh, it was just a dream?”)
But dreams can have a lot to teach us and offer us when we enter into a deeper relationship with them. The dreamworld is rich with feelings, desires, needs, and possibilities. Our understanding of what the dreamworld evokes and presents can support our physical lives and our connections to ourselves.
In this blog post, I’ll share a bit about how to start a dreamwork practice of your own.
Dreamwork Lineage
First, I’d like to share my dreamwork lineage. What I know about dreamwork comes from the work of these folks in particular, as well as my own intuition and my ancestors:
These are wonderful people to go deeper into dreamwork with if you feel so called.
1. Support Dream Recall + Sleep
The simplest of ways to begin supporting your dreaming is by supporting sleep and dream recall. It’s difficult to consciously work with our dreams if we’re not sleeping well or can’t remember our dreams when we wake up. Everyone is different, but here are some things you might like to explore to support your sleep:
Set screen time boundaries for a certain amount of time before bed
Drink a tea to support your sleep, like chamomile (always do your own research and check with a professional before ingesting herbs)
Create your own sleep ritual that helps you shift into rest mode
Meditate and/or do a gentle, restorative yoga practice
Take a few minutes to journal brain-dump style to help clear your mind.
To support your dream recall, there are a few things I find helpful:
Set an intention to dream and to remember your dream(s) before you go to sleep (you can write this down, say it out loud, or just tell it to yourself silently)
Take a few minutes in bed in the morning before you get out of bed (or look at your phone) to give yourself space to remember your dream.
Create a dream altar and meditate at it before bed to welcome your dreams to come
Pay attention to the dreams you do receive by tending them (more on that below!)
2. Start a Dream Journal
This is probably the number one tip anyone you ask about dreamwork will give you, and with good reason! A dream journal creates a container for tending your dreams, helps solidify your intention to connect with your dreams, and helps you understand your dreams.
I recommend choosing a dedicated journal for your dreamwork and placing it on your dream altar when you’re not using it if you have one. As soon as you wake up (definitely before you look at any devices), put pen to paper and record your dream. Try recording your dreams in the present tense to honor its aliveness (for example, instead of "I was walking by a river,” try “I’m walking by a river).
If it feels available to you, you might like to marinate in the dream in bed for a few minutes before actually getting up and reaching for your journal to record.
3. Explore Dream Feelings & Textures
After you record your dream, there are many ways to work with it more deeply and explore the messages it might have for you.
I like to explore the dream textures: what are the textures, sights, smells, tastes, sounds of the dream? What do those senses mean for you and evoke for you? How do they make you feel? How does the dream, in general, make you feel?
4. Understand Dream Associations
As you work with the dream you’ve recorded, notice what stands out to you. Maybe your red dress feels particularly alive, or the hawk sparks something for you, or you feel curious about a figure in your dream.
Whatever you feel curious about, do a bit of freewriting about it. List out: what does this thing make you think of? How does it make you feel?
For example, some associations that come up with hawks for me:
Hawk feather
Maggie Smith’s poetry book Good Bones
Mothers
Protecting your children
Imagination
Play
Notice how I’m not so focused on the hawk itself, but I follow the threads of what each thing is associated with! Now I have something interesting to work with and can ask myself questions like, "what’s my relationship with play right now?"
Some of the associations you make might really surprise you and can offer deeper insight into your dream.
5. Assign Dream Correspondences
As you continue to work with your dreams, you start to develop some personal symbols and correspondences.
Like you saw above in my example with the hawk, I could make a section in my journal where I note that hawk led me to mothers and children and play. When I see a hawk again in my dream, I have that reference and can ask myself if/how it applies to this dream.
Over time, you can deepen your understanding of your own personal dream symbols and correspondences. I love this practice so much because, to me, it’s not about what a certain symbol means but about what it means to you, how it feels in your body, how it resonates with your ancestry. That’s what feels potent and powerful!
Dreams Aren’t Your Personal Vending Machine
It feels important to state that working with dreams isn’t just asking a question and receiving an answer. Generally, it’s not a simple or linear way of working. There isn’t one true or hidden meaning that we need to uncover.
In my eyes, dreams and the dreamworld are alive. So it truly is a practice of engaging in relationship with, of exploring. You might like to ask yourself, "how can I be in equal exchange with my dreams?" How can I honor the dream world and not just extract from it?
Dreams have such potential to expand us out of binary thinking and into visionary possibilities, especially if we acknowledge that power and allow them to take us there!
Going Deeper with Your Dreams
Another way to explore dream tending and go a bit deeper is by asking for a dream. I share how to do this in the dreamwork ritual I shared for Pisces season, which you can find here.
Feel free to contact us and share: how is your dream practice going? How is your relationship with your dreams evolving?
Dreamwork Ritual for Pisces Season + Card Spread
Pisces, our mutable water sign and last sign of the zodiac, evokes the artist, the mystic, the dreamer, in all of us with its connection to music, poetry, spirituality, and the dream world.In this blog post, I’ll be sharing a card spread and a ritual for Pisces season.
Pisces, our mutable water sign and last sign of the zodiac, evokes the artist, the mystic, the dreamer, in all of us with its connection to music, poetry, spirituality, and the dream world.
In this blog post, I’ll be sharing a card spread and a ritual for Pisces season. To learn more about Pisces energy and your personal birth chart’s connection to Pisces, check out our Understanding the Energy of Pisces Season blog post here.
Card Spread for Pisces Season
This card spread can be done using an oracle deck or a tarot deck.
I invite you to create a ritual space for you and your deck to communicate by taking a moment to ground and center yourself; lighting some incense, herbs, or candles that help you drop into your heart space; and opening to allow messages to come through.
Truly, it doesn’t matter what you do, just that whatever you do helps you feel more grounded, centered, and open. When you feel centered and ready, shuffle your deck and draw a card for each of the following questions:
What is Pisces energy here to teach me?
Supportive energies to draw on to support my learning and growth
How can I embody the artist, the mystic, the dreamer this season?
What dream(s) to tend to at this time.
How to tend to those dreams
After you pull your cards, take some time to journal and/or meditate with them to really connect with the full meaning they have to offer you.
Dreamwork Ritual for Pisces Season
As someone who loves dreamwork already, Pisces season is basically a dream come true! This ritual is intended to support you in receiving a message through your dreams, and so is best done right before sleep. You’ll need:
A dream tea (many herbs support sleep and dreaming. Personally, I like a simple combination of mugwort, chamomile, and lavender tea before bed. But as always, with herbs, make sure you research or check with a professional about what’s right for your body. Mugwort should not be consumed by pregnant or lactating people.)
A journal and something to write with
If you'd like to add some supportive crystals aquamarine and amethyst are great options.
To start, brew your dream tea and take it to your altar (or bed, if you don’t have an altar or that just feels better for you). As you sip your tea, start feeling into what you need clarity on (you could sense into this, meditate on this, journal about this, or do anything else that helps you clarify what you want to know). This is the question you’re going to take into your dream space.
When you have that question, you’d like to receive clarity through your dream tonight, spend some time meditating with your question and take deep breaths. Feel the question in your body. Feel your desire for clarity. Let your body soften and your crown open. When you finish your tea, set your journal beside your bed and go to sleep.
In the morning, record your dream in your journal (or a voice memo on your phone if you’re not into writing) right away. It’s okay if you don’t know what it means (in dreamwork, I often find there are no clear-cut yes/no answers, rather things to explore, energies to connect with, and more questions to ask).
Record the objective facts of your dream (what happened, who was there, what you saw, etc.) as well as how the dream made you feel, what stood out to you, and what feels particularly alive or significant in the dream. Do you have any gut feelings about what this dream means for you? Write them down.
After you record, spend some time meditating and journaling with whatever sparks curiosity, feels intriguing about the dream, or feels particularly alive or significant in the dream. Notice how it makes you feel, what it makes you think of, what it brings up for you.
It’s okay if you are left with more questions - this is about engaging with your dreams and coming into a relationship with them, not thinking of them like a vending machine for wisdom. The more you consciously dream, the more you’ll start to understand the language of your dreams!
You can repeat this ritual as often as you’d like - I think three nights in a row is really helpful, with the same question - to get more clarity.
(And if you want more rituals to support your sleep and sweet dreams this season, check out our blog post 7 Rituals to Help You Sleep Like a Goddess here.)
Happy Pisces season, dreamers! I hope this card spread and ritual support - share your spreads on Instagram and tag us @cassieuhl so we can see them!
