Dreamweaving: An Inclusive, Experiential Dreamwork Group

Michelle Carchrae
Apr 18
3 min read

Updated: Apr 25

Dreams are ephemeral, mysterious, and can span the entire spectrum of emotional experience, from boring and unremarkable to vividly evocative, touching, joyful or even terrifying. You might have often wondered, "What does that dream I just had even mean?" Or have woken up with just a fragment of a dream that you can remember - one tiny image or a wisp of emotional tone - and everything else is gone. With everything else going on in life, what can be done with that bit of a dream? Is it of any value?

In my work with Dr. Leslie Ellis, I have come to deeply appreciate these tiny wisps and snippets of dreams that remain after waking. It can be very difficult to remember long dreams, but these fragments are much easier to collect, and when worked with in an experiential way, can unfold with depth and meaning. When we bring dream snippets to share with others, a new experience can emerge as we attend to these images and our embodied experience in the present moment.

What is a Dreamweaving Group?

In a Dreamweaving dreamwork group, each person brings a dream snippet or image to share with the group. First, we drop in and reconnect with that image internally, re-entering the dream scene and allowing it to come alive again. Then, we go around and each person has an opportunity to share their dream snippet with the group. Next, there is a round of clarifying questions, where each person has an opportunity to ask any questions they have about another person's image, or invites them to share more detail. Now that all the dream images are starting to become present for the group, we can begin to a process of relating to each other's images, noticing what it feels like to connect with or embody them, and what changes for us and our image as we do so. The process becomes collaborative, creative and emergent.

Dreamweaving is embodied, experiential, collaborative and emergent.

During a Dreamweaving group, we are each an individual with our own image, and something new begins to happen as we are present with each other's images. Our own image can transform as we begin to feel and connect with the resources and help in another image, and collective themes or even a sense of the images coming together to form a group dream may begin to form. We close with a round of sharing what we're taking away from the experience and the ways that our image, or our understanding or experience of it, has transformed.

Why not focus on one person's dream at a time?

Modern life is increasingly fractured and polarized. More and more we find ourselves separated from others and trying to make sense of a chaotic world with a mind that is overtaxed and stressed out. Dreamweaving invites us into an experience of belonging with others where our own individual experience is welcomed and held in the larger experience of a diverse group. Where we both give to others and receive by participating and sharing our image. Where we don't have to choose between being an observer or participant, but move fluidly between them. Where no one person is the focus of attention or the person "doing the work" in a group process. Where both mind and body are welcomed, and we can dip our toes in the world of dreams in a way that is safe and accessible. Where we are invited to be more fully embodied and present, not only by ourselves during meditation or as part of a heavy therapeutic process, but while having fun with a dreamwork group.