Dancing with DreamMaker: Into the Night Body with Art and Soul

Animas valley has created a particular way of working with dreams. The full description is here below. For those who are new to this way of working, it is helpful to consider that dreams are a powerful way of healing and whole-ing. The ream for this event includes; Doug Van Houten as senior guide. Rene Aish as an Animas valley guide in training, and Jaime Howell who will be supporting the movement integration with his experience as an Open Floor teacher. The cost will cover Doug's travel, art supplies and a cook for the meals that will be provided.

Below is the full Animas Valley course description.

Enter into a divine dance where our dreaming nightbody steps into confluence with the deep source of our creativity. This dance is a powerful portal to soul work, through which we bridge from dayworld consciousness to the hidden rivers of the unconscious in ways that are unique to you as accessed through your imagination, emotions, body, and relationships. Through the interplay of these modalities, you become a mysterious dream-walker shaping soul’s longing into expressions of art and motion.

During this immersion, we’ll wander slowly in the often disturbing, often splendorous nightworld with its symbols, images, and metaphors meant only for the dreamer. We’ll courageously commit to an extended stay in soul’s mysterious domain, permitting the dream to do its formidable work on our ego, to root us more fully in soul just as the old Alchemists transmuted base metals into gold. Rather than trying to interpret or figure out the meaning of the dream, we will submit ourselves as we yield to the dream’s characters, landscapes, and atmospheres. 

Making art helps us make meaning. Music and movement together open numinous pathways toward deep feeling and a more embodied sense of knowing. Through dance and free movement, we surrender and allow the body to express what the strategic mind cannot reach. By sidestepping everyday consciousness and allowing the unconscious to speak in its own symbols, colors, and textures, we enter a holy inner terrain that words cannot convey. Whether with oil pastels, collage, sculpture, or even spontaneous markings on the page, the act of allowing a wild conversation to flow through us — unmediated, untethered, and alive — generates a sacred gesture toward soul. As Flannery O’Conner wrote, “The artist prays by creating”. 

You’ll discover what it’s like to enter dreams as living mysteries; to boldly and vulnerably interact with its denizens and dreamscapes; to be moved by the deep intelligence of vivid dream images; to open to non-ordinary ways of perceiving and knowing; and to experience the vitality found in the under-dream of your everyday waking life. 

Dancing with DreamMaker moves you deeper toward your soul’s yearning, enabling you to artfully carry the dream into the world as a gift.