Category: Dreams
Podcast: Episode 90: Machiel Klerk: Dream Guidance
On this edition of the Sacred Stream Radio Podcast, Laura Chandler speaks with Machiel Klerk, author of Dream Guidance: Connecting to the Soul Through Dream Incubation. Machiel is a licensed therapist, dream expert, and founder of the Jung Platform. He has traveled the world, studying various cultures, their healing traditions, and dream practices. In his book, Machiel teaches how to work with dreams in a practical and profound way.
Podcast: Episode 80: Shamanism and the Inner Experience
On this episode, Laura Chandler highlights an excerpt of a talk given by Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. called Shamanic Paths to Inner Experience. Traditional shamanic cultures have long held an understanding of nature, spirit, and non-ordinary realms of being that contemporary cultures have lost touch with in the larger mainstream of experience. In this fascinating talk, Isa Gucciardi explores some of the ways healers from indigenous traditions have accessed larger aspects of consciousness and the realm of the unseen, for guidance, healing, and insight and speaks about their relevance for us today.
Video: Shamanic Paths to Inner Experience: Dreams
Dreams have been a source of fascination for people in cultures the world over. From the advanced Tibetan practice of Lucid Dreaming to the contemporary study of dreams and their meanings, dreams offer a window into deeper states of being. In this talk, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. focuses on the shamanic perspective of dreams and the role dreams play in the development of shamanic initiates. Isa is the author of three books, creator of the therapeutic model Depth Hypnosis, and the Founding Director of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream.
Article: The Language of Image in the Clinical Setting
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
The language of image is one we speak every night as we dream. It just takes a little prompting for us to be able to develop our latent facility with this language. Simple questions, such as “What does this image remind you of?” open the messages in the images in powerful ways.
People who listen to the images of their dreams find this out very quickly. In traditional societies where the journey was practiced, the journey practice was often paired with the practice of listening to dreams.
On the Air: A Meeting of the Ways with Diane Solomon and Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.: Understanding the Experience of the Altered State of Consciousness in Depth Hypnosis, Dreams, and Plant Medicine
Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., and Diane Solomon, host of A Meeting of the Ways, discuss the similarities and differences between the experience of the altered state of consciousness in Depth Hypnosis, Dreams, and Plant Medicine, focusing particularly on the way each of these methods of accessing broader consciousness can provide a path to healing and insight.
Video: Dreams & Shamanic Practice in Depth Hypnosis with Isa Gucciardi
Isa Gucciardi and Laura Chandler discuss the overlap of dreams and the shamanic journey and how these can assist people in gaining deeper personal insight in the therapeutic modality of Depth Hypnosis. This interview takes place at the Sacred Stream Center in Berkeley, CA.
On the Air: A Meeting of the Ways with Diane Solomon and Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.: Going Inward
Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D., speaks with Diane Solomon, host of A Meeting of the Ways on KKUP, on the topic of Going Inward: The role of dreams, meditation, and the shamanic journey in the evolution of consciousness.
Blog: Exploring the Unknown: Dreams
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
I have been a guest lecturer in the Integral Medicine class at the University of California at Berkeley every year for the last ten years or so. Sometimes I lecture on alternative therapies like Depth Hypnosis, and sometimes on methods of healing that are found in shamanic cultures. During the past few years’ lectures, the students have really perked up when I have talked about the way in which dreams are viewed in shamanic cultures. The students are always surprised to hear someone actually talk about their dreams as being an important aspect of their experience.
Article: A Call to Action: How Depth Hypnosis Fulfills Stanislav Grof’s Manifesto for a New Paradigm and Definition of Healing
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
I had the good fortune to attend a conference this year where Stanislav Grof was presenting a paper on his work in developing new therapeutic paradigms over the last half century. Stanislav Grof is a man to whom we all owe a great deal.
Over the last fifty years, he has been instrumental in generating innovative and fresh perspectives on the definition of healing, in response to the medical, psychiatric, and psychological establishment’s approaches to this topic. He has managed to create important changes, working both from within these establishments and outside of them. Without his tireless dedication to the redefinition of psychological health and imbalance, we would not be in the position we are in today to offer the transformative processes of Depth Hypnosis to as wide an audience as we do.
Podcast: Episode 31: Healing Beyond the Conscious Mind
Once we have become conscious of our issues, we must then go beyond our conscious understanding to truly transform them. In today’s episode, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. discusses how altering states through hypnosis, meditation, and the shamanic journey can lead to deep and long lasting healing beyond the conscious mind. From this perspective, Isa offers a brief introduction to several of the programs offered by Foundation of the Sacred Stream.
Podcast: Episode 04: Understanding Dreams
Dreams serve many different functions in an individual’s psychic life, and many theories have been put forward as to what those functions are. Carl Jung points to their function as a field of transformation of the self. Dreams are at the heart of the processes in the Depth Hypnosis model. When a person comes into counseling in Depth Hypnosis, one of the first things that might be asked of them is that they keep track of their dreams. The dreams will generally give the practitioner information about where the person needs to go or how the person is approaching the work. In this excerpt from a 2009 lecture on dreams, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. discusses dream interpretation, with a brief overview of the history of how ancient cultures viewed and worked with dreams.
Article: The Use of Altered States in Depth Hypnosis to Break Down Blocks and Resistance
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
One of the most difficult issues a person trying to understand herself comes across is the issue of resistance. Uncovering unconscious blocks to understanding is often surprising and puzzling. On the one hand, we know what is happening in our lives internally or externally is generating pain and would like very much to be relieved of it. On the other hand, we often run into resistance to change even though we suspect that change will relieve of us our suffering.
Article: Opening the Doors to the Self – Dreams
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
Widening our definitions of reality to include phenomena which are regularly perceived by the unconscious can help us find the path back to the self at a soul level. This is true even if these phenomena are discounted by the conscious mind. Dreams provide a valuable perspective on this journey and their messages are available to us on a regular basis. In order to decipher those messages, we must allow the defenses of the conscious mind to rest. This allows us to use its acuity to organize the information we are receiving in dreams. By using hypnosis to gain access to dream images generated during sleep, we can perceive that we are actually developing a relationship with profound and utterly personal guidance.