In doing research for the book, “I had the Strangest Dream” I came across some startling data about the ways the Iroquois Indians conduct a social form of dream therapy…
The Iroquois Indians, dating back to 1100A.D., regarded dreams as “the secret wishes of the soul” and that it was the duty of a caring community to gather around a dreamer, help him or her recognize the soul’s wishes, and take action to honor them. Thus became their social form of dream therapy.
They would act out their dreams and were allowed to go beyond the usual disciplined and moral social boundaries. This included making love to another person’s spouse. Such hidden desires were seen as the basis of social as well as individual problems. Allowing the expression of unconscious desires was the Iroquois way of conquering sickness of body and mind.
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In the shamanic training that I’ve participated in, we would do dream circles whereby we would discuss our nighttime adventures in a group setting and support each other as we would put the our underworld tails beneath the looking glass to understand the true story being woven as well as the message of healing, revelation, growth, and/or expansion.
In these circles we would have the experience of not only gaining a glimpse of the deeper meaning of our dreams, but a deeper connection to our souls.
But, when I heard about how the Iroquois Indians would actually act out their dreams, I got chills, goose bumps, an felt a wave of “aha” wash through me from head to toe. In that moment, I was transported to another dimension…just the idea alone of actually acting out one’s dream in the container of a sacred theatre felt to me like taking “dream work” to an entirely different level. Hmmmm…there is something here I must explore!!!
Having spent my entire 20’s as an actress (Ok, I never won an Academy Award, and I did more than one prison film…but I did have some fun on an episode of ER, the film set of Leaving Las Vegas, and a movie of the week about the Beach Boys), I was well aware of the magic that can happen on a stage when you suspend your disbelief and walk through that gossamer veil of social appropriateness into the world of “anything is possible”.
The sage words of a former acting teacher have been reverberating through the chambers of my heart and mind,
“The moment you step foot on the stage, you are in a different world…you have the freedom to fully express yourself in ways that your politically correct ego would never allow you to. You don’t adopt a mask; you actually let go of your mask. Your only job is to be a channel, a conduit, a vessel…to let go, to be naked, to connect with the energy funneling through you and to express the shade, texture, and tenor of humanity that the scene dictates, with all your heart and soul, to the best of your ability."
As soon as you step foot off the stage, just like Las Vegas, you leave what happened on the stage on the stage…you don’t take it with you….you don’t make judgments, you don’t harbor resentments. If you can do this, the stage can be the temple that it was intended to be.”
With that in mind, the thought of combining a theatrical environment with the realm of dreams and therapy felt like a dream come true (pun intended).
Now, how am I going to pull this off?
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