Laura Smith-Riva

A dream is not simply a collection of symbols that can be lifted out of the dream and assigned universal meanings. The images are emerging within a particular human life. There may be trauma there, but there may also be radical joy. There may be grief, anger, longing, sexuality, fear, creativity, new beginnings, old wounds, complicated relationships, or experiences the dreamer has not yet found a way to understand. The work is not to force all of that into an interpretation....

A few years ago, I took up metal detecting. It is a hobby that excited my inner child, the part of me that wanted to be an archeologist when I was a little girl, the treasure hunter in me that also drew me to dreamwork. In many ways, Natural Dreamwork is a process for rekindling our lost or buried intuition. We must fine tune our inner listening skills so that the signals become clearer and more directed towards our goals.

What if the feelings we most want to get rid of are actually the raw material of transformation? Dreams and nightmares invite us into a different kind of alchemy—one that asks us not to fix what we feel, but to enter into it.