TESTIMONIALS
Dreamwork has been extremely influential in my painting. I actually dream certain paintings and then wake and rush to paint it. At the start of the quarantine I was in Paris and went to the famous cemetery Pere Lachaise. When I got home I had a vivid dream of some thing like a calendar which marked the days of seclusion. A slender woman actually came into my bedroom and put this painting against the fireplace . In the morning I realized there was a painting against the fireplace I had done years ago but never liked. It was framed and everything . I painted and collaged the silver gray painting in a few hours. Then I did a second painting about the trip home. Using the same idea of small rectangles adding up like a counting of days. Though my profession has been writer for decades in my dreams I am drawn to painting and characters appear showing what to paint and sometimes how to finish. The picture of the house is called Serena’s Dream. It inspired a series too and a show. Alchemy of night. I experience great encouragements and inspiration in dreams and dream work itself helps me to overcome imagined critiques from the outside world and render my inner vision without impediments more and more.
M.C. ~ New Orleans, LA
What others are saying about working with Laura
"Hello Laura, Thank you so much for the session today. So much came up for me once I began journalling. The space you have created for me is so valuable to me and the mirror I never knew I needed."
L.D.A. ~ Bangalore, India
"You are definitely someone I feel safe with to go down that deep rabbit hole [of trauma]. Thank you for that!"
J.V. ~ Burlington, VT
"Thanks again for a wonderful workshop. You are an excellent presenter - very clear and organized and articulate. I also appreciated how you brought your own experience in when it supported the content."
P.H. ~ Burlington, VT
“I’m really enjoying the dreamwork...it’s definitely helping me in a way that traditional therapy hasn’t been able to.”
M.G. ~ New Orleans, LA
Toward the beginning of my dreamwork journey with Laura Smith-Riva, I had a series of dreams in which a blue flame appeared. In the first dream, the blue flame combusted into a destructive conflagration that engulfed me. In another, the flame emitted slyly from an electrical outlet only to disappear when I went toward it. In yet another, I wholly extinguished it because I was deathly afraid of it. Working these dreams with Laura, I came to understand that this blue flame was my own internal blue fire speaking to me, asking for attention, sometimes gently, sometimes violently.
During this time I was inspired to make a drawing of the blue flame. Bringing it to life by depicting it, giving it dimension and expression, was a way to bring the message of the blue flame into my waking life. As I drew it, I recall that I felt guided and in close communion with those dreams. We were working in concert: the dreams and my hands. The drawing, then, is both a vivid artifact of this series of dreams as well as a testimony to my own creativity. When I embody the images of my dreams in visual art, poetry, or song, it’s a way to amplify them and extend their reach beyond my psyche into the world. The more I engage with my dreams, the more they reveal to me, the more they can heal me. Each time I look at this drawing -- all those vibrant blues and the strong arcs of the flames – I am reminded of this journey I’m on, this journey we’re all on, this Journey of the Blue Flame.
J.B. ~ Somerville, MA