When Toko-pa Turner first started to experience signs of perimenopause, she was simultaneously diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis, and the combination led to severe insomnia. Sleep deprivation is challenging for all of us, but in Toko-pa’s case it was especially disorientating because for over twenty-five years she has been working with dreams in a mythopoetic way to answer life’s deep soul questions.

Sometimes called a Midwife of the Psyche, Toko-pa is the author of The Dreaming Way, and her work focuses on belonging, restoring the feminine, reconciling paradox, elevating grief, and facilitating ritual. She founded the Dream School in 2001 and has now grown a network of more than a hundred thousand dreamers worldwide.

Toko-pa’s journey with her dreams as her guide began when she was orphaned in her teens and entered the care system, and in our conversation today we track Toko-pa’s personal dreaming journey, as well as how we can all take an intimate, deep-dive into the magical world of our dreams as a gateway to a different kind of intelligence.

We explore:

• Why our cultures often dismiss the power of our dreams and how to reclaim your dreaming capacities in a world that has been stuck in a centuries-long patriarchal phase of worshipping rationality and materialism.
  
  
• How to ‘court’ our dreams, and why we don’t need to hire an expert to help us interpret our dreams, but rather to follow the wisdom of indigenous cultures and reclaim our dreaming as our mother tongue.
  
  
• How to keep a dream journal, and the key practice to do when you wake up after a big dream to ensure you remember it and can connect to the power of the symbols and wisdom within it.

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The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [email protected]

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Social media:
Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.school
Sophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardy
Toko-pa Turner: @tokopa - https://www.instagram.com/tokopa