The Dream Journal

We have a very experiential Dream Journal in which our guest Sharon Terry leads gentle dream explorations first with Katherine and later with our caller Ellen. But we start off by discussing the principles of gestalt practice and it roots in the work of Fritz Perls and Sharon’s collaborator Christine Price. The essence of gestalt is that all of the parts of my dream are somehow parts of me. Gestalt Awareness Practice is an adaptation which focuses on body awareness and allowing feelings to come into awareness rather than on fixing things. We laugh about the motto, “If it’s broke, don’t fix it” and how finding a feeling of frustration is a sign that transformation in imminent.

Sharon Terry is part of the Tribal Ground organization, and they provide workshops and book groups including a dream workshop called Mirrors in the Dark. Books we talked about include Gestalt Therapy Verbatim by Fritz Perls,

BIO: Sharon has an eclectic mix of training and experience. She has a master’s degree in theology, was a chaplain, and has practiced “engaged Buddhism” for several decades. After a transformational experience in a workshop led by Chris, Sharon became a student and practitioner of Gestalt Awareness Practice. She integrates awareness practices into her work in biomedical research and health, offering companies, academic groups, and nonprofits tools and practices to show up fully and trust process. Sharon offers Intro to GAP and other workshops in the DC area and online. She seeks to participate in and create experiences for individuals and communities that give space and time to being.

You can get in touch with Sharon Terry through TribalGround.com

We play clips from the following two guest-selected songs: Heart with These Dreams and All I Have to Do is Dream sung by Emmy Lou Harris and Alison Krause,

Live ambient music by Rick Kleffel.

Show aired on September 4, 2021.

The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM, streaming live at KSQD.org 10-11am Saturday mornings Pacific time.  Catch it live and call in with your dreams or questions at 831-900-5773 or at [email protected].

If you want to contact Katherine Bell with feedback, suggestions for future shows or to inquire about exploring your own dreams with her, contact [email protected], or find out more about her at ExperientialDreamwork.com.

The complete KSQD Dream Journal podcast page is found here.

You can also check out The Dream Journal on the following podcast platforms:  Rate it, review it, subscribe and tell your friends.

Apple Podcasts

Google Play

Stitcher 

Spotify

Being with the dying challenges us to be more fully ourselves and we can support our loved ones by listening to their experiences of dreams and visions. Jeanne starts out by sharing a dream premonition she had as a child which woke her up to the power of dreams. Jeanne describes how to tell the difference between dreams and hallucinations. We also talk about visitation dreams and grief dreams. All of these kinds of dreams can help the dying person’s family as well as the dying person themselves.

We touch into topics including Tibetan Dream Yoga, the hard problem of consciousness, awareness-based meditation, reconciliation with our beloved deceased and the soul. We take a last minute call from Amanda who asks about the dreams of people with Alzheimer’s.

Bio: Jeanne Van Bronkhorst is a non-fiction writer on dreams and end-of-life care. She has graduate degrees in psychology and social work, and has worked with people facing life-threatening illness for more than twenty years as a hospice social worker, grief counselor, and now as a volunteer. She is the author of Dreams at the Threshold: Guidance, Comfort and Healing at the End of Life (Llewellyn 2015), and Premonitions in Daily Life (Llewellyn 2013). She is working on a new book about the challenge of saying goodbye to someone we love, and what can help us speak from our hearts.

She has always been a strong dreamer and her early lucid, precognitive, and mutual dreams led her to psychology and then end-of-life care. Now she writes books about end-of-life care and dreams, and volunteers at a children’s hospice, where she also teaches volunteers and staff about dreams. She lives in Toronto with her partner of 35 years and is on the Board of Directors for the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

Contact Jeanne through her webpage: www.JeanneVanBronkhorst.com

We play clips from the following two guest-selected songs: Erik Satie: Gnossiennes -4. Lent and Erik Satie: Gnossiennes -2. Avec Étonnement

Live ambient music by Rick Kleffel.

Show aired on August 28, 2021.

The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM, streaming live at KSQD.org 10-11am Saturday mornings Pacific time.  Catch it live and call in with your dreams or questions at 831-900-5773 or at [email protected].

If you want to contact Katherine Bell with feedback, suggestions for future shows or to inquire about exploring your own dreams with her, contact [email protected], or find out more about her at ExperientialDreamwork.com.

The complete KSQD Dream Journal podcast page is found here.

You can also check out The Dream Journal on the following podcast platforms:  Rate it, review it, subscribe and tell your friends.

Apple Podcasts

Google Play

Stitcher 

We explore the dynamic of unethical persuasion especially in the context of dreams. Sharing a dream is a vulnerable act. How do we support each other in owning our own dream experiences without unduly influencing each other? Today we talk with Gerette Buglion about her new book, An Everyday Cult. Gerette is passionate about promoting ethical forms of self-discovery.

We talk about gentle ways of exploring dreams together and about what red flags to look out for around choosing a practitioner. Gerette shares some of her experiences about how her life was upended through a cult whose spiritual center involved manipulative dream analysis.

We talk about Gerette’s current work in the cult survivor movement and her part in the creation of the #Igotout movement in which people who have escaped from cults are encouraged to share their stories. We finish by talking about NXIVM and QAnon and the Unification Church (aka the Moonies).

Gerette hosts a podcast called Everyday Cults, Everyday People. You can also learn more about cults and get help through organizations including the International Cultic Studies Association. She also hosts a writing class called “Writing to Reckon”.

Bio: Gerette Buglion B.A. Elementary Education and Special Education, was born on Long Island NY and migrated north, eventually landing in Vermont. Her work and passions merged in caring for others as an elementary school teacher, special educator, house parent for people with special needs, a hiking guide and business owner. Her greatest accomplishments include parenting two exceptional young adults, marrying an extraordinarily understanding man and escaping from what she calls ‘an everyday cult’.

Also the title of her memoir, An Everyday Cult shows how an innocent quest for meaning was hijacked by a teacher who recognized Gerette’s thirst for spiritual knowledge, awakening insight – while simultaneously eroding her capacity for critical thinking. In her book, she shows readers how a mind and psyche can be compromised by a controlling leader—using techniques that fly under the radar of human awareness—and implores readers to wake up to these ever-present abuses of power.

Her current work in Cult Recovery and Education arises from her dedication to helping others navigate and avoid complex power systems found in controlling groups the world over. Gerette has been a regular presenter at the annual conference for ICSA, the International Cultic Studies Association since 2015. Her signature writing course called, ‘Writing to Reckon’ offers a safe space for cult survivors to share their story through written word. She works as a consultant and educator in cult dynamics for individuals, families and organizations of all kinds and is a founding collaborator of the #iGotOut movement, whose sole mission is to encourage people who have experienced cultic abuse to tell their stories to help steer society towards a new day where abuse of power is not tolerated.

She is especially excited to be a guest on The Dream Journal since the cult she was involved with for 18 years used dream analysis as a controlling technique. Her cult recovery process over the last seven years has included creating new and gentler ways of exploring dreams which continue to inform, support and inspire her. Gerette is passionate about promoting ethical forms of self-discovery.

You can contact her at her webpages:

GeretteBuglion.com

Igotout.org

And you can

Do you record even your shortest dream fragments? We’ll you should! We talk today with “Queen of the Snippets” Debbie Spector Weisman. We start off talking about the one-word snippet that changed her life. Debbie was late to dreams, discovering her interest in her 50s.

We speak about her experience of how she learned to find her own unvoiced confidence through her dreams. She recommends incubating dreams to help us identify our self-limiting beliefs. Debbie is the host of the long-running podcast Dream Power Radio. I appeared on her podcast recently talking about the power of good dreams. You can find the show here.

We take a call from Bob who called from Capitola after a paddleboard session. Bob shared a dream that disturbed him about making love to his ex-wife then seeing her pregnant belly with the face of their baby smiling through at him. We explored this dream in the context of our feelings of connection and the idea that something new might be getting ready to “be born” in him both in terms of relationship and perhaps spiritually as well.

Bio: Using the proven power of dreamwork to reveal Unvoiced Confidence has been the multi-year study of Debbie Spector Weisman. She is committed to helping others find their voice through her private “The Dream Coach” programs and books. Her acclaimed podcast Dream Power Radio and TV show The Dream Power Show have reached thousands where she instructs on how to understand and use dreams for greater self-awareness and finding hidden answers to unsolved problems.

Her webpage is thedreamcoach.net

We play clips from the following two guest-selected songs: Feels So Good by Chuck Mangione and I Guess I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times by The Beach Boys

Live ambient music by Rick Kleffel.

Show aired on August 14, 2021.

The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM, streaming live at KSQD.org 10-11am Saturday mornings Pacific time.  Catch it live and call in with your dreams or questions at 831-900-5773 or at [email protected].

If you want to contact Katherine Bell with feedback, suggestions for future shows or to inquire about exploring your own dreams with her, contact [email protected], or find out more about her at ExperientialDreamwork.com.

The complete KSQD Dream Journal podcast page is found here.

You can also check out The Dream Journal on the following podcast platforms:  Rate it, review it, subscribe and tell your friends.

Apple Podcasts

Google Play

Stitcher 

Spotify

I celebrate my first in-person episode of the Dream Journal with my dear friend Linda Mastrangelo. Linda was also one of my first guests from June of 2019 when this show was just a baby, and her first show was the first ever that I released as a podcast.

Today in a totally new conversation, we talk about some examples of dreams that Linda has had in which place plays a pivotal role. She starts by talking about the dream that inspired the name of her webpage LightningTreeTherapy.com and her relationship to the tree. In another dream, Linda wakes three nights in a row with the redwood trees speaking to her, and in a third she hears the voice of Mary Bennett, a pioneer time chanteuse, who would sing in the communities that sprang up around the Santa Cruz silver mines. We go on to talk about how the land can speak to us about our trauma, about our ancestry and about our possible past lives.

We receive an email from Annie who sends us two dreams to discuss which bring up issues of  imposter syndrome, of having to pretend we know what we are doing when we actually need help as well as how we all frequently hide and have a hard time standing up for our own needs.

We then talk with Linda about her new role at the Institute for Dream Studies and about what programs the IDS offers for both practitioners and for dream enthusiasts. We end with the idea of co-creating a new (fourth!) Festival of Dreams in Santa Cruz for either 2022 or 2023.

BIO: Linda Mastrangelo, MA, LMFT is the new executive director at the Institute for Dream Studies and a psychotherapist with a private practice in the San Francisco Bay area specializing in bereavement and dreamwork. Linda has presented her work internationally and has written for numerous publications including The Shift Network, GoodTherapy, SUFI, Immanence, and as a contributor for the books Sleep Monsters and Superheroes and Dreams That Change Our Lives. Linda also serves on the Board of Directors for the International Association for the Study of Dreams and is a graduate professor at the school of Consciousness & Transformative Studies at John F. Kennedy University.

Websites:

LightningTreeTherapy.com

Books:

We play clips from the following two guest-selected songs:

BECK: Dreams and

BEATLES: Tomorrow Never Knows

Live ambient music by Rick Kleffel.

Show aired on August 7, 2021.

The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM, streaming live at KSQD.org 10-11am Saturday mornings Pacific time.  Catch it live and call in with your dreams or questions at 831-900-5773 or at [email protected].

If you want to contact Katherine Bell with feedback, suggestions for future shows or to inquire about exploring your own dreams with her, contact [email protected], or find out more about her at ExperientialDreamwork.com.

The complete KSQD Dream Journal podcast page is found here.

You can also check out The Dream Journal on the following podcast platforms:  Rate it, review it, subscribe and tell your friends.

Apple Podcasts

Olivia Shiller found that certain commonly experienced dream phenomena have no words to describe them so she decided to create words with the help of her close friends to help us talk about these situations. For example, the word Amoria is defined “An intimate relationship with a dream character who is unknown in waking life.” This dictionary is online at her webpage OliviaShiller.com and is ongoing.

We also speak about how dreams deepen relationships when we share them: no interpretation required. Olivia compares the relatively anonymous kind of relationships that spring up around dreams to the more intimate relationships that arise from sharing dreams with family members and housemates. She describes how dream-sharing deepens so many moments in our life.

We also talk about Olivia’s ideas around how dream-sharing keeps us aware of the liminality of existence, reminding us of the dreaminess of waking life as well as the reality of our dreaming lives.

We take an email from Kendall who asks Olivia to say more about the care aspect of their thesis. Olivia talks about interdependency, vulnerability and presence that is focused on the “tiny everyday moments” of life that add up to be the parts of our lives that make life worth living.

Olivia says that “making dreamsense means sitting with contradictions, resisting singular interpretations, embracing mutual transformation, and acknowledging the limits of language.”

In the final segment, we take a call from Chris from Felton who describes the phenomenon in which a recurring unpleasant theme resolves into something more better. Together we come up with the word “relitement” such as “I was so relieved that my dream finally relited last night.” If you want to contribute your own word to the dictionary, do contact Olivia.

The three books that Olivia shares are:

Bio. Olivia Shiller has been collecting dreams for as long as she can remember. She is a recent graduate from Lewis & Clark College, where she received her BA in Sociology and Anthropology. Her honors thesis focused on the relationships made inside of dreams and the types of care produced through sharing them. She is particularly interested in the transformative potential of embracing the liminal qualities of dreams in waking life.

A lover of language, a large portion of Olivia’s thesis involved the creation of a “Dream Dictionary.” Unlike many online dictionaries that are centered around defining dream symbols and archetypes, this one provides a vocabulary for experiences that follow “dream logic,” or the type of sense-making that is understood in dreams but is hard to translate retrospectively.

You can get in touch with Olivia through her webpage OliviaShiller.com or at her email olivia.shiller at gmail.com

We play clips from two guest-selected songs:

Strange Attraction by The Cure and

Isabella of Castile by STRFKR.

Live ambient music by Rick Kleffel.

Show aired on July 31, 2021.

The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM, streaming live at KSQD.org 10-11am Saturday mornings Pacific time.  Catch it live and call in with your dreams or questions at 831-900-5773 or at [email protected].

If you want to contact Katherine Bell with feedback, suggestions for future shows or

Barbara Condron speaks with Katherine about her journey through her father’s dementia and death and the dreams: both his and hers, that guided her through the process. We speak about human mythology in the modern age, the idea of “neither, either, both” and about what silence means to us as humans. We then speak about the School of Metaphysics and the language of the mind. Barbara speaks about children’s dreams and how to speak to them about the dreams. She also recommends that parents give their kids the gift of listening to and recording their dreams in a journal that they can receive once they are old enough to record them for themselves.

We take a call from local astrologer Esther Frances who has words of appreciation for us about the wisdom that we were sharing. After the caller, Barbara speaks about Amy Hardie and her film The Edge of Dreaming (links below) and about how what we are going through in the world right now is a birth: messy but transformational. Barbara ends by reading the passage she was reading for her father during the moments of his last breath which comes from The Nectar of Self Awareness by Jnaneshwar.

BIO: Barbara Condron is a Renaissance Woman in changing times. Author. Artist. Composer. Dreamtime Journalist. Peace Mentor. Polymath. Barbara became serious about dreaming when she awoke at age 6 in a nightmare about her father. That dream connected with her father’s dementia dreaming 60 years later. As head of Mind Linguistics at the College of Metaphysics in the US, Barbara translated 25,000 dreams for people in 38 countries. She’ll be sharing what she has learned about Self awareness, the importance of public myths, and crossing over from one life into the next.

Contact Barbara at the following links:

MasterLiving.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barbara.condron.5832

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bg.condron/

YouTube: Master Living

After I graduated university, I read a book called DREAMS: YOUR MAGIC MIRROR. It was published in 1974. The author, Elsie Sechrist based the book on readings from Edgar Cayce, who she knew personally. It was a quantum leap in my quest to understand dreamtime because it gave me insight into how thinking occurs beyond the accepted boundaries of human thought. – Barbara Condron

And here is some art that Barbara made around her dad’s passing. The first is titled Dad in Valhalla and the second Underwater.

Barbara mentions the work of Amy Hardie. Here are some links to a trailer about her film The Edge of Dreaming and some commentary on it:

‘The Edge of Dreaming’ Community Screenings at Schools of Metaphysics Next Week

Finally here is the link to a video Barbara created to honor those last moments with her dad. The Nectar of Self Awareness by Jnaneshwar. It is a romantic notion, fulfilled in sleep, death, dreams.

We play clips from two guest-selected songs: Sound of Silence by Disturbed and Silent House by The Dixie Chicks

Live ambient music by Rick Kleffel.

Show aired on July 24, 2021.</

We start by talking about how Bambi first found her love for the natural world, a love that shows up throughout her approach to dreams as wild animals that we can track to learn more about. We then go into some of her current dream work involving exploring themes about gold, and she shares with us some of the ways that she is tracking these dreams rather than trying to interpret them as she recommends.

Dream Tracking is based on four things, engaging your curiosity, exploring your emotions, following the dream tracks and honoring the dream, and Bambi give us examples around each of these steps. We then touch into how dreams help us find and follow our moral compass.

We take a call from Lucille from Cambria who describes a collage she has been working on and the insights she has been gaining from that especially around issues of community. Our conversation expands to talking about finding community, creating community and recognizing the community we already have. We also talk about dream groups, gratitude practices and the law of attraction. We end by talking about Bambi’s vision of Dream Inspired Advocacy.

Bio: Bambi Corso-Steinmeyer is the author of her new book “DreamTracking: Track Your Dreams and Transform Your Life”. In this book, she shares over twenty-five examples of actual dreams illustrating how dream images often leave “tracks” that you can follow by journaling your dreams and looking for patterns and repeating dream imagery. Bambi serves on the Southern California Regional Committee of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, and spent nine years as a review editor for, and contributor to, the Dream Network Journal. Bambi is an avid lover of animals, the earth and nature and uses dreams as opportunities to practice what she calls Dream-Inspired Advocacy as discussed in her book. She lives in Thousand Oaks, CA with her husband Bill and their cat Nanook.

You can visit her website at www.bambicorso.com

http://www.facebook.com/dreamtracking

http://www.youtube.com/bambicorso

http://www.linkedin.com/in/bambicorso

We play clips from two guest-selected songs: “Silent Lucidity” by Queensryche and “I’m Only Human” performed by Diana Ankudinova.

Live ambient music by Rick Kleffel.

Show aired on July 17, 2021.

The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM, streaming live at KSQD.org 10-11am Saturday mornings Pacific time.  Catch it live and call in with your dreams or questions at 831-900-5773 or at [email protected].

If you want to contact Katherine Bell with feedback, suggestions for future shows or to inquire about exploring your own dreams with her, contact [email protected], or find out more about her at

We get a look under at what dreams are lurking under the jaunty turban of the Swami. Steve starts by sharing three dreams that were transformational for him as he made his way through life to author and fulltime inspirational comedian. We mull over whether dreams are the causes of our deep personal changes or whether they reflect changes that already happening for us. We also talk about how dreams, near death experiences and Steve’s experiences of hearing voices not attached to humans all provide evidence for the ancient spiritual understanding that life is a dream. We get off onto a conversation about how to meet people from a place of abundance rather than from neediness.

We get an email during the show from Laurel who knew Steve back in the late 1970s. We then talk about Steve’s work with cellular biologist Bruce Lipton in their book called Spontaneous Evolution and about the way forward in this highly divided world in which we are invited to “wake up, wise up, grow up and show up”. Steve will be covering this and other entertaining and enlightening topics in his new podcast Front And Center: Writing Our New Story Together. The podcast is currently available on locals.com

Look for a live zoom event with Steve Bhaerman and Bruce Lipton on Wednesday, July 14 called Conscious Evolution and the Great Upwising. You can find the link here.

Bio: Steve Bhaerman is a writer, author and humorist, who’s spent the past 35 years writing and performing in the guise of cosmic comic Swami Beyondananda. Swami’s comedy has been described both as “comedy disguised as wisdom” and “wisdom disguised as comedy.” Noted author Marianne Williamson has called Steve / Swami “the Mark Twain of our times.” Prior to launching his career as the Swami, Steve was an educator, author and publisher. He is co-author with Bruce Lipton the book Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future and a Way to Get There from Here and is co-hosting a new podcast called Front And Center: Writing Our New Story Together, which offers an alternative to the noise and static currently drowning out sane discourse in the form of fun, laughter, constructive conversation and insight.

You can learn more about Steve Bhaerman at the following web pages:

WakeUpLaughing.com

We play clips from two guest-selected songs:

Johnny Appleseed by Tingstad and Rumbel and The Ark and The Dove by the same artist.

Live ambient music by Rick Kleffel.

Show aired on July 10, 2021.

The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM, streaming live at KSQD.org 10-11am Saturday mornings Pacific time.  Catch it live and call in with your dreams or questions at 831-900-5773 or at [email protected].

If you want to contact Katherine Bell with feedback, suggestions for future shows or to inquire about exploring your own dreams with her, contact [email protected], or find out more about her at ExperientialDreamwork.com.

The complete KSQD Dream Journal podcast page is found here.

You can also check out The Dream Journal on the following podcast platforms:  Rate it, review it, subscribe and tell your friends.

Apple Podcasts