I have had the distinct pleasure over the past few months of immersing myself in some wise and erudite books on dreams. Here, rising to the top of the pile, are two books that I consider essential to the serious study of dreams in history and practice.
The first is by Dr. Kelly Bulkeley, former president [...]
Phillip Zarrilli’s new book may have a title that only a theater critic could love, but the body of his work deserves to be known and practiced by a much wider audience—and in terms of this blog’s readership, I am referring to anybody involved in the expressive or healing arts, ministry, ceremony, or public speaking.
Psychophysical [...]
That dreams have been influential in many pivotal episodes in history is accepted as fact in some circles; in other circles it is considered nonsense. Yet for anyone bothering to dig into the archives, it becomes indisputable that many important figures over time and across disciplines have been guided by their nighttime dreams—and have changed [...]
That’s “the virtuous life,” for those of you like me who are not proficient in Spanish. The subject has been on my mind lately as I finish reading Brendan Myers’s recent book The Other Side of Virtue. It has taken me a long time, partly because it is a new subject for me. Paganism as [...]
The first ecstatic/musical/lucid dream I remember happened when I was about 15 or 16. At that time, I was the principal bassoonist for the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra, and my life was strung with a pattern of lessons, rehearsals, concerts, after-parties, and more rehearsals. It was a good life, a great orchestra, and our conductor [...]
This book, Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World Into Being, caught my eye a year ago in a local bookstore, so I requested a review copy from the publisher. Now, before I get into reviewing the book I need to say something about Hay House Publishers.
I both admire and am horrified by Hay [...]
One of the most profound spiritual experiences I ever had was during a guided meditation led by Andrew Harvey. I was taking a class from him on my way to earning a doctorate, and the instruction he gave us was quite simple but changed completely my orientation to Spirit.
Basically, we went on an inner journey [...]
As a dreamworker, I estimate that roughly 75% of my clients have their questions answered satisfactorily using the tools of dream interpretation. Another 25% have concerns that are not completely resolved by looking at the content of their dreams. These folks are usually coping with some kind of sleep disturbance, and need to know how to get a good night’s sleep so that they can remember more of their dreams.
The field of sleep medicine is growing as more people experience insomnia, chronic nightmares, sleep apnea, and other issues that interfere with their dreaming and overall healthy functioning. With these folks in mind, I have been reading up on ways to cultivate restorative sleep. Among the many websites I have traversed, the National Sleep Foundation has lots of informative articles and links to sleep centers across the country.
There are also some interesting books on the subject that have come out recently. Among them is one which on the surface seems completely unrelated, even frivolous, yet it contains some really valuable information on the ins and outs of getting good quality sleep.
When I was in college back in Santa Cruz in the 1980s, there was a women’s poetry collective known as Moonjuice that held poetry readings and self-published their own poetry anthologies. That is how I became acquainted with the wonderful Maude Meehan, whose book of poems Chipping Bone I loved. When I was looking for Ellen Bass’s poem Then Call It Swimming to post here last year, I found it in one of the Moonjuice anthologies still on my shelves.
A couple years later, the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society came out with their first book of erotic short stories. Around that same time, the Women’s Songbook Project in Berkeley published the anthology Out Loud: A Collection of New Songs By Women. If I tried to recall all the grassroots women’s publishing projects I have come across from that era to this, I could go on for pages. In fact, just a couple weeks ago a friend sent me an announcement for a new anthology of women writers she’d been published in.
If only I had all day to sit here and write about how my life has been influenced by just a handful of trips to Esalen. If only the stories were as interesting to everyone else as they are to me. Ah well, with great restraint I will spare you and focus here on the [...]
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