Praise!

Admittedly, I am a movie nerd... to tell the truth, I am a book nerd too.  I like to watch a movie and then watch it again with the director's notes.  Then I look at the deleted scenes and watch the movie a third consecutive time with gained insight.  With books, I like to read the acknowledgements, author's notes and anything else the publishers feel like putting in the book.  And before even reading a book I always take a look at what others have to say about them in the "praise" section on the back of the book.

I'd like to take a moment to reach deep into my imaginal realm and pretend that I am world renowned, and share with my readership (wherever you may be in the stratosphere) a little bit of real life "praise", for my work; not from the New York Times or San Fransisco Chronicle, but from a small group of Master's students from Dr. Chibarro's Play Therapy class at the University of West GA:

"What a wonderful presentation! I learned how to apply drama therapy in use with adult clients, which I had never contemplated.  I particularly appreciated the experiential approach that was used with your visit.  Allowing the class to participate in work of this nature made it far more practical and plausible.  Had I not participated in this type of therapy, I would not have believed in the validity of its effectiveness".

"I loved your calm easy-going and fun personality.  I think this is a gift you have and only adds to your ability to help clients with drama therapy.  I had fun doing all the hands on activities - especially the name introduction.  I even tried to use it in my class and the students loved it!"

"You did a great job when you came to our class.  I've been in school for what seems like forever and I had never done any of the activities you had us do!"

"The activities that we did were amazing! It can even make a shy, reserved person open up while being in therapy...it was a different and exciting way to show others' points of views...Karimah had a great personality! She definitely seems like she is great at what she does! Thank you for the experience!"

"I talked more during our Drama class than any other.  Getting up and acting silly with everyone helped me with letting my guard down.  I can definitely see how a client could have a similar reaction. The living statue at the end was very meaningful and moving.  I greatly enjoyed the techniques and the opportunity to play".

"The experience and activities you shared were so helpful! I hope to be as passionate for my future career as you are for yours.  I will surely use the ideas you shared and what I learned about myself to help become a better counselor".

Permission, Playfulness and Projections

O, I attempted to invite playfulness into my day today, and the most I was able to muster was changing my profile picture on facebook.  My body is weary, and yet my mind still teems with excitement.  I am  still flying high off of the energy generated from the dream healing intensive last Sunday.  And yet, I must acknowledge that there were a few moments when I felt some trepidation.  There is something about working with dreams... people really own their dreams and are completely identified with them - sometimes overidentified... it is sometimes difficult to see the dreamscape as a mere projection, perhaps because the dream itself leaves such an indelible imprint on the psyche and influences emotions so deeply that it can be hard to play - to see it displayed as something outside of oneself.  Which can also be a bit complicated as the dream exists within your own mind.  It was generated from you, by you and for you.  And so, in many respects, it is you.  And it is also a story.  And it is also information.  And it is also an event.  And all of these things we have Divine permission to play with.  And we did.  We played and we laughed and we supported one another.  Even when it was scary and hard and strange.

We flew in the face of Mercury AND Daylight Savings Time and we were playful, insightful, intuitive and imaginative.  I was able to be a full participant myself, which was fun, but presented its own set of challenges.  I was reminded of why I typically don't try and fill the roles of participant/observer/facilitator as it is nearly impossible to do them all well.  Lesson learned.  I believe that I would like to do this again in November. I like doing it at transitional points - Spring and Fall.  My mother's birth month and my birth month.  That feels good and right and substantive.   The feedback I recieved was great and I felt very satisfied and fulfilled by the day's end. 

Gratitude for a Successful Dream Healing Intensive!!!

Dreamsapes and the Divine

As I contemplate the imminent dream healing intensive, I feel it fitting to include some of my personal philosophies on dreams and dreaming.  I believe that dreams provide some of the most powerful, creative imagery for living a fulfilled life.  I came to appreciate dreaming when I was five after being plagued by recurrent nightmares.  My mother was my first Shaman.  She taught me how to lucidly dream.  Since then I have paid close attention to my dreams.  I have joined dream groups, taken dream classes, read dream books.  I have kept a dream journal for most of my life and there are dreams that I have had many years ago whose images have stayed with me and on some level continue to guide and shape my life choices.  I receive important messages from my dreamscapes and have come to respect rather than fear them. 

Over the  past 15 years I have become a huge fan of Jeremy Taylor, an expert on dreaming, who writes: "...dreams always come to bring us closer to a deeper experience of the Divine".  And I acknowledge that with my entire being.  He also says that dreams always come in the service of health and wholeness, "...and they always start wherever the sense of transcendent presence is injured or broken... in the name of wholeness, my dreams will respond to my desire to become more conscious of the divine energies at work and play in my life by taking me directly to my unresolved emotional dramas that stand between me and the deeper sense of archetypal self and cosmos". (Excerpted from Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill, 1992. Warner Books, New York, NY.)  Clearly there are some dreamscapes that present themselves as a reminder that I have hit a "sweet spot" so to speak.  These are dreams where I fly or, as my uncle tells it, he "runs like the wind".  These dreams come to remind us that freedom is our birthright!  These types of dreams always leave me feeling closer to the Spirit world than I ever have in waking life.

There seems to me to be no greater purpose in life than working through my own issues in order to move closer to the Divine - therefore moving me closer to the collective - all of which I am a part - and then extending that to sharing it with others so that they may themselves have the same experience, thus evolving the very nature of archetypes.  Applying the expressive arts to working with dreamscapes seems to be a natural part of the evolutionary process in the sense that creative expression is organic, and emergent.  It is how we as a species have evolved - it is how we build relationships with others.  It is how we build relationship with ourselves. 

I am told that Mercury goes into retrograde tomorrow, and what that tends to mean is that life becomes more difficult for me and a few of my friends until Mercury gets back on course.  In doing a bit of research on Mercury, I discovered that the greco-roman god Mercury carried Morpheus' dreams from the valley of Somnus to sleeping humans.  So perhaps this day is meant to celebrate Mercury in deepest gratitude for the gift of dreams. 

I am hopeful that this offering tomorrow is received by all with the intention which I set many years ago and that is to share what I know of expressive dream work with others so that they can apply it themselves - anywhere , anytime.  I am hopeful that the spirit of compassion, joy and connection sings through the work, that Mercury is pleased, and that we have lots and lots of fun!

Excitement Builds!!!

I have collected all of the materials for Sunday's Dream Healing Intensive and made the music playlist.  I am so excited I can hardly stand it!!!  I wish I could stay home tomorrow and just make art all day.  Sunday soon comes...

Another Thursday and All that Could Go Wrong

Thursday just happens to be my favorite day of the week.  I think I came to really know and understand this towards the middle of last year.  I don't think I was ever conscious of it before - didn't notice the patterns and shifts... but I tend to be "happier" on Thursdays than most other days.  More productive.  It is like Christmas Eve to me - pregnant with anticipation. 

Well, I can't say that today was necessarily my favorite Thursday of all Thursdays.  I awoke this moment ceased with terror!  It hit me that in THREE MONTHS I will be headed to Jordan, and in THREE DAYS I will be facilitating my Expressive Dream Healing Workshop - disconnected from any hospital, non-profit or entity.  At once it hit me that everything I have been saying I wanted for the last six years is right in the palm of my hands.  And I am afraid I will sabotage it. So I began to conceive of everything that could possibly go wrong. 

How they may not let me out of Jordan because my name is Karimah Lateefah.  How I may leave my passport or my wallet sitting on a chair in some random cafe in much the same way I did one of the last times I was in NYC (though much to my surprise everything was found exactly where I left it - unmolested).  How I may find myself scaling short buildings and running through random strangers' back yards and clotheslines because of some remnant of an Arab Spring uprising that has finally hit Amman.  That my translator will say the complete opposite of what I meant and I will have people angry and disgusted with me - making mental reminders of my face so that they can add me to their Most Wanted lists. That all of these wonderful things people have said about me and my work will mean nothing because I will get there and fall flat on my face.  That no one will show up for the dream workshop.  That people will show, but will "forget" to pay.  That they will be in search of a particular medium and I won't have it.  That I will run out of materials.  That they won't like the interventions.  That they will think I have been a fraud all of this time.  That they will look at me crazy when I say, "Now find your dream image in your body".  Or maybe they will just leave - or worse than that, stay, out of sympathy for me and my "effort".  That I will run out of steam, or get sick, or have an accident, or LOOSE MY MIND!!!!!!!

Yes, this was not my favorite Thursday of all Thursdays, but I still managed to remain productive, complete my groups, give feedback to interns, complete administrative tasks and gather some things together for my workshop.  And I did so without having an accident, or getting sick or loosing my mind.  I say this not because I believe there always needs to be a happy ending, but as a reminder that I am still here.  I am still on track and tomorrow is another day (sadly, however, it won't be another Thursday).

A Suprise Invitation: Jordan in June!!!

So, I got a call this afternoon from Susan Anderson, founder of the ArtReach Foundation.  She says to me, "well... I have a surprise invitation for you" and everything in me just sort of stopped.  Once the word "Jordan" came out of her mouth, everything else was just babel.  We had discussed Jordan before.  Three maybe four weeks of doing expressive therapy workshops for educators, refugees, caregivers, patients., etc... but it did not happen.  Things just did not line up.  Not to mention that it was right on the verge of "Arab Spring".  I was devestated.  I had been preparing.  I used "Jordan" as an opportunity to finally change my name.  I had been carrying my married name for years after my ex-husband and I had divorced for no good reason at all.  I was not holding onto something or avoiding something else.  I was just too lazy to do it (said the excuse maker).  So I took going to Jordan to get a new drivers license (and take a new picture for God's Sake!) and renew my passport.  I finally, officially, changed my name from Chambers back to my family name of Dillard.  I was starting to re-invent myself.  Starting to remember who I was as a human being and who I was professionally. My sister once left me a voice message saying that we must really love our names because we both referred to ourselves on our outgoing messages by our first AND last names.  And now it's KarimahDillard.com and karimahdillard.blogspot.com.  It really has been a reclamation of sorts.  A re-naming and re-claiming of myself. 

And now the opportunity to go to Jordan has presented itself again.  Jordan in June is now a reality.  Stay posted.

Light and Shadow

On invitation by Dr. Julie Chibarro, I taught a play therapy class the other day at the University of West Georgia.  I've taught this class for the past three years and am always amazed at the energy and thoughtfulness of her students.  I was pleasantly surprised that they were so willing to play, perform, tell stories and reflect on their own process. Every time I am introducing drama therapy to people who are relatively unfamiliar with the process, I have the same butterflies I have just before stepping on stage to deliver a performance.  Part of the excitement is not really ever knowing how your work will be received by your audience.  Part of the fear is not really ever knowing how your work will be received by your audience.  This is how the dual aspects of light and shadow function in reality.  The challenge is to not be stopped by either aspect.

While engaged in the storytelling portion of the class, the other night, it occurred to me that the story we were weaving had an undercurrent of professional uncertainty.  I had to remember how many times I, myself, have experienced professional uncertainty - especially living in a state where there is no reciprocity for creative arts therapists... how many times I have had to put on what felt like a magic show of sorts to prove the efficacy of this practice.  And now I seek to marginalize myself that much more by concentrating heavily on dreams!  (Am I a glutton for punishment or what?!)  If I were someplace like California or Arizona or New Mexico or even New York, doing expressive work alone would not be unusual - applying expressive work to dreams, a natural transition.  But in my home state of Georgia which as a whole tends to be more conservative than not, instead of writing my own ticket, some might say I am digging my professional grave.  And at the same time, I am so excited about this venture - so committed to its relevance and healing properties, that I can't think of anything else.  I am planning a dream intensive workshop for next Sunday and Sunday can't seem to get here fast enough!  It is going to be an amazing adventure, and I am so grateful to those who are willing to take this journey with me.  So, hold on tight and enjoy the ride!  I can't wait to share the insight.