Waking Dreams

1 day workshop – October 9, 2021
10am – 4pm (via Zoom

Cost Olive Branch Volunteers £30

Outside Organisation £45

Email: traininggroup@theolivebranch.org.uk

Alan is a psychotherapist and supervisor in private practice. He has been a core trainer at the Psychosynthesis Trust since 2011 and currently teaches on the Essentials, Foundation and Counselling Diploma programmes.

Key subjects taught include: guided imagery, creativity, meditation and the will. In his teaching and therapy practice he takes inspiration from the emphasis on imagination within Psychosynthesis and Jungian approaches.

His MA dissertation ‘The Imagination Imagined’ explored how different ways of thinking and talking about imagination actively shape imaginative experience.

The Olive Branch Training Team are very excited to run this one day Waking Dreams workshop led by Alan Frater.

This workshop introduces an experiential and non-interpretative approach to the practice of waking dreams (also known as ‘active imagination’ and ‘guided imagery’) in counselling and psychotherapy.

In a waking dream we inhabit the dreamworld with an awareness of doing so – as sometimes happens upon waking from sleep when the dreamworld continues to feel present alongside an awareness of lying-in bed – the experience of which allows us to become aware of not just the content of what we imagine, but also the process of how we imagine.

Based upon the book of the same name, the workshop goes beyond a standard therapeutic presentation to emphasise the healing and transformative power of imagination in its own right, rather than merely as a means to rational insight.

The on-line format using Zoom will be a mix of theoretical presentation, case study discussion and supported practicum group work to cultivate waking dream skills.