Most of us have been taught that our dreams are the products of our own minds. But as anyone who has plumbed their depths can testify, there is a much greater mystery at work. We begin this course by reframing dreams as Nature, inclining us towards healing and belonging.

You’ll explore the root causes of forgetting your dreams, and learn how the psyche works to retrieve the lost, devalued, and neglected aspects of the Self. As you engage in this process of remembership, you realize you’re also restoring belonging to your life.

In this module you’ll:

• Learn how dreaming is nature, naturing through us in service to our wellbeing
• Reveal the underlying reasons you forget, dismiss, and even denigrate your dreams
• Discover how dreamwork can assuage your personal and collective feelings of loneliness and disconnection
• Engage in a courtship with your dreams as a potent practice for personal growth and connection
• Recognize longing as the sacred calling homeward

Unlike so many Indigenous cultures, we in the Western world have become disconnected from the Mythic Life. This loss contributes significantly to our personal and cultural loneliness. Even when we do work with our dreams, we are often taught an acquisitional approach, asking, “What does it mean for me?”

Courtship is the art of circling in closer to the mystery, making yourself approachable so you might learn what the dream loves, what it longs for, and then moving your life in response to that longing.

This week, you’ll be introduced to Toko-pa’s method for “Courting the Dream” and discover why this leads to a more enduring and fulfilling relationship with your symbolic life.

In this module, you’ll:

• Understand how your longing to belong comes out of your separation from the Mythic Life
• Discover how myth, symbols, and dreams can enhance your life
• Learn a more engaging alternative to traditional dream analysis
• Be introduced to Toko-pa’s 5 Keys for “Courting the Dream”

The body is the first gate of dreaming. Dreams are a biological imperative, and the emotions they inspire are somatic expressions. This is why in courting a dream, we need to do so with embodied presence.

This week, you’ll learn to listen to the communications of your body during dreamwork and allow its agreements and disagreements to guide your process. You’ll learn techniques for giving relevance to the invisible through dream journaling, somatic exploration, and walking in nature.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn about the biological function and necessity of dreams
• Explore ways to ground your presence and involve your body in dreamwork
• Practice an embodied method for recording your dreams in greater detail
• Participate in a somatic exploration of a dream
• Engage with nature on integrative walks to enhance dreamwork

Dreaming is our mother tongue… but throughout the ages, we’ve forgotten how to speak this symbolic language.

Dreams are made up of metaphors, archetypes, and symbolic motifs that occur in every different culture around the world. When we learn these patterns, we can better understand our own dreams and their archetypal significance, which rescues our lives from randomness and gives us a map to follow. (Bring a journal and recent dream to work with.)

In this module, you’ll:

• Recognize key elements in every dream and use that knowledge to make effective associations
• Learn how the structure and arc of a dream can put you in touch with its meaning
• Discuss universal themes and tips for stepping out of recurring patterns
• Learn how to engage your curiosity and follow the energy of a dream
• Circumnavigate the intellect to meet and tend to your animal heart

Many of us feel disconnected from each other, our ancestral roots, and even parts of ourselves. Throughout our lives, we are shaped by our consensus culture’s celebration of certain qualities, with more sensitive and creative traits often devalued, dismissed, or neglected. As a result, we become split off from those devalued parts of the Self, which can turn into shadow dreams, conflict in our relationships, and even illness in the body.

This week, you’ll learn how dark dreams are actually a validation of something that is ready to be healed.

In this module you’ll:

• Explore the origins of our alienation and how we became estranged from each other and ourselves
• Learn how to reframe nightmares and the so-called “negative emotions/images” as clusters of energy, striving to belong with us
• Discover how to approach a threatening dream to reveal its concealed medicine
• Witness and participate in a real-time demonstration of dreamwork

Dreams don’t always tell us which way to go, but ritual helps us live with that ambiguity. Once we have worked with a dream to reveal its teachings, it’s important that we take what we’ve learned and find a way to honor it in our waking lives.

This week, we’ll discuss ways to create ritual actions as a response to dreams to deepen our reciprocity with the holy in nature.

In this module, you’ll:

• Weave bridges from the wisdom of your dreams back to waking life
• Come to see dreamwork as a conversation with the holy in nature
• Understand that when you create ritual, a greater intelligence will meet you halfway
• Develop ritual tools and other methods for honoring your dreams

An incredible thing happens when we come together in dream-sharing community. We quickly realize that the pieces we are working out as individuals are arising not just for our personal healing, but to serve the larger ecosystem as well.

Dreams require us to come together with vulnerability and authenticity so that we can discover what the circle can teach us as a whole. This process introduces us to a new model of leadership that is deeply needed in the world today.

In this module, you’ll:

• Learn how to transform your fears and hesitations about joining groups so you can participate in community
• Discover how sharing dreams with others takes you into the heart of intimacy and belonging
• Discuss the role of dreaming and storytelling in creating a new culture
• Learn how to start and sustain your own dream circle

Through our many personal, cultural, and ancestral displacements, we’ve become distant from ourselves, alienated from each other, and disconnected from the natural world. Our dreams are the first place the alienated self will appear. Join Toko-pa as she explores the origins of our estrangement, how a diminished life can lead us into “false belonging,” and how coming back into relationship with the outcast self can create true belonging in our lives and in our world.

During this heart-opening session, you’ll discover:

• How alienation affects the choices we make as individuals and as a culture
• Why exile is a necessary initiation into true belonging
• That dreams bring us back into relationship with the refugee aspects of the self and the larger ecosystem in which we’re embedded

Susan Audrey holds a master’s degree in Depth Psychology. She is a dreamwork practitioner and guide whose precognitive dreams and miraculous connection with the sacred feminine archetype of the Black Madonna have made her a true believer in the power of dreaming to connect us with something greater than ourselves, deepen our trust in life, and grow our sense of belonging. Susan is also trained in therapeutic guided imagery, and is a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams.

Designed for the individual who has lost touch with, is feeling estranged from, or is having trouble remembering their dreams, the Dream Recovery Kit is a guide to help you recover your dream life. This kit contains helpful acknowledgments for overcoming your blocks to remembering your dreams, tips for dream recall, and exercises for deepening your practice, such as creating a dream altar, and dream incubation to petition your dreams for answers to your biggest questions.

In this rich booklet, you’ll receive an outline of Toko-pa’s 5-Key Process to Courting the Dream. In addition to this guidance for how to move through the dreamwork process (for yourself and others), you’ll receive an overview of the structure or dramatic arc of a dream, learn how to isolate its key elements, and discover the meaning behind some of our most common dream themes.

It can be bittersweet to participate in a temporary dream community, only to find yourself returned to daily life without anyone to share at that level of soulful intimacy. In this guide, Toko-pa offers her favorite tips for creating and sustaining a dream circle. You’ll learn how to facilitate a dream circle, including how to structure your time, how to give ethical feedback on a dream, and how to encourage participation and circular leadership.