Shamanic Dream Shifting

Before my visit to Woodloch, I had never heard of “Dream Shifting,” but the description was compelling enough to pique my interest: “Ancient cultures believed that the world is the way we dream it, and that everything we do, we dream it first. Using the sound of a drum or a rattle we’ll journey into the space between worlds to experience the power of dream shifting. We’ll meet a spirit guide and ask for information about our personal dream and the actions we need to take to fulfill our role as conscious dream shifters in the modern world.”

Filled with so many questions about my personal dream of becoming a writer one day, I embraced the opportunity to escape into an unfamiliar but intriguing means of meditation.

The instructor explains we are to lay in supine, covering our limbs under a towel for warmth. Two round meditation pillows are provided to support my head and under-knees respectively.  A smaller towel is to drape over my eyes to block out the light.  Before laying down, our instructor explains what we will soon hear. A single drum beating in various rhythms that will take us on a journey of self discovery, uncovering answers to the question we pose at the start. We will begin in a safe place in nature of our own design. The place we will return to at the end of our journey. She explains we may visit the lower realms: abstract, foundational places. . (one person had visited the color blue in the past), the upper realms: beyond the clouds, an ethereal place where one may reunite with the departed both known and unknown, or finally the middle realm: places seen or unseen on earth.  As we lay down she explains that she will not be speaking during our journey, instead she narrates our establishing moment in our safe place in nature. . .I imagine myself first in the front yard of my childhood home, but eventually this becomes the field behind that home. She calls on the spirit of earth fire water wood and wind, and I perceive the soft grass beneath me, the warm sun above me, the babbling creek through the woods in the distance and the breeze that was always there, just perfect for catching a kite. As her voice is traded out for the drums, I can’t help but to feel myself – my 10 yr old self, as my imagination would only entertain the figure of a childlike me- getting picked up by the wind. The drum beats remind me immediately of a heartbeat. Of life. As I enter the sky I expect I might get whisked up into the upper realms, but I never clear the clouds. Instead I traverse the neighborhood visiting the friends and places I have to thank for a happy childhood. It’s fuzzy here. I recall sleep breathing sounds of the man nearest my yoga mat, and how unsettling his easy relaxation was to me. I vaguely recall walking into an auditorium to warm applause -graduation perhaps?-, I recall the colors orange and blue and the energy of “The University.”  Things clear up with blurred intensity when the drum cadence changes. I find myself struggling slightly against a pressure from above. My heart begins to race. My head begins to jerk/twitch. And then the undulation begins. I am decidedly afloat on a current, meanwhile restrained by an intangible force. The face cloth, and face mask is all at once suffocating and it begins to occur to me that I am afloat but deep in the bowels of the vessel. . . I am on a slave ship. I am captive. I focus on the drum beats and shift up and out of my bondage, now on the water’s surface in a small uncovered lifeboat. The waters current more apparent than ever, I see light dancing through my closed eyelids. I am simultaneously afloat on the water, and still on a yoga mat in a Pennsylvania  resort. As the water calms I find myself overlooking, of all places, the grand hall of the Kennedy center. In all my journeying, I’m set aback by the stark absence of my family and friends of today. The view starts from above, and cranes in close to me, and what I perceive as Vincent. It’s a memory. July 2013 specifically, the first weekend out after having learned that I was with-child for the first time. The view zooms in tight on my abdomen as the drum beats speed up. Suddenly the tempo takes off and I’m ripped from the Kennedy center into a rewind whirlwind which snatches me right back to where I started, in the field. The drum halts and I’m dropped with a gentle thud onto the grass. A reverberation of the drum stop hastens me to “open my eyes” in the dream, and I take in the familiar scene. Finally as the finally drum pulse echoes I stand, and scurry home, not out of fear, but because home is where I was always meant to go.

Before the shift, I asked for answers about my book, and the journey affirmed everything I wanted to know. The focus is to be on me, but the heartbeat of my story is my children, my reason for writing in the first place. I wake up in tears, followed by gasping tearful shudders and sighs. “Wow, WOW!” is all I can manage to say to describe my experience.  For 30 minutes I found myself somewhere else entirely, escaping into myself on a plane between waking and dreaming that I never knew existed.  I highly recommend it.