PROGRAM DESCRIPTION:

This program is rooted in the understanding that we have the capacity within ourselves to come back to the depths of who we are. To heal our own splits and to heal our separation from our own relationship to deeper consciousness. Somewhere within us we have our own knowing of the way home – to know love, joy and grace again.

Yet there are also sometimes overwhelming challenges that we face in that process.

After some 40 years now, of consciousness and healing work, I have come to believe that there are three main components necessary in order for consciousness and healing work to be meaningful.

 

The Trauma Cycle

Trauma is a phenomenon that deeply affects our entire culture and therefore affects each of us in ways that we are just beginning to understand.

There is an extraordinary amount of work and research happening right now around the issue of trauma. And there is still a vast level of misunderstanding of the broader trauma cycle.

The trauma cycle is really part of our bodies most extraordinary evolutionary capacities.

It is a cycle that allows us to survive the moments when the sensitivity of our body and psyche are overwhelmed – by either a lack of met needs or assaulted by the abuse that is so prevalent within our culture.

Most of what we refer to as trauma in our culture is actually a reference to trauma that has not been allowed to complete the trauma cycle.

The result of this unfinished process is that there is a level of dissociative trauma that has become embedded within our culture. This often undermines all of our potential for healing and for deeper consciousness. Even worse it allows the abuses of power within our culture to all to often go unchecked.

In order to do this work in the face of trauma culture, we need a much deeper understanding of the trauma cycle.

We also need a way to look at how this culture of trauma has affected each of us personally. Dreams have an extraordinary capacity to not only show us this but also to show us the way to come back into ourselves.

 

Dreams

One of the most extraordinary things about dreams is that they help us to see ourselves for who we really are and not for who we have come to think we are.

Dreams reflect our inner truth in a way that is absolutely unique.

They mirror back to us any ways that we have disconnected from the depths of who we are, in order to survive and manage in this traumatized world that we live in. And they mirror back parts of us that we have forgotten. They show us the brilliance and beauty of who we can become, as we shed the layers of worldly stories that we have internalized in order to cope with the harshness of this world.

They help us to simply remember who we are.

Dreams confound the waking mind because the waking mind lives in the consciousness of the world and not the consciousness of the depths.

Dreams touch into a consciousness that is not so affected by the vagaries and abuses of this world. They are our own access point to a lineage that remembers a way of being that is anchored in a kind of primalcy and grace that is lost to most of modern society.

They open a level of depth work that can be done in a one on one setting but in many ways calls out for greater support. Calls out to our innate need for each other.

 

Community

There is a lot of extraordinary work that can be done in the realm of healing and consciousness work on our own or in a professional setting.

But ultimately we need each other.

We need each other to integrate and to sustain the work we do – particularly when we touch the depths of our own separation and we open to depths of love.

Part of the power of the trauma cycle is that the dissociative process gives us the capacity to find our way home. Home to those who can hold us while we literally come back into ourselves. But as our communities have become split themselves, we have lost access to the power that community can hold for us to heal and to open our heart.

This program cannot entirely replace that loss of community and yet we can aspire to begin to recreate that possibility for each other to the extent possible.

 

The Next Three Months

The next three months will be an exploration of building community.

We will learn together what it means to understand the trauma cycle for ourselves. We will take the incredible progress that is being made in the realm of trauma research and apply it on a practical, personal and spiritual level.

We will work with dreams with this understanding, to help us to see the ways that we have lost connection with deeper aspects of ourselves. And to explore the ways that dreams can help show us how to reclaim these parts.

 

We will do this all through a 3 month intensive combination of offerings:

• We will have twice a month classes where we teach and learn about the trauma cycle. These classes will be a combination of teaching time and sharing of our own experience. In all that we do, our intention will be to make space for this to go beyond a theoretical understanding and instead to become a community of learners working together and sharing our own process.
• We will have twice a month Dream Gatherings with the specific intention of touching into dream moments, to help us each to go deeper into our own healing process and to explore our own relationship to consciousness. These gatherings and the dream process we use will be facilitated in the tradition of Embodied Dreamwork. There will also be 4 part prerecorded video course also available to assist you in the process of exploring your own dreams
• We will have a once a month class related to Dreams and Creative Expression taught by Sue Scavo. It has always been an enormous part of our dreamwork process to make space for our creative self to find voice and to express that in this world. It is also an enormous part of coming out of trauma and back into the fullness of who we are. Sue is a brilliant teacher in this regard and I am thrilled at being able to include this in the work we are doing together. 
• We will have an Email Listserve to share and to witness each other’s process. I cannot say enough how powerful a part of this community building process this listserve can be. We have tried using Facebook to share but there is something about the energy of being on Facebook that has never come close to the power of these listserves when we have used them. They allow us each to have avaialble the possibility of a daily reminder that we are not alone. A daily possibility to find our own voice. 

 

If any of this touches you, then I invite you to join us in this exploration. For my own part I am very excited to be in this learning process with all of you!

Sincerely, with much gratitude and respect,
Bill St.Cyr

 

Pricing is variable dependent on ability to pay. We do this for two reasons:

• First, simply because we want to be sensitive about people’s capacity to pay. Economic inequality is a part of the trauma that is built into this culture and while this does not resolve that, it is our way of trying to have a part in not constantly recreating that inequality of access to resources. 
• Secondly, because our intention here is to build community and the pricing based on ability to pay is part of our contribution to that community building process.

Pricing Levels are on sign up page.

REGISTRATION WILL REMAIN OPEN THROUGH EARLY NOVEMBER. DO NOT WORRY IF YOU MISS SOME OF THE FIRST CLASSES. YOU WILL RECEIVE AUDIO RECORDINGS OF THOSE CLASSES. ONE WAY OR ANOTHER WE WILL MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU!

PROGRAM DATES AND TIMES:

November

• Dream Gathering – Saturday Nov 3, 2018, 10:30 am to noon eastern
• Class – Wednesday, Nov 7, 2018, 11am – 12:30pm eastern
• Class Wednesday, Nov 14, 2018, 11am – 12:30pm eastern
• Dream Gathering – Saturday Nov 17, 2018, 10:30 am to noon eastern
• Dream Gathering Wednesday, Nov 21, 2018, 11am – 12:30pm eastern
• Creative Expression – Wednesday, Nov 28, 2018, Noon – 1:30pm eastern

December

• Class – Wednesday, Dec 5, 2018, 11am – 12:30pm eastern
• Creative Expression – Wednesday, Dec 12, 2018, Noon – 1:30pm eastern 
• Dream Gathering – Saturday Dec 15, 2018, 10:30 am to noon eastern
• Class – Wednesday, Dec 19, 2018, 11am – 12:30pm eastern
• Dream Gathering – Saturday Dec 22, 2018, 10:30 am to noon eastern

January

• Dream Gathering – Wednesday, Jan 2, 2019, 11am – 12:30pm eastern
• Dream Gathering – Saturday Jan 5, 2018, 10:30 am to noon eastern
• Creative Expression – Wednesday, Jan 9, 2018, Noon – 1:30pm eastern 
• Closing Class – Wednesday, Jan 16, 2019, 11am – 12:30pm eastern

ALL CLASSES WILL BE BE RECORDED FOR YOU ALSO. 

Pricing is Variable Dependent on Ability to Pay – Pricing Levels are on sign up page.