NEW YORK METRO FOCUSING
April 12, 2015
Meeting Notes

We are pleased to share with you meeting notes from the April 12 , 2015, meeting of New York Metro Focusing, on the topic of Focusing-Oriented Dreamwork.  Twenty-five participants attended.  Susan Deisroth opened the meeting, welcoming the facilitator, Leslie Ellis.  

Leslie drew on both her Jungian training and her study of Gendlin’s dreamwork.  She began by leading us in a “clearing a space” type of attunement, and then in allowing a sort of day dream to emerge in the cleared space. There was sharing about this in dyads.  This was followed by Leslie presenting material and answering questions.  She said that Gendlin believes that dreams are trying to bring forward movement in our lives.  To connect with this forward movement, Gendlin recommended finding the “help” in the dream.  This could be something young or an animal or something in nature. 

In response to a question about traumatic dreams and how to work with them without re-traumatizing the dreamer, Leslie recommended that the dreamer dream the dream onward.  Doing so often brought a shift and an end to recurring repetitive nightmares.  A second topic that brought up questions was the matter of allowing the dream to tell us something that we did not already know by using the practice of “bias control.”  Bias control is also similar to Jung’s theory that a function of dreams is to compensate for conscious attitudes that are unbalanced.  Bias control is to look for a place where the dreamer or his/her usual perspective disagrees with the dream, the part of the dream that the dreamer resists identifying with.  According to Leslie, this aspect of the dream can function like a good friend who points out our blind spot.  

The next segment of the program was breaking into groups of three or four, one person describing a dream, and the listeners asking follow-up questions based on suggestions that Leslie gave in a handout.  These questions included describing the setting of the dream, the characters, looking for the Help, and seeing where bias control might apply.  After the exercise, we re-formed a large group and several people shared about what the small group experience was like. 
 
Prepared by Diana Kirigin

SAVE THE DATES FOR 2015 NYMF MEETINGS
June 5, 2015                  Friday     6:30 - 9:00 p.m: Larry Hurst: Fresh Vibrations: Inviting a Felt Sense through Sound and Movement
September 27, 2015  Sunday    4:30   7:00 pm
December 6, 2015      Sunday    4:30   7:00 pm