Sacred Dream Listening
Sacred Dream Listening is the name of the primary process Darby Christopher engages in for dream work. Sacred Dream Listening was born from a confluence of Dream Leadership Training at the Haden Institute, a process called Sacred Listening developed by Darby Christopher and Kendra Yates (which drew on the work of Eugene Gendlin, Robert Bosnak and Parker Palmer) and training in Dream Tending, pioneered and developed by Dr. Stephen Aizenstat.
When imagining how the process of engaging dreams through a sacred dream listening approach, the image of a traffic circle is useful. With 7 turn-off avenues or opportunities for exploration, including etymology, metaphor, the collective unconscious (amplification), embodied experience, association (personal experience), relationship and imagination.
While Sacred Dream Listening may go down any or all of these avenues (and they most often overlap), it is a particular way of working with dreams that emphasizes relationship with the images, story, movement and invitation of the dream. Through this sacred process we are invited into a gentle stretch — just the right amount — deepening our lives and communities in life-giving ways.