Transforming Mental Health with Dreams

Dreaming and dreams are the most widely available mental health resources that most people don't know how to use. Learn to understand and work with your dreams to self-regulate and improve mental health and well-being with our Indigenous knowledge keepers and leading dream psychologists and dreamwork practitioners.

Modern neuroscience on rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, also known as dream sleep, has proven that dreaming consolidates memories and processes emotions. Modern psychology and wisdom traditions have long known that dreams provide a window into our subconscious thoughts and emotions, offering valuable insight into our innermost desires, fears, and unresolved issues.

By exploring and analyzing our dreams, we can gain a better understanding of ourselves and the underlying factors contributing to our mental health struggles. Working with dreams can help identify patterns or recurring themes in our dreams that may be indicative of deeper psychological issues. By bringing these issues to light, we can work towards resolving them and achieving a sense of emotional balance and wellbeing. Additionally, dreamwork can help people process difficult emotions and experiences in a safe and non-threatening environment.

Our event is designed to help everyone understand the connection between mental health and dreams and teach them how to analyze, interpret, and work with their dreams. We invite audience members to come dressed up as their favourite dream characters as a way to encourage dream sharing, which fosters deep understanding and authentic connections.

Our expert panel speakers include:

• Deirdre Barrett , Ph.D - author and Harvard psychology professor known for her research on dreams and evolutionary psychology. She has appeared on numerous major media platforms, including CBC, CNN, and the New York Times. She is the current president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD) and the editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Dreaming.
• Darcey Sedgwick - Indigenous knowledge keeper at Vancouver Women's Health Collective and mental health advocate with over twenty years of experience in the Downtown Eastside;
• Rhonda Russ, Ojibwe writer, storyteller, and jingle dress dancer. The jingle dress dance is a healing tradition that originated from recurring dreams of an Ojibwe medicine man in the 1900s;
• Leslie Ellis, Ph.D., RCC, psychotherapist, leading teacher of embodied dreamwork and author of A Clinician's Guide to Dream Therapy. She offers many training opportunities in embodied, experiential dreamwork and has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, with a specialization in somatic approaches. Her dissertation on using focusing-oriented therapy to treat PTSD for refugees with recurrent nightmares won the Ernest Hartmann Award from the International Association for the Study of Dreams.
• Bei Linda Tang, MBA & MA in Health Psychology, was a VWHC board member and Guided Dreaming facilitator. She is the author of Navigate Life with Dreams, a workshop presenter and the Western Canadian regional representative of the International Association for the Study of Dreams (IASD).

100% of the event proceeds will go towards funding free trauma and indigenous counselling services in the Downtown Eastside.

Location: SFU Djavad Mowafaghian Theatre at the Woodward Building, 149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC. It is wheelchair accessible. Please contact us if you need a wheelchair-accessible seat.

For those who can't join in person, a virtual watch party will be held the following Sunday, November 3. For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit Dream Heals.