Winter '08 Lab Reports
Participant responses to the Dreaming Ritual process
MINING THE DEPTHS OF THE DREAMING
by Sylvi Alli
The winter '08 session was my third dreaming ritual lab, not to say that the third time is the charm, for that is merely a saying, at best a hope.
This time in seemed like "getting down to work", somewhat akin to being part of a group of miners piling into the trolley car to be taken down to an honest day's, or in this case, night's work. Because of the large proportion of "newbies" in this lab there was more emphasis on physical mechanics and embodiment techniques. I experienced this as a valuable opportunity to get more specific - with intention, as well as with my commitment to physical execution. I also believe that the physical emphasis in the particular lab allowed us as a group to enter some rather deep places together, especially surprising given the number of people who were new to the paratheatre work.
In the early stages of working with our dream movements, Antero brought up the importance of distinguishing between "movement" and "activity". It turned out that one of the movements that I had chosen to work with, when examined more closely, was actually a combination of several movements that was heavily tied to the activity in the dream from which it appeared. After being encouraged to focus on simple, pure movement (the simpler the movement, the less the tendency to embellish it or stray), I was eventually able to recall five specific movements that I was able to combine in a flowing way to create my personal dream ritual.
When executing our dream rituals through the influences of specific sources, there were always one or two of my movements that stood out as particularly informative to me - whether it was deeper emotional access to the dream or a stronger awareness of energies in my body or something beyond words.
This aspect of the dreaming ritual lab - maintaining the integrity of our movements while subjecting them to various sources - stood out to me as the most profound of this lab. Sometimes a source would give my movements a renewed energy, a sense of effortlessness, other times it was like moving deep underwater, slowed down with a quality of heaviness. And then there were times when a completely new level of the movements would be revealed!
A ritual form that was used consistently in this lab was that of exiting the space in noform and reentering the space with the intention of serving what was sacred - each person deciding within themselves what that was. I found this valuable in deepening my sense of self, of what I needed in that moment, and, in the serving of what I made sacred, being supported by it in turn throughout the night.
I leave this particular lab with an increased awareness of how the DREAMING is always present - within us, around us - and it is through the deepening of our receptivity, our emptying out, that we are allowed to experience it, to dance it, to tremble in awe of it. And I won't soon forget the moments of unsurpassable beauty that occurred in the room when each of us was totally committed to our ritual movements, serving the sources, serving the DREAMING - so far beyond anything that the mind could choreograph!
Writing about the lab I discover is not an easy task. While my personal experiences may/may not make any sense to an outsider, I offering these few lines to the reader. perhaps in it they will discover what the lab has meant/done for me. -- Mayur Lunia
Journeying Deep Into....
An immersion into the depths of one's own "internal landscapes"
Both joy and terror roam about freely and of their own accord
Tapping into the realms i/one has perhaps shied away from
"Discovering the imprinter and the imprint" ever so intimately
The focus has been on "feeling the body deeply"
And from here allowing one to "experience the spectrum of energies"
Tapping into them, separating from it and "listening to its messages"
That emerge from the body proper some as words, and most as "symbols/images"
The lab ends, and yet it begins again, as "one closes ones eyes" for the night
the dream, the dream, "the dream dreams you," and offers a chance to awake to it
tapping into its messages, tapping into the "postcards from the unconscious"
And bingo you are in the "theatre" again, and "the ritual is doing you again."
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