A Clinician's Guide to Dream Therapy (2nd Edition)
Pre-Orders Open May 12th
This program is a deep dive into the world of dreams, and a clear path to learning how to engage yourself and guide others in embodied experiential dreamwork practices.
Next full year cohort beginning in September 2025!
Have you complete your dreamwork or focusing training, but still want to stay connected to this beautiful community through dreams? I have a special offer for you to join the 2025 quarterly Dream Circle — join now and one of the 4 sessions is free.
The Dream Circle has been such a pleasure to host, and a wonderful way to stay connected with those of you who have completed my dream and/or focusing training. In this group, we continue to learn and practice methods of working with dreams with other like-minded therapists and dream enthusiasts. I also use this group as a venue to teach more advanced skills, and to give you a chance to practice these with each other.
Learn the gentle art of guiding someone inward
Focusing is a gentle method of learning what the body knows about your life and world. It’s a potent way of getting a sense of ourselves from the inside. Focusing was developed by Eugene Gendlin, who discovered that finding and following this “felt sense” can be taught to those who want to learn it.
This experiential program is about partnership. It is aimed at helping others listen to their body’s signals. This course can be interesting for a therapist, coach, social worker, or teacher, but also those who function as guides in less formalized roles.
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.
I recently had the honour of an invitation to guest host on Guy MacPherson’s wonderful podcast, The Trauma Therapist. If you are a therapist and not already following Guy, I highly recommend you do so. In my guest post, I interview a former student who is doing many great things in the realm of trauma therapy and embodiment. Click the link below to listen to my conversation with Ailey Jolie.
Dr Leslie Ellis explains why nightmares might be shouting for your attention, showing what is unmetabolized in your psyche and maybe even telling you what is needed to help that process. “The antidote is often within the dream itself,” she says. She tells us about her embodied dreamwork method for “imagining the dream forward” to discover a new way through the dream, allowing it to complete in a way that doesn’t disturb your sleep.
As part of her mission to de-mystify nightmare treatment and dreamwork in general, Dr Ellis talks to us about her long experience in working with dreams and nightmares, including her doctoral research on treating the trauma-related dreams of refugees. And she shares her knowledge and enthusiasm for the Focusing work of Eugene Gendlin.
For the Dream of the Week, she shares a delightful dream of a red fox that may or may not be as tame as it appears.
I am always happy to speak with the media about dreams. In this episode, aired Oct. 16, Matt Galloway talks to me and a sleep expert about how Canadians are falling short on sleep and dreams.
Sophie Glikson interviews Dr. Leslie Ellis: Working with dreams and nightmares from a focusing-oriented perspective. This half-hour interview, posted in summer 2023, covers Leslie’s current thoughts about how to work with nightmares. From here, you can peruse the Focusing-Oriented Therapies channel for much more from Gendlin and other focusing experts.
Episode 74: A Clinician’s Guide to Dreams, Nightmares, using Dreams for Somatic Awareness and Processing – and Working Deeply with our Dreams Selves with Dr. Leslie Ellis
The Sleep Whisperer Podcast – May 24, 2022
An episode about PTSD, Nightmares & Sleep With Dr Leslie Ellis.
Mind Body Training Institute – May 11, 2022
In this webinar, Dr. Leslie Ellis will guide you through the basic skills for working with dreams in an experiential way. She will also describe some simple steps to help reduce the frequency and distress related to client nightmares.
Whether we can remember them or not, we all have dreams. How active are our brains when we sleep? Are our dreams telling us something? And, what explains recurring dreams? Mike gets answers from psychologist and author who specializes in dreams, Ian Wallace, and psychotherapist, Dr. Leslie Ellis.
The topic of how the autonomic nervous system and our dreams are related was greeted with lots of interest and curiosity at the recent meeting of the ‘Polyvagal Approach to Trauma and Addiction group‘ hosted by Jan Winhall and the Polyvagal Institute. In this talk, I presented the evidence I have gathered that links nightmares and the nervous system. I also discussed implications for treatment and fielded many great questions.
In this TED-like talk for a Dream Salon in Vancouver, Dr. Leslie Ellis talks about how ALL NIGHTMARES have healing potential, even the worst trauma dreams.
Dr. Leslie Ellis is with Angela Caruk in a conversation to talk about the clinical use of dreams and why you should pay attention to them.
Dr. Leslie Ellis is with Michael Ostrolenk speaking on the value of engaging clients in dream work, as it helps point out salient emotional concerns, helps limit biased conscious editing, provides new perspectives on issues, and can serve as a diagnostic tool.
This interview with Dr. Michael Breus, “The Sleep Doctor” features an impromptu dreamwork session with Michael — who asks about the classic high-school anxiety dream.
Dr. Leslie Ellis joins Jason Wachob to discuss how to interpret your dreams. Plus how to actually remember your dreams, why you should daydream for better sleep, how to use your dreams to make practical decisions, and how to interpret your dreams without a therapist.
Guy Macpherson of The Trauma Therapist Project podcast goes beyond treatment methods. He asks his guests to talk about how they learned their craft, what drew us personally to the work, and about some of the mistakes we made along the way.
This interview with Dr. Michael Breus, “The Sleep Doctor” features an impromptu dreamwork session with Michael — who asks about the classic high-school anxiety dream.
Dr. Ellis joins Jason Wachob to discuss how to interpret your dreams. Plus how to actually remember your dreams, why you should daydream for better sleep, how to use your dreams to make practical decisions, and how to interpret your dreams without a therapist.
