An Invitation to Deepen Your Embodied Experience of Dreaming

An Invitation to Deepen Your Embodied Experience of Dreaming
A 5-week Focusing Dreamwork Journey with Dr. Leslie Ellis

5 Weekly meetings on Thursdays
April 23 - May 21, 2026

1:00pm - 2:30pm New York time
check your start time here
 

• We can experience the genius of dreaming directly and collaborate with it to carry our dreams forward. That is the guiding purpose of this new series of sessions with Dr. Leslie Ellis. It is for anyone who loves the confluence of dreams and Focusing.

• This program is best experienced live, but recordings will be made available to all registrants, whether or not you attend live. The purpose is more about deepening our collective experience of dreaming than it is about learning theory or practice – although of course our dreamtime together will inform both.

• All registrants will receive access to a Resource Page where the recordings and other information will be available. The Resource Page will be accessible through August 21, 2026.
   

We hope you can register by the 1st session but if you miss it, we have registration open until May 8 -- you'll just need to catch up on the recordings.

OVERVIEW

Dreaming brings us a radically integrative intelligence. They can routinely weave our emotions, waking-life concerns, bodily state, and snippets of our vast storehouse of personal and collective memories into moving vignettes, densely packed with meaning. How do they do this? And how do we, in dreaming, have access to so much more than our waking mind can recall?

These questions might well be unanswerable. But we can experience the genius of dreaming directly and collaborate with it to carry our dreams forward. This is the guiding purpose of this new series of weekly 90-minute sessions for all of you who love the confluence of dreams and Focusing.

FORMAT

This series will be held in Zoom meeting format where participants can see the facilitator and other participants.
Participants will need to have a computer/mobile device. Calling in by phone is also possible but not preferred. Breakout rooms are not recorded.

About Dr. Leslie Ellis
Your guide on this journey is one of the world’s foremost experts in Focusing-Oriented dreamwork, and its clinical applications, particularly for treating nightmares. Dr. Ellis has written numerous book chapters and academic articles based on this method. With her guidance, you will learn to apply Focusing to dreams in constructive and creative ways that both honor and advance Gendlin’s approach to the dream. Ellis is author of A Clinician’s Guide to Dream Therapy: Demystifying Dreamwork (2025) and has largely based her embodied experiential dreamwork method on Gendlin’s book and other teachings about dreams. 

MORE INFORMATION 

• Who should attend:
  Some Focusing experience is recommended, as well as an interest in deepening your relationship to dreams. It is not a requirement to be able to recall your dreams as the experiential processes we will be enjoying work equally well with nocturnal dreams or waking dreams generated within class sessions.
   
• What if I can't attend live because of my schedule or where I live?
  It's okay because the recording is posted shortly after each week's session. Many registrants cannot attend live because of the time zone they live in. The recordings remain available through August 21, 2026. 
   
• Not required for the course - Leslie's suggested reading (before the course if possible):
  - Gendlin, E.T. (1986). Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams.
  - Gendlin, E.T. Three Learnings Since the Dream Book (free) To Leslie, this is an essential addition to Gendlin's dream book.
  
  Additional suggested reading:
  - Ellis, L. (2023). Diving deep: three experiential approaches to working with dreams and nightmares. Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies, 22(4), 417-429.
  - Ellis, L. (2025). A Clinician's Guide to Dream Therapy: Demystifying Dreamwork. New York: Routledge.
   
• This is a standalone series. In a previous series of meetings with Leslie, participants read Gendlin’s dream book, Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams. In each meeting, Leslie led a much-loved guided experiential dreaming practice and participants were invited to share their inner journeys with each other. That experiential practice will be used again in this new series. Anyone who would like to do a post-registration for the recordings and resources from the previous series can read about it here.
   

Program Outline

Session 1.   Introduction to Embodied Experiential Dreaming
This session will include an overview of the main ways Leslie has incorporated Gendlin’s body dreamwork methods with Jung’s to evoke deep waking dream experiences. As will be the case in all the meetings, participants will learn mainly by experiencing. In session one, participants will be guided through the process of exploring the dreamscape with the aim of locating and embodying helpful aspects of the dream, and inquiring into what gifts the dream might be bringing followed by the opportunity to debrief in pairs or triads. Then there will be an open discussion for the whole group to share what came and any questions that arose. 

Session 2.   Embodying dream elements
In this session, the group will practice entering the subjective experience of elements of their dreams or daydreams. This is easier than it sounds, and often brings new energy or sheds light on aspects of the dream that seem mysterious. As always, there will be time to share dreams (or sketch or journal if preferred) and then engage in a larger discussion about this practice – which tends to expand consciousness and perspective in surprisingly helpful ways.

Session 3.   Demo of a dream session and group dream practice
In this session, Leslie will lead a participant through an embodied dream session so all can observe how she has learned to gently inquire into a dream. She will talk about how to be an effective dream guide, and discuss ways this approach can help shift disturbing dreams into more constructive ones. Participants are asked to submit a dream in advance and a dream will be chosen randomly. Then participants engage in a group dream process in which they experience the dream as their own and are invited to share how the dream impacts them.

Session 4.   Active imagination and creative expression
Dreaming is a highly creative process, and is often best expressed through art or poetic writing. In this session, Leslie will offer a guided dreaming experience that will include active imagination, or ‘dreaming the dream onward.’ Via artistic expression or written dialogue, participants will invite the dream’s further unfolding and then share what comes.

Session 5.   Dreamweaving: a group process
Dream groups typically work with one or two dreams each session, and while universal themes in dreaming make this relevant to all, Leslie wants to develop a process that makes group dreamwork more inclusive. In this session, participants will try ‘Dreamweaving’ – a process that weaves a tapestry of dream images from several members of the group. Members are then invited to offer experiential prompts that enable all participants to delve into the collage of images to see what unfolds. This process is deeply integrative and a fitting way to end the time together.

Note from Leslie: This program is best experienced live, but recordings will be made available to all registrants, whether or not you attend live. The purpose is more about deepening our collective experience of dreaming than it is about learning theory or practice – although of course our dreamtime together will inform both.

Registration Policies

Pricing: Regular price $295  Modified price $195  Lowest price $120

Three tier pricing. We welcome you to select the level right for you, while reminding you that if you have a reliable means of support and live in a country with a strong economy, we ask that you pay the regular price. By choosing the highest amount you are capable of paying you help make the sliding scale possible. Thank you! 

Note: If the lowest price is not affordable, please email [email protected] to check on scholarship funds.

DEI Scholarship. There are DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) Scholarship funds available for anyone in a group under-represented in TIFI's programs, including people aged 30 or younger, those in the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) community and others.  For more about our DEI scholarship, please see focusing.org/board. To apply, email [email protected]. Please write DEI scholarship in the subject line.

Refunds A full refund minus a $25 administrative fee for cancellations 14 days before the start date. Cancellations less than 14 days before the start date are nonrefundable. The International Focusing Institute (TIFI) reserves the right to alter the program, cancel or re-schedule for insufficient enrollment or for other unanticipated reasons. In such cases you will be given a choice of applying your tuition to future programs, or having the full enrollment fee returned to you.

The opinions offered by presenters and participants are their own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of TIFI. Participants authorize TIFI to use their name, statements and likeness without charge, for promotional purposes in publications, advertising, video, web, new media, or other formats.

By registering for this course with the Institute, and in consideration of the right and opportunity to participate in and contribute to the Institute’s classes, for the purposes of its control of all video and/or audio recordings thereof pertaining to uses serving our purposes and goals, in enrolling in this session you acknowledge and agree to the Institute’s ownership of all rights in such classes, including all rights under copyright therein.  In no circumstance shall any portion or clip posted or displayed exceed 3 minutes in duration.  If you plan to use, post or display any portion or clips of these recordings, including posting these to a website or to a social media platform or portal, you agree that you will seek and obtain the prior approval of the Institute. We ask that participants not take screen shots to share on social media. TIFI may opt to take an official screenshot where participants will be given the option to be included or not.

For more information:

Contact Elizabeth at [email protected] or (845) 480-5111.