Working with dreams in coaching

Lady on beach mending fishing net by Virginie Demont-Breton

Its our job as coaches to use all the resources available to us to give our clients the most robust and powerful results possible. When we leave out our dream life, we are ignoring a rich well of information and meaning that is meant to be of service to the client, if only he or she knew what to do with it.

Effective dreamwork requires attention. It requires discipline. It requires commitment to deeply understanding the subterranean parts of the psyche and the language of the psyche. As coaches and facilitators, we must be experts in the language of dreams, the symbolism, the metaphor, and the personal and collective mythology that makes up our dreams.

Developing that expertise as coaches takes time. But feeling grounded in this work allows us to help clients tune into what matters most in their dream life and their dream worlds. The soul, the psyche, speaks to us in dreams. The soul speaks to us with much wisdom. The soul points us in the direction of our true north. It is to our great benefit to listen.

In the Authentic Wholeness Coach Training Certification Program, I teach how to help clients work with their dreams. As coaches and facilitators, we can encourage clients to keep dream journals, come into relationship with their nightly dreams, find themes and recurrent symbols and metaphors in their dreams, and help clients bring to consciousness the messages of their dreams.

We all have an inner world, whether we attend to it or not. We all have a "dream maker" that seeks to communicate with us, if we will listen. As coaches, we can help clients come into relationship with the dream maker and the inner committee that governs our nightly dreams. We can help clients to better understand what our souls want from us, what our souls want us to know, want us to understand, want us to do.

Our dreams are one of the only ways for our souls to communicate with us. When our actions in the waking world are in alignment with our soul's calling, we are authentic and whole in who we are.

I dream of you, to wake by Christina Rossetti

I dream of you, to wake: would that I might Dream of you and not wake but slumber on; Nor find with dreams the dear companion gone, As, Summer ended, Summer birds take flight. In happy dreams I hold you full in night. I blush again who waking look so wan; Brighter than sunniest day that ever shone, In happy dreams your smile makes day of night. Thus only in a dream we are at one, Thus only in a dream we give and take The faith that maketh rich who take or give; If thus to sleep is sweeter than to wake, To die were surely sweeter than to live, Though there be nothing new beneath the sun.