Dreamwork 101 // What is Dreamwork and How to Get Started in 5 Steps

Dreamwork is the practice of tending to our relationship with our dreams. We’re dreaming every night, but many of us barely remember our dreams, or if we do, don’t spend much time thinking about them or working with them.

(How often have you dismissed a dream as, “oh, it was just a dream?”)

But dreams can have a lot to teach us and offer us when we enter into a deeper relationship with them. The dreamworld is rich with feelings, desires, needs, and possibilities. Our understanding of what the dreamworld evokes and presents can support our physical lives and our connections to ourselves. 

In this blog post, I’ll share a bit about how to start a dreamwork practice of your own.

Dreamwork Lineage

First, I’d like to share my dreamwork lineage. What I know about dreamwork comes from the work of these folks in particular, as well as my own intuition and my ancestors:

• Blanca Villalobos

• Toko-Pa

• Robert Moss

• Tara Burke

• Sanyu Estelle

These are wonderful people to go deeper into dreamwork with if you feel so called.

1. Support Dream Recall + Sleep 

The simplest of ways to begin supporting your dreaming is by supporting sleep and dream recall. It’s difficult to consciously work with our dreams if we’re not sleeping well or can’t remember our dreams when we wake up. Everyone is different, but here are some things you might like to explore to support your sleep:

• Set screen time boundaries for a certain amount of time before bed 

• Drink a tea to support your sleep, like chamomile (always do your own research and check with a professional before ingesting herbs) 

• Create your own sleep ritual that helps you shift into rest mode 

• Meditate and/or do a gentle, restorative yoga practice

• Take a few minutes to journal brain-dump style to help clear your mind. 

To support your dream recall, there are a few things I find helpful:

• Set an intention to dream and to remember your dream(s) before you go to sleep (you can write this down, say it out loud, or just tell it to yourself silently)

• Take a few minutes in bed in the morning before you get out of bed (or look at your phone) to give yourself space to remember your dream.

• Create a dream altar and meditate at it before bed to welcome your dreams to come 

• Pay attention to the dreams you do receive by tending them (more on that below!)

2. Start a Dream Journal 

This is probably the number one tip anyone you ask about dreamwork will give you, and with good reason! A dream journal creates a container for tending your dreams, helps solidify your intention to connect with your dreams, and helps you understand your dreams.

I recommend choosing a dedicated journal for your dreamwork and placing it on your dream altar when you’re not using it if you have one. As soon as you wake up (definitely before you look at any devices), put pen to paper and record your dream. Try recording your dreams in the present tense to honor its aliveness (for example, instead of "I was walking by a river,” try “I’m walking by a river). 

If it feels available to you, you might like to marinate in the dream in bed for a few minutes before actually getting up and reaching for your journal to record.

3. Explore Dream Feelings & Textures

After you record your dream, there are many ways to work with it more deeply and explore the messages it might have for you. 

I like to explore the dream textures: what are the textures, sights, smells, tastes, sounds of the dream? What do those senses mean for you and evoke for you? How do they make you feel? How does the dream, in general, make you feel?

4. Understand Dream Associations

As you work with the dream you’ve recorded, notice what stands out to you. Maybe your red dress feels particularly alive, or the hawk sparks something for you, or you feel curious about a figure in your dream. 

Whatever you feel curious about, do a bit of freewriting about it. List out: what does this thing make you think of? How does it make you feel? 

For example, some associations that come up with hawks for me:

• Hawk feather

• Maggie Smith’s poetry book Good Bones

• Mothers

• Protecting your children 

• Imagination

• Play 

Notice how I’m not so focused on the hawk itself, but I follow the threads of what each thing is associated with! Now I have something interesting to work with and can ask myself questions like, "what’s my relationship with play right now?" 

Some of the associations you make might really surprise you and can offer deeper insight into your dream. 

5. Assign Dream Correspondences 

As you continue to work with your dreams, you start to develop some personal symbols and correspondences. 

Like you saw above in my example with the hawk, I could make a section in my journal where I note that hawk led me to mothers and children and play. When I see a hawk again in my dream, I have that reference and can ask myself if/how it applies to this dream. 

Over time, you can deepen your understanding of your own personal dream symbols and correspondences. I love this practice so much because, to me, it’s not about what a certain symbol means but about what it means to you, how it feels in your body, how it resonates with your ancestry. That’s what feels potent and powerful!

Dreams Aren’t Your Personal Vending Machine 

It feels important to state that working with dreams isn’t just asking a question and receiving an answer. Generally, it’s not a simple or linear way of working. There isn’t one true or hidden meaning that we need to uncover. 

In my eyes, dreams and the dreamworld are alive. So it truly is a practice of engaging in relationship with, of exploring. You might like to ask yourself, "how can I be in equal exchange with my dreams?" How can I honor the dream world and not just extract from it?

Dreams have such potential to expand us out of binary thinking and into visionary possibilities, especially if we acknowledge that power and allow them to take us there!

Going Deeper with Your Dreams 

Another way to explore dream tending and go a bit deeper is by asking for a dream. I share how to do this in the dreamwork ritual I shared for Pisces season, which you can find here.

Feel free to contact us and share: how is your dream practice going? How is your relationship with your dreams evolving? 

The Importance of Pleasure + 3 Pleasure Rituals

We are spiritual beings, but here as humans, we have bodies. Our bodies experience a wide range of sensations and emotions — fear, anxiety, shame, joy, love, pleasure, and many more.

Pleasure is one of the things that feels so specific to having a body - something that’s available to us through the tactile, through sensation, through what we can see and feel and touch.

One of my favorite quotes about pleasure comes from the classic The Ethical Slut: “pleasure is a worthwhile goal in and of itself.”

Many of us have learned in our society that prioritizing pleasure is selfish, unnecessary, and even wrong. But pleasure is our birthright, and as the quote above shares — it is worth pursuing. We all deserve to experience pleasure. 

In this blog, I’m sharing three rituals to help you tap into pleasure. Scroll down to read them!

Before we jump into the rituals, here's a list of ritual items that correspond to pleasure. Any of these items can be used to help you set the intention to invite in more pleasure. They are in no way necessary, but if you have them on hand, feel free to add them to any of the following rituals.

Pleasure Correspondences:

Crystals- rose quartz, garnet, carnelian, ruby

Element- Water

Colors- pink, red, orange

Tarot cards- The Empress, Queen of Cups, The Sun

Plants and scents- Rose, sandalwood, ylang ylang, patchouli, cinnamon

Shell- CowryEnergy points- Sacral

1. Presence Ritual

To me, one of the key ingredients to pleasure is presence. Many of us aren’t present throughout our days for many deeply valid reasons, from trauma to busyness, but when we aren’t present with our lives, I believe we miss out on a lot of the pleasure available to us in the moment.

For this presence ritual, all you’ll need to do is bring presence to something you’re doing in your day. Here are some examples of things you could try doing more mindfully to experience the pleasure within them:

• Taking a walk

• Eating a snack or a meal 

• Gardening

• Watching the sunset

• Having a conversation with someone you love 

• Listening to a song you love 

• Listening to a poem over audio 

• Moving your body in some way (yoga, dancing, running, etc.)

• Having sex (solo or with others) 

Whatever you choose, try to ground yourself beforehand with a few breaths, a hand on your body, petting your animal companion, or doing something else that feels grounding for you. 

Throughout the experience, try to keep your breath deep and truly notice your embodied experience. When you feel yourself drifting back into your mind (I can almost guarantee this will happen, and that’s okay!), try to just notice that, release the thoughts, and return to your breath. Just keep showing up with your breath and your presence, and see how it helps you attune to the pleasure that’s available to you at this moment. 

2. Exploring the Senses Pleasure Ritual

This ritual is inspired by a group experience I took part in at Spirit Weavers a few years ago called Pleasure Stacking.

For this ritual, you’ll want to gather items that can stimulate the senses (sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch). Get creative and use what you have around you! What items in your space open up possibilities for you, feel delicious, or spark curiosity? 

Here are some things that I have used for this ritual to inspire you: 

• Crystals with different textures 

• Silky fabrics 

• Eye mask 

• A delicious tincture that tastes like cacao  

• Fruit  

• A CBD pre-roll  

• Velvety fabrics 

• Scented massage oil  

• Incense  

• Candles 

• A chain from a necklace  

• Sensual music  

1. Once you select the items you'll be working with for this ritual, set yourself up somewhere you feel comfortable - I like to lay down on a yoga mat on the floor.

2. Light your candles and incense if you’re using them, and start to breathe deeply and tune into the senses.

3. The intention of this ritual is to connect with pleasure through the senses and through the body. The only guideline is to use your tools intuitively and keep breathing!

4. Try to really stay present with sensation. You might start by rubbing oil on your body and massaging yourself, experimenting with different pressures. You might trace the chain from your necklace over your belly, taste your tincture or fruit, let your music wash over you and find organic movement, breathe in the scent of your incense, or wrap yourself in different fabrics.

5. As you work with this ritual, notice what happens in your body. Notice what feels delicious in your body, what just feels weird, what your body wants more of. Can you give yourself what you need?

6. As you keep tuning into the senses, allow any organic pleasure mantras to arise like “I deserve pleasure,” “My pleasure is sacred,” or “My pleasure matters.”

7. Notice, too, if shame arises or thoughts telling you that you don’t deserve pleasure, it’s not okay to feel good, etc. Allow these thoughts and feelings to be here - it’s okay! They’re important information. See if you can breathe into them, honor them, and return to your journey through the senses.

8. Take as much time as you need. Remember that experiencing pleasure is your birthright.

9. When you’re ready, close this ritual by placing your hands somewhere on your body and speaking some loving words to yourself, to your body, to whichever parts of you need it.

Ritual to Open to More Pleasure

This ritual is intended to support you in feeling in your body where you hold blocks to pleasure - and moving them out in a fun way. 

In my opinion, it’s not only our tears and pain that move energy and blockages. We can open to more pleasure, and we can move blocks out of our bodies in a fun and playful way as well. In this way, we become open to experiencing more pleasure and create a new pattern in the body. 

For this ritual, feel free to put on some music and create a sacred space, whatever that means to you - (maybe lighting candles or incense, or not - you are a sacred space so you don't have to do anything but you can if you'd like!).

You’ll want to be somewhere you can be comfortable, like in your bed or on a yoga mat.

1. Once you're set up and comfortable, start to feel in your body where you hold blocks to pleasure. I recommend starting by sitting in meditation and breathing deep, feeling these places that are present today (and if you can’t feel anything, that’s okay too).

2. When you feel ready, start to move those blocks in a fun and intuitive way. Just play - see if you can let the moving of these blocks itself be fun and pleasurable.

3. You can use laughter, orgasm, shaking, yelling, roaring, moaning, hissing, vibrating, circling, dancing, moving, or anything else you can feel into or think of to move these blocks out of your body.

4. Can you let it be pleasurable? Can you let it be fun even to heal and explore and transmute? Let your creativity and intuition take over when it comes to moving these crunchy, sticky places out of your body.

5. When you feel complete, take a moment to breathe and notice your new state. Can you feel where there is more space, more openness, in your body? How does your connection to yourself feel now? Breathe, notice, and perhaps take a few moments to explore these questions and process your experience in your journal.

Looking for more pleasure-based rituals? Check out this blog post for more rituals for Beltane!

Spellwork and Witchcraft Ethics

When we understand how powerful witchcraft and spellwork can be, we know that there is as much potentiality for causing harm as there is for healing.

I don’t believe that ethics in this area (or any, really) are black and white or something that can be written in a post and passed right along to you. I think ethics are both nuanced and personal. 

So in this blog, I’ll be sharing a bit of my own thoughts about spellwork and witchcraft ethics, and offering some different areas of reflection for your own spellwork and witchcraft ethics.

CULTURAL APPROPRIATION + CONSUMPTION

Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race, wrote for Medium, “Cultural appropriation is the misuse of a group’s art and culture by someone with the power to redefine that art and, in the process, divorce it from the people who originally created it.”

Cultural appropriation is rampant in the spirituality, new age, and witchcraft communities. Sacred indigenous plants are bought and sold by white folks, indigenous knowledge is whitewashed, repackaged and sold, and practices are stolen from cultures of color. 

The impacts of cultural appropriation are not just personal, they widely function to continue to funnel power towards white folks and away from Black folks, Indigenous folks, and other people of color. 

I also personally feel that working with tools and practices from our own ancestry are always going to be more powerful than working with tools and practices that are not from our own ancestry! 

Some reflection questions for your own practice around cultural appropriation:

• What tools are you using in your magical practice, and where do they come from? If they are from cultures other than your own, how are you giving back, uplifting and supporting those cultures and peoples? 

• Are they sourced in ways that feel good to you and aligned with your values (for example: are your crystals mined by children? Are trees being chopped down for your Palo Santo?)?

• What are the lineages of the practices you use? If you don’t know, do some research. 

• How were your ancestors practicing witchcraft and magic? What are their traditions? What tools were they using? What were there beliefs? (These are big questions and incredibly important ones, especially for white folks to be asking. It can be hard to find information when much of European folk magic traditions were stolen by Christianity when the religion swept over the continent, but it’s out there. To start ancestral research, I recommend checking out Sanyu Estelle’s Ancestral Altars: Europa Edition recorded class as well as Megan McGuire’s work. Cassie also loves Elen Sentier’s work on British Shamanism.)

CAUSING HARM WITH MAGICK

Just as we can do spellwork to attract love and abundance, we can also practice curses, hexes, and other kinds of spellwork to manipulate and cause harm to others.

It would be easy for me to tell you here: never use curses or hexes, never practice magic that causes harm. There are Wiccan creeds around this that you may be familiar with, the Threefold Law and the Wiccan Rede. 

The Threefold Law states that whatever energy you put out will come back to you times three. The Wiccan Rede states “An it harm none, do what ye will.” There are different ways to interpret the Wiccan Rede, but most agree that it means as long as your workings harm no one, do what you feel called to. 

I tend to agree with these ideas personally, but it’s not so black and white. Some Black magical traditions like Hoodoo have no such rules and use cursing and crossing in alignment with their own ethics. I think it’s important to stay in my own lane when it comes to passing blanket statements about what it is and isn’t okay to do with magic, when there are deeply rooted traditions that incorporate some of these practices. 

We can expand this out and ask, too — is it truly unethical to curse or hex a person who does evil in the world at a large scale?

I don’t have answers for you, but I invite you to reflect on these questions. What settles in your body and heart when it comes to causing harm with magick?

JUSTICE

This brings me to justice. Witchcraft is intrinsically linked to justice and is inherently political, no question about it. 

I invite you to ask yourself: how are my spells and magical workings contributing to justice in the world? Or are they functioning to amplify privilege and get only myself ahead?

One of my favorite practices around this was shared by Amanda Yates Garcia, the Oracle of LA. She invites us to send out any spell we do for ourselves for the collective, too. For example, a spell to attract money would also include something like, “as it is for me, as it is for all,” to ask the spell to attract money for all of us. A spell for a new home for yourself might include housing justice for all. A spell for a lover for yourself might include safe and healthy relationships for all. And so on!

CONSENT

One of the key principles in energy work is always getting consent. Energy work has real impacts, and people deserve the opportunity to be able to opt-in to receive it. 

For me, this is true regardless of our best intentions - even if we want to send healing to someone we don’t know (who can’t consent) because we think it would really help them. 

What is true for you? Ask yourself: what are my consent boundaries with others when it comes to energy?

As you can see, ethics is a murky field but an important one to consider for any witch! My advice is: Work from your own value system. If you’re not clear on what your values are, start there. Let your witchcraft practice reflect your ethos, and know that we all have different values & ideas of what is right or wrong.  

At the end of the day, we all have to be able to sleep at night from a place of knowing the truth, not from ignorance of the impacts of our actions. What do you need to change or lean into in your practice to make that so?