Dreaming into 2012, Prophecy, Guidance & Healing
Coyolxauhqui, Mexica moon goddess.
Dream group facilitated by Atava Garcia Swiecicki.
Session 1: 8 Thursdays, 2/23-4/19, 9:30 am- 11:30 am, Cost: $325
Session 2: 6 Thursdays, 5/10-6/14, 9:30 am- 11:30 am, Cost $250
Receive $40 discount if you sign up for both sessions.
“When you’re speaking English and you’ve been disconnected from your cultural, spiritual heritage and power for hundreds of years, how are those ancestors going to connect with us? What’s the way? We don’t have an intact tribal community to contain it, to hold it, to support and protect us. How’s it going to happen with integrity and safety? One of the main ways is through dreams.”
Dr. Apela Colorado, Founder of the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network and the Indigenous Mind Program
This dreamgroup is dedicated to remembering our indigenous ways of knowing through community dream work. The focus of this dream group will be on receiving and sharing the important messages from the spiritual world in this prophetic year of 2012. We will work with ritual, art, tarot, guided meditation, and plant spirit medicine to enhance the dreamwork process.
Application required. Email atava@ancestralapothecary.com to receive an application to join this group.
Class size is limited. $100 deposit required to save your space. Balance due at the time of first class.
For the latest updates, find this class on Facebook.
Dreaming with the Ancestors Starts October 28th
Calling All Dreamers!
Do you have powerful dreams that are calling for your attention?
Looking to connect to spiritual guidance from the dream world?
I am excited to announce that a new cycle of Dreaming with the Ancestors will begin on October 28th at my Oakland office.
My intention for this group is to create a safe and sacred space to explore the ways in which the ancestors and the spiritual world communicate to us both in sleeping and waking dreams.
In my experience, these dream groups have become a place for spiritual empowerment, healing, transformation & community building. I am continuously in awe at the magic & synchronicity that is experienced in each circle.
To reserve your space in this small, intimate dream group, call 510-541-2715, or emaill me at atava@ancestralapotheary.c0m
Dream Diet for Optimum Health
Dr. Oz recently did a show on What Dreams Mean About Your Health.
I am glad this important piece about dreams has reached the mainstream. As a holistic health care practitioner, educator and dream worker, I’ve been leading Mind-Body Healing Dreamgroups in Oakland for the past few years.
A simple way to start working with your dreams to improve your health is to pay attention to dreams of food. I recently wrote an article for DreamTribe about how to examine and follow your own dream diet:
http://thedreamtribe.com/dreaming-your-diet-for-optimal-health/
How Plants Heal Us In Dreams
Chapparral, larrea tridentata, one of the oldest living plants on earth
I have been observing the messages plants give to us in dreams for many years now with myself, my herbal students and my dream group members. Here is an article that I wrote for the Dream Tribe about dreaming with plants.
http://thedreamtribe.com/how-plants-heal-us-in-dreams
I also am collecting plant dreams, so if you have one you’d like to submit, you can email me at atava@ancestralapothecary.com.
Blessings,
Atava
Keith Richards Dreams “Satisfaction”
Dream news alert!
In a recent interview on NPR, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones spoke about how the hit song “Satisfaction” came to him in a dream. He apparently went to bed with his guitar and a tape cassette player at his bedside. When he woke up, he noticed that the tape was full and that he had recorded something in the night. When he played back the tape, he heard the now famous guitar riff and lyrics “I can’t get no satisfaction.”
A great example of the creative potential all of us tap into at night during our sleep. Many other famous artists, musicians, and inventors have all credited the dream world with their creative inspiration. I myself have woken up with songs in my head but haven’t had the nifty bedside recorder to help remember them for more than a few minutes
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130722581
Dreaming with the Ancestors
Dreaming with the Ancestors
12 session series begins Friday October 29th
Do you have powerful dreams that are calling for your attention?
Looking to connect to spiritual guidance from the dream world?
For many cultures, this is the time of year for remembering and honoring our ancestors. Also, as the nights grow longer, our attention is pulled more strongly to the dream world.
In my studies and work as a graduate of the Indigenous Mind Program, I have realized that the dream realm is one of the most direct and powerful ways to reconnect and communicate with our ancestors.
In honor of this season I will commence another cycle of the dream group, Dreaming with the Ancestors. In this facilitated dream group, we will focus on how our dreams can help us connect to our ancestors.
We will dream with our own human ancestors and also practice making dream connections to the plants, animals, and guardian spirits of our ancestral realms. We will work with family stories, fairy tales and folk art to help activate our ancestral dreams and memory.
In each class, we will build an altar and create a sacred space for our dream work. Flower essences and plant spirit medicine will be incorporated to help enrich our dreaming process.
This cycle I will be joined by my good friend and colleague from the Polish Ancestral Healing Project, Maura Singer Williams. Maura, a gifted facilitator, is an interfaith chaplain who leads dream groups for people with cancer at Summit Medical Center.
This is a small, intimate dream group and space is limited. Call or email now to reserve your space.
Dates: 12 Fridays, October 29-February 4th (no class 11/26, 12/24, 12/31)
Time: 3:30-6:00 PM
Cost: $350-$450 sliding scale
Location: The Goose Sisters Healing Center, 3798 Grand Ave, Oakland
Class size limited. Register now to save your space. $100 deposit required to save a space. Call 510-541-2715; or email atava@ancestralapothecary.com.
Exciting new dreamwork website!
I’m excited to announce the birth of a hot new website dedicated entirely to dream work! I am a part of the “dream team” of dreamwork facilitators who support the site.
The site will be a place for you to share and explore all of your dreams- your healing dreams, your plant, animal & nature dreams, your ancestral dreams, your prophetic dreams- all with the support and guidance of expert dreamworkers.
The website is going live April 27. In the meantime, check out the inspiring 45 second video by clicking here.
Let the global dream weaving begin!
Dreaming with the Ancestors
One way I have been applying my training in Indigenous Mind is to lead dream groups that focus on dreaming with the ancestors. Dream work was a central part of the Indigenous Mind experience and we were blessed to be guided by some incredible distinguished traditional elders, including Dr. Apela Colorado, Mr. Hale Makua and Auntie Mahealani Poe Poe. In much of the western world, dreams are viewed mostly from a the perspective of the individual’s psyche. In IM dream work, we also viewed dreams as a major means of communicating with the ancestors. Many of us had dreams of ancestors and were able to recover lost bits of family history through our dreams. I personally had many dreams about the Polish land and Polish people as I began to explore my Polish roots. You can read more about my ancestral dreams in a paper I wrote called “Dream Journey to Poland.”
Vasalisa the Brave, from Slavic fairy tales of the Goddess/Witch Baba Yaga
Starting on March 18th, I will lead a 8 week dream group that focuses on Dreaming with the Ancestors. In this facilitated dream group, we will focus on how our dreams can help us connect to the ancestral and spiritual realms. In each class, we will build an altar and create a sacred space for our dreamwork. The focus of our dreamwork will be first be on our genealogical ancestors and we will set our intentions to remember their stories, rituals, and healing traditions. We will also practice making dream connections with our animal and plant allies, magical beings (like fairies) and our own spirit guides. We will work with family stories, fairy tales and folk art to help activate our ancestral dreams and memory. Flower essences and plant spirit medicine will be incorporated to help enrich our dreaming process.
I have facilitated similar dreamgroups for the past few years and amazing things are occurring in them. It seems as if the ancestors are ready and eager to show up for us to do this work!
For more information, go to the Events and Classes page on my website, AncestralApothecary.com.
For those of you who don’t live in the California Bay Area…….. teleclasses coming soon! Drop me an email if you are interested.
Blessings,
Atava
Mind-Body Healing Dream Group Beginning Soon!
Mind-Body Healing Dream Group
Starts January 19th, 2010
6Tuesdays Starting January 19th, 2010
The New Year is a great time to give renewed attention to our physical, emotional and spiritual health. Dreams can be powerful allies and guides on your healing path. They tap into a wealth of imagery that can be directed towards personal healing. Dreams also can connect us to our healing guides that may take the form of a plant, animal, ancestor or other supernatural being.
In this facilitated dream group, we will focus on the healing art of dream work. We will explore our dreams to discover clues, remedies and prescriptions for health and wellness. Flower essences and plant spirit medicine will be incorporated to help enrich our dreaming process.
Date: 6 Tuesdays, January 19- March 19th
Time: 10:30-12:30 pm
Cost: $150-$250, sliding scale
Location: The Goose Sisters Healing Center, 3798 Grand Ave, Oakland
To Register: Class size limited. $100 deposit required to save a space. Call 510-541-2715; or email atava@ancestralapothecary.com.
Polish Ancestral Dream, Thesis Excerpt
Dr. Apela Colorado, Founder of the Worldwide Indigenous Science Network
On Summer Solstice of 2003, I participated in a Polish ceremony that has its roots in ancient pre-Christian times. A few days before Solstice I had this dream:
I am at the Summer Solstice Polish picnic. I am lying on a picnic table with my sister. Polish people are surrounding us. They walk up and say, “Dzien Dobre” (Good Day).” Everyone is chattering in Polish. Many of them have brought jars of pickles. Polish people and pickles are piling up on the picnic table. (June 18 2003, Sun in Gemini, Moon in Pisces)
On this day, special fire and water rites are performed. The word Kupala comes from the ancient word kupati, meaning “to bathe.” Water is believed to be infused with special healing power on this day, and people gathered to bathe at rivers, springs, and seas. Women create wreathes of nine sacred herbs and flowers to offer to the water. These offerings to the water helped to strengthen the water as well as to bring protection to families from floods and thunderstorms.
In the evening of Kupala (also called Sobotki or St. John’s Eve) people gathered on hilltops, mountaintops or in clearings in the forest to light huge bonfires. The sacred fire was believed to be connected to the sun itself and could only be started by rubbing two sticks together. People would dance and sing around the fire. Later they would jump over the fire to receive its blessings of cleansing and protection. The smoke from this sacred fire would drift into nearby fields to help protect the crops.
Mugwort or Blycia
Later, in the afternoon, I met with other members of the Polish Arts and Culture Foundation at Lake Temescal in Oakland. We were gathered to reenact an ancient ceremony, in which we created beautiful wreathes of flowers and herbs. After we finished making our wreathes, we walked to the water’s edge and tossed our wreathes to the water. As I sat with my Slavic friend David watching the wreathes, the water seemed to shimmer with our prayers and blessings. The lake looked like a beautiful woman covered in flowers and jewels. The energy surrounding us felt peaceful and welcoming. I could almost hear the lake saying: Thank you for your beautiful gifts.
This day was an important landmark for me, for it was the first time I had participated with the Polish community in such a ceremony. Smelling the pungent aroma of the blycia, I was transported back in time. As my hands wove together strands of herbs and flowers, I could almost see the hands of my great-great grandmothers. As I gazed at the lake decorated with our wreaths ancient memories stirred within me.
Tags: Dreams, Kupala, Polish ancestors
