Engage in this 6-week course exploring our relationship to the inner child and our ability to self-parent with compassion and empowerment. Using the mythic story of Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Brave, this course encourages participants to examine their own narratives through archetypal correspondence and creative expression. Our inner children often reach out to us through woundedness and disruption, making us recoil and repress them. However, we can learn to find compassion and grant space to our inner child, and this can transform our entire relationship to self. Weekly modules are provided with assignments (readings, journal activities, films, rituals). The course includes two virtual live class sessions: one at the beginning to explore the symbols present in the Vasilisa myth, and one at the end to provide an opportunity for sharing about the course among participants.

Join with others in a convenient online course to explore the mysterious world of dreams. As we turn our attention toward our dream life we enrich our connection to our symbolic lives and the archetypes behind them. Depth psychology approaches dream work from the perspective that the world of dreams is very much alive, ready for our respectful exploration. Dreams are one way the unconscious speaks to us. This unique approach to the mystery of dreams opens the possibility for dreams to be an inner influence, offering help, hints, clues, and support in our efforts to heal, grow, and live consciously.

This course will provide the opportunity to examine  contributors to the field of dream study as well as the chance to delve into the limitless potential of your own being. The first four weeks of this course will focus on the study of dreams from a depth psychology perspective. This study will include watching a film, reading books and articles, and on-line discussions with the group and facilitator. Participants will also begin recording their dreams.

The second four weeks will focus on helping you form a personal and dynamic relationship with your own dream life. We will watch for themes in your dream life, notice and discuss synchronicity, watch for and discuss symbols and the archetypes, and learn how to form a relationship with symbols. This section of the course will help you develop a dialogue with your own psyche, and to apply some of the concepts and ideas you learned in the first four weeks.

The shadow is often seen as undesirable aspects of self. Actually, the shadow is simply your unlived life – the parts of yourself that have been banished to or have always lived in the dark. The reason shadow work is confronting is that the shadow is unconscious – we know not what it contains, so we fear it.

It is remarkable how often the content buried in the shadow is positive in nature, rather than negative. These are the “treasures in the dark.” These treasures were hidden away long ago and with good reason; to keep the love of a parent, to please a sibling, to remain liked, to be accepted, etc. We were convinced, unconsciously, that these treasures were costly to us – and that they must never again be allowed to surface. As children our emotions are experienced instinctively, which gives them an “all or nothing” quality. This is why we so resolutely stored these aspects of self in an unreachable cave. And, as a fail-safe, we placed a guard at the gate in the shadow. This guard ensures that the treasures will not be released, and will not be reached by the conscious mind.

This course will explore the personal and collective layers of shadow, and will offer a method of shadow integration by changing the internal relationships between the self, the treasures in the dark, and the guard - transforming them from fear-based to compassion-based.

This 6 -week online course includes weekly modules with engaging assignments and activities, and two live virtual class sessions.