In social dreaming, we gather together to share our night-time dreams and associations to those dreams. In the conference, we will be doing this in the context of the conference themes. Social dreaming is interested in the dream, not the dreamer, so it is a social event that explores the shared unconscious. There is no turn-taking and people offer dreams, images, associations and feelings as and when they wish. There are two sections to the event, first a ‘matrix’, where participants share their dreams and associations, and second a post-matrix discussion, where participants offer some creative sense-making from the dreams that identify new thoughts that had hitherto remained undiscovered.

A climate café is a simple, hospitable, empathetic space where fears and uncertainties about our climate and ecological crisis can be safely expressed.

With sturdy enough support structures in place, most people can sustain challenging feelings without either dissociating and numbing or going into blind panic. They can engage with difficult truths whilst staying connected and grounded.

A climate café aims to be such a structure - a container that is strong enough to allow the exploration of fear, anxiety, and other emotions such as anger, helplessness, sadness, grief, depression or anything else that emerges from the conference.

The focus of discussion is participants’ thoughts and feelings about the climate and ecological crisis. There are no guest speakers and no talks, and it is an advice-free zone. Whilst the conference themes are the main focus of the café, we realise that other related preoccupations need a space to be explored. This can happen here too.

These are times of great change and uncertainty. We are transiting a cultural threshold – going ‘through the door’ – and this requires relinquishing the ‘normal’ and being open to another reality.

In this short introductory session we invite you to go ‘through the door’ into a way of experiencing the current crises that is counter-culture, imaginal and emergent. We will explore our own experience of what happens when we go through the door with the use of imagery, writing, pair work and group process.

Between the desire to ‘Do Something’ and the feelings of overwhelm, is a third possibility, that of being with the unendurable feelings and engaging a different reality. The session is designed to assist in building personal resilience as a new story of an uncertain future unfolds.

This short session is a taster of the day-long workshop, run by the CPA, which invites a deeper dive down through the breaks and ruptures of our times.

Because of the short, online nature of this session, it is recommended that you bring only that which feels comfortable to work with. This is not a therapy session, nor is it grief counselling. In this light, to be fully aware of what we bring, what others may bring and what we may experience in the workshop, is important. This is not a workshop for therapists only; all are welcome. Again, with this in mind, it is important to bring an enquiring mind, that is open to other worldviews.

Website: www.nwyfre-earth.co