The Dream Show Quest.
If you’re a Dream Academy student or graduate, you’re probably familiar with my long-running podcast, The Dream Show with Jane Teresa Anderson. Perhaps you’ve listened to a handful of recent episodes, or, like many of our dedicated students, you may have perused the back catalogue. It’s a huge back catalogue!
It all began in early 2009, when a friend urged me to create a podcast show about dreams. I’d like to say that 2009 was a time when podcasts weren’t a thing, but the term ‘podcast’ was first mentioned in the media in 2004, and ‘audio blogging’ was a thing during the 1980s. For me, though, podcasting was a vague notion. I hadn’t listened to any podcasts and was otherwise preoccupied with communicating about dreams through my website, books, and media interviews across print, radio, and television. Did I want to add regular podcasting to my schedule? No! On top of all of that, I had my dream consultation work, workshops, and training students in the art and science of working with dreams.
No, I said. I’ll pass on podcasting.
I also said I’d pass on that other new activity that was gaining traction around that time – blogging. That pass didn’t last long. By the end of 2009 I was blogging away happily, a joyful way to engage in writing between writing books.
But back to the podcast story.
I had been quite firm with my no, but a couple of weeks of heart-warming synchronicities led to meeting James Williams and Justin Tabari who had built a podcasting platform, Lifestyle PodNetwork, and I felt the beckoning. Michael, my husband, volunteered to learn the technical side, guided by James and Justin, and we were off and running in a matter of days. It was James who suggested calling our podcast series The Dream Show, just as it was James who suggested calling my e-learning platform The Dream Academy, many years later. While the two Js later expanded their podcasting focus to website development and digital media creation, they continue to provide professional support for my technical endeavours. It was James and Justin who built the technical side of The Dream Academy, delivering your courses and making sure that everything runs smoothly for our students.
But back to the podcast story!
So there we were, in May 2009, recording a weekly podcast featuring a guest bringing a dream for interpretation.
The format was similar to our current episodes, but much shorter, about 10-15 minutes for the first few weeks before they quickly morphed into the one hour shows we produce today. Once the show was established and we had a solid following, we changed the frequency to a new episode every four weeks, and that’s where we are today, and where we intend to continue well into future years.
We celebrated 12 years of podcasting in May this year, and our most recent show, episode 246, Two Giant Snowmen, was released earlier this month.
As a Dream Academy student, what is the best way to utilise this huge resource?
While the usual podcast platforms (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform) carry our most recent episodes, you can access every single episode – all 246 and counting – here. You can simply listen back through the catalogue, or you can try this quest:
Your quest
Choose an episode, listen to the guest tell their dream, then press pause. Take a few minutes to ponder the dream. What do you think it means? What questions would you ask the guest? What symbols or dream dramas stood out as you listened? Which of the tools and techniques that you have learned from your Dream Academy courses would you apply to this specific dream? What would your ‘One Simple Sentence’ be?
Then press play and listen to the guest and I as we explore their dream.
How does a dream exploration on The Dream Show differ from a dream consultation, or dream therapy?
When our guests volunteer to be on the show, we set up a day and time to record, but I know nothing about the dream that the guest will share until we start recording. We don’t edit. What you hear is the entire conversation, and that is what our listeners tell me they enjoy: the feeling of sitting beside me as we hear the dream together for the first time and explore it from there.
When people book a dream consultation, I ask them to email their dream to me 24 hours beforehand. This gives me time to review the dream before the Zoom or Phone consultation. I’m able to give the dream deeper consideration than I do on The Dream Show, and bring the fruits of that prior work into the consultation.
I do the same for Dream Therapy clients, although dream therapy consultations are less about interpreting a whole dream and more about using key elements of a dream in a healing psychotherapy context and working with dream alchemy to effect therapeutic change.
But back to the podcast:
What people love best of all, I am told, is when our guests relate the dream to their waking life, share their stories and innermost experiences, and get excited about the fresh insights our dream exploration has delivered.
As a Dream Academy student, you might listen to the podcasts to refine your own dream interpretation skills, but the greater takeaway might be the dreamers’ stories and the inspiration and light they gift you as you step anew into your day.
