Natural Dreamwork with Mary Jo

Here in my final days is my final interview about dreams. It is incredibly poignant as this is the only...

from my midnight loft…   While I will continue to work with dreamers, I had the last dream session in...

I had the most lovely privilege to be with the families of CCALS (Compassionate Care ALS) in this presentation that...

The day after I was diagnosed with advanced esophageal cancer I chose to step into this already scheduled interview Randy.  And...

(encore post) In the three decades I had the privilege of teaching middle school and high school I too often...

(revised post)   “An uninterpreted dream is like an unopened letter” -Talmud   If you were God would you leave...

  Dreaming into the Mystery with Mary Jo Heyen A special presentation for Compassionate Care ALS March 3, 2022 2:30-4:00 eastern  Mary...

Our dreams want to help us align our inner and outer worlds and help us learn to be in relationship...

Very early in my dreamwork I had this difficult and painful dream…a challenging invitation to meet the sacred encounter and...

(encore post)   As a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner my work includes being a hospice volunteer, being with the dreams of...

(encore post) Dream – I’m with a group of unfamiliar people spelunking in caves and I’m excited. It’s dark, mysterious...

“Dreaming into the Mystery: Explorations into Being with the Dreams and Visions of the Dying” is marking its first year...

(encore post) That which I want to carry forward into this new year is not a resolution.  There is something...

During my years of training as a dreamwork practitioner I would ask clients to send me their dreams a few...

Dream – I am talking with a man I care about. He puts his hand on my shoulder and then...

When my husband, Joe, and I bought land in Colorado back in the 80’s we found a respected local fellow...

(encore post) Several years ago my dreamwork practitioner asked me what I felt it was that was helping me deepen...

(encore post) I spend a lot of time inside people’s dreams.  It’s what I imagine spelunking might be like, with...

I’ve had a daily meditation practice for almost fifty years…teach meditation and facilitate mediation retreats. Yet nothing prepared me for...

We are among several generations that have been inundated with self help books and workshops, all encouraging us to make...

(encore post) As many do, I write every day, some of which I post here. Even during my career as...

September is here…and school is back in session. The truth is…school is never out of session.   Each night we...

(encore writing) Heavy snow in the mountains…living on back roads makes travel challenging and dicey…went to the morning grief group…and...

So often in our dreams we see ways we behave that can feel painful. We may be judging, criticizing, pontificating,...

One evening sitting in my midnight loft, I was gazing quietly at one of our Navajo rugs and feeling how...

  “The closer one approaches to God, the simpler one becomes.” ~Teresa de Avila   In 1993 I was invited...

One of the incredible awarenesses that emerge when we begin to work with our dreams is how little access we...

In my dreamwork with hospice patients and their families, with grief groups, grief may be felt in the moment or...

A theme…a motif even…that eventually comes in most people’s dreams is that of being with a child who is in...

(encore post…) Often times what is most revealing and therefore very important in our dreams may be what is not...

When we work with our dreams over time they help heal the parts of us that were wounded…truly they soften...

Our dreams are impeccable at helping us find the places of tension within us…the places where our inner self and...

When Voldemort struck a death blow to baby Harry Potter, Harry didn’t die but he did have embedded within him...

My dreamwork practice has brought me the incredible privilege of working with the dreams and visions of those in hospice...

Our dreams are trustworthy. We may misunderstand what it is they are trying to teach us, attempting to understand them...

Dream – I am with a woman and a girl, age 15, who is sitting in a wheelchair. Nearby I...

If we take the healing medicine found in our dreams there will be tears…   We will get underneath our...

There are several versions of this tender and meaningful anecdote: There is the story of a little boy who was...

Morning and how we step into it can paint the rest of our day. Some of us jump out of...

Cairn Hill, which we see from our windows honors those who have died. It has prayer sticks, mementos honoring loved...

Dream – I am standing on a hillside near our house.  A yearling mountain lion, still with his black markings,...

Dream – Dusk, I see Jim on a playground climbing around on the jungle gym. This was a dream I had...

As a practitioner of Natural Dreamwork, offering presentations, workshops and dream circles are great joys for me. I have this...

So many times we wake up believing we have a good understanding of what our dreams are saying to us,...

There is a spiritual advice that encourages us to “Love God through other people.”  My inner sense wants to feel...

There is a howling going on around the world…this wordless expression of something deep inside that pours from our very...

In the three decades I taught middle school and high school I too often found myself sitting on the steps...

Dream – A group of people who feel like royalty are at a large on-going outdoor party.  We are about...

Our dreams are filled with a “curious sometimes crazy cast of characters.”* While many dream characters may be the actual...

snowflakes and dreams… Just as no two snowflakes are alike…no two dreams are alike and no two dreamers are alike....

A valued part of being a hospice volunteer, their dream specialist, and a member of the hospice team means that...

What arises on the zafu, the meditation cushion, also arises in our dreams and it can be difficult material. As...

Jealousy A dark voice whispers, “they are excluding you…they don’t even see you…” so I know to look up…just in...

Dream – I look at my phone. I have a text. At the top of the screen is the letter...

Are you a meditator? Are you a dreamer?  Have you thought of these as two mutually exclusive practices?  Sitting in...

Our dreams want to help us remember who we truly are…not who we think we are. They do that by...

Sometimes we can feel that we are too much… too much for our families…our partners…our friends …too much for the...

from my hospice journal…. A hospice patient died this afternoon. I had been to visit Sharon every other day for...

If you were God would you leave the beings on this ragged little planet without a way to be in...

In addition to dream presentations and workshops that I offer to the general public, I am invited to speak to...

I was speaking with a woman whose husband had died suddenly. She was wondering aloud what’s better…a long drawn out...

From a dreamer… Dream – I’m with a group of unfamiliar people spelunking in caves and I’m excited. It’s dark,...

Most of us have been woken from a dream or woken ourselves up with a heart pounding fear.  In its...

When people learn that in addition to working with my regular dream clients I am also a hospice volunteer working...

I write here so often about the importance of letting ourselves feel our feelings as they rise, that feelings are...

Our thoughts and our words matter. With our words we can either uplift or diminish ourselves or another… our words...

In 2003, I experienced the third recurrence of breast cancer and was now stage 4. By that point we were...

November is a time when we are heading into the holidays…a time when we are expected to give thanks and...

There is a bit of a glorious teaching running just under the surface of most fairy tales, isn’t there? …a...

I spend a lot of time inside people’s dreams.  It’s what I imagine spelunking might be like, with the cave...

Joe and I know to our bones how blessed our lives are and for decades on most gift giving occasions...

I often go on a ‘walk and talk,’ whether it is literally out walking or going off by myself into...

Dream – On a narrow road I am driving fast and come up on two slower cars. I brake a...

As many do, I write every day, some of which I post here. Even during my career as an educator...

Dream – In a large wooded area. I’m in front of a burial mound that looks as though someone has...

Heavy snow in the mountains…living on back roads makes travel challenging and dicey. Maybe I’ll skip the afternoon hospice meeting…the...

This post includes an invitation to visit and if you’d like, to follow my Facebook page – Dreaming into the...

Here on my dream blog, and on my Facebook pages, “Mary Jo’s Dream Page” where I share my work with...

While our dreams may show us ways we are in the world that we can readily identify with, they more...

The late poet activist priest, John O’Donohue, whose voice itself was liquid poetry spoke of finding our ‘signature voice.’ What...

Upon the sudden death of Mark Twain’s  24 year old daughter from meningitis, he wrote,  “It is one of the...

I was reading an archived newspaper article* by Ron Gosnell, speaking about the beauty and resilience of old fence posts...

What is it that can happen for us when we are willing to explore the material in our dreams…and even...

Welcome to Planet Earth…is what I hear my inner voice say whenever I’m faced with a personal struggle. It’s a...

Dream – Dark, out in the country, in a huge old gold-colored sedan. My grandma is behind the wheel and...

A few weeks ago I was invited to speak with our local crisis advocates team about dreams and their role...

Today my Natural Dreamwork Center was blessed…I was blessed…all those who come here to explore their dreams were blessed…the sacred...

Through our senses there are so many rich ways we take in experiences…our sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch…pure experience....

There is a scene from the film, ‘Adaptation’ with Nicholas Cage (playing twin screenwriters, Charlie and Donald) that taught me...

Dream – “I am skating along an upper balcony of a building, trying to avoid small frozen pools, worried that...

How many times a day do we find ourselves checking our phones, e-mail, Twitter, Facebook? What is it we’re hoping...

Dream – Night, in an unfamiliar house, with three other children. A monster is coming. We are running around getting...

Dreams have always had a strong presence in my life. I’ve written before about my lifelong relationship to my dreams...

A few years ago I took a course on Dream Yoga, the Tibetan approach to dreams. One of the first...

This is a post from 2015 and remains a timeless reminder for me of the importance of being in the...

There are many ways we can approach our dreams wanting to understand what their intention might be…what it is they...

Dreams come to us at every age and every stage of our lives, with a desire to be in conversation...

A dark voice whispers, “they are excluding you…they don’t even see you…” so I know to look up…just in time...

“We are always deceiving ourselves when we say we do not know what to do about this or that.   Somewhere...

It is true that most of us have woken up from a dream with unsettled feelings…of loss or loneliness…even more...

As a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner my work includes being a hospice volunteer, being with the dreams of hospice patients, their...

When we work with our dreams, we are developing our capacity to be in feeling…our capacity to be in soul....

Part of what happens to us when our connection to soul is frayed is that we develop language skills to...

I was recently with a hospice patient in the final hours of his life. He was a religious man but...

(Image by Joy Filamena) “Everything is upside down and I’m afraid of losing my balance…of falling.” “I tell people I’m...

What is it that begins to happen in our dreams as we explore and stay open to what it is...

Dream – I am walking through a parking lot and see a big car parked crookedly between two other cars....

Besides journals I’ve kept over the years, I also have a precious collection of scraps of paper, all shapes, colors...

Many of us never got to feel special…especially to those who mattered to us. We came to believe there was...

“Wake butterfly – It’s late, we’ve miles to go together . . .” — Bashō Matsuo Looking back through my...

A line from the song, “Sound of Silence” keeps running through my head…”Hello darkness my old friend…I’ve come to talk...

Dream – I am in the women’s clothing department of a large store.  I am looking for a business suit. ...

(I was speaking with a dreamwork colleague this morning about past lives, how hints of them may show up in...

Dream – I am looking closely at a knife as a man explains to me how to use it.  Just...

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh coined a phrase Engaged Buddhism referring to Buddhists who are seeking ways to apply the...

“We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse...

“You can tell you have made God in your image when it turns  out he hates all the same people you...

I was a co-teacher at dream retreat last May, and as part of our work we were stepping into each...

Inspired by a friend who has received difficult and painful medical news, who rightfully and sincerely asks… “How do I...

Our dreams want to help us remember who we truly are…not who we think we are. They do that by...

Dream – I’m in a place, active, working with others sometimes. As I’m coming and going, I encounter this black...

I had the privilege a couple of years ago of being invited for breakfast at the home of Eve Ilsen,...

Another precious part of my time being with the dreams of others is spent in volunteer work…with hospice patients and...

“She avoided eye contact the way people avoid eye contact when they can’t stand to be seen.” -Author, Lisa Lutz...

June Invitation into Your Dreams June is a month we celebrate Father’s Day…and how often we see male figures in...

Since 1969 Joe and I have surrounded ourselves with Native American art, especially those of the Hopi and Navajo cultures,...

One evening sitting in my midnight loft, I was gazing quietly at one of our Navajo rugs and feeling how...

Many of us believe that to be deeply spiritual we must somehow ascend, transcend…rise above this gorgeous earthiness of being...

Our dreams are full of images that carry feelings… I had the privilege last week of co-teaching at a dream...

In the morning when you wake up…lie still…
 gathering in the images and pieces of a remembered dream… gathering the...

“Mothers are lost to their daughters when they’re lost to themselves.” ~Geneen Roth Dream – I’m at some large event,...

A few years back at a dream retreat, we were speaking about how we work with the material that comes...

With the relentlessness and reliability of the tide each night our dreams come…and most nights they challenge us to look...

Our dreams bring lovely, connected and supported moments. They also bring material that can be difficult to be with. We...

“Welcome to Planet Earth”…is what I hear my inner voice whisper whenever I’m faced with a struggle. It’s a tough...

When we find a spiritual practice that speaks to us…be it dreamwork, meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer…so many…we want to see...

As a practitioner of both dreamwork and meditation the two have become increasingly integrated for me. Dreams want me to...

When we’re willing to take a deeper look inside at what may be keeping us from our wholeness, our connection...

Sitting quietly in a hospice room with a man who is dying.   He has been dying now for over...

When asked, “How do you exhaust karma?”  meditation teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche simply said, “When things come up in your...

Excerpts from my dream primer, “Who Are Those Guys?” Dream – “I am skating along an upper balcony of a...

There is a fascinating teaching in the Tibetan approach to working with dreams….that in our dreams we are actually working...

What an amazing age to be alive, where it seems all teachings, all teachers, all paths are but one computer...

When my husband, Joe, and I bought land in Colorado back in the 80’s we found a local fellow to...

Dream – I am leaning against a split rail fence.  A tall young man, who I don’t know, comes up...

When I first began working with my dreams, the dream would often show our dogs on leash, me in control,...

the lion’s roar… It is not easy to work with some of the material that comes up in our dreams....

making peace with the tiger… Back in the 90’s I was a co-leader of three day meditation retreats. Most of...

“you can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness…”  Gotye Many of us have a ‘certain kind of sadness,’...

When you were young did you ever play the game “Hot and Cold?”  Where something was hidden and you were...

When working with someone’s dreams I will always ask about some moment in the dream, “What is that like?” ”What’s...

We have  all been that geranium…many times.  We all have parts of ourselves that through lack of attention and nurturing...

That which I will carry forward into the new year is not a resolution.  There is something about being resolute...

Can working with our dreams help us recover a healthy weight, have better relationships, a deeper sense of self, be...

A while back someone I respect was speaking to me about leaving a legacy…my writing, my work…and I nodded…listened politely…while...

In one of my Dream Circles, where I work with dreamers exploring together what their dreams may be trying to...

Wondering what it would be like to receive the gift in your dreams…the em-bodied feeling sense of soul connection? “There...

Our dreams comes to us at every age and stage of our life, offering us threshold moments where we encounter ...

When we find a spiritual practice that speaks to us…be it meditation, yoga, contemplative prayer, dreamwork…so many…we want to see...

Dreams come to us at every age and every stage of our lives, with a desire to be in conversation...

Stephen Levine, who died last week, was a beautiful spiritual teacher, whose work with death and dying influenced me greatly....

There is a Zen story of a general and his troops who marauded province after province. The people of one town, hearing of his...

Last night I was gazing quietly at one of our Navajo rugs and I felt how analogous they are to...

This morning, as I was preparing to leave to teach meditation class, my last blog topic came into me…the importance...

(this is in part a reposting from last new year’s blog) That which I will carry forward into 2016 is...

I’ve written about essential (of the soul) and non-essential (not of the soul) qualities and how our dreams teach us...

We think of this time of year as the Season of Giving. And when we think of giving, how do...

I was in New Orleans last week for a gathering of dream practitioner’s, a dream retreat and a public dream...

Since 1969 we have surrounded ourselves with Native American art, especially those of the Hopi and Navajo cultures, with Joe...

Our dreams want to help us remember who we truly are…not who we think we are. They do that by...

I was on the hiking trail today, with Joe and a close friend, enjoying the early fall feeling coming to...

There is a helpful inner practice that I’ve shared in my newly released dream primer (on Amazon), “Who Are Those...

Can working with our dreams help us recover a healthy weight, have better relationships, a deeper sense of self, be...

Mothers are lost to their daughters  when they’re lost to themselves. Geneen Roth This writing and the previous one speaks...

Today is Mother’s Day…with Facebook photos, postings, restaurant brunch tables, flower vases and candy boxes…filled with the outpouring of love...

Tea cup…already broken -Zen saying The small u-haul is packed. Tomorrow Joe and I leave our home in Illinois for...

(a psychological phenomenon in which hostages express empathy and sympathy and have positive feelings toward their captors, sometimes to the...

While our dreams may show us ways we are in the world that we can readily identify with, they more...

What an amazing age to be alive, where it seems all teachings, all teachers, all paths are but one computer...

Are we in the world with the mind that God created or are in the world with the mind that...

Do I believe in past lives?  A qualified ‘yes.’  While I do think part of our soul path includes lives...

In working with our dreams in both session and post session we are asked to feel into a specific dream...

The late poet, activist, priest, John O’Donohue, whose voice itself was liquid poetry spoke of finding our ‘signature voice.’ What...

So what can we do when we are ready to come home to our true selves only to find this...

What happens to us in a moment of trauma?  For many of us…we shatter.  Be it a deep loss, betrayal,...

One of the most comforting images of death was something I read years ago. I wish I could remember by...

My Delicate Dilemma –  Do I risk my own soul journey by stepping  prematurely from being a student  into the...

My current dream practice and that which I will carry forward into 2015 is not a resolution.  There is something...

This morning I was on my daily ‘walk and talk,’ whether it is literally out walking, as I was today,...

Back near the end of 2009, before I began learning about archetypal dreamwork and working my dreams with my dream...

It is not the never ending battle with pathology that kills the ego… it is the girl that kills the...

(Again, while this doesn’t speak to dreams directly, it is the direct result of working with my dreams that opens...

Dream Practice/Homework: Jump in the water with all my love for the boy, my fear of losing him and let...

From ‘Awakening Shakti’ by Sally Kempton “Radha is one of the secret Shakti’s (feminine principle of divine energy/Krishna’s counterpart.)  When...

While it doesn’t speak to dreams specifically the following poem I wrote does speak to what dreams open me up...

A few months ago, Rodger, my dream practitioner, asked me what I felt it was that was helping me deepen...

Question: Once we make the trip from the head to the heart, is there only one true feeling? When a...

Facebook seems to think they can help me reach more dreamers and potential dream clients, so I’ll be posting my...

A most dear friend and I have been speaking of a spiritual path we shared for almost thirty years, and...

Recently my dreams have been abundant, the archetypes approaching me fast which is scary, the struggles of lifetimes, the ways...

Are you a meditator? Are you a dreamer?  Have you thought of these as two mutually exclusive practices?  Sitting in...

Many people who work with their dreams do so with the regularity of traditional therapy, meaning they meet with a...

Dream – I am in a small dark shack of a house with other people.  We are on the move,...

Dream – I am in a large school, hurrying down a hallway; the bell is about to ring.  I can’t...

Dream – A group of people, that feel like royalty, are at a large on-going outdoor party.  The afternoon activities...

Dream – I am walking along a narrow jungle path; the foliage is dry and colorless.  I have a small...

Dream – I am in a hospital room.  There is a young girl, about 14, lying on her back.  She...

“I am sitting in the front passenger seat of a large old sedan being driven by a man I don’t...

“I am driving a car.  I look over and there is a man in the passenger seat.  He is explaining...

“I go outside and my dad is in the tool shed.  He’s really crabby and yells at me. He tells...

“I am skating along an upper balcony of what feels like a hotel, trying to avoid small frozen pools, worried...

“I am in a familiar feeling craft room.  I open a letter, addressed to me but the country is India. ...

“I am standing at the top of our stairs in my childhood home.  I feel a movement in my upper...

Dreams-The Sacred Experiment …following the path back to our soul Every dream has an intention.   Every dream has a...