Dream Weaver

Courtesy of American Craft Show

David Jenkins lead you on a journey that will change your nightlife—and maybe even your life during the day. His dream workshops, which began in Berkeley and Oakland and come to Walnut Creek this month, enjoy a loyal following because Jenkins overturns the traditional way of looking at dreams. “Dreams are real,” says Jenkins. “You can’t fake them or spin them. They’re larger than psychotherapy, truer than waking life.” A native of Manchester, England, Jenkins came to Berkeley in 1973 for a three-week visit and never left. He draws on an eclectic background in Jungian analysis and other types of psychotherapy. Jenkins treats dream life not as symbolic commentary on our waking lives but as having a separate reality. The person who lives your dream life—the approximately 100 minutes we spend in REM sleep each night—has his or her own fears, desires, and rationales. “The truth is [that] everyone is living a double life,” he says. “Your ‘Awake-I’ can give good advice to the person living your dreams, which in turn feeds back to your waking life.

“We do this by revising, replaying the dream, writing new endings. If a woman dreams she is being attacked by a voracious, raging lion, we don’t talk about her problems with her overly demanding boss at work but about how her ‘Dream-I’ can escape. The woman in your dream life might say, ‘Stop complaining about your boss, and get me out of here. Now!’ ”

Jenkins’s free dream workshops begin August 3 and are scheduled to take place Fridays at 2 p.m. The workshops are one of many class offerings, such as yoga and holistic nutrition, being offered at Elephant Pharmacy, 1372 S. California Blvd., Walnut Creek, (925) 658-5300, www.elephantpharm.com. For information about David Jenkins, visit www.dreamreplay.com.