EXPLORING THE NEW WORLD OF DREAMS
Part One of Two: Dream Interpretation and Lucid Dreaming
A Summer Chautauqua Lecture by Bill Adams
Admission is $15. Or two for $25 -- bring a friend!
(Part 2 of this workshop will held at RVML on Sunday 8/08/04)
Presentation Description:
Dreaming is perhaps the most mysterious experience that all humans share. Although everyone dreams -- every single night -- some of us have no memory of dreaming, while others can recall only tantalizing bits and pieces.
Wondering and speculating over thousands of years, a few cultures have developed valuable ways of working with dreams, but there until the last few decades there was virtually no scientific understanding of the dreaming process. Now the time is ripe to synthesize these sources of knowledge -- to survey and understand the world in which we all spend a third of our lives.
EXPLORING THE NEW WORLD OF DREAMS is a series of two lectures, each of which can be enjoyed and understood separately. The first, "Dream Interpretation and Lucid Dreaming," will be presented Sunday, August 1 and repeated the following night. A brief overview of the physiology of sleep and dreaming is followed by an explanation of how this latest knowledge changes our view of what dreams are and what they mean. The lecture concludes with a thorough discussion of "lucid dreaming" -- the ability to become aware that we are dreaming and continue to be conscious within the dream, fully participating in it - and even controlling it.
In the course of this lively non-technical lecture, you will learn
What happens within your brain and body as you dream.
Why dreams are sometimes surreal, black-and-white, or impossible to hold onto.
How to remember more of your dreams.
How to understand what your dreams are trying to tell you.
How to experience "lucid dreaming" -- step-by-step through several techniques.
Bill Adams conceives his lectures and classes in the spirit of the old Chautauquas that criss-crossed America in the Nineteenth Century, providing entertainment as well as enlightenment through the use of humor and personal examples. Asked if he could really improve on the tradition of Ashland's one-time Chautauqua Dome (on the current site of the Shakespeare Festival) Bill replies: "Don't forget the air conditioning."
The main lecture should not run over 90 minutes, with a brief break, and will be followed by "questions, and possibly even answers." Notes for the instructional parts of the lecture will be made available free after the lecture, at an Internet address to be announced.
Presenter's Biography:
Bill Adams is a writer, editor, and stage performer based in Ashland. He is the co-author of THE UNWOUND WAY ("Tremendously impressive." - LOCUS Magazine) and THE END OF FAME ("An intricate machine . . . The closer you look, the more details you see, like a fractal design revealing new structure at increasingly greater magnifications." - Catharine Asaro, astrophysicist and author of THE LAST HAWK), and (as "T.M. Adams") has frequently been published in ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S and ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE.
His "day jobs" have always been at night and usually on the graveyard shift: no-tell motel manager, "trouble desk" for a detective agency, bonded courier, radio dispatcher. Hence his thirty years' interest and research into the interrelated mysteries of sleep, dreams, and memory -- and the sometimes-bizarre anecdotes that color and enliven his lectures.
He currently teaches small-group classes in memory and test-taking skills here in Ashland, and can be reached at wadams9@mind.net.
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