ABSTRACT
Chapter 9: Intimations of the Numinous: “It feels like a visitation from the lady in red in here”
This chapter presents a session with a client in a major life transition, who presents a highly significant dream for this stage in her process. She is in a state of hypoarousal and in a dorsal freeze–referring to her energy as jammed up; her skin tone is pale, and she has a tightness in her gut. I regulate the nervous system, restoring homeostasis, a preparatory step to lay the groundwork for the dream exploration, shifting the dreamer into a more open, receptive state where the right hemisphere is available to explore the unconscious somatic processes.
She orients toward an image on the wall as a positive resource to counteract activation and engages in an active imagination dialogue. The image takes on a living quality and initially awakens her to its numinosity. Very quickly her system is overwhelmed by powerful feelings and falls into a dorsal freeze. We titrated the arousal, supporting her system to be fluid and receptive to a different kind of knowing, an extraneous knowledge (Neumann) that is coming through her sensing body, her powerful emotions. She is engaged and actively alive to the energetic nuances in the dream and able to heed its message.
