Living Our Dreams Workshop
We will connect to our inner desires with body, mind, heart and soul. Within us and outside of us - personal, local and global. We will interweave through movement, stillness, meditation, visioning, dreaming, sharing, listening, discussion, reflexion, gibberish, play, objective analysis, feeling, breathing and manifestation. By examining our relationship to our vision of "peace" we can begin to realise it in harmony with our most outlandish desires. Peace is so emotive that our blocks and dodges become visible before us. Peace becomes a metaphor for things that we truly want in our lives but seem unobtainable. We can pass beyond and around these blocks by understanding their influence on our decisions and actions. We break through by describing, visioning, feeling and sharing our future world desired. We can create holographic visions within ourselves and radiate this energy out to the world. And we have some fun too in the process!
Connect to your vision of world peace with body, heart and soul.
I run a workshop called 'Living Our Dreams'. It takes me to various events around the world...
"Discover and share your vision of peace"
"What does it look like? Sound like? Feel like? Smell like? Taste like?"
I want people to leave the workshop buzzing about the possibilities of World Peace. It's simple but effective. It's aim is to give people space and time to imagine themselves in a world at peace. Many people don't even believe World Peace is possible. So, within the workshop we play with the idea - softly - using imagination - without thinking about all the 'bad' things that could get in the way. We then share our visions of a world at peace. By talking about these visions we can assist each other into bringing them to reality. That's the idea.
In short, the more we describe in detail how a world would look like (with: a human sustaining sustainable biosphere; total peace for all the population; and abundance of resources for every person) the more we can accurately measure if each action, step or thought takes us towards or away from that vision. We can then make a conscious decision. And then another one. But without that detailed vision we are constantly reacting to negative scenarios from a place of fear - and our reactions will then always be short term. So, first we need the vision and then we can start walking towards it. Everything else is fluff and treacle sent to get in our way. There's much more process than this but that's a start.
What people have said:
- Chris Johnstone, author of Find Your Power, said: "Daniel is an excellent group facilitator. His workshop invited me to connect with my vision for a positive future - I found it inspiring. I really liked his approach and I'd strongly recommend his workshops."
Events and venues where I will be running the workshops in 2024:
- None yet but probably Buddhafield 2024.
But feel free to invite me (see below)...
This workshop is transforming each time I run it. Things become more clear... When we think about a World at Peace it's very easy to get frustrated and confused as all these conflicting thoughts come in to our head. It's also very easy to go round in circles to the point that thinking about it is just painful. But in taking the Visions workshop I'm seeing that the more we can consciously analyze our thoughts the more we can deal with the issues in a calm and rational way. What's really become clear - thanks to all of the participants working on this - is that if we can take our Visions of a World at Peace through a design process then we can be a lot clearer about how to proceed.
So, thoughts can be put in boxes: aims/goals, hinderances, resources, materials, processes, etc. Then we can look at dependancies between different ideas and so make decisions about what can be done first and build a timeline of action. All in a clear and rational way. What's also interesting is that this clarity of thought and design can be applied to any goal. In picking world peace the challenges are so much more acute and the emotional responses so much greater that one can really see the benefits of clear thinking straight away.
One thing that has become blatantly clear is the importance for people to use their own words. One can support and make stronger ones own vision using ones own words. Concepts then are secondary to giving each person a voice and enabling them to validate their own words and their own existence.
Feedback has been really great and leads me to proceed with running with the workshop. People seem to appreciate the space to play with and express their own vision of a world at peace - without having to justify the possibility of it happening - we stress that we should concentrate on the positive. I, for one, get an immense sense of hope, clarity and happiness by just sitting and creating a beautiful world at peace. And seeing everyone share their own visions gives me such a confidence boost to carry on, I can tell you! ;-)
I'm very open to invitations to run this workshop at events and festivals - please email me at: daniel at livingourdreams dot uk - you'll need to replace the " at " and " dot " with "@" and "."!
- My preferred time to run the workshop is in the late morning, starting between 1100 and 1130 and lasting between 1 and 1.5 hours. I'm also happy to do early afternoon slots starting at 1430.
- My desire is for a self-contained space that'll hold around 10 people, comfortably and quietly, with space to move around yet also without us being lost in a huge space.
- I prefer not to use amplified sound for my voice.
- I like to hold my workshop everyday so that there's some continuity though the festival and a sense of growing the ideas that we gather. But obviously that's down to time/space availability.
I have run workshops since 2004 at the following events:
2023:
- Buddhafield - 12 to 16 July 2023 - UK
2018:
- Buddhafield - 18 to 22 July 2018 - UK
2017:
- Buddhafield - 12 to 16 July 2017 - UK
2016:
- Buddhafield - 13 to 17 July 2016 - UK
2015:
- Colourfest - 5 to 8 June 2015 - UK
- Into The Wild Summer Festival - 28 to 31 August 2015 - UK
2014:
- Festival of Life - 13 September 2014 - UK
2013:
- Buddhafield - 17 to 21 July 2013 - UK
- Festival of Life - 14 September 2013 - UK
- Unity Earthdance Celebration - 19 to 23 September 2013 - UK
2012:
- The Sharing Game - 19:00 to 23:30 - 19 October 2012 - London, UK
- Festival of Life - 29 September 2012 - UK
- Totnes Peace Day Festival - 21 to 23 September 2012 - UK
- Buddhafield - 11 to 15 July 2012 - UK
- Thursday 12/07/2012 10:00-12:00 Perma Whale
- Sunday 15/07/2012 10:00-12:00 Perma Whale
- Sunrise Celebration - 21 to 24 June 2012 - UK
- Beltane May Celebration Week at Sandwell Barns - 11:00 to 13:00 - 6 May 2012 - UK
2011:
- Festival of Life - 24 September 2011 - UK
- Waldorfschule Klagenfurt - 19 and 21 September 2011 - Austria
- Wild Heart Gathering - 29 April – 2 May 2011 - UK
- Sunday 01/05/2011 1200-1400
- Monday 02/05/2011 1000-1200
2010:
- Leeds Schumacher Conference - Beyond Consumerism - 23 October 2010 - UK
- Festival of Life - 25 September 2010 - UK
- Sunrise Off-Grid - 19 to 22 August 2010 - UK
- Buddhafield - 14 to 18 July 2010 - UK
- Sunrise Celebration - 3 to 6 June 2010 - UK
2009:
- Festival of Life - 26 September 2009 - UK
- Out Of The Ordinary - 18 to 20 September 2009 - UK
- Saturday 19/09/2009 1430-1600
- Big Chill - 7 to 9 August 2009 - UK
- Buddhafield - 15 to 19 July 2009 - UK
- Thursday 16/07/2009 1200-1330 - Social Change
- Saturday 18/07/2009 1200-1330 - Social Change
- Healing Field Gathering - 12 to 16 August 2009 - UK
- Sunrise Celebration - 28 to 31 May 2009 - UK
- Small World Spring Festival - 21 to 25 May 2009 - UK
- Star Mountain - 17 May 2009 - Plymouth, UK
- Sunday 17/05/2009 1100-1300
- Beltane Rainbow Gathering - 25 April to 12 May 2009 - UK
2008:
- Out Of The Ordinary - 12 to 14 September 2008 - UK
- Saturday 13/09/2008 1130-1230 - Workshops
- Healing Field Gathering - 30 July to 3 August 2008 - UK
- Buddhafield - 16 to 20 July 2008 - UK
2007:
- Big Green Gathering - 1 to 5 August 2007 - UK
- Thursday 02/08/2007 1400-1530 - Little Bag End, Ethics Spirituality Philosophy Field
- Glastonbury - 22 to 24 June 2007 - UK
- Friday 22/06/2007 1700-1800 - Speakers Forum, Green Futures Field
- Buddhafield - 11 to 15 July 2007 - UK
- Sunrise Celebration - 31 May to 3 June 2007 - UK
- Thursday 31/05/2007 1445-1645 - Solar Temple, Sacred Heart Area
- Friday 01/06/2007 1500-1600 - Rainbow Fayre Workshops Space, Tipi Village
- Saturday 02/06/2007 1230-1330 - Earth Circus Dome, Campaigns Area
- Beltane Rainbow Gathering - 24 April to 10 May 2007 - UK
- Ragley Green Fair - 5 to 7 May 2007 - UK
2006:
- Big Green Gathering - 2 to 6 August 2006 - UK
- Buddhafield - 12 to 16 July 2006 - UK
- Sunrise Summer Solstice Celebration - 16 to 21 June 2006 - UK
- Earthwise - 1 to 4 June 2006 - UK
2005:
- Festival of Life - September 2005 - London, UK
- Big Green Gathering - August 2005 - UK
- Buddhafield - July 2005 - UK
- Sydney Confest - April 2005 - AU
2004:
- Confest - December 2004 - AU
- United Diversity - 7 February 2004 - London, UK
Reoccurring themes:
Over time themes and ideas keep popping up in the workshop. These themes seem to mainly fall into one of two camps: ideas that hinder us and ideas and assist us going forward to realising inner and outer peace. Here are some of them...
Things that assist us:
- Our thoughts create our create our reality
- We are all one
- Action
- Responsibility
- Talking from the self - using the "I" word
- Openness and transparency
- Creating
- Abundance - there's always enough
- Truth
- Understanding that the "means create the ends"
- Distributed power structure - autonomy
- Love
- Acceptance and appreciation of the now - but the next moment is full of new possibilities
- Self awareness
- Equal access to resources
- Sharing
- Uniting
- Knowing that we are all one, united and connected
- Genuinely caring about oneself
- Saying hello to each other
- Building bridges between different communities
- Music and celebration
- Cultural exchange
- Food and houses/homes
Things that hinder us:
- Blame
- Protest
- Destroying
- It's got to get worse before it gets better
- Scarcity - there's not enough
- Playing the Devil's advocate
- Centralised and/or global government
- Fear
- World Peace is not possible
- Concept of "human nature"
- Country borders
- Material wealth
- Money