Foundations of Animistic Dreamwork
The Dream That Tends You
May 31st – June 28th 2026
3pm-4:30 ET | 12pm-1:30 PT
Welcome to the Threshold
Something in you already knows this course was not found by accident. Perhaps a dream sent you here, a fragment of image you couldn’t shake, a feeling that wouldn’t translate into ordinary language, a voice from the almost-sleeping that called your name in a tongue older than you knew you spoke.
Welcome.
In most of the modern world, dreaming has been reduced to a puzzle to be decoded, a symptom to be managed, or a random firing of the tired brain. We have been taught to move through our nights in silence and to greet the morning having left our dreams behind like shed skin.
But the animist knows otherwise.
In earth-rooted traditions across every inhabited continent, the dream has always been understood as a living field, a place where the boundaries between the self and the wider web of relations grow thin. Where the ancestors draw near. Where the land speaks in image and sensation. Where the soul, freed from the obligations of daylight, wanders its true home.
This course is an invitation to return to that understanding as a lived practice, something you carry into your soma, onto your altar, into the soil, companioned by the greater web of relations.
We do not analyze dreams here. We receive them. We accompany them. We honor them.
Dreams are not riddles to be solved. They are relations to be met, threshold messengers carrying medicine from the unseen world into the waking one. – Shannon Willis
What You Will Receive in These Five Lessons
◆ A living framework for understanding dreams from an animistic, relational worldview
◆ Practices for preparing the dreaming body — creating conditions for meaningful, rememberable dreams
◆ Tools for meeting the human and other than human kin, landscapes, and forces that arise in your dreams as living relations
◆ Ways of working with ancestral and land-based dreaming — listening for what is carried in the lineage
◆ A simple, sustainable daily practice you can weave into your devotional life
◆ Ritual responses: ways of honoring, completing, and answering what the dream asks of you
A Word on How to Move Through This Course
Each lesson is its own threshold. Give yourself time to cross it. There is no race here, no credential to collect. Let each teaching rest in you for a few days before moving forward. Sleep on it — quite literally.
You will find, woven into each lesson: teaching, reflection, a practice for before sleep, a ritual for waking, and a live call to bring the practice into being. The understanding lives in the doing.
Lesson Content
Lesson One: The Dream Is Alive
Dreams are living encounters.
In an animistic view, dreaming is entering a deeper layer of reality where everything is in relationship and meaning is alive. Every dream carries a kind of intelligence.
We will learn to recognize what is arriving through discerning the different types of dreams.
Lesson Two: Ritual Dream Re-Entry
Some dreams are not finished when you wake. They leave a charge, an image, a threshold waiting.
Re-entry is the practice of returning to the dream with intention. You go back as a prepared traveler, with protection, presence, and a clear question.
The dream is a living territory you can walk with awareness and respect.
We will learn how to return, how to listen further, and how to meet what is still waiting.
Lesson Three: Meeting the Dream Presences
Dream presences arrive in many forms. A stranger, an animal, a place, the dead, each carrying presence.
In this work, we meet them as they are – sentient beings, not just symbols. The dream is an inhabited world and we are not alone in it.
We will learn how to approach these presences, how to listen, and how to enter into right relationship with what arrives.
Lesson Four: The Land Dreams Too
The earth has been dreaming far longer than you have.
The land beneath you carries its own intelligence, its own memory, its own voice. And it speaks through dreams.
You are not separate from this. You are part of a living field of relationship.
We will learn how to listen for the voice of place, and how to deepen relationship with the land that dreams you.
Lesson Five: Answering the Dream
Closing the circle with ritual response
In the animistic understanding of the world, a gift unanswered is a relationship left unfinished.
This is what separates dream tending from dream analysis. Analysis stops at understanding. Tending goes further, into action, into response, into the closing of the circle.
We will learn how to recognize what a dream is asking, and how to respond in ways that close the circle.
Lesson One: The Dream Is Alive
Dreams are living encounters.
In an animistic view, dreaming is entering a deeper layer of reality where everything is in relationship and meaning is alive. Every dream carries a kind of intelligence.
We will learn to recognize what is arriving through discerning the different types of dreams.
Lesson Two: Ritual Dream Re-Entry
Some dreams are not finished when you wake. They leave a charge, an image, a threshold waiting.
Re-entry is the practice of returning to the dream with intention. You go back as a prepared traveler, with protection, presence, and a clear question.
The dream is a living territory you can walk with awareness and respect.
We will learn how to return, how to listen further, and how to meet what is still waiting.
Lesson Three: Meeting the Dream Presences
Dream presences arrive in many forms. A stranger, an animal, a place, the dead, each carrying presence.
In this work, we meet them as they are – sentient beings, not just symbols. The dream is an inhabited world and we are not alone in it.
We will learn how to approach these presences, how to listen, and how to enter into right relationship with what arrives.
Lesson Four: The Land Dreams Too
The earth has been dreaming far longer than you have.
The land beneath you carries its own intelligence, its own memory, its own voice. And it speaks through dreams.
You are not separate from this. You are part of a living field of relationship.
We will learn how to listen for the voice of place, and how to deepen relationship with the land that dreams you.
Lesson Five: Answering the Dream
Closing the circle with ritual response
In the animistic understanding of the world, a gift unanswered is a relationship left unfinished.
This is what separates dream tending from dream analysis. Analysis stops at understanding. Tending goes further, into action, into response, into the closing of the circle.
We will learn how to recognize what a dream is asking, and how to respond in ways that close the circle.
Investment
Interested in the next round of Forces of Nature?
Leave your name and email below, and we’ll notify you as soon as registration opens for the next run of the course.
(You’ll also be added to our newsletter, if you’re not already on the list.)
WE’RE HAPPY TO OFFER 3 PRICING OPTIONS IN CONSIDERATION OF THOSE WHO ARE IN FINANCIAL NEED.
Generating: For those folks with comfortable financial means to contribute more, we are deeply appreciative of your generosity which assists in making this accessible for those who may otherwise not be able to attend.
Sustaining: This is the actual cost for us to offer this program and sustain what we do. We are grateful if you are able to enroll at this rate.
Supported: We invite folks with leaner financial means to enjoy programs at a reduced cost and are delighted you are here.
If you need a reduction beyond what is provided or a payment plan, please reach out directly to shannon@redearthhealing.org
Generating
For those who are able to support othersSustaining
For those with modest meansSupported
For those facing Economic HardshipFacilitator
Shannon Willis, M.Ed
Shannon will be your guide for this immersive. Her work lives at the wild confluence of dream midwifery, oracular listening, ancestral reverence, and ritual arts. She’s the Ritual Director at Ancestral Medicine, and an initiate in the Òrìṣà tradition of Yoruba-speaking West Africa, she has also apprenticed herself to the dreaming wisdom of her own bloodlines and to teachers of Jhanki Shamanism.
Shannon writes and weaves spiritual accompaniment for emerging leaders and cultural edge-walkers—those drawn to the holy work of remembrance, repair, and rooted resistance. She dwells with her son and their furred companions near the mist-kissed shores of the Salish Sea, on the ancestral and living lands of the Twana-Skokomish people.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this course for me?
This course is for all level of dream tenders, those who are avid at recall and working the dream and those who are just beginning to explore their dream time. I believe we live through experiences in our dream time first and then actualize them in waking life and we can dream for our community as well. The only pathway to this is with everyone!
How long do I have access to the course?
Once you’re enrolled, you’ll have ongoing access to the course for as long as it’s hosted on our site. While we may update or transition older teachings over time, we’ll always do our best to give plenty of notice if anything is changing. We deeply value your learning journey and aim to support your connection to this work for the long term.
Are refunds possible if I'm unhappy with the course?
A full refund is available for up to 30 days after the course begins. If helpful, please reach out as I would like to see if it’s possible to make the course work for you. Of course, you are welcome to the refund as well with no questions asked.
What if I can’t make the live Zoom calls?
All Zoom calls will be recorded and made available within 48 hours.
