Santa Barbara Healing Sanctuary

an integrative health retreat
focused on the healing potential of dreaming
with Cheri Clampett
Monday, May 14th, through Thursday, May 24th, 2012
Monday, October 15th, through Thursday, October 25th, 2012
For full information and registration details, visit the Santa Barbara Healing Sanctuary's website

Conventional wisdom has it that sleep is a central element in the deeper healing process. Working in concert with conventional medical treatment, we offer effective integrative therapies. The Santa Barbara Healing Sanctuary focuses on the healing potential of dreaming amplified through the arts. This makes the Santa Barbara Healing Sanctuary unique in the world, employing our 24-hour creative mind. Dreaming embodies intelligence we are not aware of while awake. This unconscious intelligence, which can have various effects on the neuro-immune system, can be brought to awareness. While at the Santa Barbara Healing Sanctuary, participants may achieve this awareness and enhance their own endogenous healing systems. Dreams are channeled into our awakened state through embodied dream tending, and dream-based reflective writing, body work, visual art, music, yoga, dreamtheater and other modalities

Based upon a large body of scientific evidence regarding innate resilience, it has been demonstrated that imagination can trigger the endogenous healing system, stimulating the body to heal itself. Dreaming is a primary form of this creative imagination. Other scientific studies show dreaming to be involved in learning. This is vitally important at the Sanctuary where people are given the opportunity to learn new life styles; adaptive behavior, enhanced during the work with dreams, is essential when a person is called upon to adapt to the challenging realities of stress or the trauma of illness. It has long been known that attention to dreaming enhances our sense of direction, which frequently gets lost during periods of traumatic stress.The SBH Sanctuary is currently doing research on the hypothesis that therapies based on waking consciousness (conventional medicine in combination with integrative medicine and nutrition education) can be significantly enhanced by including consciousness available during sleep.