Dreaming and Enchantment with Writer Andy Couturier

My personal writing mentor, Andy Couturier, is helping me through the birth of my book about dreaming. Andy is also an avid dreamer in his own right, and he has lots of say about using dreams to deepen our enchantment and sense of magic in the world.

We start with Andy sharing an early childhood dream of bookcases full of presents which he thinks of as the gifts of life to come. He says that dreams are a welcome non-utilitarian part of my life and quotes from Thomas Moore’s book The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life. We talk about the Abundance of Less by our guest and The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard.

Andy recommends that we ask questions of our dreams without needing to answer them. He also shares some writing exercises from his book Writing Open the Mind designed to access the subconscious and describes the logistics of his self-organized dream group encouraging you, the listener, to set up one of your own.

We take a call from a widow in Aptos whose husband died three years ago. After an absence of three years, now he is starting to appear in her dreams. We also take a call from Elizabeth in Bellingham who says that her dreams are guiding her as she writes her memoir, and she ends by asking a provocative question about how we are each placed in time which inspires Andy to share one of his precognitive dreams.

Sign up for Andy’s contact list to stay in the loop about the new course he will offer later this summer called “Dreaming and Writing,” or to sign up for one of his Book Completion groups.

BIO: Mentor of hundreds of completed books and author of Writing Open the Mind and The Abundance of Less, Andy Couturier is a writing coach and an engaged dreamer. During waking hours he is also guiding Katherine’s book creation journey using innovative writing techniques that access subconscious processes. He walks the line between dreams and the waking subconscious, practicing an open-minded curiosity and amazement toward dreams, and he likes to welcome all the dream parts without making a story of them, but including them all and giving them all voice. He is developing a new course for this summer called “Dreaming and Writing.”

Find our guest at: theopening.org or on IG at Andy.Couturier.

Intro music is Water over Stones and outro music is Everything both by Mood Science. Today’s ambient music is created by Rick Kleffel. The audio can be found at Pandemiad.com. Many thanks to Rick Kleffel for also engineering the show, to Tony Russomano for answering the phones and to Ewa Malady for audio editing.

Show aired May 13 2023.

 

The Dream Journal is produced at and airs on KSQD Santa Cruz, 90.7 FM, streaming live at KSQD.org 10-11am Saturday mornings Pacific time.  Catch it live and call in with your dreams or questions at 831-900-5773 or at onair@ksqd.org.

Contact Katherine Bell with feedback, suggestions for future shows or to inquire about exploring your own dreams with her at katherine@ksqd.org, or find out more at