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The Dream Circle


Thank you for those who have attended my dream group. I deeply appreciate it.

As you all know, I have been working with dreams and dreams groups since I was eighteen years old when I was first introduce to the work of  Carl Jung and I read his book “Dreams”.   Later on, I found a copy of  “The Interpretation of Dreams,” by Sigmund Freud. I started my dream journal then, keeping notes to understand my dreams further. It was in 1982, I found the work of Tony Crisp, and his book “Do You Dream?” that helped gain insight into the power of my dreams. It is in my dream world that healing is created, it is there that art lurks hidden and stories are born.

When I was 23 years old, a dream about birds led me by coincidence to New York City, when upon arriving, I found a  flyer blowing in the wind about a dream workshop  led by Dr.  William R. Stimson. His weekly Friday Dream Circle in Chelsea, where I now work, and the teachings of his mentor, Montague Ullman, author of Appreciating Dreams: A Group Approach,  led to a fruitful period in my own dream work.   

Every Friday night, we held a dream group which was often held by dream leaders familiar to Dr. Stimson. I was impressed by how many people he knew and how many people I was privileged to meet,  from Dr. Ullman, to Patricia Garfield, and other notable dream leader who influenced how I work with dreams.  At the time, he edited a little dream newsletter, The Dream Network, which we created in his home during a time when there was no World Wide Web. I have saved every one of these newsletters .

Other influential writers also shaped my knowledge of dreams, Stanley Krippner, author of Dreamtime and Dream Work: Decoding the Language of the Night” as well as Fritz Perls, Calvin Hall, Anne Faraday and Patricia Garfield, and most recently, Robert Moss  author of Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path to Everyday life”  came to me in a dream (of course), and his book Dream, Coincidence and the Imagination, led me to a new dream discovery, his Active Dream method which I have used for some time, and find very powerful.   Recently, I have been reading the work of Justina Lasley “Dream Synergy” and her book “Wake Up”  which teaches us to wake up to the wisdom of our dreams. 

Lastly, I am a focusing oriented psychotherapist and I have been deeply influenced by the work Eugene Gendlin’s author of “Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams”,  and Arnold Mindel’s “Dream body”   both are  integrative approaches where through meditative process you learn to allow your body to assist you in interpreting your dreams.

I have led dream groups at Lehman College when I was a Director of their Counseling Center. I had a great powerpoint presentation to teach students about different theorist, and we would end up with Ullman’s technique “If it were my dreams….” and the students took to it so easily. Once I left Lehman College, and went to Bronx Community College, I participated in a dream group led by an adjunct psychology professor Roger Cunningham. He has led this group now for almost five years. An amazing group of students sit and work on their dreams with each other.

I have been very privileged to have  dreams in my life, the knowledge of their power and wisdom and the support of wonderful dreamers who have taught me to never give up on dreams. Dreams have been my guide, they have helped me understand my life, but most important they have guided my every step. This is what I wish for you, for dreams to be your guide, for coincidences to remind you that you are on the right path, and for your imagination to open to the creative forces that lay within you.

 I am a psychotherapist, educator, poet and writer, author of My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories (2007) and winner of the Curbstone Press Marmol Prize for First Latina Fiction. My most recent fiction is anthologized in Viajeros del Rocio: 25 Narradores Dominicanos de la Diaspora and in Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers. Presently, I am an Associate Professor at Touro College Graduate School of Social Work. My professional research can be found at academia edu.

Professional & Creative Writing: https://touro.academia.edu/AnnecyBaez

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