Happy New Dreaming Time
As we cross the threshold of the winter solstice, something quietly powerful happens. The nights stretch longer, the days grow shorter, and life seems to draw its breath inward. On the 21st of December, we enter what I like to call a New Dreaming Time.
Not as a metaphor borrowed from somewhere else, but as a lived experience of this season.
The season of dreaming
If we relate the rhythm of the year to the four phases of the Dragon Dreaming method — inspired by the wisdom of Australian Aboriginal cultures — we move through a continuous spiral of:
- Dreaming
- Planning
- Doing
- Celebrating
These phases are not linear. They spiral, returning again and again, each time on a wider, richer level, each one nourishing the others.
Spring carries the energy of planning — ideas rising, possibilities awakening. Summer invites us into doing — action, growth, expression. Autumn allows us to harvest, to celebrate what has been created, to acknowledge effort and completion.
And then comes winter.
When the outer world quiets, when much of what has been visible begins to fall away, we return to dreaming.
Winter: where new life begins
Winter is often misunderstood. It can look like collapse, like an ending, like nothing much is happening. But underneath the surface, something essential is taking place.
Winter is where the seeds are held in the dark.
It is the season of stillness, listening, and subtle beginnings. The season where new visions form before they ever ask to be acted upon.
This is why I experience winter as the beginning of the cycle — the New Dreaming Period.
Recently, I bought a small nativity scene. Mary and Joseph. The newborn child. And it struck me how deeply this image mirrors the essence of this time of year. The light being reborn in the darkest moment. Something fragile, new, and full of potential arriving quietly — not through force, but through presence.
What touched me most was the balance in this image. The masculine and feminine. The holding and the emerging. All parts equally seen, equally needed.
About dreaming (and why it matters)
I often hear people say things like: “I’m not a dreamer,” or “That’s unrealistic,” or “You’re just dreaming.” As if dreaming were something naïve, childish, or disconnected from real life.
But the truth is this:
Everyone dreams.
The problem is not that we don’t have dreams. The problem is that we live in a culture that has learned to devalue them.
Every single thing that exists in this world — every creation, every movement, every meaningful change — began as a dream. Long before there was action, there was an inner image. A felt sense. A quiet knowing that something else is possible.
Dreaming is not escapism.
Dreaming is the soil from which reality grows.
Emotional integration and dreaming
In emotional integration work, dreaming has a very grounded place. When we slow down enough to listen — really listen — we begin to notice the dreams that live beneath our coping strategies, our habits, and our defenses.
Often, what we call confusion is simply a dream that hasn’t yet found language.
Winter offers us a rare invitation: to pause without pressure, to feel without fixing, to allow images, sensations, and longings to arise without immediately needing to turn them into plans.
This is not passive. It is deeply creative.
A gentle wish for this season
So as we enter this winter, this quiet threshold of the year, I want to offer an invitation rather than advice.
Give your dreams some space.
Not the big, polished ones that already know where they’re going — but the small, tender, half-formed dreams that only appear when things slow down.
Let them be vague. Let them be impractical. Let them rest.
Because when the time comes, they will know how to grow.
Wishing you a nourishing, gentle, and honest beginning of this New Dreaming Time.