In a world that often demands constant logic, productivity, and linear thinking, our inner lives can easily become restricted. We are taught to intellectualize our pain, analyze our patterns, and think our way out of suffering.
But what if the keys to our healing aren’t found in our rational minds? What if they live in our dreams, our symbols, and the wild terrain of our imagination?
At Ancestral Memory Therapy, we are deeply dedicated to therapies that honor the whole self, including the parts of us that speak in metaphor and myth. Today, we are shining a light on Willow Salehi Varela (they/them), MSW, RSW, and their beautiful approach to integrating imagination and dream therapy into the healing journey.
The Healing Power of the Imagination: More Than “Make-Believe”
In Western culture, “imagination” is often dismissed as something childish or untruthful. But in psychotherapy, the imagination is a potent, active agent of neuroplasticity and emotional liberation.
When we experience systemic oppression, or chronic stress, our nervous systems can get locked into survival mode. We lose the ability to envision a different future or feel a different state of being.
Willow utilizes the imagination not as an escape from reality, but as a bridge to a new one. Through imaginative processing, you can:
- Give form to abstract feelings: Transforming a heavy, nameless sensation in your chest into an image, shape, or character that you can actually talk to and understand.
- Create safe inner sanctuaries: Co-creating internal landscapes where your nervous system can practice what true, deep rest and safety feel like.
- Re-author ancestral stories: Using creative visualization to offer your younger self, or even the ancestors who came before you—the protection, witnessing, and care they deserved.
Dream Therapy: Listening to the Language of the Night
Dreams are not random static; they are the subconscious mind processing memory, digesting emotion, and offering profound guidance. When we ignore our dreams, we ignore a vital channel of self-communication.
Willow’s approach to dream therapy is relational and non-dogmatic. They don’t use generic dream dictionaries to tell you what your dreams “mean.” Instead, Willow helps you step back into the dream landscape to explore its unique emotional climate.
“Dreams don’t speak in the language of the everyday mind. They speak in the language of poetry, somatic sensation, and ancestral memory. By learning to sit with these symbols, we access a deep well of internal wisdom that our waking minds might try to protect us from.”
Why Work with Your Dreams?
- Circumventing the “Gatekeeper”: Our waking minds have highly sophisticated defense mechanisms (like intellectualization or humour) that keep us safe from discomfort. In dreams, those guards drop, allowing core emotional truths to gently surface.
- Somatic Release: Ever woken up from a dream with your heart racing or crying, even if the dream itself didn’t make logical sense? Dreams are a playground for somatic (body-based) processing. Working through the dream helps release that stored physical tension.
- Reconnecting with the Collective and Ancestral: Many of us carry memories and survival strategies that belong to our bloodlines or collective histories. Dreams are often where these ancestral threads weave themselves into our awareness, offering us a chance to resolve inherited burdens.
What to Expect in a Session with Willow
If you decide to explore dreamwork and imaginative therapy with Willow, you won’t be expected to instantly know what your mind or dreams are trying to say.
Willow holds an incredibly gentle, queer-affirming, and collaborative space. Together, you might:
- Slowly unpack a recurring dream, an evocative fragment of a nightmare, or a persistent waking daydream.
- Use gentle somatic prompts to see where an image “lives” in your body.
- Engage in dialogue with different parts of yourself using active imagination techniques.
- Integrate creative practices (writing, sketching, or narrative work) to anchor your insights into your waking, daily life.
Whether you are carrying a rich dream life that you want to finally understand, feeling creatively blocked, or looking for a therapist who honors the mysterious, poetic, and spiritual dimensions of mental health, Willow is here to walk alongside you.
Willow Salehi Varela (they/them) offers virtual psychotherapy sessions for folks ready to dive deep beneath the surface of everyday coping.