Working with Nightmares in Spiritual Direction
Virtual Spiritual Director Enrichment Session
Sunday, November 15, 2026, 1 – 4:30 p.m. U.S./Eastern
$75
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About this offering
This Virtual Professional Enrichment Session for Spiritual Directors provides a space for spiritual directors to gather for fellowship, formation, and personal reflection.
No one likes to have a nightmare and often our response is an attempt to ignore it. In the worldview of this session, many nightmares are coded messages with often surprisingly positive value for the dreamer, the community, and Creation. Spiritual directors and their directees will benefit from learning ways to facilitate the dialog between the waking conscious mind and the unsettling images that can hold important content for discernment and the call of the future.
This afternoon workshop will support directors in:
- Differentiating the types of nightmares and when referral is appropriate
- Learning practices to reassure and ground their directees who have experienced nightmare images
- Learning a gentle, incremental process for hosting nightmare figures
Focused on professional development and fostering fellowship among spiritual directors the session will offer input from Liz Walz, Ph.D., conversation among participants, and the opportunity for communal prayer and reflection.
Contact Megan Shepherd, Director of Spirituality and Retreats for more information or with any questions.
About the presenter
Liz Walz, Ph.D., a spiritual director since 2003 and facilitator of spiritual retreats since 2004, offers deep listening in service of your soul and the soul of the world. A spiritual seeker for four decades and counting, Liz's background includes the Catholic Worker movement and nonviolent direct action; yoga, massage, and Ayurveda certifications; and directing a school for contemplative living. Liz is enthusiastic about the many "love languages" of the Divine. Her retreats offer a thoughtful and grounded framework supported by bodily-based ways of knowing tapping into intuitive wisdom and insight through creative expression. Liz's theology is cosmological and Christo-centric; her spiritual practices are creativity and nature based. Liz received her doctorate in Jungian and Archetypal Psychology, with a focus on dreams. She lives at the foot of Cape Cod.