Dreamplay

connecting parents & kids to their inner creativity

A Nevada City-based experiential learning group led by Red & Nicole Feola

Current Focus: The Element of Fire

Times:

• 10-11:30 AM on Mondays for 4-6 yo age group

• 4-5:30 PM on Mondays for 8-10 yo age group

• Other times may become available depending on interest.

Dates: Every Monday beginning September 23rd

• September 23rd & 30th, October 7th, 14th*, 21st & 28th, November 4th & 11th, (November 18th*)

• *The meeting on October 14th is during most people’s fall break, so we’ve set aside November 18th as an available date in case we need to miss 10/14 and push back the rest of the dates.

Frequency: 8 Weekly Gatherings

Duration: 1.5 hours each

Exchange: $130/child + $130/adult

Age Groups:

• Ages 4 - 7 years

• Ages 7 - 10 years

Size: 6-8 kids + 6-8 parents

How to sign up

Sign up for 4-7 yo group (10-11:30 PM) or 7-10 yo group (4-5:30 PM) group. You can also email nicolefeola@livingmoons.com. If you’re curious to learn more you can book a free 15-20 min call here.

Intentions for this Group

Our intentions for building this container include assisting parents and caregivers with:

• Recognizing and resourcing wholeness, both inner and outer.

• Perceiving and experiencing a deep belonging to and interconnectedness within a shared field of Story and web of relations.

• Bringing an embodied recognition of how important and sacred play is for their children, from the parent’s direct experience of how play can be transformative to their own sense of Self, well-being and possibility.

• Participating in an intentional and held space with their child.

• Reclaiming their imaginations and authentic self-expression from the parched landscape of the Dream of Separation, and into the Dream of Interconnected Aliveness.

• Practice lucid dreaming (awakening within the dream in both waking and sleeping life) as a skill for Self-connection, vibrant meaning-making and shaping change within oneself and in the world.

• Share and connect in the experience of wonderment.

• Have fun together!

Additionally, our intentions are to facilitate an experiential learning group for kids to:

• Attend to a relationship with dreaming and the dream realm through an exploration of dream awareness, dream recall and lucid dreaming practices.

• Develop a familiar vocabulary for dreaming and the world of dream exploration that they can carry with them and make their own over time.

• Explore their innate creativity in a number of different ways.

• Connect with other peers in a space of play and in the context of a living world — of Land, Skies, Soils, Waters and the many creatures living therein.

• See and join their parents in play! See their parents role model Play as an essential aspect of one’s life-long education (a word that comes from the Latin root educare — “to bring forth that which is within.”)

• Have fun together!

Group Structure & Commitment

During each gathering, the kids and parents will separate into their own “learning groups” guided respectively by Red and Nicole.

Exercises will vary from nature-based art, collages, costume-making, role plays, puppet shows, charades, creative movement prompts, observation practices and more.

For parents, there will also be space for sharing stories, personal experiences and reflections. And there will be 1-2 hours of recommended resources on astrology, embodied storytelling, myth, lucid dreaming & conscious parenting. The intention of this “homework” is to deepen our individual participation with the material as it relates to our own stories, processes, parenting/reparenting journeys, so that we can feed the field of our group's contemplation and dreaming together. These resources will include:

• Video recordings

• Readings

• Journaling, art & movement prompts

Kids will also have optional resources and prompts to explore on their own or with their parents. It could be a really sweet way to connect and intentionally cultivate a family culture that includes dreaming and body- & Earth-based storytelling.

The opening and closing rituals of each gathering will involve both children and parents coming together, providing an opportunity to remember that we are dream-weaving our stories together, in our own unique ways, coming from our own unique vantage points as “grown ups” and kids!

There will be eight gatherings with focuses listed below:

Meeting #1:  One or two play-based exercises to introduce ourselves and tend the shared field & felt safety of the group.

Meetings #2 & 3  ARIES — Cardinal (activating, beginning, sparking, initiating) Fire (creativity, enthusiasm, passion)

Meetings #4 & 5 LEO — Fixed (stabilizing, cohering, containing) Fire

Meetings #6 & 7  SAGITTARIUS — Mutable (shifting, swirling, pivoting, changing) Fire

Meeting #8:  Integration & Closure

To tend the group field and connection, please plan on attending all the sessions as much as possible (of course, understanding that there may be unavoidable absences, illnesses etc. that inevitably come up.)

Optional 1:1 Consults will be available to parents and caregivers to enrich their understanding and personal contemplations; explore more deeply their own birth chart and transits; facilitate Self-connection; and support metabolism of what’s arising during this time together. 

Participant Requirements

For parents:

• You have some kind of self-care, mindfulness, embodiment or somatic practice.

• You feel confident in your ability to reach out for support if deeper material does surface beyond what you feel comfortable or equipped to engage with further inside of this container only. Through participant agreements, shared intentions and check-ins, I (Nicole) will facilitate and we will together hold the safest and most loving space possible, and ongoingly tend a felt sense of safety. That said, it’s important to know this is not intended to be a form of group psychotherapy, nor is it a substitute for therapy.

For kids:

• No expectation or requirements other than showing up, we trust the rest will unfold as it should, with guidance, grounding and support.

Experiential Astrology & Embodied Storytelling

This work will be guided by astrology and its associated myths, as they are always here and now, living through us. These stories and ways of seeing can open up to us an abundance of avenues into more facets and dimensions of our creative energies.

Lineage

I (Nicole) offer deep thanks and gratitude to Jason Holley, my astrology teacher and mentor, for his 1:1 and group work as well as his ongoing guidance around this type of group facilitation. His own group containers, experiential astrology approach and invitations to walk the land of the mythic has transformed and expanded my relationship to astrology, myself and the world.

I am also informed and supported by Internal Family Systems (Parts Work) as well as Craniosacral Therapy, which both have supported my body in other ways of listening and being with.

About Your Facilitators

Jared (Red) Feola has worked in a variety of youth educational contexts with kids of all ages for over 20 years. He has taught in the classroom and the outdoors, coached on the soccer field and acted as a mentor and advisor for high school students. Red has been studying and practicing Dream Exploration for over a decade, focusing on Lucid Dreaming in sleeping life and the impact of dream awareness in waking life. He’s thrilled to now create a space that supports children and their parents to genuinely connect with each other, themselves, the Earth & Skies — and to do so in the realm of play, where grown-ups have primarily been facilitators or space-holders for their children and not as much participants alongside their children. Through this offering, Red is weaving together his passion for youth mentorship and tending the realms of Dreaming, Education & Play, so that kids can see their parents embody these essential skills of Adulthood in today’s world.

Nicole Feola has been a professional astrologer for nine years, and a mentor and teacher in Nature-based educational communities for 15 years. She’s an artist, mother of two and trained in Internal Family Systems and the Conscious Parenting Method. Her voice and work emerges from the depths of her own awe, wonder & gratitude for the wisdom of the Body, Earth & Skies. Learn more about Nicole here.