The therapist opened up space and time for the client with non-verbal expressions of gentle encouragement followed by a statement: “Take some time and explore that inside.”

The client closed their eyes and connected with their internal experience: the hot tingling of leftover anger in their chest and limbs, the plush couch and an awareness of safety seeming to radiate toward them from the therapist. Then, images started to appear.

Before becoming angry a moment prior and launching into a familiar tirade, they had started relaying a dream to their therapist. They seemed to re-enter that dream now.

They wound through a labyrinth of tall stone walls. Their heart rate accelerated, and an anxious warmth filled their body—which way?

They swallowed hard, took a deep breath. They noticed tension in their shoulders. Part of them wanted to open their eyes and not be back in this dream. And yet, they wanted to figure it out and move forward in their life.

They decided to stay as long as they could. They chose a path.

The therapist said, with a calm and loving voice, “There you go. I’m here if you need me. Take your time. Explore.”

After ten minutes of anxious searching, with periodic gentle encouragement and mirroring from the therapist, the client’s sensations changed to an excitement and a sense of power. They paused in the maze, looked up at a beautiful moonlit sky of bright stars.

“Oh, my. Nobody is actually chasing me."

"Interesting. Can you expand on that?"

"I’m chasing myself, inside my gut. It’s weird. What if I let myself catch up with me?”

"Hmm. Yes."

Silence for several minutes. Tears. More silence. They knew that they didn't need to tell the therapist what they saw next.

They sit up straight and lean forward. They find their way out of the maze and into a bright, sunny field populated by people they love. They open their eyes, smiling, tears coming.

“Wow,” they say.

Modern society values focus on external tasks, cognitive analysis of experience, alertness, steady........

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