Interview with 효영 HyoYoung Minna Kim

효영 Minna: I messaged Elisabeth back in January after seeing her Instagram post about 한 (Han) and dreams. I don’t remember following her page, yet here she was—4,500 miles away in Scotland—a sibling of the Korean diaspora creating art inspired by her relationship with the dreamworld as a shamanic practice, part of her dialogue with Life and the work of intergenerational healing.

Our first video call was a breezy hour of chronological time, and stretched beyond into something ancient. One particular moment stands out: Elisabeth was sharing a dream about her wailing ancestor, and as I was listening, I felt so felt by her in that moment, I started to sob, surfacing 한, “…a complex, deep, generational unresolved grief, sorrow and loss that are linked to historical and cultural oppression, injustice and suffering…”1 We both wept. It felt medicinal.

There was much left to be explored together, so below is our second conversation we’re inviting you to be a part of. As you read the interview, the invitation is to notice what’s being stirred, what questions are emerging, and how you might respond to some of the questions. Feel free to comment below and continue the dialogue with us.

The painting represents Mago, my Korean mother, the dream and the divine female archetype.

효영 Minna: Well, here we are, Elisabeth. Will you share who you are, what you are working on, or creating, however it feels right for you to introduce yourself.

Elisabeth: Great. First of all, I feel deeply grateful to be connected with you, Minna. It’s such a meaningful and rich and very moving, as well, that we met. So, in that energy of gratitude, I would like to start this discussion.

So who am I? It’s always a very interesting question to me. There are so many words that come to me. I do see myself as an artist. But I feel the word that really reflects who or what I am is a very curious explorer artist.

I think that I am somebody who’s very alive and very connected to myself, and for me, art is life. Therefore, I don’t necessarily stick to one type of practice. There’s a lot of changes, I evolve, I have different inspirations, and so my practices, they vary, the tools varies, although the expression, the love for art remains, but the expressions outwardly might differ.

So far, I’ve done so many things. I’ve started with designing, making clothes. Then I switched to jewelry making, and then I started to make Korean paper lamps, some of them really, really big, like 2 meters high.

And then I continued with painting, like visionary art and expression through painting of my mystical and spiritual experiences, but then I also started dancing a lot, so a lot of somatic-based practices.

Whirling came, and then I went to Korea and learned Korean calligraphy. With that, I felt something wanted to be expressed in a very raw and alive way through calligraphy, movement, and art, so I started practicing that and then performative arts. And, of course, in all this is the dream fabric, a dreamweaving. Always, quite present, actually, in my life.

Dreamworld is just a different reality from this physical reality. So, for me, that’s very important we start saying this is a reality, dream reality is another reality.

If we think of the dream world as a place that exists, then it’s about having an intimate relationship with that world–bringing an element, or something that you’ve felt, something that you’ve seen, something that you experience, maybe characters, entities, spirits, funny animals, whatever your dream world has created, bring this back into this reality and take action.

To weave these two realities. That’s what I could call Dreamweaving.

효영 Minna: I appreciate you making that very clear–a dream is not just something that happens when I sleep, it already is here. And the soul takes this journey into it, we are actually accessing it, and sleep is the ticket that gets us in the doorway.

Elisabeth: Love that, yes. I actually think that the dream reality is continuous. The mind works with focus and presence. So, we are now focusing on this reality, so it feels like the dream reality has stopped, but it still continues, but we are not aware of it. It’s actually happening as we speak, but our mind is focused on this reality.

In hypnagogic state, just before falling asleep or when you wake up, this in between being fully awake and the dream state, there is this twilight zone where you can actually receive a lot of information and insight. I can’t remember, it could be Robert Moss, my teacher, who said that usually the last dream, just before waking up, has pre-cognitive information which most people have experience of.

효영 Minna: It makes me think about lucid dreaming, where I’m swimming in this liminal space that you’re speaking about. Can you share more about lucid dreaming?

Elisabeth: I don’t have much experience of it. I used to have–it’s a kind of a lucid dreaming–sleep paralysis. I had it a lot for many, many years, to a point where every time I was falling asleep, I would fall into sleep paralysis. I knew I was sleeping and I tried to wake myself up, but I couldn’t move at all.

I developed a little bit of anxiety going to bed because it would happen almost every time. At that time, I didn’t know anything about spirituality or shamanism. That was my soul trying to tell me, “Come on, wake up, wake up to your soul.”

I read many different articles. There was a shaman from South America who was able to go 11 layers of lucid dreaming. He’s aware that he’s dreaming. In that dream, he falls asleep 11 times.

효영 Minna: I can’t even comprehend that! Stephanie and I speak about the value of dream work rehabilitating the capacity with which we can imagine that’s been stunted as we age through schooling, through modernity; it keeps pruning more and more of that expansiveness that you’re talking about. And it sounds like, for you, dreaming has helped you to maintain it, preserve it, to grow it. How would you share about the vitality of dreaming for rehabilitating our imaginal capacity?

Elisabeth: It’s such a crucial question. I don’t know exactly how to explain it or even to understand it, but in my personal experience, there is a link between the energy we have and the capacity to dream.

For example, when I’m very into my head and thinking mode, then I tend to not remember my dreams. If I have a lot of paperwork and a lot of admin and computer work, and I’m thinking, thinking, I remember less of my dreams. If I’m really in a space of creation during the day, then I remember up to 5 dreams the next day. We live in a Western modern society where everything is in here [points to head].

For me, the dream world is a portal to not only our imagination, but we enter the mundos imaginales, the world of imagination beyond our own imagination. So we are talking about infinite imagination and the dreamweaving that I practice to nurture that capacity to be spontaneous and imaginative in weaving the dream reality into this physical world.

You sent me a list of questions, you wrote, “What does the dream world wants us to know?” I love that question. I’ve been sitting with that question for two days since I read it yesterday morning. I got very moved about it. I woke up, and I read again, and I stopped again at this question, and I felt I really don’t know what to answer. And I thought, if this question was a being, I was starting to dialogue. And I thought, how can I reply to this question?

And this question invited me to

Dance with it. And sing it.

So, I started singing, singing, singing.

And I started dancing with it, and I got really emotional, and I cried.

I cried because it opened to me

the love that I have for the dream world.

So this is an example of how when you dreamweave it can take you to do things that I wouldn’t have thought of. It’s the question that invited me.

효영 Minna: I think you became the vessel through which the dream could communicate, and you just described that so beautifully. What you even said earlier–it’s a real relationship. I am communing with the dream world, or I am co-creating, or I’m dialoguing with.

Elisabeth: In English, we say I had a dream, but in French we say, ‘J’ai fait un rêve. It means, I made a dream. Whereas in English, it’s more passive. I had a dream as if the dream happens to you. But in the French language, we are more active in the dream-making.

효영 Minna: You know in Korea, it’s 꿈꾸다 gghum gghu-dah. I dream the dream.

The English language, I think, is rife with colonial mindset. To have a dream almost feels like a material thing that I get to own versus when I dream my dream, there’s a romantic quality to it that I’ve become more curious about. I’m still playing with that language for myself.

Elisabeth: When you say the word romantic, I feel like, oh, the dream is my lover. I feel he, she, it is my lover, and so dreamweaving is what relationship do you want to have with your lover.

효영 Minna: Then there’s the flip side. You mentioned sleep paralysis, which I also experience. Rene Descartes’ dream led to the philosophy around Cartesian dualism, or absolute rationality, the exact opposite of dreams preserving and nurturing nonlinearity. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Elisabeth: I briefly looked into the political, social, religious context where Descartes was growing up and living, and it’s the beginning of the 17th century. I think there is a very complex issue we’ve got here.

In the Western world, it’s a human-centric way of perceiving life, whereas in Korea, people are way more in a holonic perspective where we are influencing our environment and influenced by the environment.

So, in the earliest 17th century, it was wartime and the collapse of God and faith, with violence and war. I’m trying to understand how it came to this dualistic and materialistic perspective, and it’s quite clear to me that, at that time, if you can’t rely on God, who do we turn to? And so comes the mathematics–something quantitative, reliable, predictable; it was a way of survival. So it’s in that context that I feel he came to this view that has influenced the first centuries.

I think he would have taken a totally different direction if it was shared within a community. Because when we are ego-driven, we use the dream for our own benefit, for our own selfish vision.

I’m sure that many times I came to an understanding that was completely different, or dreams have so many layers, and facets, and that it is very, very easy to completely misinterpret, misperceive, be misled, depending on our belief.

Our ancestors were sharing dreams in community, and very often, they would make decisions by listening to each other’s dreams, and usually they would have a common thread, because they are, we are all connected. So the community, and very often, the leader or the chief would pick up the common theme, the common pattern, and will decide on the collective thread that was emerging. One dream has the potential to change the trajectory of our life.

Carl Jung was very good at that. He said most dreams, you need to look at what’s the reoccurring pattern, what’s the reoccurring theme, and how do you tie this in a much bigger perspective than just one dream.

효영 Minna: What I’m getting from what you’re saying is the context really matters. You went back and looked at what was happening at that time, what was also Renee’s cultural context, ancestral context. Renee grew up in a time where war was rife, and also grew up in a really individualistic society versus one that’s communal, so more self-centered, human-centered. You and I grew up in animus culture, collective culture, in which elders and ancestral wisdom were consulted. So the cultural and spiritual context really feeds into how we also relate to our dreams.

I also heard the inquiry, “What was he in service to?” I would be so curious what his values and perspectives on life were. Maybe there was a lot of ego there. Maybe he didn’t have a lot of practice of looking to elders, mentors, or counsel, and just relied on his own intelligence, and that was good enough, which could really warp or bend this in service to Life with a capital L or self with a lowercase s.

Elisabeth, do you offer dream weaving sessions with people?

Elisabeth: I did last year, in nature. We’ve lost really deep connection to nature and we’ve lost connection to ourselves, because we are nature. So it was really important to facilitate dreamweaving sessions in nature. The consciousness of water, fire, air, earth, barefoot dreamweaving–for me it was a conscious way to dream with internally our own nature, and externally with the nature outside. However, I live in Scotland, and the weather is very unpredictable. Sometimes it was raining, so nobody turned out.

But I still went with my best friend and we still made a fire and we still were present, even though there was nobody. For me it was a rendezvous with a dream spirit and it was a joy and a blessing just to be in nature. I did that for about 3-4 months.

I really feel the calling to actively, imaginatively, creatively fully participate in a dreaming culture, because for me it’s actually crucial. We know what’s happening in the world. There’s so many horrible things happening around us, and I really feel that this is my way–through art and through dreamweaving–to contribute, to compensate.

I really love this word that I think Carl Jung used a lot–to compensate for the one-sided story. I try to compensate in my little, humble way as an artist to compensate this materialistic, this physical, quantity-driven world, with my quality, presence, and my intimate relationship with the mysterious. So, dreamweaving is very much part of it.

효영 Minna: There’s a lot happening in the U.S, and it’s got significant ripple effects. The global connection is difficult to deny at this point. How would spending some conscious time relating to our dreams, nurturing that relationship with our dreams, support us in this time?

Elisabeth: For me, the dream world, the dreams are the poetic language of the soul. Soul has many ways to speak to us, but dreams are one way soul communicates with us.

There are people dying, there are people who are threatened, their safety is threatened every second. And I think about dreams and art, and I feel sometimes, “What does that mean? What I do–what does it mean? How do I help humanity in so much suffering and violence and destruction?” But this is happening because we are disconnected to our soul, to ourselves, because we don’t know how to speak the language of our soul, the language of intuition, the language of art, the language of dreams. That’s the consequence.

Because this is the consequence, then I work at the root. The root is how I reconnect back to our soul. So then dreams is one of the answers. There are many ways, of course. There are amazing social workers, therapists, doctors, and so there are many different ways we can work at the root of the problem, this connection to our soul.

효영 Minna: You have an amazing art exhibit coming up. And would you please share about it, and how your dreams contributed to it?

Elisabeth: Yes, it all started with a dream, as it often does. I had a dream of a painting. Then I went to the Arthur Conan Doyle Center in Edinburgh. When I entered the office, I saw this very big painting. It reminded me straight away of a dream I had. It had very similar energy. In the dream, I was walking a path and there were flowers everywhere, and that’s the painting I saw in that center. And I felt, okay, I think this is where I’m going to have my exhibition.

I applied and I was invited to do an exhibition there, which felt right because of the dream, but it didn’t work out. So I wondered, why did I have that dream and I felt connected when I saw that painting?

The timing was not right. The owners had to change. I didn’t feel a very good energy from the management team of the center, but they all left. And once they left, then I was invited.

So I’m doing this exhibition with Korean calligraphy. I will improvise. I call it ki art. Ki (기), in Korean, means energy, spirit.

I really love painting meticulously with details and at the same time, I love very raw expression of energy with movement, with what’s alive here and now. So, I will see what’s alive on the opening night, what I feel with the audience, and express what wants to be expressed at that time.

효영 Minna: I feel so energized and nourished by the conversation, and really inspired. I want to take the moment to also honor our dreams, our dream world, who’s clearly here with us right now, and the spirit of our relationship. I’m deeply grateful for our ancestors who somehow brought us together.

Elisabeth: Yes, and the dream spirit who’s connecting all the dreamers in the world. Thank you so much for your questions, especially the last one, it moved me to tears, really. It was a moment of grace; I really felt this very deep love as I was singing and dancing that question. Thank you.