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The 2012 IASD Nominating
Committee has invited the following eight members to run for the five three-year
Board positions that will be vacated as of the June Board meeting: Mark
Blagrove, Laurel Clark, Jordi Borras-Garcia, Janet Garrett, Curtiss Hoffman, Linda
Mastrangelo, Tracey Kahan, and Robert Waggoner.
The Committee
also arrived at a slate of Executive officer nominees for 2012-2013, which is
as follows: Robert Gongloff, Board Chair; Scott Sparrow, President; Laurette
Dupuis, Vice-President; Tracey Kahan, Secretary, and David L. Kahn, Treasurer.
As for the Board
nominees, the Committee members worked long and hard to arrive at a slate of Board nominees who
were interested and available, and who reflected gender and geographical
diversity, as well as a wide range of skills and knowledge. Below are brief
descriptions of each nominee in his or her own words.
Mark Blagrove, United Kingdom
I joined IASD in 1989 and
have attended all conferences since then (except one). I am a past IASD
President, and have assisted in maintaining the membership database functions.
I am currently Chair of the Publications Committee, a member of the Research
Committee, one of the reviewers for the conference research track, and a
reviewer for the Hot off the Press session. I have won several prizes at the
Dream Ball and write the Dream Bibliophile column in Dream Time. For employment I am full professor and head/chair of
the Psychology Department at Swansea University in south Wales, where I run a
two-bed sleep and dreaming lab (www.swansea.ac.uk/sleeplab).
I conduct research into nightmares, lucid dreams, and the possible relationship
between dream content and memory consolidation during sleep. I also run an
Ullman dream appreciation group for students. I am forever grateful to IASD and
its members for having inspired much of my scientific work, but also for
introducing me to many other disciplines involved in the study and appreciation
of dreaming.
If
elected to serve on the Board I would continue to recruit dream scientists and
students who would add to the scientific side of IASD, and who would also
appreciate and benefit from, and add to, the colourful and eclectic mix that
characterizes IASD. I would also work to recruit and involve individuals who
are doing neuroscience research into dreaming. There is much work being done on
the relationship between the brain and dreaming, and such work is of great
interest to the general public. These researchers must, by definition, be
open-minded to be doing such work, but only a few of them attend IASD programs.
I would thus aim to enhance the research track at the conference that that is
related to the neuroscience of dreaming. I am also interested in continuing to
publicise IASD to the scientific community, as well as continuing to “flit”
between the dream appreciation, artistic, scientific, and humanities branches
of IASD.
Laurel Clark, USA
I
am President of the School of Metaphysics (SOM), a 501(c)(3) educational
organization. A teacher, counselor, and interfaith minister, I have kept
a dream journal since 1976 and have been teaching dreamwork since 1979.
I
have also written several dream-related articles for publication in magazines
and online. I am co-editor and a contributor to the book Interpreting Dreams for Self Discovery. I am currently writing a book
called Intuitive Dreaming, and I’m one of the authors of the
online study program at www.dreamschool.org. I contributed an
entry on “Dream Incubation” to the Encyclopedia
of Sleep and Dreams,
(edited by D. Barrett and P.McNamara) and a chapter on “Proposing Courses on
Dreams” to the book
Weaving
Dreams in the Classroom,
(edited by Curtiss Hoffmann and Jacquie Lewis.) I serve as a columnist
for the Longmont Times Call, in which I write a weekly dream
interpretation column.
I
give frequent lectures on dreams to professional and civic organizations and
have appeared on worldwide radio and
TV to educate people about dreams. I teach ongoing dream education
courses through the School of Metaphysics and community colleges, and have
guest-taught dream seminars to psychology, theology and philosophy classes in
high schools and universities. I also use dream analysis in my work as a counselor
and interfaith minister to aid people who want to cultivate a soul-oriented and
spiritual perspective on life.
I
became a member of IASD in 2008, and attended my first conference in Montreal
as a volunteer and a presenter. Since then, I have volunteered at each
annual conference, primarily for registration and publicity. I have also
participated in the IASD PsiberDreaming Conference since 2008--as a presenter
and avid learner. As a more-than-full-time volunteer with the SOM for 30+
years, I have a unique perspective on the power of volunteering, always
endeavoring to inspire people to serve something greater than themselves.
With skills in mediation and communication, I often serve as a “worldbridger”
by aiding people to hear each other and understand each others'
perspectives. I see IASD as an amazing organization for helping people to
learn from their differences as well as similarities. I believe I can
contribute to this evolving process.
Jordi Borras-Garcia,
Spain
I
started my private practice in psychology in Barcelona 15 years ago. I began
organizing dream workshops soon after realizing how my clients evolved much
faster if I gave them some clues about how to work with their own dreams at
home. I then created
mondesomnis (www.mondesomnis.com),
a platform from which I’ve been spreading the importance of dreams for
self-knowledge. Since then I’ve been organizing regular dream workshops, and
host two dream “circles”–– with ten participants in each one––on a monthly
basis. I also host lucid dreaming and incubation workshops. I was really
excited when I discovered the work of IASD about six plus years ago. This
discovery made me feel I was not alone! I soon became a member and I’m now its
Regional Representative in Spain and Portugal.
I
love promoting IASD and dreamwork whenever I have the chance. Since 2000 I’ve
had a deep connection with the media in Spain––especially in Catalonia. I’ve
talked about dreams in the most widely heard radio stations in the country;
I’ve been interviewed several times by the major newspapers and for some
popular TV programs; and I assessed and participated in a series of 13 programs
devoted to dreams, which aired in prime time on the main Catalan TV station.
I’m a dreamwork teacher for psychologists in the
Institut Transpersonal de Barcelona. I wrote a chapter on mutual
dreaming in a book called Transpersonal:
Planeta, Cultura y Conciencia
(2012), and another chapter on dreams and healing for a book shared with
Stanislav Grof and Manuel Almendro, among others, to be published next
September.
When I started studying psychology,
I wanted to keep alive the artist in me: I sang and played bass guitar in a
band, I sang and danced in a professional theater company, and I wrote stories
and drew comic books…so I felt exploring dreams was the natural evolution of
both of my main interests: conscience and creativity. I long to connect
artists, dancers, filmmakers, dreamworkers, psychologists, scientists, and
mystics…in short, everyone who would listen to their dreams. With this in mind,
I’ve just co-written the screenplay for a comedy on dreams which will be shot
next April in Barcelona.
If
chosen to be on the Board, I’d love to foster the online community––for instance,
by studying the chances to develop an online conference on dreamwork, such as
we have employed in the Psiberdreaming conference, or by exploring the
possibilities of airing the regional and annual conferences online for those
who are not able to attend them. I also believe that online conferences are
something we can do to reach a lot of people who still don’t speak English
fluently but are very much interested on dreams. I’m thinking, particularly, of
Spain but also South and Central America, and Mexico. I think we can build the
bridge and increase knowledge of the IASD by exchanging ideas in a Spanish-speaking
forum. The whole world’s waiting for the dreamworld to show!
Janet
Garrett, Spain
My interest
in dreams began in 1989 after attending a course on Jung in San Francisco, and
I have kept a dream journal and participated in dream groups ever since.
Here in Spain I have given informal courses on dreams and psychology. I
attended my first PsiberDreaming Conference (PDC) in 2004, which was when I
also became a member of IASD.
In 2011 I
was awarded an M.Sc. in Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology from
Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. A project in my second year and my
thesis were both dream related; the latter revisited the group dreaming
experiments conducted by Jean Campbell in 1979-1984, and was the basis for a
paper I presented at the 2011 PDC.
However, my
professional background was not in psychology or dreamwork, but in IT project
management. I believe this has already been of use to IASD as I have gradually
developed standards and procedures for the PDC, in the process discovering a
talent for copy editing which I've also put to use for Dream News and conference program booklets.
After
enjoying the many benefits that IASD has to offer, I feel that it is time for
me to take a more active role in the organization, and I believe that my
project management experience can continue to be an asset if I am elected to
the Board.
Curtiss Hoffman, USA
I am Professor of Anthropology at
Bridgewater State University, where I teach courses in Archaeology and
Cognitive Anthropology, including Myth and Culture, Anthropology of Religion,
and Culture and Consciousness. I am the author of The Seven Story Tower: A Mythic
Journey through Space and Time.
I have been
an IASD member since 1997, and have presented at most IASD conferences since
then. I served as conference Host in 2006, when the IASD annual
conference was held at Bridgewater. I am currently serving a second term
on the IASD Board, and I am the Program Chair of the 2012 conference, as well
as Chair of the Student Research Awards Committee.
Tracey Kahan, USA
I
am a full-time member of the
Psychology faculty at Santa Clara University, a liberal arts university in
Northern California. I have been at SCU since 1990. I received my Ph.D.
in Cognitive/Experimental Psychology from SUNY Stony Brook. I am the founder
and director of the SCU Sleep Cognition Lab. My SCU-based research, conducted
entirely with undergraduate student collaborators, investigates the
relationship between the dreaming mind and the
waking mind, with an emphasis on variations in self-reflective consciousness,
intentionality, and self-regulation. This research utilizes laboratory as well
as experimental, phenomenological, and first-person approaches. I also
maintain active collaborations with several IASD researchers and sleep
scientists at Stanford Research Institute. I have a strong record of empirical
publications in the field of dreaming, sleep, and consciousness and cognition.
I teach courses in cognition, perception, consciousness, sleep and dreaming,
and research methodology--and I have won several teaching awards.
I have been involved with IASD for
over 20 years and have given over 20 research presentations at IASD conferences.
Presently, I am a member of the Research Committee. I also have reviewed poster
submissions for IASD and grants for the Dream Science Foundation.
Notably, I have won two awards at the Dream Ball! As a future Board hopeful, I
will bring good organizational, and interpersonal and collaborative skills. I
will also bring a long-standing appreciation for IASD as a unique venue for
multidisciplinary and multi-method approaches to the study and exploration of
dreams. I have kept a personal dream journal for over 40 years. I welcome the
opportunity to serve IASD as a Board member.
Linda Mastrangelo, USA

Linda Mastrangelo, MA, MFTI (FELTON, CA)
I have been on a dreamer’s path since childhood, but it was my first IASD
conference at Bridgewater where I truly found my tribe. I was moved by the
generosity of heart, soul and spirit of each member and the earnestness and
easiness these gifts were given. And from that moment, my intention was to give
back what IASD has given me: My life’s work and soul’s calling.
Since then, I am graduate certified in dreams studies, earning licensure as a
Marriage Family Therapist; facilitating dream groups; lecturing on dreams at
institutions and universities and am part of a dynamic team called The Dream
Tribe. In 2009, The Examiner’s first dream column was born and this labor
of love has grown into a resource for the San Francisco Bay Area dreaming
community and beyond. Other research and work has been published in The Lucid
Dream Exchange, Dream Network Journal, All Things Healing and
DreamTime Magazine printed “Animal Dreams,” which received the IASD Student
Research Award.
Over the years, my involvement and commitment to IASD has only deepened like
promoting events and its members, social networking, volunteering and serving on
various committees and presenting my art and research at annual and
Psiberdreaming conferences like “The Right to Dream” (Asheville, 2010) born from
my passion for dream activism and sustainable communities. This year, I present
on dreams of the bereaved based on my grief counseling experience at hospice: An
area in dire need of dream research and education.
It would an honor to continue to serve IASD through community outreach, forming
collaboratives and increasing awareness of the dream in all its incarnations,
healing and evolutionary possibilities.
Robert Waggoner
In 1995, I
attended my first IASD conference in Manhattan. I left the conference
feeling completely amazed and delighted by the wide-ranging presentations
across disciplines, the ethical treatment of dream interpretation, and the
tolerance for diverse viewpoints.
Over the years, I have come to see
IASD from numerous vantage points: first as a member and occasional presenter,
then as Treasurer for eight years, and a year each as Vice-President, President
and Chair of the Board. I still feel amazed by IASD, and the incredible
volunteers, Board and staff that keep it vibrant and alive. I agreed to
accept this nomination with the hope that my business expertise could assist
IASD in further expanding its membership and outreach.
Thirty years
after teaching myself to lucid dream in 1975, I began to write a book on lucid
dreaming to address many aspects of the experience that deserved more
attention. With the publication of my book,
Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, I have been invited to speak at a
number of college campuses and conferences, a bimonthly radio show on dreams
and lucid dreams with Iowa Public Radio for eighteen months, and an online, biannual
lucid dreaming workshop with Glide Wing Productions.
I intend to
continue to serve IASD actively as co-chair of the IASD Heritage Fund and on
various committees and sub-committees––and encourage others to get actively
involved in supporting and growing IASD.
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