Laura is a psychologist and a dreamwork practitioner. She obtained her PhD in psychology from the University of Swansea, UK. She is a lucid dreamer and a writer, and for the past three years, she has been leading workshops for artists and therapists on the creative use of dreams for mental wellbeing. 

Laura currently works at the University of Warsaw, conducting dream research in collaboration with Copernicus Science Centre and teaching a master’s course on dreaming. She presented her research on dreamwork at the International Association for the Study of Dreams conference (2023 and 2024), London Arts-Based Research Centre 2023 conference, Talking Research 2023, and most recently the Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity 2025 conference at the Paris Brain Institute. Her research was also published in the International Journal of Dream Research, and has been submitted for publication to The Journal of Creative Behavior and Creativity Research Journal.

Laura writes for Psychology Today, where she shares research and tips on lucid dreaming and dreamwork for therapists. She was also interviewed for the Guardian where she shared her views on the future of dreamwork.

For over a year, Laura worked with a group of therapists in monthly workshops, as well as the general public at the Swansea Wellbeing Centre. Through this work, she has developed and keeps refining a practical model for combining dreamwork, storytelling, and drama as therapeutic tools.

“I started my doctoral research in search of the dreams’ creative potential, but I ended up unravelling the therapeutic side of combining creativity with dreams. Expressing my own haunting dreams creatively through a very unconscious process allowed me to understand myself against the confusing background of traumatic life events, and I continuously see this incredible effect dreamwork has on anyone willing to look inside.”

Barry is an experienced and accredited Gestalt therapist, trained and practiced in working with dreams using the Gestalt Dream Method.

Barry has a long history of dream work from the mid 1970’s on working with Tony Crisp (aka: Dream Hawk, co-founder of the The British Wheel of Yoga, author of Dreams and Dreaming and Dream Dictionary amongst many other titles and articles).

Barry has since worked with and attended a great variety of dream workshops from
different global shamanic traditions to Jungian and then to Gestalt, which, being a truly integrative modality, allowed for the incorporation of all the above to inform his practice in a safe and trauma informed way.

“I first came to dream work from a need to unravel a sense of lostness and depression as a teenager which threw me into a deep existential crisis. Stumbling across Dream and Encounter groups back then opened up for me a deep journey into an understanding of myself and my relationship with others. This became a rich seam of support for my own journey into greater self-understanding and self-acceptance. I am still forever amazed at the complexity and wisdom that shows up and informs me from inner world of my dreams. All I have to do is pay attention.

For me working safely with dreams in my personal world and with my clients is the gift that keeps on giving, and I would never say that I am finished in my learning of this fascinating and exciting realm.”