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Leilani Lewis '65
While working as a clinical psychologist in private practice in Hawaii, Leilani Lewis ’65 serendipitously discovered a way to deepen both her own personal growth and the healing of her patients: shamanic journeying. Throughout history, shamans worldwide have used methods such as drumming to travel to and receive guidance from the spiritual realm to assist people in their healing. Lewis learned about the practice by accident; an Aikido retreat she’d signed up for was cancelled, and shamanic drumming was offered in its place. Finding the method powerful, Lewis could see the practical applications of the method and began teaching patients to go on their own healing journeys. Shortly after incorporating shamanic journeying into her clinical practice, Lewis discovered that a recurring dream—in which she returned to Sarah Lawrence to teach—resolved itself. A few years later she actually did return to the College to teach shamanic journeying at Reunion, and her dream played out in a crowded Titsworth Lecture Hall. Now in semi-retirement, Lewis tells the story of how a dream came to symbolize personal transformation.
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In August 1969, the night before I got married, I had a powerful dream: I was back at Sarah Lawrence, about to teach a course in interpersonal relationships. When I entered the classroom, the students booed me and said, “You can’t teach here.” Shocked and dismayed, I woke up with a feeling that the dream was warning me not to marry the next day. The marriage lasted ten months.
The dream recurred several times a year from 1969 to 1990. Always the same theme: “No, Leilani. You don’t have it yet. Go home.”
From 1987 to 1995 I trained with cultural anthropologist Michael Harner and taught shamanic journey workshops for the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. In 1988, I dreamed I went back to SLC again, this time to teach shamanic journeying. As I entered the classroom the students applauded and said, “Yes! Now you’ve got it! You can teach here.”
In 1990, a few months before my 25th Reunion, SLC called and asked me to teach a psychology seminar during Reunion weekend. I said no, not psychology. Yes, shamanic journeying.
I began the workshop by introducing myself and telling about the recurring dream. For the next few hours I drummed and guided everyone in journeying to other realms. The response was enthusiastic. At the end, people spontaneously stood and clapped, and someone yelled out, “Yes! Now you’ve got it!”
Joseph Campbell had told me in 1965, “Follow your bliss, Leilani.” After many detours along the way, my final Sarah Lawrence dream acknowledged that I had blissfully realized my potential.
Brian Emery '07
Over the course of his Sarah Lawrence career, Brian Emery’s short film, Contrition, evolved from short story to aborted feature-length screenplay to completed film—and soon after he graduated, it played at the Anthology Film Archives in N.Y.C. as part of the New Filmmakers series. Emery filmed Contrition in one weekend, with the help of fellow students, actors recruited from Craigslist, and an enthusiastic uncle with a scenic house in rural Pennsylvania. Film faculty member Fred Strype mentored him on the project.
After spending the summer coordinating the International Film Institute’s summer intensive program for young filmmakers, held on the Sarah Lawrence campus, Emery is now working in the camera department of Columbia University Film School, where he teaches technical workshops to graduate students. In addition, he’s a freelance videographer and has a paid editing internship at Priority Productions. He is also writing a feature-length version of Contrition. Here, he talks about the making of the film.
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My uncle has a huge house, and it was the perfect setting for Contrition. We faked a motel room in the guest room. It’s in the basement, so there’s no window. What motel room doesn’t have a window? So we hung curtains in front of a closet. It worked out really well. Then Davin Searles ’07, the grip/gaffer, and assistant director Anthony Fleming ’07 noticed that the motel room door didn’t have a peephole in it, and they thought that was unrealistic. So Davin pulled a nickel from his pocket and taped it onto the door. In the film, you can’t tell that it’s not a real peephole.
…There’s a shot on an empty road where two cars come from opposite directions and stop, and the drivers get into a fight. We had to coordinate the meeting of the cars via cell phone. The first time, the timing was off, and they met in the wrong place. The second time, it worked, but the camera wasn’t on. The third time worked fine, but a guy came out of the house that we were in front of and started yelling, and his dog was running around and barking. The guy couldn’t see the camera because it was inside the car. The actors just kept going. After the scene was over I rolled down the window and explained that we were shooting a movie. The guy said, “It doesn’t look like a movie to me—it looks like a fight! I’m calling the cops!” and went inside. The actors wanted to do another take, but I said, “We’re leaving.” Then the car got stuck in a ditch. We got it out and turned onto the main road just as a cop car was turning in. We weren’t doing anything illegal, but our filming schedule was so tight that we couldn’t afford to get stuck explaining things to the police. We ended up using that take and just overdubbing the sound. You can see the dog in some of the shots.
Take a look at Emery’s work, including the trailer for Contrition, at http://web.mac.com/brianfilm.
