I am Amber Kidner, a dream practitioner with a background in dance, movement analysis, and family therapy. I am sensory oriented and like to make poetic leaps. I’m deeply interested in Psyche’s wildness and the depth possible through a relationship with our dreams. I like to immerse myself in the whole of things, looking for what is making itself known in the movement and tracing the connections between—like you might do when gazing at a constellation of stars.

I grew up in East Tennessee in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  I hold a graduate-level certification in Laban and Bartenieff Movement Analysis through Integrated Movement Studies.  Previously, I worked as a Marriage and Family Therapist, raised my kids in London and Delhi, and now in St. Louis, which is the place I currently call home.

This integral approach informs my work as a dreamer and a dream tender. 

One of my favorite aspects of somatic movement education is the invitation to try the movement on, notice what it feels like, and what wants to happen next.  In addition, I adore working with imagination as a portal for movement-based play.  

I grew up in East Tennessee in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  I hold a graduate-level certification in Laban and Bartenieff Movement Analysis through Integrated Movement Studies.  Previously, I worked as a Marriage and Family Therapist, raised my kids in London and Delhi, and now in St. Louis, which is the place I currently call home. 

These days, I enjoy studying dreams and deep imagination, and finding myself beneath my favorite tree in Forest Park as often as possible.

In one of those baby books where parents record things like first words, first steps, and first trips, there’s this written by my mother, “At 21 months, Amber was constantly asking us to ‘Sing, again!’  and dancing to whatever we sang.” I wish that I could see myself back then, not quite two years old.  I like to think that the request to sing was urgent and raw, that I had a craving for movement. Stumbling across this bit of information from my childhood and sitting with it is a form of dreaming to me.

Dreams are the stories we wake up with from our night journeys. In addition, I like to think that we secrete dreams like pheromones, and we stumble across dream images and fellow dreamers (both human and more-than-human) as we move through our waking lives.

that was not about pleasing my audience, like when a child is told to say “cheese” for a picture.  Instead, something was coming through me; it just had to.  

I am a certified Laban and Bartenieff Movement Analyst.  This system provides me with scope and a range of ways to play with movement. In addition, I am a student of Continuum Movement, of Dream studies, and Depth concepts. I have a masters in Marriage and Family Therapy, but as a mentor in dream and movement explorations, I do not offer therapy.  My style is syncretic and surprising.  I am sensory oriented and like to make poetic leaps. I’m deeply interested in Psyche’s wildness and depth and will strive to hold space for your dreams in ways that support what is coming through you.

I’m curious about patterns - patterns of a habitual nature, patterns in development, patterns forming and unforming. I’m curious about how we hold ourselves and the nature of our relationship with the gravity that holds us. The embryologist Jaap van der Wal speaks about our bodies as a process and as a lifelong performance. We are not machines. In fact, “We are never ready.” Our whole lives, we will go on shaping. I like to think about how this perspective on the body relates to dreams, about how movement is central to both, and how both are ephemeral. There’s something tangible and intangible in this conversation between forms.

How dream work can take us deeper still patterns and pain points

The dynamic between the concretized and the crumbling is where we make our art.

, stumbling across thresholds, and the word syzygy - these are intriguing to me.

I like to think about the intimate and vital relationship between our dreams and our bodies. How our dreams are born within us, come through us, and have the capacity to arouse our senses and connect us. awaken, inform, and shift our perspective. They can teach us about patterns and what it is for us to quicken, to release, and to begin again. They can teach us as a collective about what it is to be alive now, today, in this moment in time, as the ground shifts beneath our feet.

I didn’t learn about dreams and dreaming bodies in school. Honestly, I can’t recall anyone growing up who spoke about their dreams. For many of us, when we finally come into a relationship with our dreams (which is to say that we come home), we recognize them as a profoundly valuable resource for our personal and collective lives.