Why Become a SoulCollage(R) Facilitator?

SoulCollage(R) card: Heroine's Journey

What is SoulCollage®?

SoulCollage® is a creative, intuitive process for personal growth, healing and transformation.  You create a deck of cards for personal consultation, using images, intuition and imagination. Synchronicity and surprise are a few of the main elements that give this process its richness and value.

It is easy, fun, and satisfying and can be used by individuals or in groups (families, churches, schools, therapy, coaching, and many other contexts).

By participating in a four-day Training, you will learn how to prepare for a workshop, create safe space for participants with connection, permission and protection; consult your cards in a SoulCollage® reading, as well as learn how to promote your workshops. You will be given access to a rich archive of information available to Facilitators on the SoulCollage® website. www.soulcollage.com 

Who are SoulCollage(R) Facilitators?

Facilitators of this process come from many fields including writers, artists, coaches, and labyrinth facilitators. They may be individuals seeking a creative way to give back to their communities, , cancer support groups, schools, writing groups, and hospices, or therapists, art therapists, counselors, nurses, chaplains, and other licensed professionals working in trauma recovery, addiction recovery, with teenagers, at risk children, and many more.

Find out more about the training with Trainer Jennifer Boire in Montreal, July 3-7, 2019 at the Villa St. Martin, Pierrefonds.

http://jenniferboire.com/the-soulcollage-facilitator-training/. 

Note: The training will be held in English, with French materials available. A French speaking facilitator will be on hand to answer questions and guide small groups in discussion.

As of March 29, 2019, there are 3,837 Facilitators in 48 countries, including Aruba, Australia, Brazil, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kenya, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, United States, Taiwan, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Watch founder Seena Frost explain how to do SoulCollage(R) on the short video: 

             https://youtu.be/rtDBTTneHfY  

www.jenniferboire.com   for more information on the Training in Montreal

SoulCollage®: How to become your own oracle

Have you ever gone to a reading by a clairvoyant, or picked up an oracle deck of cards to find out the answer to a question that has been bothering you, or has gone unanswered? Have you ever wanted to get more in touch with your own intuition and find the answers to your own questions?

SoulCollage® is a unique way to explore your Self, all the parts of you, your light and your shadow, your talents and gifts, your allies and challengers. Using only images, intuition and imagination, you create a deck of 5 x 8 cards that becomes a visual journal of your journey, one that evolves as you evolve.

With this deck, created using images and symbols that call to you, you hold a symbolic reflection of your one and many-faceted Self in your hands. Once you have a dozen cards or so, you can do consultations or readings with them. It's quite astounding how our own psyche loves this process of dialoguing with images. The SoulCollage® process was designed by Seena Frost, MS, MA in Div., a psychotherapy clinician and supervisor in California for over thirty years. The international community now includes more than 3,700 Facilitators in 45 countries, and a team of SoulCollage®  trainers who offer training programs all over the world.  

Caretaker Card

What I’ve learned from this unique creative process is that the body uses metaphor and images to send us signals. Sometimes working with images is a more direct path to seeing our own truth than working with words. We all have our own personal totems, images, symbolic animals, and SoulCollage® helps us feed the feedback loop between psyche, body and mind. It’s a fun, creative process that is very light on the surface, as we cut and paste images, but leads us to deep truths that resist interpretation by the linear mind. We learn to trust our intuition, the bridge that connects what we feel and what we know sometimes in a flash: mental logic and heart wisdom come together and communicate.

“When the soul wants to experience something,

she throws out an image in front of her and

steps into it.” Meister Eckhart

The voice of our embodied soul, or wisdom, is our intuition. It sends messages in symbolic form and metaphor from deep inside us – thoughts, guesses, hunches seemingly come out of nowhere. When we are in touch with our inner guidance, and feeling connected to our own truth, we can heal a relationship with ourselves that has been aching to be known. Images are one of intuition’s most powerful voices, and have been called the food of the soul.

SoulCollage(R) card: Woman Dances with Wolves

“Ultimately, it is the voice of the soul... When you take the time to draw on your listening-imagination, you will begin to hear this gentle voice at the heart of your life. It is deeper and surer than all the other voices of disappointment, unease, self-criticism and bleakness. All holiness is about learning to hear the voice of your own soul. Your soul is your true source and a new energy and passion awakens in you.” ~John O’Donohue, Beauty, The Invisible Embrace

I invite you to come and learn more about SoulCollage® in a safe and friendly environment, at an all-day introductory workshop Sunday April 7, with a small group of people (maximum is 10). 

We will spend time making cards, playing with images, and witnessing how our intuition guides us to exactly the right image for the card it wants to make. You are a unique being, and your soul essence is waiting to reveal some of the pieces of your puzzle to you, so you can begin to gather the whole.

As Seena Frost, SoulCollage® founder puts it, “Every soul essence has a special imprint or pattern within it; some have said it’s like our mission. This pattern is a blueprint for your deepest self, the self beneath the persona we all must develop to live in the world. Its imprint is recognized by the archetypes who gather and who act like magnets drawing you into manifesting your pattern; remember, it’s not a goal, it’s more of a map, a map of your potential, uniquely yours.” 

If you are feeling stuck or overwhelmed, or just curious about all the parts of you, this creative, fun process can help move you along to a deeper understanding.

Come join me, Sunday, April 7, Ermitage Ste-Croix, from 9:30 am to 4:30 pm, with lunch included, for $60. If you invite a friend, I will gift you with a package of cards/frame/pen and glue so you can get started with SoulCollage® and discover your own inner wisdom. Register at: 

www.jenniferboire.com

NOTE ON FACILITATOR TRAINING-   If you already love SoulCollage® and would like to train as a facilitator, read this:

The Facilitator Training is different from a SoulCollage® retreat or workshop, even though in both settings a participant may experience deep personal process.  We expect that you are interested in taking the Training because SoulCollage® has been meaningful to you in your own process, and you are eager to share SoulCollage®, even if you are not clear just how you will be doing that. Many people become clear about how they will use SoulCollage® during or even after Training.

SoulCollage® has also proven to be a valuable therapeutic tool when used by therapists and professionals as a part of their practice.

See https://www.soulcollage.com/facilitator-training  for more information on what is required before you sign up. 

I am holding a training in the Montreal area from July 3-July 7, 2019. See my website www.jenniferboire.com for details and costs.

What is SoulCollage(R)?

This easy, fun, creative process allows you to explore your inner parts of self  by making a visual journal of cards that you create. It is deeply transformative and helps us answer the age-old question, Who am I and what am I doing here?

Watch this short video to see and hear more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4NlG9JW4Go


I am keenly interested in helping women find creative tools that feed and tend the soul, that make us feel nurtured and protected in what are turbulent and confusing times. I believe we are beings filled with light, yet we often live in fear of shadow.

We are limitless and courageous in facing our challenges with persistence. 

Yet we doubt ourselves.

We are women with heart, connected to all living things. 

And we thrive in community.

Come join me and learn more at:

One Day Introductory SoulCollage® Workshop: 

Gathering the Pieces,  Finding Wholeness, from 9:30 - 4:30 pm 

on Sunday April 7, at the Ermitage Ste-Croix 
21269 boul. Gouin, Pierrefonds  (near Montreal)

Cost $60
pre-pay by e-transer or paypal 

Registration on my website or by email info@jenniferboire.com 

xxxx
Jennifer
www.jenniferboire.com

SoulCollage(R) Facilitator Training in Canada

Jenn facilitator card

This is a new year, and with it comes a new role for me – to train people interested in becoming facilitators of SoulCollage(R) workshops.

SoulCollage(R) (www.soulcollage.com) is the single most interesting creative process for self-exploration that I have used in over twenty years of leading creative journaling classes and retreats for women.

Basically, it can described as an easy, image-based tool to delve into a dialogue with the self in a deep, but playful way. I find it more satisfying than journaling alone (although we do journal and write with the 5 x 8 cards we make). I find it calls on my inner artist without challenging my lack of art skills – anyone can cut and paste images onto cardboard cards. And exploring these images with my imagination, finding out where they come from and what they mean, allows my inner wisdom to pop up as I gain intuitive insights. Sharing this with others in community also provides hours of fun and creative flow.

Founder Seena Frost described it this way: "It is a tangible way to know yourself in your diversity and depth, and also to show yourself to others. Showing your deck of SoulCollage® cards to another person can be a profound experience. In like-spirited groups, you can share cards and work with them in many sacred ways. You can consult them intuitively and discover wisdom within yourself which will amaze you. Besides all this, creating them is just plain fun! You will love your deck -- a multi-card Mirror of your Self and your Soul -- whether it consists of three cards or a hundred."  

SoulCollage(R) has also proven to be a valuable therapeutic tool when used by therapists and professionals as a part of their practice. It has brought healing and guidance to individuals, groups and communities, such as cancer wellness centers, seniors homes, women in prison, conflict resolution, pastoral counseling, couples therapy and many more. Facilitators are sharing and teaching this unique process in many ways with diverse populations and in a wide range of environments.

Images, intuition and imagination

The collage process we use helps to reflect and give a voice to all our parts; sometimes images call to us and we don’t know why, it seems beyond words, until we dialogue with the card and discover who or what  it is. SoulCollage(R) is a great tool for awareness and personal growth, and making the cards is a pleasing process full of synchronicity and surprise. Some of the images you choose will symbolize inner parts of self, maybe your Inner organizer, your happy inner child, or your inner lonely one, or your Inner Nurturer. Others are larger energies, on a mythical level, like the Great Mother, or the hero archetype. These universal stories are woven into our own personal journeys and stories.  I see this process as a gathering of the whole, bringing all the pieces together, the unknown or invisible ones, the silent or ignored ones, and acknowledging them, reclaiming them.

Tapping into your own inner wisdom using images develops intuition as well. The more you play with it, the more you learn to trust the process. It’s a great life lesson. We can become our own wise oracle, consulting our cards and using our imagination to let the images speak with us.

In my own women’s circle, some of us get together every two weeks to make cards, dialogue with them, and then do card readings once a month. Consulting cards you have made to represent energies and archetypes, parts of self and members of your family and friends, is a very rich way of accessing inner wisdom, and to my mind a lot less mysterious or esoteric than consulting a deck of oracle cards devised by someone else with symbols I may or may not understand.

There is no wrong or right way to do SoulCollage(R). It is a gentle, intuitive self-care process that reaches deep into our inner pockets of knowing. Most of the people I have introduced to it find it immensely satisfying to both make cards and do readings.

Body Love card

In early July, I will be offering a 4 day SoulCollage(R) facilitator training. All information on registration, lodging and fees is on my website at www.jenniferboire.com.  

or http://jenniferboire.com/the-soulcollage-facilitator-training/.

In the training, you will be given a comprehensive, step by step workbook (manual), and all supplies are provided; accommodation and meals are covered in the total fee. You will learn all about SoulCollage(R), how to use it, how to incorporate it in your workshops, including ethical care, and be invited to network with like-minded people. 

The only pre-requisite is that you have followed an Introductory course on SoulCollage(R), either in person or online, and begun making cards for yourself, so you see the benefit of it, before starting to share it with others as a facilitator.

Sample card:  Heart Focus for 2019 card

I made this card recently to represent an intention of mine for the coming year. It said to me: 

I am one who longs to feel my heart open. I am one who receives guidance from the universe. I am one who feels connected when she is around open-hearted, soulful creative people. I want to bring back more of that Heart Focus in my life this year.

Heart Focus card

Watch this video to hear from some people attending a facilitator training on how and why they love to work with SC.  And if you want to learn more about SoulCollage(R) or become a facilitator, just drop me a line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrHmvbEb4w0#action=share

Jennifer

Celtic Pilgrimage into Women's Power

(photo by a member of our group)

There is a latent memory deep inside my soul of a kind of knowing, call it feminine intuition if you wish, a kind of ringing in the ear and buzzing in the chest that signals Presence, the numinous, or entering sacred ground.

On a recent pilgrimage to the sacred sites and stone circles of Ireland with Amantha Murphy at Celtic Soul Journies, I felt a lot of that buzzing, and rediscovered the magic of fairy glens. Some part of me, deeply slumbering, was awoken.

Ostensibly, I had flown to Belfast to be with this group of ten women in the land of my feminine lineage, to learn more about the Celtic Wheel, the goddesses and mythology of the land.

I had no idea what Celtic Shamanism was about, but I was very intrigued by discovering something more about the land of my ancestors. I was also intrigued by the description of the Celtic Woman’s Path - getting to know the deities, the Celtic Wheel of the year and the seasons, and how to access and deepen our communion by opening ourselves to Sacred Ceremony and Ritual.

I was not disappointed - my inner child was delighted with the discovery of magical fairy glens, mossy covered rocks and trees, and exploring the connection between the feminine life cycle and the land. As well as exploring two famous landmarks: the Giant's Causeway (one of the eight wonders of the world) and the Cliffs of Moher, a truly misty, mystical experience of ocean and rock cliffs.

The biggest revelation, however, was how 'things' like rocks can speak to us. 

Wrapping my arms around a huge dolmen in the middle of a field, the ancient rock covered in lichen and smelling of the sea, I meditated on my origins and somehow sensed the ancient sea that had covered this land, eons ago. There were moments tramping through tall, wet grass and fighting our way through blackberries and brambles that were less romantic, but the feeling of being rooted to the earth, and connected with Spirit, was very strong. I was there to receive messages from Spirit, and renew my belief in women’s magic.

At the end of one afternoon, after tramping around and through seven stone circles in one field, we sat in our own circle around an ancient pile of rocks or cairn, and re-remembered the women’s rites for birthing and dying. We sang, ‘The Goddess is alive and magic is afoot!’ while waking in a circle. Then we switched directions, walking widdershins around the stone circle, asking for a dream, a memory, a song or something to come through. I left a gift inside the cairn, letting my little gold painted rock fall inside the pile of dark rocks, down a crevice, to feed the dragons underneath perhaps. Sounding, voices and inner focus filled my heart, despite the chilled bum from sitting on damp grass.

I felt blessed to have someone so knowledgeable about the myths and stories of the land with us.  After three or four hours of drumming, ceremony and reimagining women’s ritual in the birthing and dying places, it was time to go home and have tea.

https://www.discovernorthernireland.com/Beaghmore-Stone-Circles-Cookstown-P2949 

We often met in the morning before our treks into the countryside to attune, to sit in silence, then speak from the heart, and perhaps sing a song or two before getting on our mini-bus. Every day was a new adventure, full of surprises.

One morning, after slipping down a very muddy, wet path into a lower level of ancient rock and moss-covered trees in The Glen, on the side of Knocknareaa Mountain in County Sligo (http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ireland-glen-knocknerea),  we sat and listened to an insistent drum beat while we journeyed inwards towards the ancestors. I saw flashbacks from my childhood home, saw myself playing in the woods outside, and then heard voices singing on a hill, around a fire at night. It was hard to tell if the voices were inside my head, or coming from inside the drum.

Note from my journal: The split between the logical side and the intuitive one is sometimes painful, the harsh inner critic so loud. Yet, she feels herself melting, she sings, she opens, she forgets her separateness, her defenses disappear or melt into the constant rain, the green green moss enchants and delivers her over to the silent space just between head and heart, the observer self, the open-handed receiver, the Feminine, the wonder it is all here, only a breath away.

It was a strange and wonderful journey – we not only communed with fairies and spirits, but shared delicious meals in restaurants or the homes we stayed in, making new friends in friendly conversation on one level, and dancing with the fairies on another. A seaweed bath in Strandhill spa was another kind of magical moment, calling up the selkie in me.

In a private session with Amantha, I learned that intuition and dreaming are strong in me, and to trust the energy of things: rocks, trees, but also inner feelings. The woman's creative center or womb is a source of guidance - I can ask inside about how I feel, and if those feelings belong to me. Guidance is always available. I am learning to trust my inner knowing and let nothing get in the way of that. 

As we sang one day:

We are sisters on a journey, walking now as one

Remembering the ancient ones, the women and their wisdom!

On my return, I pledged to keep an open heart and mind and resist withdrawing and hiding myself away. Now my challenge is to find the magic in my own ‘home’ landscape. With the changing leaves and colours, that shouldn’t be too hard.

Resources for Heroines at Mid-Life

Her Journey: Books and Resources for the Heroine’s Quest at Mid-life

A Woman’s Journey to God, Joan Borysenko

Animal Speak by Ted Andrews  (animal totems and descriptions)

Archetypes, A beginner's guide to your inner-net, by Caroline Myss www.archetypes.com

Circle of Stones, Woman’s Journey to Herself, Judith Duerk

**Goddesses in Older Women, Jean Shinoda Bolen. A Jungian psychologist

Descent to the Goddess, A Way of Initiation for Women, psychologist Sylvia Brinton Perera. (Explores the myth and symbolism of Inanna in great detail.)

Inanna, a retelling of the Inanna myth by Kim Echlin, with illustrations, a Story book

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, her Stories & Hymns from Sumer, Wolkstein & Kramer

I am a Woman Finding my Voice, Janet F. Quinn

I Will Not Die an Unlived Life --by Dawna Markova

Listening to Midlife: Turning your Crisis into a Quest, Mark Gerzon

Persephone Rising, Awakening the Heroine Within, Carol S. Pearson

SoulCollage Evolving, Seena Frost

The Heroine's Journey by Maureen Murdock, (and workbook)

Visual Journaling, Going Deeper than Words, Barbara Ganim & Susan Fox

Woman at the Edge of Two Worlds, Lynn V. Andrews (menopause as spiritual quest)

**Women’s Intuition, Paula Jeeves. “By nature, we women are highly intuitive.”

Marion Woodman, Jungian analyst on the Conscious Feminine, Books & Articles at https://mwoodmanfoundation.org/

Wisdom is Feminine

”Wisdom is a woman, a crone, a goddess, and a feminine archetype. In Greek mythology she is a barely personified Metis, swallowed by Zeus. In the Bible she is a hidden Sophia, the goddess who became an abstract and ungendered concept. Wisdom may be found at twilight where the three roads meet as Hecate, or in the hearth fire as Hestia. She may be the invisible Shekinah who enters the Jewish home for the meal that begins the Sabbath. She was once the Celtic goddess Cerridwen. She is Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of wisdom and Erda in Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung.”

~ Goddesses in Older Women, Jean Shinoda Bolen.

Writing down the body or The Story I tell myself is....

Ever since my first creative writing class and an exercise called the Taboo Journal, I have been fascinated with the power of memory held in the body, and the way our stories define us. The story I tell myself is, as one well known psychologist and author puts it. I have stored memories, hurts, traumas, griefs, and blocked energy in my shoulders, my belly, my ovaries, my pelvic area, my broken wrist and strained right knee and god knows where else. Clarissa Pinkola Estes has a quote somewhere that wherever we press on the flesh of the body, a memory surfaces....Healing through writing has always been an important tool for me.

As a writer and facilitator, this has led me to lead workshops using journaling prompts to write the body, and have a conversation with body parts that want me to shine a light on their neglected story. In one exercise, I named one breast Famine and the other Abundance and wrote a poem for each.

I had a dialogue with my vagina about what colour the wall paper in her room was, and what kind of furniture would be in there (red velvet, of course!). When I broke my right knee skiing, just on the cusp of menopause and a roiling mid-life transition, it gave me permission to take a lot of quiet time for thinking and writing about the connection between my body and my mind. I wanted to know why I broke my knee, was it significant? Was it a symbol for me needing to stand up for myself and ask for help when overwhelmed? At the same time, Louise Hay’s book and a few others came to my attention – giving me a kind of lexicon of the body-mind connection. A key resource was Dr Northrup’s exploration of the female body in Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom.

Mid-life brought up some more intense body wisdom and learnings. I was mothering two hormonal teen age children, while facing my own menopausal angst, as well as writing, teaching and volunteering to organize events. One particular project had become too large and unmanageable, but I didn’t know how to step down without looking unreliable and disappointing the others. My shoulders and upper back began to ache so badly that every night I needed a heating pad to fall sleep. When I finally made the decision to step down, my body aches disappeared. This happened at least twice, when I was over-committed to outside projects.  I began to pay attention and listen to my body more earnestly.

Recently I’ve been taking some online writing courses specifically centered on healing and releasing old family shadows. It has been very enlightening, to learn how the trauma and pain in one generation can get passed down to the next, until we become aware of it and break the cycle. Another course used the Hero’s Journey as an outline, and urged me to enter the cave of old griefs and hurts, and face the Dragon guarding my treasures and dialogue with him. During that five day class, I wondered at the marvelous ways my body was humming, buzzing, aching and releasing. Energy was moving, just by answering journal prompts and using my imagination to enter that dark cave of old beliefs about my “story”. Reading Women’s Intuition has further bolstered my faith in the embodied guidance and wisdom from within. (https://www.amazon.ca/Womens-Intuition-Unlocking-Wisdom-Body-ebook/dp/B00466HMJG)

The story I tell myself is....This is my old story: I was brought up the eldest of eight children (born in 10 years), in a Catholic family, and became the responsible one, the Mother’s Helper or Little Mother, out of necessity. My mother was alcoholic, and I stepped in to help out, putting a certain burden on my shoulders at an early age. This lead to a pattern of valuing myself externally in my life – the need to always feel productive, purposeful, and valuable by giving and doing, and almost never allowing myself to rest. My body had to force me to stop sometimes.  I look back now, and see that in my twenties I had become addicted to the high of self-less service in my spiritual life, finding great satisfaction (but also exhaustion and stress) in being always on call, evenings, weekends, and whenever there was a need. It was for a good cause but my body craved rest and a more balanced lifestyle. Once I got married, I threw myself into studying, going back to school full time, being an A student (overachiever that I am), then having two babies while doing my Master’s degree over several years.

Bringing up two children, born twenty months apart, was a wonderfully fulfilling role to play, and at the same time I was studying creative writing, teaching part-time and working on a master’s thesis, which became the book, Little Mother. I needed to explore motherhood: my mother’s alcoholism, my childhood, and my own birth journal while I was pregnant. I wrote poems about breastfeeding, sex, and the mothering overload. Writing the body was a life-saver, once again, and it helped me make order out of chaos. But becoming a mother was also my Waterloo. My wolf-mother instincts had been awakened, my hearing and eyesight were keener than ever. My nervous system went into overdrive; it was hard to sleep, hard to share the parenting roles when babies only want their mommies, even with a willing partner. That brought me to therapy, where the psychologist kindly said, you have taken on another mothering job with teaching. I was trying to be the perfect mom, you know how it goes. I ran up against my own human limitations, and more body wisdom.

Menopause, that other womanly rite of passage, threw my body into hormonal chaos and sent my heart and mind onto a rough rollercoaster of ups and downs, highs and lows. Some days, I felt like I was going crazy – shrieking at my kids about crumbs on the counter. Mild depression swung me on a hook for a while. I was saved again by the writing. I started a blog, interviewed other women to find out if it was the same for everyone, researched and read a ton of books, and finally wrote my own, The Tao of Turning Fifty. Since then, I’ve given lectures on the mid-life transition and written a few hundred blog posts and articles. (http://msmenopause.blogspot.ca/)

My life has been a search of that mysterious answer or clue to what ails me....for instance, a frozen shoulder, shortly after my book came out, prevented me from working on the computer for any length of time. It took five years of journaling, osteopathic treatments, shamanic journeying and finally I felt I got to the bottom of that shoulder issue.  I was in a workshop exploring the Inanna myth and down in the underworld meeting Erishkegal when I realized that the pain in my upper back was from the good girl archetype tightly wedged between my shoulder blades! Some very simple exercises from a physiotherapist helped me strengthen the back muscles. Now I sit at a desk with better ergonomics, and a good height for the keyboard. Plus, my adorable shitzu Mollie forces me to get up and take walks, and take a break from the computer regularly.

After the wild mid-life transition, in my sixties, my continuing curiosity led me to take classes to help find my inner child artist. I have rediscovered a love of artistic expression with SoulCollage and Art Journaling and once again, been catapulted back into the body, into the wild joy a child’s body feels while finger painting, drawing, or cutting up bits of images and pasting them onto cardboard. Time does not exist when I am in creative flow, and I stop feeling those aches and pains. I am grateful for the wise body guidance I receive, when I listen to it, and I want to commit to staying close to its wisdom every day.

Your story has a surprise beginning says this collage from my art journal, with a naked woman riding a white horse, facing backwards. Yes, it is a surprising rewrite. For instance, I have loved singing and music all my life. Where was that in my old story? The story I tell myself now is different from the one I have been telling myself all these years: eldest daughter, little mother with an absent mother, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. I have found my joy in the magical child, the story teller, the little girl who sings to the flowers, la petite fille qui chantait aux fleurs.

Embodied wisdom, the body’s wisdom, is still something I am exploring. Creativity and Flow have become my go-too therapies. When I am stuck in the writing, I immerse myself in making collage, in playing with images instead of words. I am learning to speak the body’s language – it uses imagery, metaphor and symbols. Myths and the imagination emerge from the collective unconscious, as Jung taught, in the same symbolic language that speaks to us through dreams, in poetry and art, in our body’s intuitive knowing... Now I know that anything is possible.

See my website at www.jenniferboire.com for a free excerpt of the book, The Tao of Turning Fifty, and to register for my latest class offering, Her Journey, the Heroine’s Quest at Mid-Life.

Through the eyes of SoulCollage(R) Book Review

What I learned about SoulCollage(R) from reading Through the eyes of SoulCollage(R)  

by Anne-Marie Bennett, published 2015

(Note: SoulCollage(R) www.soulcollage.com is a process of making a deck of cards that represent various parts of one’s life journey. There are four suits that represent either people we have loved, archetypal energies, inner personality parts and animal guides or instinctual energies).

On Facebook recently I saw a quote that read, I have been a seeker all my life and still am, but I stopped asking the stars and the books and started listening to the teaching of my own Soul. (Rumi) Stopping to listen in, and dialogue with parts of myself as represented in my SoulCollage(R) cards, is the best thing I have ever done to get to know myself better. And not only that, but it’s helped me accept all of me, the good and the bad, the light and the dark.

The lovely essays and reflections on life in the book Through the Eyes of SoulCollage(R), Reflections on Life via the SoulCollage(R) Lens, by facilitator and trainer Anne-Marie Bennett, grew out of the last ten years of her SoulCollage(R) journey, and were originally written as newsletter articles for KaleidoSoul, Bennetts’ SoulCollage(R) community. http://www.kaleidosoul.com/ 

In this first book, of two planned books of essays on seeing life through the lens of SoulCollage(R), Anne-Marie covers two of the four suits – Community and Companions. (Council and Committee are the other two suits). Community cards are made for all the actual people who have lived, touched us in some way, or been close to us (including pets). Even teachers you have known or celebrities you admire fit here. Cards can be made to grieve and honour lost ones, and can increase our sense of connection, or “nettedness” as Bennett calls it. The Companions section has some wonderful ideas about how to receive messages and gifts from our animal guides or totems.

The book includes a list of vocabulary for the uninitiated, and a Time to reflect space to encourage readers to journal along with each chapter, as well as additional ideas for card making. She provides a link to her SoulCollage(R) cards on her website, with other resources and recommended sites and books. Facilitators can mine the book for workshop themes based on the topics in each chapter, with the author’s full permission.

There is a chapter on spirituality that I found especially appealing. Bennett sees SoulCollage as a form of prayer, as a tool to stay close to spirit. I like that Bennett describes the cards as more than just pieces of cardboard with images glued on them – they represent our wholeness, all the parts of self gathered together. Using the cards allows one to access deeper layers of soul, through active imagination and intuition, seeing patterns, themes, and writing about what one sees.

Bennett suggests that sticking close to your SoulCollage(R) cards through readings is a way of coming home to yourself. She strongly encourages makers of SoulCollage(R) cards to either do daily readings, picking two cards and sitting them on your bureau, or journaling about them, or Focused readings, where you set aside a special time and space to ask a question, clear your mind, and receive guidance from 3-4 cards you choose at random. Again, journaling is a component, as you dialogue with the cards and receive messages – in actuality, your sub-conscious selves, or inner self replying to your own questions. Bennett’s book is full of instances of synchronicity and learnings. It can be a fun, light process or one of transformation and deep healing.

After finishing the book, I spread all my SoulCollage(R) cards on the floor of my bedroom – they covered most of the room – and did what Bennett suggests – separated them by darker Neters or shadow parts, and Light Neters. I put the darker ones on the left, for no apparent reason, and the lighter, more playful cards on the right. Right away I noticed the difference in colour – the darker cards (representing anger, shame, old hurts and abandonments, painful heritage, etc) were mostly dark coloured. And the joyful, juicy creative cards (representing whimsy, joy, spirit of play, sanctuary, love and marriage, sexuality, freedom and creativity, were much more colourful and light – reds, yellows, blues predominating.

This was a very good exercise and I’m glad to have learned it from Anne-Marie’s book.

Some of my favorite essays were about learning how to trust the intuitive process. How does one begin to listen in and discover which inner parts need attention? I put a star beside a few chapters: What lights you up, and Inner Beauty (writing a love letter to the self, sealing and mailing it is a great idea and one I use in my journaling classes). So many creative moments are explored in this heartfelt, inspiring book...simple moments, from stopping to pause and admire nature, lessons learned riding the metro, to having the courage to tell all your heart.  

Read this book and discover many artful ways to pause, wonder at, and savour the moment.

You can find the book on Amazon, or read more about it here: http://www.kaleidosoul.com/books.html

Jennifer Boire is a published author and a facilitator of the Creative Circle class, (creative journaling and SoulCollage(R)) and leads retreats for women.

Anne-Marie Bennett– KaleidoSoul founder, SoulCollage(R) Facilitator and Trainer lives in Massachusetts.