Blogging on the run!

I've just set up my new smart phone for blogging on the run while I'm overseas from early September until January. I'm sending this from my phone to test it out!  I'll be with family in Canada, the US and then Europe, so this SoulCollage® blog may be somewhat inactive during that time, but I'll hopefully have some news if I can manage to meet up with other facilitators in the northern hemisphere, which is what I'm trying to organise now, and if I can find the time and resources while travelling to make some cards.

Meanwhile, I still have one last workshop for the year, on 4th August, and 2 more studio sessions, so click on the links at right for information about those. I'm looking forward to catching up with some of you at one or more of those events before I go.

Here's a card I made a little while ago. While it may look dark in colour, to me it's actually extremely positive and filled with light. While many SoulCollagers are very open about posting their personal dialoguing online, I've always felt quite reticent about this as I feel my cards are an intimate reflection of me, and are relevant for me only, and it doesn't feel natural or right to expose myself to strangers in such an intimate way. I even find it quite hard to have someone scribe for me while I'm dialoguing with a card. However, I'm trying to allow myself to show my vulnerability a little more by posting a snippet of the dialoguing from now on in the hope that it might encourage some of you to fully engage with your cards and to get on friendly terms with all of them as a means of better understanding yourself.  I believe it's important that we celebrate ALL the parts of ourselves, both light and shadow.  This card came together very easily, and I absolutely love it!

I am the one who is mysterious, ancient and electric. I am intuition and intelligence. I crack through ignorance and I am a catalyst for change. I can work things out quickly and I instinctively  know what to do.  I am the one who brings Wisdom from the Spirit world. 

Digital SoulCollage® card

The Artist

Although I know that some people who are very competent with Photoshop and other similar programmes sometimes make their SoulCollage® cards digitally, I've always thought that making them that way wouldn't suit me as I don't have sufficient technical skills to be able to do it without staying in my left brain. SoulCollage® works with the right, intuitive brain. However, I made this digital collage a while ago while fiddling around with Photoshop and she's been nagging away at me ever since to be printed out and made into a SoulCollage® card.  So, I am going to go with my intuition and grant her wish!  The background is a photo of a partly-finished intuitive painting I did at one of my friend Denise Dillon-Bolland's wonderful workshops a few years ago, which was still taped to the board, and the other two images were cut from magazines and then scanned.  Very happy with her!

NB: SoulCollage® cards are made from images published in magazines, calendars, books, cards and on the internet, and from personal materials (e.g. photos, artworks). SoulCollage® cards may be reproduced only for the personal use of the maker of the cards or for use as examples to illustrate the SoulCollage® process. It is a principle of SoulCollage® that SoulCollage® cards are not for sale, trade, or barter.

Nourishing the Soul

Great workshop last Saturday, and a lovely facilitator's get-together at Wendy's house on Sunday. The Brisbane winter weather has been back to its glorious best lately - chilly mornings but beautiful sunny days around 20-23 degrees (celsius), so sitting on Wendy's verandah in the beautiful sunshine making cards among friends was so good for the Soul! Thanks, Wendy! And thanks to you and Sheryl for generously sharing images, some of which contributed to this card below:

Don't forget, the last opportunity this year to learn about this wonderful process for nourishing our Self/Soul is coming up at my final 2012 workshop on 4th August. Book in now to avoid missing out!  All the details are here.

Last two Brisbane workshops for 2012: Don't miss out!

'There is a knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight. The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth.' ~~Carl Jung.

Don’t rely on others to find your “deeper insight”. Come and join with like-minded people in a day of creativity, inspiration and self-discovery to learn how you can access your OWN Inner Wisdom. Release your creative Soul/Self! Let it out to play and discover its many aspects by exploring the profound meanings, unique to you, which are hidden within the images you intuitively choose, cut and paste as you create your beautiful cards and then dialogue with them. These cards will be the foundation of your personalised deck which you can build on over your lifetime and consult to gain insight and guidance.  SoulCollage® was developed by U.S. psychotherapist Seena Frost while studying under acclaimed transpersonal psychologist, Jean Houston. It's a powerful transformational process which works with the language of symbols and archetypes, combining image, intuition and synchronicity into a unique creative process that anyone can do. For more information about SoulCollage®, click here.

There's only a week to go until my next workshop in Brisbane next Saturday 16th June, so, with only one more workshop coming up this year (August 4th) don't miss out on your chance to experience this simple, fun, creative and powerful process first-hand! 

Click here for the full workshop details. I'm so looking forward to seeing you there!

My latest card

My newest SoulCollage® card, made as my demonstration card during the recent Inverell workshop. 

Love her, loved finding out what she revealed!

Catch-up

Once again, I'm playing catch-up. I've decided I'm not such a great blogger.  So many other exciting things to do here in Brisbane!

My trip to Cairns in March to co-facilitate the 'Processing Trauma through SoulCollage®' two-day training with Dr. Greta Galloway from Alan Webster Consultancies was a wonderful experience, and my thanks go to Greta and Alan for their great hospitality, and also for giving me the opportunity to present SoulCollage® to professionals working with trauma clients. It was lovely to meet the participants and I hope they enjoyed their SoulCollage® experience and will find it a useful tool in their work. I certainly got a lot out of Greta's very professional presentation on trauma on the first day.

Last weekend I travelled to Inverell in northern NSW to run an introductory SoulCollage® workshop at the Inverell Art Gallery. It was great to be back in the country. I grew up on a property near Bellata, between Narrabri and Moree, so I always love the opportunity to get back to my roots.  Thanks to Jo Williams from the gallery, and to Carolyn McCosker and Lynn Lennon, for helping with publicising the event. Also, to my friend, Lainie Jubb, who travelled down with me, my thanks for your help in setting up, and to all those kind souls, including Lainie and my friend Roie, who stayed back to help pack up at the end of the day.  We had 12 participants, several of whom are counsellors, and it was a lovely group.  A great bonus of being in the art gallery was being surrounded by all that lovely art in the workshop space! I hope everyone enjoyed their day as much as I did. It would be wonderful if someone from the group could take the initiative to start up a card-making group down there. Making cards in community is such a lovely thing to do and provides a great opportunity to have people scribe for us and to share our cards and our experiences of making and dialoguing with them.  

My next introductory workshop is in Brisbane on Saturday June 16th. Go here for more information. 

   

Getting excited for my Cairns visit!

Getting excited for my trip to Cairns next week to co-facilitate, with Dr. Greta Galloway from Alan Webster Consultancies, the two-day training for health/caring professionals, 'Processing Trauma through SoulCollage®'. It's not too late to book in for this one-off event, so if you are a counsellor, therapist/art therapist, social worker, psychologist, mentor, support worker, carer or guidance officer in north Queensland, you have a unique opportunity to benefit from this training.

I'm so looking forward to meeting and sharing SoulCollage® with this group, and also to visiting Cairns again after rather more decades than I care to remember! Then, I was a young, recently-graduated paediatric nurse off on a working holiday around Australia with two other nursing friends. We camped on Trinity Beach, along with three young men who'd recently been working as jackaroos at King Ranch at Tully and whom we'd met in Cooktown - a country boy from Singleton NSW and two American students on holiday from Yale University,  one a law student and the other studying anthropology, majoring in Australian Aboriginal culture. We camped right beside the beach and had long, involved philosophical discussions at night as we toasted marshmallows on a bonfire on the beach. Sadly, I'm told this area is developed as housing now. A delightful postscript to this story is that one of us has been married to the boy from Singleton for over 40 years and they have 4 children and ever-increasing numbers of grandchildren! 

Congratulations to my SoulCollage® students who are now facilitators!

Congratulations to three former students from my SoulCollage® workshops, Malinda, Jodie and John, who have loved their SoulCollage® experience so much that they've gone on to train as SoulCollage® facilitators last weekend in Brisbane with Australia's only SoulCollage® Trainer,  Karen Mann.  I'm excited that more people will now be introduced to the benefits and magic of SoulCollage® in the Brisbane area through them and I welcome them, and the other new facilitators, to the Queensland facilitator network.  Wishing them well in their future journeys with SoulCollage®!

Here's a card that I made at my facilitator training in September 2010:

Soulcollage® in the forest!

We had a great introductory workshop on Saturday at the Quaker House on a beautiful Brisbane summer's day. The energy of the group was wonderful and everyone seemed to enjoy creating their cards, dialoguing with them, and learning more about the process (and themselves, of course!). This is such a lovely venue, nestled amongst the trees on a block of suburban forest only 10 minutes from the city. The calls of the parrots and laughter of the kookaburras really added to the ambience and peaceful atmosphere!  

The following day I received an email from one of the participants in which she said: "Thank you for such a delightful experience of SoulCollage® yesterday, in such a beautiful relaxing environment.......Thanks again for such an inspiring day! I'm so excited to have discovered this process, and look forward to discovering more and more about myself, through the cards I make."


And from another happy participant: "I just wanted to send you an email and thank you for such a wonderful day on Saturday. I really enjoyed the whole process and in such a beautiful location..........I will certainly be recommending SoulCollage® to all my friends."

If you'd like to find out what this "wonderful", "delightful" and "inspiring" SoulCollage® is all about, go here for details of my next Brisbane workshop on 21st April at the same venue (also in June, August & October), or see some of my workshops at venues outside Brisbane at the links at right.  See also the official SoulCollage® website for more general information about SoulCollage®.

Totally absorbed and happily creating in the treetops!

'Introduction to SoulCollage®': Brisbane

 The next  Brisbane 'Introduction to SoulCollage®' workshop will be held on

Saturday 18^th February, 2012  

9.00am to 5.00pm


Places are limited. Book now to reserve your place!


Click here for full details

Cairns change of date & Inverell NSW workshop date

The dates for the CAIRNS TRAINING have been changed to Wednesday 7th & Thursday 8th March (i.e. starting one day later than originally planned). The details are here.

Also, the date for the one-day 'Introduction to SoulCollage®' workshop in INVERELL in northern NSW is Saturday 19th May, 2012.  At this stage, the Inverell Art Gallery is being considered as the venue but I'll update that as the details are finalised. Please contact me if you're interested in this workshop.

Maleny Workshop Date: April 28th

The date for the one-day 'Introduction to SoulCollage®' workshop at Maleny, north of Brisbane in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, has been set as Saturday 28th April. Full details to follow. 

Meanwhile if you think you might be interested in attending this workshop, please contact me to be put on my email list for details to be sent to you when they're available. 


See posts immediately below for details of my other workshops in Brisbane, Cairns and Inverell NSW (date for Inverell yet to be determined). 

Strong, confident woman

Processing Trauma through SoulCollage®: March 2012

Fragmented

Training Event:

Processing Trauma through SoulCollage® 

Wednesday 7th and Thursday 8th March, 2012

Facilitated by Dr. Greta Galloway from Alan Webster Consultancies & Ms. Jo Knights, SoulCollage® Facilitator

If you are a counsellor, therapist, social worker, psychologist, mentor, support worker, carer, or guidance officer then this training is for you.


FULL DETAILS HERE

SoulCollage® in 2012

Pregnant with Possibility. That's 2012!

Hello, and welcome to 2012!  I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and feel rested and ready to start another year.  My Christmas was infinitely different from last year, when I experienced the magic of a snowy white German Christmas in Berlin with all my family together. This year I spent it in a somewhat warmer climate, on the Sunshine Coast, with my amazing 97-year-old mother-in-law, Laura, and some more extended family, but neither of my children or my grandchild, who all live overseas. I know I'm repeating this, but I'm so thankful that I live in the age of Skype! 

Most of us are making resolutions and plans for the year ahead at this time, and SoulCollage® is a great tool to assist in that. We can do readings from our cards asking for insight on what we need to focus on for the coming year. Formulate an open-ended question around that, draw a card, or a number of cards, and then dialogue with them, writing down what comes. You could use all the dialoguing questions, or just the first "Who are you?" question.  With your original question in mind, you then finish your dialoguing with a question something like, "What wisdom do you have for me as I set about this new year? Or "......about this issue", etc. Don't forget to date it so you can refer back to it later. 

After a short break over the holiday period, I’m now gearing up for the year ahead, with some exciting things happening. 

Here are the dates for planned SoulCollage® workshops and Studio sessions for this year (so far!):

CAIRNS, North Qld

6th & 7^th March, 2012: 

‘PROCESSING TRAUMA THROUGH SOULCOLLAGE®’

A one-day SoulCollage® workshop will be a component of this two-day training on trauma for health professionals, co-facilitated with Dr. Greta Galloway from Alan Webster Consultancies. If you are a counsellor, therapist, social worker, psychologist, mentor, support worker, carer, or guidance officer, then this training is for you. For more information, please contact me by clicking on my profile link at right to access my email.

The Cairns workshop resulted from a serendipitous meeting with Greta, whom I’d never met before, on a broken down council bus in Brisbane last year. I just love the way SoulCollage® works so synchronistically in my life. One never knows what amazing and interesting things might ensue from such a simple act as chatting to the person next to you on the bus!

BRISBANE

PLANNED ONE-DAY WORKSHOPS:

SATURDAYS from 9am to 5pm, on:

18th February

7th April

16th June

4th August

20th October

STUDIO CARD MAKING SESSIONS 

(for people who are already making cards). First Monday evening of the month.

MONDAYS:

6^th February

March: No Studio session

2nd April

7th May

4th June

2nd July

6th August

3rd September

1st October

5th November

Workshops are also planned for INVERELL NSW and MALENY QLD some time this year. 

GROUPS

I am available to give complimentary short talks to groups about SoulCollage®. This is not training but to give people who may not previously have heard of SoulCollage® an idea of what it's about. 

DISCOUNTS FOR ORGANISING YOUR OWN GROUP FOR A WORKSHOP

Organise your own group for a workshop and save. Ask me how!

INTERESTED IN SOULCOLLAGE® BUT UNABLE TO ATTEND THESE EVENTS?

If you're unable to attend these events because of the timing, or because you don't live in the area, please contact me and I will endeavour to assist you with a facilitator in your area, or in any other way I can. I am available to travel out of SE Qld to run workshops.


BRISBANE SOULCOLLAGE® FACILITATOR TRAINING
This is happening in Brisbane on 24-26 February 2012, run by our fearless Australian SoulCollage® leader, Karen Mann from Melbourne, and there's still plenty of time to book in if you think that you'd like to do this training, which would qualify you to teach SoulCollage®, or you might simply want to learn more about this wonderful tool of self-development. I'm very pleased that one of my former workshop participants will be taking the training. For more information, visit the Australian SoulCollage® website.


Please contact me if you're interested in any of these events, and I'd be very grateful if you could pass on this information to any of your contacts who might be interested, too.

May 2012 bring you transformation, joy and success, and hours of creativity and deep insight and guidance from your SoulCollage® cards.

Jo  xxoo

Now is a very good time to revisit my 'Stepping into my Power' card!