Preparing for the Fall Launch of our ecourse-SUBLIME

I am revising my ecourse-SUBLIME so we can run it again this Fall. I really enjoyed working on it the first time around and now I have more ideas to add. A dear friend lent me this wonderful book on mixed media and I devoured it. I have been wanting to try mixed media for a long time but never knew where to start. Well starting with a great book makes a lot of sense. The book is called "Taking Flight: Inspirations and Techniques to give your Creative Spirit Wings" by Kelly Rae Roberts. In this book Kelly Rae outlines lots of techniques mixed with supportive prose. She encourages people to allow themselves to get into their work and free themselves from past baggage. The illustrations are lovely to look at and her advise really is inspirational. So I have adapted some of her techniques for our ecourse.

My plan is to add a photo/collage journal to the mix. I wrote assignments based mostly on photography which I will keep in place but I thought that adding the mixed media art component might make it a little more fun. In addition, throughout the course I ask women to think about a number of questions that I pose and now with a journal project in place there will be a beautiful place to add these reflections. I am excited to be working in this area because it really does allow me to pull parts of myself together in a way that I haven't done before.

The artist and the therapist in me finally get to inspire one another. I have heard the stories of some many people's lives and have felt incredibly privileged to have done so. However, I have often felt that I wanted to offer people more then just an hour a week. So I did run some groups at one time but coordinating weekly meetings can get cumbersome and when people miss a session... So the ecourse is an ideal means of extending what I do while adding some fun along the way. What I hope is that this course will inspire people to reflect on themselves in ways they haven't before. What I have seen in my work as a therapist is that people really do have more tools and internal power then they realize. Part of my goal in therapy is to help people see this about themselves and learn to access this untapped resource. The ecourse is another way to show people the wonderful resources that lie inside waiting for release. 

During the ecourse we get to explore this internal terrain through creative expression. Sometimes words along don't help. When we are trying to discover something about ourselves that we can't clearly see it is almost impossible to use words to describe it. So by using art we can get a glimpse of this inside stuff and find a way to name it. Ultimately, I believe that finding our voice is one of the key elements necessary to feeling at peace in the world.