Workshops
In these workshops participants are oriented to a variety of simple art materials
Warm ups are offered to engage participants directly with art materials
No expectation to produce a specific image
Technique is de-emphasized so that the natural creativity of the individual is allowed expression
A non-judgmental discussion of artwork is facilitated to explore its significance and promote insight.
Opens up new possibilities of understanding often revealing aspects of the self not previously evident.
A Mythopoetic inquiry
As we engage our story, our myth through the symbolic processes of image making and narrative the possibility of a different way of being in the world and within ourselves can emerge. C.G. Jung tells us, “The image is an expression of the unconscious as well as the conscious situation of the moment.”
The essence of psyche and her manifestations are images - dream images, active imagination images, and those expressed in art. These images have the capacity to move us beyond our literal history and into rebodying our experience.
Please join us Saturday, December 9th 3:30 – 6 pm (Pacific time) for this free workshop to celebrate the upcoming winter solstice.
Contact Susanna at susanna.ruebsaat@outlook.com to register.
Upcoming Workshops
Alchemical Relationships. EnSouling Projections
An embodied inquiry of:
The necessity of projections.
The image in the mirror tells me who I am. Or does it?
What would it be like to “see through” a projection into its essence?
Could this image point me to a part of myself I am both looking for, and giving away?
Is the act/art of projecting a way the psyche manages its homeostasis through keeping within certain pre-set limits the parts of the self it can handle at any given time or circumstance?
Could these be processes living in the unconscious and insisting on expression and embodiment?
Aspects of the self I am not identified with I may be wanting to rescue, disown, off-load, reclaim, or mirror back as self-images through seeing them outside of myself as other?
Projections can feed me or drain me of my life force.
TBA 2024
Past Workshops
A Mythopoetic Approach
An arts-based experiential inquiry:
the Trickster Archetype in Individuation.
Explore how archetypal energies appear in your own art making process and the relationship between these archetypal images and the complexes (those split off sub-personalities that suddenly take over in a charged situation). This session offers simple art making warm ups and development of themes that emerge in the art of participants.
Trauma and Creativity. a Symbolic Response
In essence trauma is energy that has been trapped in the body (soma) and psyche. Creativity opens a middle way, a path between the conscious and unconscious where psychic material can bypass the conscious mind's filtering and editing imperative and allow the body and heart to express energy previously held captive by trauma. The creative process literally helps metabolize intolerable events and feelings inviting the body and psyche to transmute this raw material into energy for healing and wholeness.
My Migration Story
Whether the journey be an inner one or a literal immigration, it carries a symbolic charge that can be devastating and/or transformative. A mythopoetic voyage into the unconscious realms, sometimes an Underworld experience, holds meaning that reaches into the depths of our being and brings forth treasures in the form of images and stories that have come through us and now desire to be part of the world. Through embodying and contemplating these rich symbols of our own interiority we beckon fate to reveal to us our own mythic nature and destiny.
Images and Stories of the Child Self through Art
Awakening the creativity of the child within: past narratives, future dreams-this course explores images and stories of the child still present in the psyche of the adult. Through a variety of simple art making activities, aspects of the self that hold important links to creativity and healing are activated and explored in a non-judgmental atmosphere.
Seeing Yourself as a Way of Seeing
The image of yourself as a mirror is of symbolic value. Seeing your life as a mirror is the methodology of myth-making, soul-making. It is the imagination both mirroring back and seeing (interpreting) the experiences it has been presented with. The image in the mirror is not you. It is the reverse image of you, from which you can perceive significant reflections of the soul-image, and embark upon a mythopoetic journey. Embodying this journey through art making opens up a depth dialogue with the unconscious.
Inner inquiry through art-making
Explore the inner landscape and the inner figures that roam there influencing moods, energy, choices and often determine the direction we take in life. Easy art making activities will be offered as guidance as we journey into the psyche. This course draws on CG Jung's "active imagination."
I Myself am a Dream: The Child Archetype
The courage and resilience of the Child Archetype keeps us leaning towards learning and growth. As we tap into this, one of the primary archetypes through a dreaming process, we gain access to its potent and endlessly innovative energy for dreaming our myth forward.
Finding Containment While Facing Fragmentation
Through the creative process we can often come across an uncanny form of alchemical containment that supports and nourishes us deeply. A natural form of introspection arises when we notice a kind of tugging of the inner life calling us to embody that which is not yet known.
Mourning the Dream/Amor Fati: A Mythopoetic Inquiry through Art Making
The whispering voice seems to have knowledge of the archetypal resonance in the same manner art does. It is as if a layer of the unconscious where the mythopoetic dwells continues to reveal itself in the mirror of my experience, no matter what or how I think of myself. My body lives and extends mythopoetic wisdom as the dreaming-body is tumbling through the wounded parts of the old story, the false myths. And so I am confronted by my own narrative, turning on me in a desperate gesture for me to awaken to the unlived life, a symbolic life that sees Psyche’s deeper intent for me.
A Journey of Discovery into our own BirthDdeath-Rebirth Archetype
This workshop explores how it might be possible to mourn what was never to be, and seize life as it actually is in the same moment. Through the creative process, we engage a form of archetypal activism, a bringing together of polarities which takes us into the mythopoetic dimension.
Re-telling the Tale:Re-imagining the Journey
The Future Cannot be changed because it has not yet happened. But the past can be changed to what it is meant to be. The ability to move beyond one’s present myth and all its assumptions and prescriptions, and into one’s living myth.
Through art making activities and discussion we will engage this deep, archetypal activism.
Light and Shadow
Light and Shadow suggest many things to us:
Life, death, seasons, mental states, visual experiences.... and how we travel through these paradoxical yet natural rhythms of our life and its story. This workshop will open the space for you to explore in the art your own deep connection to this rhythm.
The Role of Supervision in Working with the Disturber
In the disquiet of the countertransference the “disturber” within is intimating an unconscious call for a change of attitude.
Supervision includes this intimate inner figure as an archetypal force entering the intersubjective field and—in an atmosphere of support and mirroring of the professional-self of the practitioner—is invited to be engaged through the contents of the counter transference itself. Assisting in the development of the transformative potential of the “disturber” calls for the discernment of its deeper intent, or ulterior motive we might say. Simply put, the presence of a “disturber” is a demand for change.
How the Body Makes Art
Let the natural and spontaneous gestures of the body be your guide to opening the drawing process; giving your mind a rest and exploring how your inherent aesthetic lives at the core of every movement you make. Find your own rhythm and approach to the image making process without having to know ahead of time what you are going to create: imaging through the synchronistic meeting of your body and the body of the art materials: body to body creations.
Art & archetype
Explore how archetypal energies appear in your own art making process and the relationship between these archetypal images and the complexes (those split off sub-personalities that suddenly take over in a charged situation). This session offers simple art making warm ups and development of themes that emerge in the art of participants.
The Authentic Self and the False Self
The Authentic Self and the False Self Seem to Speak in Different Languages. They have different voices and speak of different things? What are they speaking of? Do we know the difference? What are they trying to tell us? Who do they belong to? Is there a place for both of them?
Sessions are framed within an arts-based and mythopoetic inquiry into these voices and the inner figures they are connected to in relation to the Self, the Ego, the Persona and the Shadow archetypes.
Living in the Dream: Living Symbolically
From inside the dream we see the way the dream does, that is, Psyche’s or the soul’s perspective of what’s going on. From inside the image we see the way the image sees; we shape-shift and enter other states of consciousness, realms that exist outside or beyond consensus reality.
Through the marks that come through our own bodies, as they engage the body of the art materials, we plot a path into the imaginal, into the dream body.
Symbol-Maker, Story-Teller: How Psyche Tells her Story
The nature of the Psyche is image. As an image-making organism, the psyche spontaneously produces images from the unconscious. These images then move quite naturally towards making some sort of sense or meaning on behalf of the personality.
Mythopoetic Inquiry
As we engage our story, our myth through image and narrative, the possibility of a different way of being in the world and within ourselves can emerge that moves beyond our literal history and into re-embodying experience.