It will be as if you took a kaleidoscope full of all the bits and pieces of your life and held it up to the light and there, even as you look, falling into place are the unique patterns and the amazing beauties of your Story.
Community suit: Claude Monet card
DISCOVER YOUR WISDOM, CHANGE YOUR WORLD™
About SoulCollage®
SoulCollage® is a fun, intuitive form of self-discovery, founded by Seena Frost in California. It is a creative way to celebrate all aspects of yourself, beyond any concept of positive or negative. Incorporating archetypes and basic concepts from Jungian psychology, SoulCollage honours your whole, divine self or spiritual essence in a visual way. Hence, alongside my cards for Bliss and Grace, I have one that represents She Who Likes Confrontation. Another one depicts my powerful Source, yet another my Witness Self, the deep part of me that can view events and actions with detachment and great wisdom.
Seena Frost describes Soul Collage® this way:
“It is a system for creating a deck of cards which is a visual journal, your own living journal to which you can add over years. Your deck of SoulCollage® cards will help you identify and image your diverse inner parts, the beautiful ones and shadowy ones, the easy-to-like ones, and the harder-to-like ones. You will also reflect on the external guides and allies in your life, visible and invisible, human and archetypal, and make cards for them.
“A SoulCollage® deck is the Story of You. It is a tangible way to know yourself in your diversity and depth, and also to show yourself to others. 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.”
What do you need to do SoulCollage?
No art experience is necessary for the SoulCollage practice. All you need are 5 x 8 matte cards, magazines, glue, and scissors. ( I provide all supplies and images in my workshops.) The process comes from Frost’s background of psychology, theology, and work with Jean Houston, one of the founders of the Human Potential Movement. It involves the creation of cards in four suits, each representing the psychological, communal, energetic, and archetypal dimensions, respectively. You can use four separate colors of matte board to represent the different suits.
Here is a brief description of the suits:
- Committee suit: Our many inner personality parts, our ego, our character. Some examples: The Writer; The Worrier; The Teacher; The Activist; Inner Critic; Playful Inner Child
- Community suit: Our loved ones, teachers, pets, guides and mentors — anyone or anything that represents “community” to you. Besides your friends or family, this can include people, dead or alive, who have inspired or challenged you as thinkers, artists, or spiritual leaders. Some examples: Gandhi; the Dalai Lama; Desmond Tutu; Georgia O’Keeffe
- Companion suit: Animal guides visualized in our body’s energy centres, a different one associated with each of our seven chakras
- Council suit: The archetypes who (that) guide and challenge us personally, and who are active in the collective consciousness of the planet. Some examples: Fear; Death: Bliss; Grace; Shame; The Warrior
There can be overlap between some of the suits. For instance, The Warrior can appear in the Committee Suit and/or the Council suit.
Three Transpersonal Cards stand alone, apart from any of the suits:
- Source Card: It represents our Divine Source, the Unmanifest, the Mystery, Foundation of Being
- Soul Essence: Each person’s unique spark of Source, our divine potential, how we manifest our Source energy
- Witness Self: Our Observer Self that observes all that is with detachment and nonjudgmental consciousness
Council card: Artemis
What is the process of SoulCollage?
In simple terms, SoulCollage involves choosing images that you feel drawn to or that evoke a strong reaction in you, whether you understand why or not. You can make a collage card without knowing what it signifies at first; the meaning can become clear later. No words are included in the collages; this is meant to bypass the linear, logical brain and celebrate spontaneity instead. Each card has a single focus or energy.
A SoulCollage workshop combines both individual and group exploration; making at least three cards; guided visualization; and a variety of verbal or written exercises, depending on the time and desire of the group.
Discover and share the value of SoulCollage
Making SoulCollage cards can have great therapeutic value, especially creating a card for universal aspects of our lives such as Fear and Death. You can make a card to represent your Playful Inner Child and one that shows your Wounded Child.
How do you use SoulCollage?
Besides my regular SoulCollage workshops, I have used this process with some of my writing students (adults with mental illness), who have conveyed parts of themselves with pictures that they couldn’t articulate in words.
Used alone or in groups, SoulCollage cards can serve as a catalyst for journaling, poetry, solo or group rituals, or creating affirmations. You can pick one a day for inspiration, self-enquiry or to accompany an intention. Create one of your hero, mentor, friend or loved one and send a copy to them as a gift. Use them as a form of wise counsel, like visiting the all-knowing Oracle within you.
Try many fun and insightful ways to use SoulCollage with Heather as facilitator:
- Creative writing workshops
- Dream groups
- Storytelling sessions
- Birthdays and wedding showers
- Job transition and workplace change management
- Employee morale-building workshops
- Healing and addiction recovery work
- Spiritual guidance and self-expression
See Workshops for more details
“I Am One Who. . .”: a significant SoulCollage phrase
The “I am One Who” exercise is a powerful way to interact with a SoulCollage card. Using this phrase either verbally or in writing, the card creator imagines entering the image(s) on the card and viewing the world from the perspective of that person, animal, or object. Allowing words to flow spontaneously, the card creator repeats the “I am One Who” phrase to describe sensations, thoughts or feelings associated with the card images. This process can feel scary or strained at first, but it accesses a deeper part of ourselves, offering insights about our inner being that might otherwise have remained dormant or ignored.
This technique is similar to the timed writing and oral timed writing exercises that I use in my writing classes, inspired by Natalie Goldberg and her “wild mind” process. Such exercises offer a way to bypass our controlling mind and let a deeper, more vulnerable part of ourselves gain a voice and achieve recognition.
Two committee cards: The Yoga Practitioner; The Meditator
About SoulCollage® Facilitator Heather Conn
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his [or her] soul.”
– W. Somerset Maugham
Thank you to the many artists and photographers whose work appears on SoulCollage cards. Your images have inspired us to recreate and discover our inner and outer worlds. As a writer and photographer who honors and supports the role of artists and their work, I strive to be respectful of your rights.
SoulCollage cards are not bought, sold, or traded; they are created solely for a card maker’s own inner exploration. When observed within a workshop, these cards serve to demonstrate the SoulCollage process or someone’s inner realization.
Thank you, Seena
SoulCollage is a trademarked process created by Seena Frost. Thank you, Seena, for introducing such a fun, fulfilling, and enriching creative tool. For more information about Seena and her work, please visit her website.
