Dreaming Awake the Goddess

The highlight of my week has been an art/planning date with the energy power house that is Carol Newmarch

Carol and I are going to be running a series of Goddess workshops and we really needed to get down to business and do some planning.  We also needed to get to know each other's way of working as we haven't facilitated a workshop together before. 

So we decided on an art date/planning session. 

Productive!

Creative!

The best idea!  

Work but fun!!

Highly recommended - right brain planning, getting to know your co-facilitator and having a laugh... (and I forgot to mention the cups of tea and party bag chocolate buttons, thanks Carol)...

I can't think of a better way to spend an afternoon.

For those of you who live in the north east of the UK, the first of these goddess workshops, Dreaming Awake the Goddess, is on Sunday 30th March - and you can sign up here to be kept in the loop about in person workshops in the UK.

How do you run your planning or business sessions?  Or your team meetings? Wouldn't it be great if big biz did this?

From my heart to yours

Rachel xox

ps don't forget - if you would like to be kept in the loop about my upcoming ecourse - sign up here and for in person workshops here xxx

And the launch of 21 Secrets 2014 is drawing closer - more details over here xxx

Imbolc blessings to you

 It's the 2nd February - Imbolc or Candlemas or Brigid's Day - bright blessings to you.

Today is the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It is the day we celebrate the small signs that Spring is approaching; snowdrops, hyacinth and crocuses blooming, daffodils in bud. These all herald the return of the Goddess. (Not that she ever left here...)

I'm chuckling a little to myself as I write this because this is a Fire festival (!!) and Brigid is another Fire goddess.

Brigit is Lady of the Sacred Flame, the Flame of Inspiration, the Flame of Creative Consciousness. Her bright, fiery energy is the energy of creation. She is patroness of all creatives - poets, writers, metal workers and crafts people. She encourages us to tap into our own inspiration and our own creative power. Brigit reminds us that we are connected always to Divine Inspiration and the creative Source.

I started this painting on the Solstice; family time at Christmas and a busy January with my other business meant that it has been neglected. But inspired by Brigit this weekend, I have reconnected with the fiery red energy. It feels so luscious and rich and I'm ready to finish this painting and its sister canvas that I started at the same time.

It's still winter outside but Brigit's energy brings brings hope, renewed enthusiasm, renewal, and new beginnings; Whichever way your spirituality lies, today, whatever the weather, take a walk and look for those small signs of the goddess - perhaps some green shoots appearing or snowdrops in bloom.

And to honour Brigit's fire, llight candles around your home tonight and celebrate with her.

I'm off to Yorkshire Sculpture Park with my beloved for this week's art date to marvel at the Henry Moore's and see the Angie Lewin exhibition.  But also to look for celandines and crocus and the goddess.

From my goddess heart to yours

Rachel xox

ps don't forget you can read all about my Glorious Goddess course for 21 Secrets here

fire in the hold

I hope you are settling into 2014. I've just got time today to squeeze in my (very belated) New Year wishes to you.  And it is The Chinese New Year today, so maybe I'm not so late after all, maybe I'm right on time! 

Welcoming in the Year of the Horse (and I surely am in for the ride) - Gung Hai Faat Choi! May this year be full of prosperity, wealth, health and happiness! May your rice bowl always be full!! (Stealing this from my lovely friend Tina Fu.)

January is usually a slow time of year for me - and as I live in the north east of the UK, this is just as it should be; we are still in the depths of winter. It should be hibernation time - and that is partly how I feel, I just want to cosy up on these dark days, but rippling away beneath the surface, there is much activity...

I'm still dancing round the fire with Vesta.

 

The fire goddess is still informing my daily journal practice. My thought on this is that pre-Christmas and on the Solstice, Vesta was helping me to be in the moment, get cosy and stay home, but now I'm stoking the fires ready to fuel the year ahead...and there's so much coming up I really need this injection of fire energy.

I'll let you in on this activity, what's happening now, coming up and in the planning: 

• I'm preparing my Glorious Goddess workshop for 21 Secrets
• I have a series of workshops planned at the Healing Touch in Staintondale, North Yorkshire - there will be more at my home too, dates coming soon
• I'm planning a series of Goddess workshops with the energy packed Carol Newmarch - more news on that very soon too
• AND Carol has invited me to co-teach on one of her Tuscan Retreats! (I said yes!)
• last but but not least, I'm planning to write my own ecourse - if you'd like to be kept in the loop about that, please sign up here 

Phew!

How's 2014 shaping up for you? Are you still in hibernation mode? Or are you busy busy? I'd love to hear...

I'd also love to know what ecourse you'd like to see me develop. What aspects of my work would you like to know more about? Colour? The Goddess? Art journaling?

From my heart to yours
Rachel xox 

INSPIRED BY THE GODDESS (and my beloved sister)

My Goddess Inspirations Yearbook is back for 2014!

If you follow my blog or my work on Instagram and Facebook, then you will, of course, know that I am inspired by the goddess. With the release of my 2014 Yearbook, I thought it was timely that I say a little bit more about my inspiration.

The goddess energy first inspired my life and art work in the mid 1980's. I was a few years out of university and my paintings then were large abstracts based on landscapes. It's difficult to pin down one event that changed my work and invited in the goddess but my dear sister, Jacky (12 years my senior and who sadly passed over in 2000) was a big influence on me.

Here we are circa 1982, I was 25 and Jacky 36.  We look so young!  I so wish she was here now to share these Goddess goings on.

Jacky was active in the Women's Movement in the late 70's and 80's; she ran assertiveness training workshops for women and wrote two books on this. She introduced me to femininism and women's consciousness raising. I loved her and looked up to her  because she was my big sister, but I also knew intrinsically that what she was teaching and talking about was right. Not just logically but with my heart; women needed (and still very much need) to take their rightful place in the world.

Around the same time I discovered the work of Georgia O'Keeffe and also went to see Judy Chicago's 'Dinner Party' in London. O'Keeffe's beautiful paintings and Chicago's celebration of the feminine spoke to me in a way other art had not done before. My own art work started to change.  Female imagery started to come into my work. I found that I wanted to make paintings about myself as a woman. I made large paintings using myself as a life size motif.

But then another element came into my paintings. One evening, working late in the studio, I felt that another energy was guiding my hand and my paintbrush. The painting was nothing I had planned to create. It was coming onto the canvas with almost a life of its own.  The Goddess had stepped into my painting.  This was the 'Bird Goddess', the first of a series of huge paintings about the goddess which I now know were painted 'intuitively' rather than based on drawings and sketches.  

These paintings celebrated the goddess or the Divine Feminine within me. I also wanted to reach out to other women through my art and let them know that they could celebrate their own goddess within. I loved those paintings, I still love them - the ones that survive - I have two left out of six. What I didn't bargain for was the reaction I got from the then predominantly male art world. They didn't like them. I took this rejection totally to heart and started painting landscapes again. Then I stopped painting altogether. Until 18 months ago...

When I started painting again after so many years of drought, the goddess wasted no time in leaping straight back onto my canvases and journal pages. In February 2012, I took Flora Bowley's first round of her course Bloom True. Her intuitive, heart centred method gave me permission to paint again and her imagery and motifs the permission to paint the goddess again. Artemis had returned...

Last year, I was guided to write my yearbook, 'Goddess Inspirations', combining the seasonal journey through the rhythms of the year with the goddess energy, creative activity and my own artwork.

It is now available again for you to enjoy through 2014. To buy, just hop over here

If you're not sure, this year you can 'try before you buy'. Sign up for my newsletter and as a gift, you will receive a booklet for the month of January completely free with no obligation to buy the full yearbook. Try now

There is also a chance to win a copy of Goddess Inspirations 2014!!  My lovely friend Julie Gibbons is hosting a giveaway for her birthday and to celebrate her Mama. Join in the big birthday blessings giveaway over at juliegibbons.com today. A circle of creative women, including me, is offering prizes galore, one of which is a copy of Goddess Inspirations 2014. Go to http://bit.ly/birthdayblessings to join the party...

I have so much to thank Jacky for. So grateful to my big sis...for her part in putting me where I am now. Today I'm remembering her with great fondness and love.   I know she's loving these goddess gals and the joining in circles with other women.

From my goddess heart to yours

Rachel xox

Transformation and transmutation

I've been journaling about letting go. Again. All this year it seems, I've been letting go of fear; letting go of old, deep seated anxieties of not being good enough; letting go of the fear of being my true self.

But in the letting go there is always something new ready to rush in. If we let go of something we create a vacuum and a vacuum cannot exist; nature abhors a vacuum - it needs to be filled. So, my journaling is not just about the letting go, it's about the new states of my being that are flowing in to replace the old skin I am shedding, the skin that no longer fits.

As I journal on my pages, the positive energy comes in on a gentle wave. The process is one of marvellous transformation. The writing transmutes the dark feelings as fear becomes excitement, the uncertainty a knowing and the hidden emerging into the light.

This is a process which works for me every time. Sure, I need to come back to it again and again. My patterns are old and I need time to change them (and the opportunity to work on them again and again) - there are layers and layers of change to sift through. But each time I sit with my paint and pens I find that joy, I find that light.

As I write my Glorious Goddess course for 21 Secrets 2014 I have to face my dread of seeing myself on video (eek!) and hearing my own voice (meh). Connie's invitation has forced me to confront these issues of self acceptance. It's big stuff...and requires lots of journaling...

Are you transmuting some dark matter as we move towards the winter months? How are you dealing with your own transformation? Perhaps the shifts are gentle, maybe they're pretty seismic like mine :-)

Whatever is in your alchemist's crucible, let it be there, let it transform, let yourself transform dear one...

From my heart to yours
Rachel xox

ps there are two more days of my Etsy birthday sale and you can sign up for 21 Secrets 2014 here