welcome to new connection where you can tune in and grow i'm your host vicky thompson you may be familiar with new connection magazine for conscious living which has been enjoyed by readers in the pacific northwest for more than seventeen years now we're excited to bring new connection to your life in your home a new connection we welcome authors and visionaries and practitioners to share new ideas for alternative health spirituality and personal growth today i'd like to welcome to new connections susie will fire who is a licensed clinical social worker who teaches people how to do so collage this unique process helps you to create many works of art that tap into your inner healer susie thank you so much for joining us on new connection my pleasure thank you i have a special love for so collage because we got to do so collage with you and it is such a wonderful process can you tell us how to sew collage work well so collage is a process that on the surface seems like a just a fun simple sou works of art but underneath that there is a deeper level where you can use to access sometimes wise parts of ourselves that often don't get a voice in everyday life so these seemingly simple little creations and being our best friends our companions our allies that can help in the therapy process or just help in everyday life to gain access to our deeper unconscious selves might say usually those images have deeply coded meaning that when they're put together with other images have a profound effect on how we can access our own wisdom and information where the turo deck has kind of a set interpretation and so collage it's all very personal individual so in that in that way i think very powerful so in the special healing deck there are four suits and one of the first suits that you start with is the committee right and in the committee there's like the inner parts the psychological part of the deck you might say examples are the happy child card or people have the inner critic or the inner wise woman or it's the personal level you might say it's our local personal wife and oftentimes they'll be parts of ourselves we've disowned like our inner wise person or the one who's good at solving problems so those cards can be very helpful for calling upon  situations in everyday life and getting a second point of view they can also be helpful when we have zero or white little slips of the tongue or we say things that embarrass us we may find parts of ourselves that are under represented and kind of maybe have a different agenda than we do and so we can gain access to those parts and help them speak up where we're more in charge of it and not it's not sort of sub sub rosa or under the table so that can be a helpful way to bring that up into the open and take charge of it so another current that might be a part of the committee would be the protector card which is another archetype well that one isn't it can be an archetype in the picture we're going to show this is an inner part it's the inner part that has an agenda to protect and defend it doesn't have a life so much about being creative or being in business it's more about protecting innocence as you can see from the image there is little children in the stone goddess figure who's there to make sure that they're safe and the interesting thing about so collage is these are images that you're taking out of magazines and not to books yeah that speak to you when you're cutting them out and you are creating this mini work of them are you wouldn't somebody deep layers yeah underneath it so one question people often ask is well you know i can't do this i'm not very artistic well it turns out you don't need to have any artistic talent all you need to do is build a cut and paste and i think the subconscious does the rest that's why it's kind of exciting people sort of sit back kind of go on automatic they just cut and paste and let their hands move around and pretty soon it all congeals or comes together in this card that people always often take a little breath and go oh that's it as they recognise some really profound part of themselves that really maybe hasn't had a voice or been framework or a template for how we move into the in the world so the artist archetype is and as an example when we have archetypes i believe that they are there with us at birth we're born with that and so it gives us a lens in which to look at the world so the artist archetype corner which i think is up on the screen when you recognise your archetypes and it gives you an extra power to move through the world so for example and a friend of mine wanted to be an artist and she took all kinds of art classes and she just never really could make it gel she couldn't didn't have the warmth to push through to figure things out  archetype was the therapy architect she would could be with clients and sit with them through all kinds of things and help out she never her energy never flagged but with art she just didn't have the archetype wasn't in in her life and so was for her to solve problems and push through difficulty she just didn't care that much the archetypes can be really helpful to help help us on our mission define ourselves and give us that extra energy to move so that suit can contain powerful teachers animals are pets teachers family members people that inspire and help us make our way in the world so scene is the founder of soul collage and  can see her down in the bottom corner there with the fire right so she's a writer a teacher a therapist and one who works with archetypes a lot so i i use this card personally to call upon her wisdom over angels or saints but calling upon the wisdom of someone who's right here with us today is very powerful yes to emulate them so it's feeling really connected to that other person it is yes exactly so the other last suit insole collage is the companion and one example we have of that is the deer yes so the companion suit represents the animal guards and allies that assist us some people link them up with the shockers so if you're working on  specific area like the deer card for me relates to motions and the whole emotional life so it wasn't till i read the card that i really understood it as you can see on the screen there is going to a number of images and for me this card represents every day life in the lower part of the card and then the larger deer kind of represents the spirit then and that underlies our emotional life in a kind of  dear is an archetype and so collage is a wonderful way to discover our it types and so how can we use soul collage to find our archetype and find the ones that i've chosen that isn't well let me let me use a little  example the architect karl you me kind of introduced the idea of archetypes when he said that we are we're born with the archetypes we don't choose them they choose us and when an archetype chooses us it kind of gives us a lens in w to look at the world and use in the civil graphic you can kind of see that life has all kinds of interesting bits and pieces when the archetype chooses it creates a field that allows us to notice the things that are connects domain and that field allows us to move in the world and use this pattern to gain power and energy and direction so i like to think of the archetype in that way as something that helps the shape and give form to  everyday lives it's a very powerful message to look at a magnet and to see you know where what are we attracting and where are we heading with the demand archetypes let's go through and talk about some  archetypes that choose people and i think one of the archetypes would be the healer ok yeah i think the card is coming up is the healer archetype it's one it's one of my cards and  was well the first time i knew that was my archetype was i was in the playground in second grade in this little gal come to me started telling me her problems and i thought you know i don't think i'm i'm i'm not why would they pick me i don't know what i'm doing here but ever since then i've realized that this is just not just who i am which is what i do i used to work in sales and marketing and i i called myself a counselor for businesses so that archetype  just speaking personally when i'm in a social situation there's a part of me this always looking deeply into people and looking at their strengths and how those strengths come through and it's just who i am and whether that person archetype is the artist or the mother or the warrior those energies allow us to look at the world in a certain through a certain lens you might say and that those archetype of energies give us power to carry through and to be creative and innovative in what we do in the world with those like those pieces that were on that image a few minutes ago well another powerful archetype for women would be the wise woman in with them and it's something i  feel like as we age and as a society it's something very powerful to claim for ourselves yes and particularly i think in a culture like ours that is so it's so easy to get caught up on image and youth and all that sort of thing so the wise woman archetype may not grab a set birth but i think as we age we come its domain and you can see the car that i have here is the laughing chrome  she she would say i am the one who laughs through adversity i use many tools to overcome obstacles i have nothing left to lose so i have everything to gain something like collage cards you're giving voice and you're speaking it's an amazing process to go through when we did soul collage together and i found myself choosing images and later on as i look back at they had even more deeper meanings that i didn't catch the first time around yeah so it is really going deeply into here and hunches mind you just pulling up issues you know many people or there's two ways to make sokol wash cars one is to set in your mind an agenda like i make the artist card or something and so you that that's totally ok the way to do it and you pick images that i find they take longer that way another way to make cards is kind of in a synchronistic kind of way so that you're just when i do a workshop i have thousands of images spread around the room and i like to use the idea that letting one of the images choose us and how you know an image is choosing you is there's a little emotional reaction it could be an intake of breath it could be a giggle it could be a groan it could be oh not that one and that's how we know that there's something juicy in that image for us so let's see what was your question again well we're talking a bit about the archetypes and how you create the cards and let's let's talk about another card it's called the full card and then to see these because these are cards that you have created of your own deck yes and wonderful examples of how you looked and found the images or they found you tell us a bit about the full card and how you created that well i was drawn to the two images of there's a come a clown figure and a woman dancing and a set of dominoes make up the road for the four and they're just they've kind of tumbled and when the fool enters our lives it's about unpredictability it's about when things when there is an agenda beyond what our plan is and the fool comes in to open up possibility to surprise us to open up another curve in the road even though our plan may be the other way so and you can see the full invites us to laugh and dance although sometimes our response to the fall is not that way it's amazing your images are simpy to fill in that you're just putting together all these different images but they're just so deep yeah and that is it sometimes feels like i'm not doing it the images make themselves into a card so it kind of takes away that i didn't do it right kind of feeling because all you're doing is using your hands to move the images around until they feel right let's look at one more of your it's called the water bear which is another a typo image that people share yeah this is an image that or a member of the council suit that seemed to invite us all to make and there was about forty of us that made waterbury cards to speak to the  the problem in the world of a shortage of water so we brought in this these images and had an exhibit and this particular image is about honoring the cycles of the earth and the of the earth in the little boy in the corner simply about joyfully doing our part to carry the water that we do have it's a car that i read a lot and i it keeps there's more and more information about the car and all that it reveals more to me and i've had this card for about three or four years now and it always surprises me of the depth that it brings well you got me excited to create my own current side love to now go through the process of soul coersion actually making a card images and i think the images that we have here are related to communication because you asked me earlier what archetype would i relate to and i said the communicator because it's something that always seems to come up it's a passion that i that you have criteria around this and it's i do it for free often you know and it's just it's something i love to do that's how you know the archetype is chosen is part of your mission it's part of your passion you do it for free you do it when other people might give up and i really love this image of the communicator oh i guess that's calling to you yeah i like the imagery helping others in being a part of their journey yes so that's really important rather than a single figure so these images of the single figures don't call to you as much because they're not about the interaction probably not because i think i'm more i see myself as a part of a team yes and so i think i would be much more attracted to you know working with a child or working with a coworker so that would be an image that's like that's for the juices for you it is and i think probably i would relate to this image as well of being part of a interaction and the relationship and i like an image with the horse as well because it's kind of a creative power coming from without you know i'm outside of you but i'm also really attracted to this image here of the exactly how you make a card you kind of look at the ones you're drawn to and then we kind of like try them out like hiring one straw i like the nature aspect ok great so then you take these other images to kind of try them out for size on the imagery and then i use this little frame as a way to get it's the same size as the card would be and allows us to see where the card  just kind of placing the images in and i don't have to drive the things right i think that's so absolutely fabulous because it's not my forte know but it might be the one but i think that it looks a done to me yes because it looks really complete with the two together and i really like the little image of the person there that's what i find so fascinating about torkel ashes if that's what the what you like the card you take the breath and so that's it so that this out of where you want to be yeah i think that a beautiful example of what it looks like you know how you experience the archetype moving through you there's a sense of process as a part of the sokol as process after you've created your card the final step is giving voice to your cars and so how would we give voice to this car well the first thing we do is so quiet is use a simple phrase such as this sounds like i the one who teaches you with love and passion i am the one who feels great joy in being a part of your journey i am the one who listens to you and takes your ideas and g flight i'm the one who nourish you and gives you water for your journey and water for your creativity to blow freely and i am the one who wants to be beside every day of your journey then i also feel a different voice coming from a child that says i am the one that feels great joy and having you cite me and learning and teaching having you teach me and learn new things from i am the one discovering new things about life i am the one discovered and so if you were to give voice to the card what would you say let's see i would probably start with adult male there and say i am the one who is filled with white because i'm on my mission doing what i love to do i'm using the civil image in the in the foreground here with the woman drinking the water i am the one who's card but i just feel some sympathy for it i can relate to this to image there's a universe ality in imagery that i think is one of the reasons so cautious so popular is that it speaks to people in a very deep level beyond that we're our neocortex are analyzing the brain often leads us it does and i think it just and i'm sure i'll take this card home and i'm sure more will come up as i look at it and more thoughts and how it relates to my he and it's been so wonderful to talk to you about so kalash and to really experience it here today thank you so if you'd like to learn more about so collage place visit our website at new connection journal dot com join us next time a new connection where you can tune in and grow