SoulCollage® with Children

By

Seena Frost

Imagination is more important than knowledge.  For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world. ~~Albert Einstein 

Carrie Frost, age 7 Seena's granddaughter shows her   SoulCollage® cards

As you might guess most children love to make SoulCollage® cards. They seem to quickly understand about their inner parts, and will eagerly make cards for a Sad Self, an Angry Self, a Scared Self, a Rebellious or Stubborn Self, a Curious Self, and on and on. With the help of images, they can start to identify difficult parts of themselves and talk about uncomfortable feeling and behaviors. They can see themselves as being like a kaleidoscope with many parts constantly changing and still making a beautiful whole. They can learn to watch themselves with curiosity, and so begin on the road to consciousness!

You will need to find magazines with images that have children in them. Animal images will also have expressions and postures children recognize as like themselves. When children select images and paste them on new backgrounds, the resulting collage becomes vivid and alive in their imaginations. Young children will be willing to pretend to speak from these images, and unconsciously they will embed their own feelings into their words. This is right-brain sort of work, and it's only later, in schools that so emphasize left-brained thinking, that children begin to repress their intuitive and creative abilities. For older children who may be more self-conscious with the process, it can be a valuable way to honor their imaginative, intuitive right brain. This process is similar to sand tray or puppet work because of its visual and playful nature. One lovely advantage of SoulCollage® is that children can take these small cards home with them, collect them over time, and cherish them. They may use them to identify a feeling as it arises, bringing a card out of their room and letting it explain what is going on in their feeling world. Often children want to take their cards to school to share and other children become fascinated. Perhaps, on day, children will be doing SoulCollage® cards in school, and that would be a great boost to their right brains.

Children of adults doing SoulCollage® are usually very curious about what their parents are doing with pictures and scissors and glue. When Mom or Dad get our magazines and begin making little picture cards, children want to do it too. Set them up with their own cards to work on, perhaps a lot of cards made just from file folders or heavy index cards, and a safe, non-toxic glue stick. You can give them suggestions or not, whichever fits the child. One woman's twelve-year-old daughter began making community cards for friends and family on birthdays and special occasions. This was her project, and she loved doing it.

SoulCollage® can be used in so many settings - schools, family occasions, Scouts, with ill or dying children and at-risk teens to name a few. SoulCollage® can give children and teens an experience of self-esteem, confidence in their unique creativity, and to help them express what is inside them, the feeling and experiences which otherwise might be difficult to share.

This article was excerpted from Seena's book  SoulCollage® Evolving -An Intuitive Collage Process for Self-Discovery & Community.   

Dates: Saturdays, November 9, 16, 23 and 30, 2013
Time: 1-2:30pm PST - 6 CEUs
Cost: $132 Plus $10 CEUs 

 
Do you ever feel the need to strengthen your boundaries, perfect your  filters and regain balance  more quickly when you brush against somebody's negativity, feel under attack or feel impotent in the face of violence and disaster in the news or at home? This course invites your Neters, your allies and guides present in your SoulCollage® cards, to reveal more efficient ways to manage your permeability to the forces of the World Shadow, in its small and larger expressions, rooted in fear, greed, and ignorance. New cards will be created and old ones consulted to weave the needed web of support, clarity and strength. In deep dialog with your body wisdom and your imagination you will learn useful tools to invoke energetic protection and solidify your resilience.   

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