Reflections From The Sand

Sand Tray Landscape

Dream is the depersonalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of dynamics of the psyche. But, in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind. – Joseph Campbell, 1949. 

The sand tray is a place for transformation and a way to process symbolic information.

What happens in this small box, in a world of sand, which moves one into a sacred place where stories and layers of the psyche can unfold?

A queen, a starfish, an oak tree, a bridge, a heart, a sea dragon, a monster, a purple stone, a wizard, a truck, or a pink pretty princess can all become signifers to give meaning and clues into the riddled language of the psyche. These small sand tray toys or objects of art become pieces that bridge into the unconscious where a form of play therapy opens up expression for the psyche.

Sand Tray therapy is a tool for all ages.

Ellie Lara MA, MFT Intern is available by appointment.

(714) 254-5612

JOURNEY COACHING AND COUNSELING SERVICES

18023 SKY PARK CIRCLE, SUITE G, IRVINE, CA 92614

714-296-8052

Total Body Counseling

Body and Mind Connection

“Total Body Counseling”

by Counselor Ellie Lara M. A., M.F.T. Intern

at Journey Coaching and Counseling Services

18023 SKY PARK CIRCLE, SUITE G, IRVINE, CA 92614

714-254-5612

Client:  You

Goal:  To improve the quality of  your personal Health & overall Lifestyle with psycho-dynamic coaching and counseling; the various topics may include body image, eating habits, attitudes about food,  and desire to radically change unserving and harmful behavior.

Proposal:  I will guide and counsel you into a 6-week intensive and inter-personal discovery where you will develop a deeper connection and understanding  to your Self and your relationship to the foods you eat and your body.

Are you ready to make this change, for good?!

I would like to introduce a counseling program that is unique and specific and targets your individual needs by effectively changing your diet,  integrating healthy habits, and help you achieve a  lifestyle of awareness.

Your focus can be on any  subject such as: weight loss or gain, coping with a gastric bypass surgery, recovery from a major illness, transitioning into a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle, helping overcome body dysmorphia,  or just the desire to receive caring, gentle  support of your optimum and long-term wellness ideals.  While we work together, we will  build and develop a positive relationship with you and your  body, we will also integrate life skills that will effectively change the negative and unserving patterns that have been keeping you stuck. Often times, we find ourselves on the brink of a desperate and critical need for change in our lives.  The options to achieve these changes are limited and narrow in our mainstream society which also fail to give one adequate support.  However, this does not have to be!

You hold the key to healing your own relationship with food/body, and I would like to guide you in this discovery.  When one has an ephiphanic moment, that  ”ah-ha!” expression he or she realizes their eating habits are compulsive and addictive.  Meanwhile, the body has been sending out signals of distress and various forms of painful cries for help.

Green Woman

This program is scheduled to begin Tuesday May 10th, 2011.

the initial consultation: Free

the individual session:  $65 each hour

$35 each additional hour

the 6 week program total cost: $390

*group sessions : To Be Announced

Interpersonal Journey

A Night of the Senses: Crazy Art, The Other in Art, and Living Foods

 

A Night of the Senses: When Psychology, Crazy Art, &  Living Foods Meet! 

March 12th, 2011

7 – 10pm 

$15 Entrance Fee to this Event at the Wheel of Wellbeing http://www.wheelofwellbeing.com/ 

To register please call the Wheel of Wellbeing

1575 Westwood Blvd. Ste #205

Los Angeles, CA 90024 (310) 477-8833

The Featured Documentary:

Crazy Art (58 min)

http://www.crazyartonline.com/

 

A compelling documentary exploring the role of art in the lives of 3 artists diagnosed with schizophrenia, looking at how it helps them with their recovery. Framing the film is a look at van Gogh’s psychiatric symptoms and his brilliant art. 58 min. This film is by Filmmaker, Justin Rowe and produced by JT Turner, Executive Director of Phoenix, Santa Barbara.

  

Justin Rowe, discussed how this film is ” . . . not an educational film but it will give outsiders an inside view of the disease these people have to deal with daily”. JT Turner stated, “The message of this film is that individuals with severe conditions like schizophrenia can be compellingly creative, using their struggles, as van Gogh did, to produce art that reaches all of us at a deep level. You’ll be captivated by their story as the three artists in the movie describe how they do alchemy with the voices they hear and the terror they feel, turning their psychiatric experiences into transcendent art that speaks to us and touches us in a unique way.” 

    

Earthly Juices will provide a cozy ambience, serve each guest a Living Food Appetizer and a Beverage.  

www.earthlyjuicecart.com

Experience an Art Therapy Expression Exercise: Dialogues with the Other (15 - 20 min).

 Prepare to discover who “Other” is, that person who is different than you.

Ellie Lara MA, MFT Intern will facilitate this fun and optional art therapy exercise which will provide you a way to visually express, gain insight, and non-verbally dialogue with the “OTHER”.

Daniel Sadigh, PsyD., LMFT, will also present a discussion on art, techniques for healing trauma and  share more on Eye Movement Desensitzation and Reprocessing (EMDR).

www.imagesinvisibleink.wordpress.com

Meet the painters from the Fusion Art International, led by Master Rassouli

http://www.fusionartinternational.com/

 

Working from the Inner to the Outter

 

Coaching and Counseling

Change can happen on many levels, and when you set your mind to make a change in your life, Congratulations! This initiates the first step to true awakening, divine presence, and tuning up your consciousness! What a magical thing!

 

I speak from personal experience, as this year reflects my 2010 initiation to make a change in my life that involved developing a long-lasting healthy and Earth-friendly lifestyle. My awareness has been set at the right dial, essentially opening my consciousness to look at my relationship to body, environment, and food. Yes, as a co-founder of Earthly Juices and as psycho-therapist intern, I already had a good amount of tools in my bag to get started. Within one year, I was able to meet my goals! During the process of attuning my relationship with living, whole foods, and the body-mind connection, I co-developed an effective detoxing system that helps reset the mind, body and soul.

 

Most of my clients approach me with their desire and need to learn how to detox the body and lose weight. This is very important and something that everybody should take time out for at least once a year. However, what I began to realize was that during this process, the Earthly Juice Detox, we began to teach our clients not only how to clean the body system but also how to live a healthier lifestyle. I also began to notice that deeper emotional and somatic issues begin to arise. Once the body is given an opportunity to purify, it acts quickly and begins to release all negative and toxic junk, even the negative somatic memories/ patterns/ imprints from previous life experiences.

As a food coach and therapist, I am trained to know how to begin to address and consciously look, with you, at the old patterns and their inter-relatedness to food. From my depth-oriented counseling approach, I look into these somatic signals showing something much deeper below the surface, waiting to be seen.

Food is something that brings a great amount of sensate pleasure! Food is a substance that nurtures and soothes and also creates chemical maps in the brain that associate with emotions and psychological affect; mix this with hormones and your body’s chemistry and you can get a hot mess! Eating patterns resulting from this mix, are hard to break.

 

How do you know if you are a food addict? Do you use food to cope with a past or current issue related to grief or loss? Do you over-consume food, or have obsessive thoughts about your body and food? Do you eat when you are not hungry? Or when you feel sad or depressed? Food addictions are both physiological and psychological, and there is a way to make long lasting changes from these patterns.

If you are interested in coaching and counseling on any topics related to wellness, health, food, body,  psyche, lifestyle changes; then, I would like to invite you call me for a private session.

 

You can make an appointment with me by calling me directly (714) 254-5612. You can find me at Journey Coaching and Counseling, in Irvine.

 myearthly@gmail.com

http://www.journeyccs.com/journeyccs.com/Welcome.html 

 Waiting . . . to see the Beautiful, Authentic, Divine in You!

 

 

New Journey: Coaching & Counseling

 

The Art of Listening

“Memory heals into imagination. . . . psychotherapy encourages the musing, that activity which frees memory into images. As we muse over a memory, it becomes an image, shedding it’s literal historical facticity, slipping its casual chains, and opening into the stuff of which art is made.”  By James Hillman, in Healing Fiction.

Turning those emotional storms into images, by using Carl Jung’s method called, active imagination, provides a way getting familiar with psyche’s landscapes, a step toward making the unknown, known and going beyond the personal identity.

 

Ellie Lara M.A., M.F.T Intern, is a visual artist with a formal education in painting, visual media genres, film, photography, and performance art. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Film Studies with a specialization in cultural anthropology and visual arts from UC Berkeley. Through her training as both an artist and psychotherapist, she developed a deep understanding of the unconscious and the visual, imagistic language which exists in the  form of symbolism, the semantics of language, and archetypal images.

C. G. Jung refers to psyche as the image-maker, at the root of these psychic images lie meaning and greater understanding. Ellie Lara’s gift as an empathic therapist and as a psycho-dynamic artist opens a unique and safe space for healing and self-exploration by working with the  process of art and image making and as a form of  healing therapy. Ellie Lara’s interest in the nature of the soul and  her passionate curiosity about the inner and unconscious landscapes led her to complete a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Ellie Lara is trained in the Jungian and Archetypal school of psychology and works with a myriad of Junigan based psychotherapeutic techniques, all of which begin to look at the personal and collective unconscious. This form of psychology looks at the mythic pieces of our nature and works with an understanding of how all experiences are inter-related and influence the individual, the environment, and the collectivity of human consciousness.

Ellie Lara is a current staff therapist at Journey Counseling and Coaching. Here, she works in  a depth-oriented approach by utilizing active imagination, art therapy, cinema therapy, and sand tray therapy. As a Marriage and Family Therapist, Ellie works with teens, diverse family systems, individuals, couples, and the LGBT community. She is a dedicated to empathic and creative approach providing a safe environment in which to  reflect, re-tell, and inquire into the needs and nature of the Spirit in a Soul focused Depth Psychological approach.

Journey Coaching and Counseling offers a unique approach to healing in the belief  that physical symptoms and emotional distress may be the result of living inauthentically. Often, the symptoms provide the clue and it is important not only to help alleviate symptoms, but to understand the meaning behind and underneath the symptoms; moving toward full harmonious union with the True Self. http://www.journeyccs.com/journeyccs.com/Welcome.html

Completion

It is inevitable to realize that there are moments one experiences in life, that simple cannot be put to words. 

 The Soul has a way of recording these moments, and they are based on it’s own mysterious nature.  I have come to learn that the most appropriate way to re-tell, re-record, and recall these numinous moments can be through painting.

Lead by my painting teacher, Master Rassouli, we encounter the mystical realms of soul and spirit and learn to discern the workings of the mind from the expression of the soul. We learn to find the mystical elements of our true selves that allows us to create and express, particularly through painting.  I have been painting with the Fusion Art group for a year and half now.  I have been able to radically change my approach to painting and find a way to express the archetypal psyche that is both personal and transpersonal.  Master Rassouli has been a guide for me, in that he lends his wisdom on the way to open the door to this beautiful and elevated mystical realm. I have come to particular point of  ’completion’ with this process. In return of the gracious guidance and love that has been offered, I have gifted this painting “Completion” to my teacher and mentor, Master Rassouli.  This painting is deep with emotion and comes from the heart vibration that has inspired me to seek the mystical way of seeing reality and imagination. Thank you, Master Rassouli for guiding me to “The Way” of heart and soul expression.

I have searched inward to find a way to express this mystical energy and through image I can express this culmination of Expierence.  Although, we spoke about Completion and the End of an Era, I see this painting from our December retreat as one that both signifies completions and new beginnings, like a Janus head coin, it holds the past and the present. As a painter,  I find inspiration in this iconic duality;  and as a psychotherapist, I see incredible prima material which signifies the archetypal consciousness of duality.

—–

 

Seeing The Other: Painting Process and Demonstration

A Chance to Seek The Other 

Seeking The Other

Catching the tail  end of a summer painting class, taught by Painting and Fine Arts Prof. Craig Keith Antrim, I stepped in as a guest so that I could take a closer look at the Artists’ process and also to share a demonstation of my own work and technique! 

So, I took advantage of this class by both demonstrating my own process and my search for the imaginal and inner Other.

I tapped into that field of unknowing and with my paint brush, I stroked a place of knowing.

I demonstated a few of  my painting techniques that can conjure emotion and feeling, bringing to surface those complex tones which lay on the invisible surface, and which await the help from the artist, to create and move forth into a painting.

I am inspired to look for the archetype, for the hidden Self,  for the characteristics of The Other.  I chose to expand upon the painting series that addresses ”The Other”;  the one who is the stranger, different, and distinctly lacking some specific characteristic that belongs to the dominate group. 

Painting The Other

 

Craig’s  Art  Studio  summer class is amazing.  Check out his  work,  it is really beautiful: http://www.magnoliaeditions.com/Content/Antrim/Antrim.htm

By Craig Keith Antrim, Painter

Crazy: Art Therapy with a Depth Psychologocial Approach

 

Painting, Creating, and Healing 

Painting Workshop

This week I had an amazing opportunity to facilitate my first Therapeutic Painting Workshop, at a well known non-profit rehabilitation house in Santa Barbara.

 I was invited by my colleague, from Pacifica Graduate Institute, to teach this on- going art class to 5 rehabilitating residents. We painted at the Mountain House, out on the hillside, surrounded by Oak trees, gardens, and nature. Serene.  

I began with one canvas, and opened the workshop by showing how I relate to painting, showing how I use active imagination, check in with my inner sensations, and engage myself to connect with underlying feelings, rather than approaching an image directly (like a tree, flower, house, or landscape). I showed how I allow the images to come to me. 

I felt that when I began to create color and motion onto the canvas, I had invited each person in the class an opportunity to connect to imagination, freedom, and release.

I witnessed the transformation of each person, I saw how they were able to connect into their own spirit, feel colors, and open a space so that emotion can be expressed released.  It was remarkable!  

 http://www.arttherapyblog.com/mental-health/crazy-art-documentary-explores-art-therapy-schizophrenia/

 

 

 

Bohemian Lounge: Earthly travels, yoga and meditation

Bohemian Lounge

• “It is a direction not a destination.”  Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person.

I am finally stepping out of the box! Taking a change in my direction and not focused on the direction has been healing and transformational. This is a new  place, and has been a very important Psychological Process to learn how to let go of a conditioned and old way of being. I am beginning to unravel myself, in a way that helps me to re-develop into the true nature of  the authentic Self. My goal is that this will allow me to become a better artist and therapist. I am letting go of the fears, anxiety, and confusion and finally accepting a new way of being which has been a vital part of this process. My invisible life has shifted and made a very important change! I have been dreaming of something much more than just the security and safety of The Box; while transformation and metamorphosis have always been waiting for me around the corner! I have found courage to evolve into the next stages of personal development and grasp onto my orginal and envisioned artistic, independent, and creative lifestyle.  After alot of hard work and sacrifice, I believe it is about to finally happen!

I am by nature an artist, inquisitor, craftswoman, curandera / medicine woman.  I am revealing in this new feeling, a returning to my true Self.  In the Summer of 2010, I found myself on my own bohemian journey that led me to learn new crafts, healing arts, consistent practice of  and found a path into contemplative mediation.

The Other: Encountering The One Who Is Different

 

 Encounter The Other: Encountering Differences

The Other: A New Painting Series

As a visual Artist and as an emerging Psycho-Therapist, I want to push some of my own personal and psychological boundaries. I have been invited to partcipate in ongoing dialogue about “The Other”, in a cultural and psychological context.  

This dialogue is inspiring an upcoming series of paintings, where I intend to explore the feminine archetype, as the “The Other” yet, part of the Whole. Rider Haggard refers to the anima as the mistress of the labyrinth. In depth psychology, it is generally the rule to assign the concept of “relatedness” to the feminine and the concept of “discernment” to the masculine. Yet, these two parts make up the entirety and relate to each other in such a unique way that they make up an entire Psychic function. When tensions arise, Jung called this the Transcendent Function, the coming together of opposites. The image, or the Symbol becomes known through the Transcendent Function.  In Jung’s Red Book, he shows the developement of his inner cosmology and the importance of these archetypal relationships expressed by the Anima (or animus). The qualities of the Anima are also part of the entire character, the person, the hidden aspects of Self, which by are inevitably projected upon a real person, object, or idea. 

I want to open a space for the inner “Other”. I may also want to look at the Jungian concepts of the contra-sexual qualties that make up the entire whole of the Self. As an artist, I am able to visually identify the “outer” and the “other” qualities found in this charged and invisible realtionship of the Anima (animus) to Self, particulary through photography. As a painter, I can integrate these connections through colorful, vivid, and meaningful images. I want to find out what parts of the Self are also parts of The Other, unknown to me, and inevitably prima material for psychic projection. I will begin to look at these qualities and images that ignite, stir me, frighten me, darken,  warm, bring heating, open up the body to a space that is quickend to reduced to the prima material, its orginal form. This process in alchemy is called, nigredo. Such are the stages of cooking. This is where I will begin to look for the prima material, The Other.

I may ask some of these questions: What qualities will ignite the Tension of Opposites?

Essentially, what qualities will emerge, and will they be bearable? When I begin to paint, it will be like a stream of consciousness, so that I am able to tap into the well spring of creativity, the source, the prima material, letting the images flow. This is how I have learned to mystically paint with the Imagination, dialogue with Psyche, and open the gate for the Archetypal energies to show.