This Summer I got the hankering to do a workshop. Having spent a lot of joyful time creating my own workshops to host, I felt open and ready to see what others were doing. Plus, I was needing something. A little boost, some inspiration and a journey inward. To my grateful delight, I came upon three soul-filling workshops and plunged right in!

Dreaming

Upon referral from journaling Guru Mari McCarthy, I registered for Nathan Ohren‘s Dream Journaling Workshop. My dream life has always been rich and vivid, so recording and exploring my dreams more deeply sounded great, and it was! Nathan is a kind and passionate Host. He conducted the workshop through weekly conference calls and a group Facebook page. At first this threw me. I hold tight to my security blanket of introversion and wasn’t sure I wanted to … gulp… talk to people. I write this with a big smile because the group interaction was my favorite aspect of the experience! My fellow dreamers were truly wonderful.

We recorded our dreams regularly in our journals and each week we had an additional assignment. We learned a way to analyze dreams that was completely personal to our own experience and extremely useful. Listening to Nathan take one person through a dream and then talk them through the analysis was spellbinding. We all learned so much just from listening.

Check out his website, Write4Life.us, where you can also find audio interviews with other journaling folks and blog posts and information on upcoming workshops. Thanks Nathan!

Courage

Though I have technically been on twitter for about a year, this Summer I started to get my tweet on by following other like-minded souls who journal, write, create, dance, inspire. This is how I found Marianne Elliott and her 30 Days of Courage Workshop. Courage? Yes, I’ll take some please! I signed right up.

This workshop was truly surprising. At first, I read the daily emails and felt somewhat disappointed. Marianne shares tales of her (truly awesome) journey and offers tid-bits about what you can do each day to foster your courage. The emails were beautifully written and well thought out, I guess I just thought there would be more to DO.

But as the days went on something started to happen. Those little “tid-bits” seeped into my consciousness and I found myself making connections and stumbling upon insights. The emails built upon themselves, steadily and surely. Her wise words stuck with me, her story and the stories of others that she shared resonated within me. I ended up gaining so much from this workshop and from Marianne.

My frustration with the seeming simplicity of those emails mirrored my frustration with myself. Shouldn’t I be DOING more? Making changes, calling up reasons for fear and tapping into your potential for courage are not items you can cross off a to-do list. These all are processes to be tended to regularly and to do so, you must be patient with yourself. Duh. Thank you Marianne!

Check out Marianne Elliott here. You won’t be sorry.

Meditation, of course!

Finally, there was Deepak and Oprah. Deepak Chopra offers a free 21 Day Meditation Challenge on a regular basis. I have been meaning to do this forever so when I saw a tweet about it (professional tweeter that I am), I knew this was the time. After signing up I realized it was co-hosted by Oprah and the focus of the 21 Days was relationships. Relationships? I don’t need help with relationships. Oh well, I was signed up so I just went with it.

This workshop was beautiful and I loved every moment of it. Of course I need help with relationships, who doesn’t? But the relationship that you are really nurturing here is the one with yourself. Each day you get a guided meditation along with a lesson delivered by the soothing voice of Deepak Chopra. I could listen to him all day, his tone is so gentle and encouraging.

If you have ever wanted to meditate but have struggled, I highly recommend one of these 21 Day Challenges. You can do it. For sure. Check it out here.

If you get that feeling in your gut that it is time to do something, listen to it. Check out any of these wonderful teachers and do something great for yourself!

And if you want a little creativity along with your introspection, come join me for Expressions: A 21 Day Creative Journaling Workshop, which starts again on September 16th!

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