Your work, your business, Your Mission, your project has it’s own soul.
I provide a group process for a small group - team in an organization, board of directors, an entrepreneur and team, a band, a family, etc - who are dealing with expansion, or ongoing unresolved conflict, or who just wish to create a map based on cohesiveness and focus.
This unique one-of-a-kind process is for you if:
“Every intention sets energy into motion, whether you are conscious of it or not.
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You have a dream or vision and you want to bring multiple parties into the same focus.
You want to have an inclusive team and integrate and work with the “pros and cons.”
You understand that your team members bring their own visions, ideas, knowledge, and emotions to the idea or project - that can sabotage as well as enhance your mission.
You've tried team building and collaboration activities but emotions and "agendas" are still a problem.
You still experience conflict that prevents you from moving as you’d like.
I highly recommend the process for Human resources departments in organizations dealing with the most recent concerns, sexual harassment in workplace;
and, in organizations addressing child and domestic abuse, obstetric medical abuse, and men's issues. I've devoted my life to resolving these issues.
Your work, your business, your project has it’s own soul.
I learned this in every professional position where I was director of a program, when I was collaborating on or leading group efforts or grants. I learned when I worked alone on my independent docu-series film. What I thought was a short film focused on one thing became an epic series that had control over me, not me over it.
As a independent practitioner and artist/filmmaker it became clear to me that projects and ideas have their own soul.
As a project coordinator or program director I experienced this - learned this - many times. I did my best work in coordinating group or team efforts, bringing to life the group plan or the new grant project.
I worked in many organizations and systems that were a convoluted, conflicted mash up of corporate, leadership, and management ideas and personal agendas about what should be.
When I coordinated a state wide project in NY that involved highest level of decision-makers; a steering committee of all the agencies related to child welfare; service providers all over the state; and the “grassroots” - a nice, empowering word for the clients of the services of all of these institutions and the faces of them - I realized the power of the group.
The members bring their soul, their dreams, and intentions to your project. Humans bring their lives - their human baggage - to everything they do. This makes team work, coordination, and collaboration very challenging.
In an organization or corporation the mission, the projects, the plans are co-opted energetically and behaviorally by the intentions and baggage of the participants. We have an either/or mentality. People divide into groups.
Here in DC, we live in the greatest city in the world where decisions are made that impact the world. We are divided about how to do that. Eric Garcetti, mayor of Los Angeles when Stephen Dubner on Freakonomics asked him what he would change:
“”In DC we have this replace and repeal mentality. ‘As soon as I can get into government I am going to just repeal everything that the last folks did and replace it with my philosophy. And we see compromise as some kind of dirty word.’ And I think that’s really toxic.
At the local level, we can’t afford to do that. We raised the minimum wage here in LA but we also reduced our city’s business tax. Think about that for a second. If you’re a Democrat you are supposed to raise both of those things. If you’re a Republican you are supposed to lower both of them. But we know putting more money in the pocket of folks who are going to spend it on Main Street is good for the economy as is lowering the city’s business tax that we have that is based on gross receipts - which is anti-business.
So, if I could change one thing in Washington it would be - and this is totally radical but - I would maybe get rid of political parties altogether. I think our founding fathers envisioned factions, not parties and it’s the most destructive thing we have right now.
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Your team each has their soul. We bring our human baggage to everything to do. This makes team work, coordination, and collaboration very challenging.
The Soul Portrait process for a group brings people’s ideas, needs, fears, and hopes together in a non-verbal, non threatening way … into ONE, cohesive, collaborated, expressive drawing. It is a map.
I do the intuitive drawing, a map of your journey and your team. You and your team members will then have the Collective Group Soul Portrait to color, paint, or mediate upon.
The Soul Portrait may be used as art on the wall, to color or paint, or to meditate upon.
You and your group will decide how to proceed … to work together to transform the original portrait into a larger piece of artwork for your organization to display. OR, to have me complete it.
The larger portrait hanging on the wall will speak to people where they are intellectually emotionally without the chaos and conflict of social, racial, religious, political constructs and beliefs.
I work with you to determine what you need for your team or project or company.
How it works
In an intentional process with your group or team I am there to "transcribe" the meeting into a visual art piece that represents your members and you.
The process is a fun, non-threatening way for all points of view and emotions needs (some we don't even know we have or don't know how to express) to be expressed into one cohesive vision.
In the intuitive soul portraiture process for groups we gather for your meeting, and based on your intention, I work in the energetic limbic system of our collective individual brains (nervous systems) that we form when we come together in a couple, family, or workgroup.
Together, doing what you already do, we create a piece of art that is a visual map of your group's conflict and resolution. Your team has the portrait to color, paint, or meditate upon.
The Portrait
You can choose different options for your finished product.
You will receive a copy for each participant on mixed media paper.
You can choose to have:
follow up meeting where participants color the group Soul Portrait.
Individual follow up sessions with me for members.
Consultation with your facilitator or mediator.
Commission a larger painting for your facility.
For you and your team/staff/band members and guests will see the painting it is a powerful reminder for participants of your process of creating your vision together.
The large scale commissioned portrait
Hanging in an organization or groups’s space, the large Soul Portrait of your businesses intention and mission supports you and members to remember, to refocus when one feels lost or discouraged or needs to calm when things get chaotic, or to reconnect to that positive collective experience when the group was in agreement.
Members can reconnect to when they were there: sharing, feeling, thinking, and maybe were feeling pain and loss as the joy and hopes of the future and how to achieve their personal vision and that of the group project.
See.Feel.Do,