A Peek Inside Joyful Pause Studio – SoulCollage® Workshops for Women

Posted by Barbara Techel
A Peek Inside Joyful Pause Studio - SoulCollage® Workshops for Women
Entrance to Joyful Pause Studio. Artwork by Shannon Winter.

Over two years ago I began giving thought to offering workshops for women in the lower level of my home. But I wasn’t quite sure what they would exactly be.

But I knew I wanted to encourage women to pause, listen, capture, and open to the many facets of themselves.

And then I discovered the process of SoulCollage® in November 2014. I jumped in and took the training in hopes of making this dream come true.

And little by little it did with workshops I held at a local art studio and through friends. And then I held my first workshop in my home studio on January 16th, 2016 for five wonderful women.

Eventually I do hope to expand with different types of workshops, too and have also been offering some online workshops.

I see myself sort of like an Intuitive Guide… I love the idea of “holding the space” for women– gently encouraging them to tap into their own wisdom and open the petals to their own beautiful flower and what they discover about themselves.

So my studio is just about complete. My dear, sweet, supportive husband, John, is finishing up soon with the spare room which will have a new drop ceiling and lighting also.

John almost threw this piece of wood in the woodstove — but I saw it as a lovely place for a bird to perch upon to welcome visitors to my studio.
This is where tea and water are available and a bathroom to the left.
One view of the almost 1,000 square feet in my studio.
Canvas panels along the wall are paintings I’m working on for the long wall – Tree Goddesses is what I hope the end result will be!
Window to let in some natural light with lots of good overhead lighting.
I can accommodate up to 10 people for workshops.

What was once a family room for John and I and a craft space for me, to then a space we opened to a young woman in need of somewhere to live during a transition, to now Joyful Pause Studio…. I can’t wait to welcome you!

It’s my hope it will be a serene place for women to come be among other kindred-spirits and will serve as a way in which women can take time to create, listen to their hearts, and just be.

I’m so excited about this new venture!

Thank you for subscribing to my journal posts.

I’m SO Excited to Share this With You!

Posted by Barbara Techel
https://joyfulpaws.com/art-altars-and-animal-guides-understanding-the-connection-between-animal-teachers-ourselves-and-the-world/
Art, Altars, and Animal Guides

This is something I’ve devoted much of my energy to the last few months!

A NEW online workshop with my friend and fellow author, Dawn Baumann Brunke.

https://joyfulpaws.com/art-altars-and-animal-guides-understanding-the-connection-between-animal-teachers-ourselves-and-the-world/
Barbara and Dawn with Gidget

I’m so excited to announce:

ART, ANIMALS, and ANIMAL GUIDES:

Understanding Our Connection between Animal Teachers,

Ourselves and the World

Exploring how everything is connected can have a profound effect on our lives. All it takes is the willingness to pause, listen and be open to the powerful connections that are with us all the time. In this workshop we will engage our animal guides, discover meaningful links between inner and outer worlds, and learn how to gain deeper levels of awareness through self-exploration and creation.

During this workshop we will:

  • Meet your animal guides.
  • Learn to invoke assistance and advice from your guides.
  • Design a SoulCollage® card of your animal guide.
  • Create a personal altar.
  • Deepen your relationship with animals, yourself, and the world.

To learn more and register, please check out the details here (or click on either photo above).

We hope you can join us for this intuitive excursion we are so excited to share with you! And if you know of anyone who would enjoy this, feel free to pass it along.

Thank you for subscribing to my journal posts.

The Making of a Memory to Carry Me Through that Inevitable Someday

Posted by Barbara Techel
The Making of a Memory to Carry Me Through that Inevitable Someday
Artwork by me. 🙂

Sitting on the stool in my teachers art studio, the blank canvas on the easel loomed large in front of me.

Could I really paint something that would actually look like something when I was done? I wondered.

I was out of my element, but wanted to give it a try. The last time, the art lesson had been in a different location and instead with oils. I never did finish the painting and don’t much like working with oils. But this time I was trying acrylics.

And the teacher, someone who I’ve always admired for her myriad of creative talents, was eager to share her love of painting with me.

But first I was drawn to the photos that were carefully pinned on the bulletin board on the wall in front of me. I couldn’t pull myself away from getting lost in them.

Many of the photos of her late husband. He died at the age of 82 in November 2014, at a cabin up north that he loved.

His wife, my teacher, now moving into her second year of learning to live in a new way with good, and not so good days.

It was her second marriage and she was just easing into her fifth decade when she married him.

I stared at the photos of her with him. A chapter I couldn’t really recall being that I was so busy in my own life, married by then for almost ten years.

But now the pictures came to life in a way I’d never noticed before. Photos of my teacher at that time, around the same age as I am now.

What was her life like in her 50s? I wondered.  I thought about my own life now, trying to relate to how she may have felt and thought at that time, wondering how it is to what she now feels and thinks about in her early 70s.

I saw myself in her. In more ways than one. I saw it more now than ever before. This decade I’m in, she once was.

I too, will someday hopefully, be in the decade that she is now. But then where will she be? I wondered.

And my heart begged my mind to stop thinking ahead, urging it to instead linger as long as I could in these moments.

Live in the precious memory that is in the making right now, I heard a voice inside me say.

Drink it deeply into your heart, holding on as tightly as you can. It will be the memory you will need, along with all the others, when the teacher who has taught and gently guided you your entire life, will have moved to the other side of the veil.

You will need it then, to call upon, to be the comfort of an embrace of those loving arms that wrapped around you countless times over the years, providing a love like no other.

And as she began to squeeze the splashes of many different paint colors onto the glass palette, excitedly chattering away about making the blank canvas my own personal piece of art, my heart overflowed with love and joy.

My teacher…My friend…My mom…

and the work of art that now hangs on my wall and captures a day filled with sweet moments of laughter and love–and what I will no doubt turn to that inevitable someday as a gift that will flood my heart with this precious moment in time.

Thank you for subscribing to my journal posts.