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Medicine Women Lodge
Kristena West M.A
MEDICINE WOMEN LODGE
ACCESS TO OUR CREATIVE COMMUNITY
BECOME A MEDICINE WOMEN LODGE MEMBER!
Hi friends! I'm so happy to offer you a creative membership to our Sacred Arts School.
Also, exclusive monthly issues of the MEDICINE WOMAN JOURNAL
Dear Medicine Women
This Medicine Women Lodge represents a life-time of research, experience and teaching in the ancient practices of creating sacred arts, shamanic and western mystery traditions, to bring the basic foundational practices to build a stronger relationship of self to the world. The Tungus term "Shaman" means To Know or to See with a Strong Eye or See with the Heart. These ways of perception have been almost lost, but we can develop many techniques from different traditions to "Know the World" as a means of perception.
This foundational program teaches basic safe techniques to support personal growth and build a strong emotional feminine core, this will support spiritual and soul work.
Foundational Practices are taught within the Five Lodges of Perception.
• Air Dream Lodge learning to work and journal our dreams - Will
• Earth Body Lodge taking care of body & tools of self-reflection - Thinking
• Dolphin Lodge Emotional Lodge -Feeling
• Fire Lodge of the Heart - Revelation
• Aether-Space-Void Lodge - Being
These sacred arts mentorship is a rare opportunity to be with a teacher who has trained with shamans over 30 years, and brings a life-time of research in western mystery traditions and received her M.A. in cross-cultural sacred iconography. This training is calling to souls who feel that there is more to the creation of art and wish to deepen their skills and learn techniques of knowing. Learning to create art in a sacred manner with intent.
Kristena brings a life-time of study, training and respect for these sacred traditions and allows the student to go at their own pace and holds the container for personal growth.
We will remember the sacred rhythms of the earth; the cycles of nature and the forgotten traditions of Women's Medicine Ways. This Alchemy Lodge training is safe and reliable, containing lawful methods passed down by authentic shamans and spiritual traditions that Kristena has personally studied and put to the test in her own journey.
I bring a life-time of indigenous and cross-cultural tools, techniques, exercises and art lessons that will deepen your practice and support strengthening skills of ways of knowing and sacred seeing.
Transformation occurs when the soul enters a journey into their biography, the trials, troubles and adventures.
sacred arts alchemy training
Air: Owl Dream Medicine
Earth Bear Physical Medicine
Water Dolphin Emotional Medicine
Fire Lion Heart Medicine
Space or Void Medicine
Cross-Cultural Sacred Traditions
Air: Owl Dream Medicine
The Dream Lodge
Ways of Seeing
Learning sacred arts includes waking up to ways of seeing. How we do not really look things. We scan with a unfocused eye, and are kept too busy in our daily life.
Sacred Arts is not only art-making, it's an entire way of life. When we take up creativity in a "sacred" manner it changes our focus, enhances our contemplation skills and we learn to hone our intent as we create. Through the lessons, we develop rigor and discipline learning how to create a chalice within; to center and enter the silence.
We engage in different ways of "seeing" we re-learn how to really look at the world, nature and the other; this wakes us up to the numinous.
Dream Practice as an entry into Sacred Art
Learning the skills of dream work is one of the many tools for gaining gifts, information and yes, even training in sacred arts.
Dreams are one way many people are given direct training in sacred arts. They are shown how to design, make and empower ritual art objects. When one is given a dream art image, shown what materials to use and how to empower it, they become sacred artisans. These kinds of tools, masks, or ceremonial art will carry the power of the spirits and it’s maker.
When I decided I was going to start a business making spirit dolls, I was trained for years on all the aspects of doll making and empowerment. I was shown how to make armatures, bodies, wig, costumes and rituals to empower the doll-every night in my dreams.
I have an artist friend who receives fully detailed shamanic art projects. He sees these just before he actually awakens--they come as visions. He then finds and creates exactly what he saw in the vision. He has pictures, costumes, ritual regalia all over his studio. The interesting thing is, he knows nothing about shamanism!
But he will do what he is given in dreams. One full figure he made covered in leaves stands in his studio--when he finished this piece-his dog started howling at it. That is spirit filled art!
I receive art or ritual tools to make for myself, others, or to use in my healing practice. If the spirits give you a dream ceremonial art piece, my advice is to make it and use it. If you do so, you show respect and gratitude to the spirit world and your willingness to work in co-creation with them.
Learning dream work and building a cohesive dream body is essential for crossing the thresholds and bring back spiritual tools and information.
Bear Medicine Ways of Relating
The Body Lodge
Curing the Soma
One could say Bear is the Great Dreamer too. These animals are chosen to represent the directions, and they are found cross-cultural. But for the Medicine Lodge we use them in a general way. Bear is one half of the year on the earth and the other half of the year under the earth; this is two-earth medicine.
Bear medicine is both taking care of the physical and the unconscious. For women we acknowledge our place in the world and take care of our daily life of being in the world and also personal development of our soul-spirit selves.
When we experience issues at work, in our families and close relationships, we can deny or submerge our feelings in our body, because we have to just get on with life and our many tasks. When we begin to slow down and breath, take time to just be, walk in nature or sit at our art table we can make a "sacred" time-out to do some creative writing or art to express what arises in our body. Expressive arts can make a big difference in soothing our anxiety, sadness or low-self esteem.
When we develop a habit of "soothing" our body-soul-heart connection as a daily or weekly artistic practice, we find that it eases our mind, smooths out life's wrinkles and develops an inner strengthening that builds a firm foundation.
I have many "Medicine Stories" of healing of to share in our Bear Lodge circle.
Water: EmotionalMedicine
The Emotional Lodge
Balancing the Opposites
If we think about it, we could say the whole world is driven by the feelings of every human being, couldn't we? Feelings are the driver behind all our triggers, decisions, reactions, musings, wishes, longings and drives.
A Medicine Woman must have an understanding of her own feelings, and unravel the knots of her unconscious resistance, fears and self-doubts that may have developed into patterns that limit her life. And through conscious decisions, she lays new more creative pathways to her life path.
This is the secret key of transformation.
In the Dolphin Lodge we will be delving into our biography using creative writing and artistic practice to explore, expand and discover our deeper story.
If you have some struggle, go through it. Grow through it. Don’t let it stop or hinder your outflow of creative juices.
Creation is a birth process, and part of that process is the tension or struggle to release the sacred art you feel within your soul. Let it flow through your body and mind.
Allow the power and potency of pure, raw creativity to lay new pathways within your soul being.
~Kristena West M.A.
Fire: Lion Heart Medicine
the Heart Lodge
Igniting Creativity
Doing our art lessons, life-story creative writing, personal development and researching and using sacred techniques of the shamanic journey, meditations and dream journaling, we can over time, gradually sweep clean the inner chambers of our hearts. It is in this sacred silence that the World Soul the Animus Mundi can speak to us. Perhaps it's only a whisper at first, and that is okay we allow what is, and this begins our conversations within the Heart-Lodge.
Developing this connection is the Medicine Woman Way, it does take time as we have to clear away the debris of our lives, and this is our inner-work will give us strength, purpose and reveal right-livelihood gifts that lead us into our future.
Each of the Medicine Women Lodge practices, artistic lessons, research, life-story expand our world view, open us to the paths of the ancestors and also lead us into the future in raised awareness of our lives and natural world.
The Void: Being Medicine
the Aether Lodge
Revelation
The whole universe is in the process of letting go, this Lodge is is the most mysterious of Medicine Lodges, and we can only touch on it's meaning over time, with our studies and experiences.
The Saints, Mystics, Dreamers, Gods & Goddess' all say that the Primal Godhood, is beyond space & time. These are deep matters of the divine manifesting in the world.
It is the final frontier, the end of all roads and journeys. It is truly beyond the comprehension of most of us, unless we are granted moments this veil is lifted.
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"The Medicine Lodge of Being holds emptiness, the ground of the World Soul.
This means, coming out of hiding and into the light. Reality is guided by the movement of epiphany. This is the thought of the hadith, “God is a hidden treasure wanting to be known.” The unveiling of reality coincides with letting the blocks and limits go, holding back no longer. Presence appears from absence and disappears back into it. This is marked by an outbreak of meaninglessness—for Eckhart, the call from on high to be empty of all knowledge. For him, emptiness is the coming of an ever-present relaxation. Nothing happens, yet everything does. This is how Meister Eckhart’s universe works.
Introduction to Sacred Art training ranges over many media, styles and hand-crafts.
Painting, drawing, mixed-media, fabric arts, book arts, art journals, dream journals, pastels and more!
Playing with colors, beads, threads, feathers, fabrics & textures, collage, nature's petals or leaves, thread, inks, pencils, charcoal, we dive into sensual tools of art-making.
Creative Writing Journal;
We will keep an art & dream journal. We will also write our thoughts, dreams and ideas as we progress in our training in sacred arts.
Writing as a daily practice, like art making, creates a healing rhythm that supports our contemplative practices.
After we learn this rhythm, it gives us strength, silence and we grow to depend on this daily time for ourselves.
Shamanic Journey Work, Active Imagination and Meditation are the three keys to contemplative practices.
Learning the techniques of the shamanic journey teaches us that we have helpers and can gain tools and learn about the sacredness of life.
Meditation is one of the ways to calm the mind and body, and overcome our inner critic so we can allow the freedom of creativity to guide us.
Developing Personal Healing Rituals is the ancient art of women's ceremonies over the ages.
SPIRITUAL = SPI-RITUAL
You will learn many ways of art-making lessons contain creative writing exercises to explore inner story and then bring that out into manifestations of form. Finding our soul song is another pathway to power.
Ritual frees our deep self which lifts us to higher and loftier levels of energy.
This first year is an introduction to all the tools and exercises to start activating experiences.
We cannot be a teacher or healer or create sacred art if we are filled with our own psychic debris. The first year is dedicated to opening, revealing and understanding our personal story. This includes identifying prima materia and starting the work of deep story.
This year will feel like a personal renewal and artistic retreat. As we being to live into our story we will work with our writing journal and mixed media to illustrate information that is arising.
PRIVATE SESSIONS: $125 an hour.
*private sessions not included in Medicine Women Alchemy Lodge Training.
Yearly Cost is $299.40. This works out to $24.99 a month, very economical.
Monthly Payments: $24.99 a month. Payments are due before Sacred Arts Lessons are delivered.
*the program cost for this kind of training is apprx. $3,500 a year, this is our introductory offer. Super Sweet deal!
HOW IT WORKS
Every month you will receive a link to your personal login on www.MedicineWomenLodge.com to view videos, download writing exercises, dream work and lessons on introduction to sacred art training.
Each lesson builds on the former, so you are building a cohesive body of knowledge and using it experientially building intuition and ways of seeing in all these traditions: creative writing, dream work and sacred arts.
There will be psychological tools taught and exercises given that are used successfully by my students and clients to discover and explore our inner world.
Also using cross-cultural practices we learn to become more open individuals trusting the world and creating a deeper connection to people and nature. As artists we learn to listen to our body, take time to self-nurture and to create sacred space in our lives as a daily practice.
Who are We Becoming?
What am I passionate about?
What do I want to do?
Will it be worthwhile?
Will it benefit myself and others?
If we want to make a piece to express some strong emotions or to say the unsayable, art is the flexible, moldable, movable, carve-able, additive or subtractive medium. And within that medium are hundreds of forms, including paper, wood, canvas, altars, cloth, music, dance, theater, sculpture and sound.
People create art for many different reasons. If we want to invoke a feeling of divinity within the viewer, we will use images, symbols, gestures, colors to invite that experience.
If we want to make an art piece that is healing or holds power, we will infuse our ideas with that power and move it into the art. But we need to be capable to know how to cultivate power, contain it and empower an object, that takes training and knowledge.
The Alchemy Lodge training will expand and strengthen your skills, while cultivating contemplative practices.
Artists, because they stand at the edges, can see farther than the ordinary mortal. They are not as rigidly constructed as most folks are and their feeling nature is highly developed. This means they are extremely sensitive to the fluctuations and energy surges of the universe-in-making. This allows them to stretch their antenna, if you will, out into the web of our universal weaving. They bring back ingenious designs, inventions, and ideas that will help anchor this new creative and healing energy.
With this kind of skill and life purpose we can see that character development of the creator-artist would be the integral measure with which to weigh the merit of the inspired designs coming in from the borderlands of our sacred hoop.
The clearer the vessel, the clearer the energy. To become a clear vessel takes discipline and dedication to an creator-artist-writer's path of personal development. (excerpt from-Alchemy Lodge)
I look forward to working with you! - Kristena