Self Care can be dubiously positioned as a way we can consume a lot of bubble bath and spa days, as a way of recovering from lives that regularly feel 'too much' and impossible to thrive in, so I just want to say from the get go thats not my orientation! I'm looking at self care as a pathway towards a life that purposely recognises and counters any habits we might have of self neglect by instead offering ourselves kindness and what we need to nourish and re-source ourselves.

This is actually challenging work: Often, the external demands on us of roles focused on productivity, efficiency, and others welfare, implicitly promote versions of self neglect. And most of us are spending a lot of energy on staying afloat and attenpting to steer our vessels in some very choppy social and political waters. At the time of writing this blog post, I am getting used to the news that in my country we have just installed a new Prime minister and that the Queen has died. The war in Ukraine contines. Instability seems to be our new normal.

The joy of visiting an internal spaciousness that holds all kinds of wisdom about your life, that is actually working on behalf of your life force to deeply resource you when it has the chance, is one of the things that developing an intuitive creativity practice offers me as a profound antidote to this. It can be like taking a really deep sigh of relief! And a profoundly helpful map I use to help people to orientate to what they need is the Enneagram. That's what im going to talk about a bit here.

For my part, I have been on a nine year journey of exploring how my wiring can be helpfully mirrored to me by this map, and I'm on a journey of becoming a certified Enneagram professional, which will enable me to bring it explicitly into my creative offerings and one to one facilitating work. At this stage, it is woven into my work more at an implicit level - the more I learn about the way I'm wired up, the clearer I can be at the contact boundary, and the more spacious my creative offerings can be for others who do life differently to me. The enneagram offers nine archetypal patternings of human consciousness and character. It might already be very clear to you where it might be helpful to look on the symbol. But for our purposes here, what i would like to do is to explore the ways that our needs of a creative process differ.

Here are nine ways I recognise that intuitive creative processes, such as SoulCollage®, Walking with Trees, and Deep-Mapping, can re-source different people.As you read on, you might want to consider pulling out a journal and pen, and making a note of which of these openings speak most to what you might need at the moment, today, right now. Maybe there are some ways you can make space for what you notice you need, as a part of your day too?

*Nine enneagram openings exploring your intuitive creativity - which are yours?*

If youre on your phone, these may need zooming in on. Or you can find them on Instagram @the_soul_shed, where each is a seperate post.

If you're already familiar with the wisdom of the Enneagram symbol, perhaps you tuned into the ways that the 9 openings came up for you in different proportions, and be able to trace them back to your core type pattern. If you're not familiar with the Enneagram and its mapping of archetypal patternings of human consciousness, you might have noticed that some of these might speak to core needs you have, and core values you hold about life. Such is the significance of archetypal patterning. And a side product of this is that by understanding who you are a little bit better, it becomes easier to recognise how others needs might be very different. Where one person might be seeking intimacy, another one wants space; where once person craves authentic self-expression, another seeks time to go inside.

The beauty of an intuitive arts practice is that you get to hold that contact boundary in the way you want it - the practice is spacious enough to contain you. As a facilitator my work is to create a container where you get the amount of imput you need so that you can come to know that viscerally through your own explorations. In other words, most of my job is to be available with resources and to get out of the way so that you can have the journey you ne

Enneagram wisdom teachings have underpinned Soul Shed offerings since the very beginning, If this focus has piqued your interest, since I wrote this post last year my studies have taken me further on this path and I have become acredited as a trauma-informed enneagram coach with IEA acredited schools Takdir Transformations, and Aephoria Leadership development and Coaching.

If you would like to explore your own Enneagram template for transformation, through The Soul Shed lens of your intuitive creativity, I would love to work with you and this can include exploring a personalised profile from Aephoria. Take a Please do message me about this at connect@thesoul-shed.co.uk or set up an exploratory call here I would love to chat with you about it all!

*The enneagram* *as a candleabra! thank you Richard Marmer for the image*

And for good background informaition on The Enneagram - The Enneagram Institute is a very good place to start.

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