Mixed Media Art, Healing & Wellness with Willowing: Radical Wellness now open for Registration! :)

MAKE ART, GET HEALTHY!

Are you, like me, fed up with not being as healthy as you could be?

Fed up with making poor food choices?

Fed up with being an emotional overeater?

Fed up not committing to an exercise routine?

And do you want change all that?! (Yes?! Me Too!)

Then join this program and let's get healthy together!

Using a comprehensive workbook (approx 95 pages), the transformative power of art, support through daily emails, meditation and an encouraging community of like-minded people, we will create health in our lives together!! YaY!! :-)

Sign Up Now!

(or read more information below)

£49 GBP
(approx $75USD)

Watch the promo video:

Program/ Course Details

Begins: 20th May 2013

Registration Opens: 19th April 2013

Registration Closes: 19th May 2013

(You won't be able to sign up while the course is running, it's not designed that way)

Introduction

Hello, I am Tam and I want to get healthier! :) I work a lot on mental, emotional and spiritual health on my courses, but the physical side is always a struggle for me. I 'use' food for all the 'wrong' reasons and would love to change that. I'd love to begin using food for nutritional reasons only! I'll be more specific: for many years, I've struggled with making healthy food choices. I've somehow conditioned my brain to think that food can be used as a great strategy to sort out things like: anger, sadness, depression, anxiety, tiredness and a whole host of other emotional states. It's frustrating me that it's so hard to overcome this behaviour and I've finally come to a point that I want to tackle this problem head on! This kind of behaviour needs careful love and attention to overcome.

I have had ups and downs, better and worse times when it came to managing this behaviour. Over the years, I've found a few things helpful:

Living a conscious and mindful life
Cultivating self-respect, self-love and self-empathy
Conscious planning/ decision making (meal plans and other)
Acknowledging self-empowerment
(I am the one making the choices)
Practising radical self-care
Being in touch with and processing my emotions

This program was created to help me become more mindful and aware of my daily behaviour, experiences, feelings and needs. I have found that by filling in this workbook/ journal daily and by doing the exercises as outlined I am able to make more life and health-enriching choices.

It is my hope that this program will help you too somehow!

Sign Up Now!(or read more information below)

£49 GBP
(approx $75USD)

This program has a different layout to my usual courses. See the schedule below to learn more about the exact schedule and layout of the course:

Week 1. Prep Week

In week 1 we'll be preparing ourselves for the 28 days of implementing our health plan into our lives. Week 1 contains several information videos (talking ones, not art ones) in which I will be explaining how to go about filling in the daily pages. There will also be videos of myself and Gracie in dialogue and Andy too will provide some useful insights in some of the topics we'll examine in the first week.

Specifically we will be dealing with the following topics this week:

Day 1. Reasons why we want to become healthier: your whys.

Day 2. Exploring limiting beliefs which may hinder your health plan and noting down current common behaviour/ responses/ problems that hinder your health plan.

Day 3. Thanking the body.

Day 4. Planning your health, exercise, self care and food plans, some goal setting.

Day 5. Saying goodbye to unwanted behaviours/ thanking the unwanted behaviours/ writing a letter of love, encouragement, empathy and understanding to yourself before you start on your 28 day journey.

Week 2 – 5. The 28 day program: Implementing and Living Your Health Plan

During week 2 to 5 we will actually be living and practising our health plan. To support you, you will receive:

A 95 page workbook (also used during prep week) – in which you can fill in daily (and weekly) pages
5 x 5 minute meditations (to be used at the start of the day to help you ground)
Daily encouraging/ inspiring emails
1 Weekly art video (step by step) that explains a healing art journal technique
1 supporting PDF explaining the healing art journal technique
1 Weekly art video fast forwarded of a project I did that week

Art wise, we’ll focus on creating beautiful journal pages which incorporate some kind of healing/ feelings processing element. We’ll include fabulous artsy concepts into our journal pages like portraits, animals, whimsical characters, collage etc.

Both the art and health side of things are very comprehensive on this course!

Here is a little peek into the workbook! :)) --->

Printer paper for workbook and ring binder:

Please print out the workbook and put the pages in a ring binder. The workbook is best printed out onto slightly heavier paper than regular printer paper. I'd go for 90gsm and if possible, print the workbook out double-sided to save paper!

(The workbook is a lot of pages).

Paper (for Arting on):

A dedicated art journal. Start a new journal specifically for this program. The idea is that you'll do all your emotional processing in this journal. Get one that has thick sturdy paper, preferably 140lbs in weight. I like hot pressed paper, but cold pressed or mixed media paper is fine too.

Paints:
Water-soluble crayons – Caran D'ache Neocolor II
Acrylic Paints – Daler Rowney/ Golden/ Winsor Newton
Golden Fluid Acrylics (optional)

Pencils:
Watercolour pencils: Derwent Inktense/ Caran D'ache Supracolor (optional)
Graphite pencils: 2b & heavier
Graphite crayons are fun but optional

Mediums:
Gel Medium: Golden or Liquitex I have both heavy and soft. If you just want to buy 1 go for soft matte. Cheaper gel medium to use as an adhesive: Daler- Rowney Impasto Gel Matt/ Golden Matte Medium

Collage:
Variety of patterned scrapbooking papers, magazine pages, book pages and photos.

Tools:
Brayer/ Palette Knives/ Scissors/ Rulers
Heat gun or Hair Dryer

Markers:
Aquamarkers Letraset
Posca pens or posterpaint pens

Inks/ Sprays:

Dylusions Ink Sprays
Daler-Rowney Liquid Acrylics

Other: White Gesso & Clear Gesso
Gelli Plate (optional)Washi
Tape (optional)

Please assume that the list above is tentative and that you may need a few more bits here and there (although it's unlikely I'll suddenly come in with a new product!) or certain materials on the list might not get used. It's also not always necessary to use the exact same materials as I list above. Certain materials can easily be replaced by similar or other materials.

So if you're on a budget, don't go mad buying lots of new materials.

This programme is not solely about weight loss. While in order for some of us to become health(ier), weight loss is a good idea, this programme was not written to focus solely on weight loss. Instead, the course is about an overall holistic approach to creating health and well being in our lives. A likely side-effect of achieving this is weight loss. I don't want the focus of this programme to be weight loss only as I think that misses the point and is going to make it less likely for us to actually become healthier. Additionally, extra weight is (in most cases) a side effect of an unhealthy approach to food. You'll agree that it's much more effective to treat the cause of an unwanted something in our lives than the symptom itself. In this case, the symptom is 'too much weight' and the cause is: unhealthy living. So, let's focus on 'living healthily' instead of weight loss and the weight loss will come too! :0)

I am not a professional nutritionist/ therapist or psychologist. This programme is offered based solely on my own personal experiences and learnings in life. If you suffer from an eating disorder like Bulimia or Anorexia (or other mental ailment like depression), this is probably not the programme for you unless you follow it with the support of an experienced therapist.

Though I would love to be able to support you on a one-to-one level, I am unable to do so due to time constraints and other commitments in life. So, if this type of programme easily triggers or upsets you, I strongly recommend you withdraw from the programme or only follow it while having the emotional support of family, friends or trained professionals.

Recommended reading and apps:

'Eating Less: Say Goodbye to Overeating' by Gillan Riley
'Eat by Choice, Not by Habit' by Sylvia Haskvitz
iPhone app for tracking calorie intake and exercise: NutraCheck

The video files are hosted on vimeo.com and can both be watched online and be downloaded to your machine. The video files will be in either .mov or .mp4 file formats. Both file types can be watched in VLC player or Quicktime which can be downloaded off the internet for free.

Your PDF files can be read through a variety of programs, the most common one being Adobe Reader.

Always make sure that your flash player is up to date as out of date flash players can cause some of the videos not to play correctly or at all. You can update your flash player here.

For browsers I recommend you use Firefox, though Chrome and Internet Explorer work fine too.

To download the video files you need to have a high speed internet connection (broadband). If you don't have a high speed connection you can stream the videos online (or the downloads will simply take a longer time).

Can I download and keep all the materials? Yes you can. You can download the videos and watch them at your own pace in your own time, over and over.
Do I have to participate in the healing/ health exercises? You don't have to, but the main focus of this course is creating health, so you would miss out on a huge element of the course if you didn't take part. It's cool though if you only want to join in on the art exercises.
Do I have to upload my work? No. Uploading work and interacting/ giving feedback is entirely optional.
Will I get a DVD for this course? No, DVDs are not included on the live course.
How long will the videos and PDFs be available for? Until the end of December 2013.
Can people continue to sign up throughout the course? No, as the program is very specific and because the course is likely to bring up quite a bit of emotion, registration will close before the course starts. I will run another few sessions of this program later in the year.
Can I get a refund half way through the program? No. Refunds can be given before the course starts but not when the course has already started.
Can I share the videos and PDFs with other people who are not on the course? No. If your neighbour or friend wants to take part in the course, they have to purchase a course space themselves as should you. Please do not share the course videos and PDFs with anyone else.
I don't know how to download the videos, can you help? A description of how to download videos is given alongside every video posted. If that description is still too confusing you can email me and I will try to help you. Please note however that detailed advice and lessons on how to navigate IT cannot be offered. You will need to have basic IT knowledge to be part of the course.