Back in November, I interviewed Winifred Whitfield, a wonderful artist and photographer, whose passion is creating portraits for women of themselves – not their everyday selves, but their inner selves, their intimate selves.

Since that interview, Winifred has been pretty busy – teaching in her workshops and seminars in New York and London, making portraits, and working hard collating and editing her images to produce her first book - “Intimate Portraits for Women”. The book is now available – a beautifully printed hardback edition – one of those irresistible coffee table ones – and you can preview it here online: CLICK HERE.

“It is really like a game – you’ve gotta know the rules of the game, and it takes a while to learn those rules – once you know the rules, you’ve gotta play, you can’t just watch, you can’t just sit on the side and be a spectator and comment – you’ve got to get your hands dirty and start playing…”

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Over on my art blog michellerumney.com, I just turned the page to Week 4  - Developing a Sense of Integrity of the 12 week Artist’s Way program. Snoozily reading my way through this week’s chapter last night, I reached the end of the chapter and thought – “that sounds like a pretty easy week – there aren’t so many exercises as last week… all you have to do this week is “Reading Deprivation” – that just means to not read anything… that sounds ok…” … and then I went to sleep.

If you’ve listened to my interview with Sada Nam Kaur, you’ll have heard her mention a powerful meditation called Kirtan Kriya. Sada Nam ‘prescribes’ this for many of her Kundalini students, as it works on many blocks and common problems. And unlike many meditations, it doesn’t even demand that you sit still and empty you thoughts – you really have no choice, because when you start you have so much to concentrate on and once you know how to do it, you get straight into the repetition and lost in the meditation anyhow… Here’s a fantastic video showing you how (I love this video!!).

Be able to say “I am who I am… and that is that!”

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Sada Nam Kaur began coaching people on their personal development long before coaching became a recognised profession. Trained as a management consultant in the banking world, she adapted what she was teaching in business and applied the same principles to help people improve their own lives. “When we begin to know who we are, we begin to take steps in our authentic path, then we blossom – and that gives me huge joy”.

Over on my art blog, michellerumney.com, I recently started a great 12 week self-coaching program called The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. It’s aimed at blocked or recovering artists, writers and creatives but as we’re all Creative, Resourceful and Whole, I think it would benefit anyone who follows it. I’m now in week 3 – Recovering a Sense of Power.

Here’s a great exercise for working out what core beliefs you carry around deep in your mind that just might be holding you back from achieving the success you know you’re capable of. So, the next 20 minute window you get, sit down and do this;

This week I seem to be aware of about ten different paths or programs or challenges or number of days that I could be joining in with, to benefit myself as a human being and also the readers of this blog and the participants in my workshops and groups. They range from the Philosopher’s Notes 50 Day Challenge, to Escaping Mediocrity’s 30 Days to Changing Your Game to Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (that I’ve been on and off doing for ages – Darren, it’s brilliant – maybe I just don’t want it to end!).

My post yesterday, where I talked about Shadow Artists was, of course, only one version of ‘my story’ – a story of struggle and what was missing. The way we tell our personal stories – to others and to ourselves – has a great impact on how we go forward in our lives; whether that story is empowering or whether it keeps us stuck in an endless loop, doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.

Are you doing what you love? Something that you’ve dreamed of doing? longed for?

Or are you doing something close – in the same industry but a different role, in a field which gets near to, but isn’t actually what you’d like to have done?

How close are you to the Big Hairy Audacious thing you’d LOVE to be doing? (not necessarily the thing you think you can do or should do)

Are you indeed a shadow xxxxx?
(insert your dream you eg. artist, photographer, actor, surgeon, politician, journalist…)

“This is not just my work – this is the work of all women on the planet at the moment – to go out and take the essence of the feminine out there and share it with others ”

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