Faces of Your Soul

Book excerpt: In Faces of Your Soul, Elise Dirlam Ching and Kaleo Ching combine art and archetypes, meditation and acupressure, guided imagery, journaling, and many different creative processes in a collage of healing knowledge and wisdom. The authors start by stressing the balance of complementary opposites—left brain/right brain, challenge/comfort, practicality/the sacred—as crucial to beginning the journey. Then through guided imagery, they lead readers through subconscious realms to connect with archetypal sources of inner wisdom. This process frees the creative and healing spirit, connecting explorers with the body's instinctive intelligence, which expresses itself through the creation of art. Central to this process is a detailed description of maskmaking—including how to work with a partner to mold each other's gauze mask—balanced with self-explorations of the inner experience of this event. Poetry, personal stories, photographs, and a gallery of Kaleo Ching's evocative totemic masks expand the reader's experience of this richly resonant journey to self.