TEMPLE 2024: The Artist Erotic

A Message from MUSEA Co-Founder and Curate, Shiloh Sophia

How will you begin the new year? Will there be recommitments? Will there be relationship adjustments? A shift in how you listen to your body? What will mark the change from 23 to 24 ritually for you?

I am not talking about goals to be accomplished or apologies to make or even resolutions in the standard sense. I am talking about emotion and sensation. I am speaking to the energy you want to generate and feel. Where does it come from and how do you generate it?

If you do not choose how you WANT to feel and begin to practice the opportunity for feeling what you desire, just it isn't very high. We know this. But how? Self-expression is the how, really.

A huge part of my work over the past thirty years has been dedicated to the repair of our relationship between our bodies and our spirits. This isn't a concept however, we have spent a lifetime NOT being connected in the way that we could. Repair is possible. We are going to repair and renew our relationship with our bodies, together. Like my dear friend Dr. Lissa Rankin says - You can heal, but you can't do it alone.

If you feel called to join our community of women at MUSEA Sonoma or Virtually, we are going to go on a ceremonial reclaiming and celebration of our bodies and spirits in union. That sounds like a great way to begin a new cycle, in relationship with ourselves and one another!

We have 13 senses, let's invite each one to show us the way to sensation, pleasure and possibility.

TEMPLE
A Virtual 90 Day-Month Immersion Course

New Year, New Energy for a Fresh Start in 2024! TEMPLE is all about Somatic Energy Movement Practices that helps you harness healing energy in physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual ways that reflects the rebirthing cycle of a new year.

Our relationship with our body is sacred. Yet all too often the way we relate to our body and mind wellness is dictated by internal stories from the past and external stories of the present.

How can we become accountable to ourselves in a new, juicy way?

Through self-expression!

OUR FOCUS for TEMPLE: The Artist Erotic
VITALITY. WELLNESS. REST. CREATIVITY.

Inviting our bodies to speak through self-expression.
Invoking healing for our body-mind-based traumas.
Recovering and honoring of our innate sensual centers.
Releasing sexual shame-based-stories and inviting new life.
Practicing the Particle-to-Wave healing techniques.
Four body wisdom practices for integration.
Summoning your MUSE within to guide your story forward.
Liberating the 13 Senses for increased pleasure and potential.
Painting a record of your healing with abstract imaginal art.
Writing a new erotica story as inspired by your body wisdoms.
Movement meditation practice and food adjustments.

We are waking the body into a new story.

WHY?

We all need healing in connection with our body stories. Yet it is the thing we seek so much healing for - outside of ourselves and with experts. What if we are the only true expert on what our body needs to heal and wants to experience and what we need to do is simply LISTEN?

You can learn how to become the one to discern what is next for you on your healing journey. But you can't do that if you don't know how to listen to your body speak. If you can't hear your body speak, it is possible that there are parts of you that have gone dormant or are asleep as a part of a healing response. One by one we will begin to gently wake up the parts that are ready to awaken and invite them into beauty.

We have all spent a lot of time and money seeking solution for our experience with our bodies and spirits where we have been hurt, shot down, and closed off. We try SO MANY things and we get further on down the road but not quite far enough.

"It is time for the next revelation. Listening to your body speak while painting is our specialty at MUSEA, and we have practiced this for over twenty years. The focus on healing our bodies of sexual shame and opening up to more expansion has been on my heart for years. Based on the stories I am hearing about what is coming up for us, what is holding us back and what keeps us from fuller healing and pleasured lives - I am choosing to offer this experience for us. Let's move forward together."

~ Curate Shiloh Sophia

Temple as a Medicine Painting journey will invite new awareness regarding how we can reveal, release, recover, respond and expand into our fullest self-expression that is available at any given time.

You can and you will:

Awaken your senses through creative experience and exploration.
Paint an image that holds the Body Story and will carry the invitation to expansion.
Move towards healing your relationship with your body through the practice of medicine painting and movement.
Claim your body as a temple made from love and for love.
Discover erotica through a writing practice to get your juices flowing!
Experience a health reset through practices that include movement and rest.

Wouldn't you agree this is a wonderful way to start the New Year?!

Following registration, you will receive access to everything you need to prepare and get ready to paint with Shiloh Sophia.

For support and connection, there will be a private online classroom in the iMusea App. If you want to paint in real-time with other women, we will host daily Pop-Up Studio Sessions where everyone paints together and shares their work. Or you can paint as it works for you. Everything is recorded and yours to keep!

This includes our Temple Curriculum, Live Zoom Calls AND your focus on your health, rest, movement and food.

WHY PAINTING CAN BE SO CATALYTIC for Navigating Transformation

Answer: Intensity

The truth is painting is very intense. It brings UP SO MUCH STUFF. Whole body awakening kinds of things that don't happen in other settings - because painting helps you FEEL IT and SEE it. Painting, especially medicine painting feels almost dangerous - but it isn't - it will however walk you to the quivering edge. It amazes me every time. The intensity itself can lead the way for the erotic, because sexual energy and creativity energy can feel similar but in different ways there is an opportunity for big change because there is big movement happening.

Why focus on the erotic when healing, in particular with sexual stories of recovery?
We are looking through the lens of the erotic, so we have something powerful to work towards, FEELING and being in TOUCH with that feeling. The idea that we could be whole healed erotic creatures inspires us to do the work of transforming our relationship with pain to one of presence, power and eventually, pleasure.

WHAT: TEMPLE: Intentional Creativity® Medicine Painting Journey with Shiloh Sophia
WHERE: Participate from your home studio anywhere in the world (that has internet!)
WHEN: Virtual Course Begins January 4th for 3 Months
WHO: Must be a woman age 21+ to participate. Guided by Shiloh Sophia with Havi Mandell
HOW: 24X36 (or larger) canvas, acrylic paint, and basic painting materials + journal
WHY: For Healing and Awakening our Sacred Temple: To paint an image that embodies awakening your sensuality to heal your relationship with your body and invite more pleasure!

TEMPLE Schedule: Go at your own pace. YET this is created live and you can join live or watch immediately. This is NOT a zoom course, it is high quality live-streaming video. The quality and energy of a live presentation creates a dynamic real time experience.

We will have two days of painting together with Shiloh Sophia and women attending Temple in Sonoma. We will Broadcast LIVE from MUSEA Center for Intentional Creativity. Additional video teachings will be provided in January by Shiloh Sophia + regular Zoom Connection Circles.

The idea is that you will get all the primary painting teachings delivered in the first month and then the following two months we dive deeper into the process, relationship with our body and healing and writing and ritual. This gives you spaciousness to be with your process and go at whatever pace works for you.

The Livestreams are recorded in real-time so you can watch on-demand. The Zoom calls are also recorded and provided within 24 hours.

Thursday January 4th @ 12:00 PM PT: Opening Circle on Zoom
Friday January 5th 12:00 PM - 4:30 PM PT: Painting Day One Stream
Saturday January 6th 12:00 PM - 4:30 PM PT: Painting Day Two Stream
Saturday January 13th 12:00 PM - 3:00 PM PT: Painting Day Three Stream
Friday January 26th 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM PT: Painting Day Four Stream
Thursday February 8th @ 12:00 PM PT: Connection Circle on Zoom
Thursday February 15th @ 12:00 PM PT: Connection Circle on Zoom
Thursday February 22nd @ 12:00 PM PT: Connection Circle on Zoom
Thursday March 7th @ 12:00 PM PT: Connection Circle on Zoom
Thursday March 28th @ 12:00 PM PT: Closing Show and Tell Circle

During TEMPLE, you are invited to gather together with women across the world to explore your innate sensuality through creative exploration.

We have more senses than sight, sound, taste, touch, feelings - so many more. Do you wonder what they might reveal? Has a part of you been sleeping and is ready to awaken?

Join SHILOH SOPHIA, Artist and MUSEA Curate to bring you an experience of aliveness to your entire body, energy field, and relationship with being in a body.

Intentional Creativity is a creative approach used by tens of thousands of people around the world to discover new worlds, reveal voices that have been silenced, claim affirmative frameworks, and invite imagery that is hidden in the internal landscape.

Beloved community,

This is an invitation for us to work on, sensual healing, self-revelation, and a new orientation to your sexuality.

If you Google or look up sexual healing or healing from shame, there are so many books so many classes and so many teachers. I find it overwhelming and quite nuanced. Just like each woman finds her own pleasure, so nuanced...

Now I'll just say in advance that I am not an expert in this topic so I might not be the teacher for you. But in this process, it is less about what I'm teaching and more about the space, that I, as a Curate, hold for women on their journey of self-healing and embodying their own sensuality.

What kind of healing and what’s that got to do with the body?

Healing from trauma, inflammation, aches/pains, illness, grief, fear, shame, body shame, and perfectionism can live in the body often keeping us from the fullness of our innate sensuality and our deep connection with our sense of intuition.

When we are born, we come into the world with incredible faculties like consciousness, imagination, creativity, and instinct. When those faculties are not connected with our human capacities, we have a disconnect in other words …

If the body isn't aligned for you, the capacity to access intuition will be limited.
If you are not being self-expressed in your physical body, as a capacity of this incredible temple, then there's a disconnect between the innate creativity that you are intrinsically born with.

When I talk about the things that you're born with I literally mean by grace. If you’re in a relationship with Creator, Mother, or Source you can say that those things arrived from the divine design or if you are a very organic agnostic animist, you can say it's how we're designed and the design we arrived in comes in with these preexisting faculties just as you have a nose, eyes, ears, and hands.

These faculties are like the spiritual essence of incarnation and when they're disconnected from the physical body, we experience challenges. And I know that we've been doing lots of work, especially over the past 35 or so years to connect soul and spirit but there are some basic missing ingredients that I'd like to bring into the recipe. Temple is where we are going to do that through a very feminine sensual painting.

ABOUT TEMPLE HEALING RECIPE

Temple is going to be a healing experience.

What it's not going to be, is my prescription for your healing. You are going to take the healing of your temple into your own hands. We are listening to our bodies instead of someone else's formula for recovery, expansion, and integration it comes from within.

If you are way deep into what you need to mend yourself, then TEMPLE might not be for you because there won't be individual people to care for you as you go through things, although the container is there to witness you in our private classroom.

If you are going through something with a guide or a therapist, you could potentially do this in addition and let them know that you're doing this. You could provide access to this course to anybody that you're currently working with because it's bound to open up some things. Because when we start to paint, we start to hear, see, feel, and know different things than when we've been talking about or doing bodywork or other types of catharsis, we've adopted to mend our gorgeous temple that is really requesting our aliveness to come into the center.

OUR 13 Senses are PORTALS of PLEASURE and PAIN

I will guide you in the painting process just like I traditionally do. It will be like the 13 steps for mending our relationship with our sensuality through the senses that we haven't been paying attention to.

Let's talk about this....

Pain and pleasure: Pain with our nose... is different than pain and pleasure regarding our urethra, right? They're different and they do different things, and they have different functions and they're different portals to the temple.

Most of us are mostly living through a handful of the senses but not really living to the fullness of what's possible, which then again connects with our innate intuition.

We will be focusing on some pain and some pleasure but only from the perspective of what you're now navigating and what might be preventing you from your own fullest expression for you and you use that in your relationships with others and yourself any way that you choose.

Connecting to spiritual faculties: My theory is that as we honor the senses of your body, I call it worshiping at the temple. As we worship, our senses start to come in alignment and achieve greater coherence, then we begin reconnecting the spiritual faculties.

With each painting step we ask different parts of the body different questions e.g., What does my body want to say to me now? and let them express on the canvas so that there's this clear awakening and interconnection between what we sometimes think of as dormant, sleeping, or stagnant parts of ourselves.

Visting memories: We're only going to visit memories to the degree that they arise for you in the process where you're almost just touching them and then asking; What about this memory is preventing me from moving forward into full sensuality? Is this something I can now release or recover from so that I can now go forward? We're only looking for the part of the trauma that is keeping you from going forward.

Somatic grounding container: The painting process is the somatic and grounding container that allows for the work to happen and become integrated. There's such an acute intelligence here that if/when you're specific with yourself because you are the inquirer and narrator, asking "only show me that which is preventing me from feeling this, knowing this, being this, healing this, and then let me paint that".

It's very specific because it is often a belief that resulted from an experience that's been ingrained and internalized over many years which sometimes results in shame, hiding or shutting down. Those physical impacts on the body, even though those are mental things, end up backing up physical realities and it's like a whole infinity that happens between what ends up happening and how you recover from what happens and what meaning was given.

Change the relationship: We can't change what happened, but we can change the relationship to what happened through focusing specifically on how what happened is keeping you from moving into your future in a way to be a fully turned-on sensual woman.

Nourishment and Connection: This course will have nothing to do with actual sex or actual partnership. This is all about your relationship to your own temple and listening for guidance at each place. For example, one of the places we're going to be with is the space of the belly button, which is our original red thread, our umbilical cord. It is also considered a sense in some cultures and in our culture here. When you allow belly button to speak, it's so astonishing what gets revealed because that space is about nourishment, Connection with Ma, Connection with Self, Original Flow of Information.

There's so much here in how we are humanly designed, how the internal anatomy, for example, of the breasts, whether you gave birth to children is directly connected with nourishment and your relationship to your body and to creation.

Repair, Refiring, and Rewiring: This isn't about anyone else but you and about doing the repair work that you can do, and I feel like that's what Intentional Creativity is really honing into. Yes, there are many books, there are many guides, there are many shamans, there are many healers I am One in Your Life.

The steps and recipe are from me, but the journey is ultimately you listening to your body fully through writing and access to the infinite intelligence you have as you paint with movement that it starts to be expressed through somatic sensations of refiring and rewiring.

Being aware and available to what the messages that your body has for you are and how we do that in the safest sacred way possible is through painting now and moving and being in circle.

I cannot promise this isn't going to bring up stuff that's difficult to unpack.

I cannot promise it's even going to work.

But I can promise that the heart of my intention is as pure as the sun shining on my face right now.

I so want you to have access to your own self-healing tools.

I so deeply want that for you, for me, and for all of us, and for us not to live our lives through our trauma.

I want to shift from that, have trauma recede and be a story in the past, and have the world you look out through be one of self-actualization according to your terms. I do feel that we can create that here. I designed this course just for you to turn your own system on. If you're feeling resourced enough as they say in the Recovery world these days, meaning well enough to participate in this, but the key of moving off other people's wisdom and into your own wisdom to turn yourself on!

One system - One stroke - One brushstroke at a time.

That's at the heart of the TEMPLE.

Because your body is a temple of an infinite palette and a capacity to transform past pain into future pleasure and in the moment present-ness to your full expansion that you're available at any given time in your life and that's what we do here, and I'll see you in class.

Here at MUSEA we are devoted to working with our students from around the world in dynamic, interconnected education.

This painting experience is more than a course, but a ritual offered in the spirit of healing and personal transformation. We can't be expected to do all the work of awakening on our own, in isolation. But also, we may not believe in a lot of the spiritual speak happening out in the world.

Gather with a group of fellow creatives virtually.
Your course will be delivered online, and it is yours to keep. You will be invited to join us for interactive conversations and share your work.

Gather with women creatives in person.

This is a guided journey like a treasure map, yet with lots of room for your voice to reveal itself. Intuitive Painting for personal exploration is all about process and discovery. This isn't about talent or getting it right or following a formula. We will provide the path but the way you walk it is up to you!

Dr. Havi Mandell who will be our call host and support us in the app has worked with SHILOH SOPHIA since 2010. Havi is the Director of Red Madonna, our Intentional Creativity Sisterhood Circle.

"I am overwhelmed with joy, excitement, tears, and love. I have treated my body so mean for so long, danced with addiction, and struggled with major body image issues for decades. There are no words to accurately describe just how much Shiloh Sophia's work has impacted my life and helped my body heal. Painting is unwinding what has been held deep within my cells. I am blown away and completely surprised by the impact this has had on my body, and on my life. It was the Great Spirit that brought me to her, to all of you. I am forever grateful and look forward to more Intentional Creativity journey together."

~ Megan Zaback 2023

Medicine Painting is a practice woven throughout human history that we are seeing a revival in our modern times, as people are called to take healing into their own hands. Approaching painting as a healing journey can be thought of as a blooming branch of neo-shamanism (methods of seeking visions or healing) with roots that go back to healing rituals and ceremonial practices of storytelling, marking, dancing, singing, alchemy, and prayer. All of these can be considered tools for resiliency, connection, and insight during times of great change. (Painting: Constellation of Wisdom by Shiloh Sophia, Acrylic on Wood, 2020)

Medicine Painting is an intuitive journey that grants access to our internal guidance system - the inner healer. More often than not, we don't know what we know. With painting specifically, we do have a way to make what our subconscious or unconscious knows, visible. Imagination may be one of the most potent links to recovering from trauma and illness that we have available. Our hope is that our culture can begin to include this medicine painting as a valid pathway to healing, not as a fringe practice, or the domain of the gifted few, but as an integrative approach to self-healing.

Our Intentional Creativity approach to Medicine Painting is painting with an intent to heal and receive insight. Which activates an inherent life force for anyone to spark healing, not just artists, the talented, or those who feel they are creative. Creativity cannot be relegated to those with skill alone. We have been practicing this way of working in our creative lineage since the 1930s. I am thrilled to share that tens of thousands of women around the world work with our Intentional Creativity® methodology to embark on a healing journey through Medicine Painting.

The thing is that while it seems that many parts of us have been dormant, they haven't left you. They are right there ready to be related with and to through sensual engagement. In a way, this isn't even that hard to do - it does take focus and practice. That is what this program is all about. Creating an experience where the healing that is ready to happen can happen.

The art studio of your own home is a great place to engage in experiencing your body as a temple. Will you take a risk and create just for yourself?

We spend a lot of time taking care of business and even practicing 'self-care'. But what about caring for the capacity to see, feel and experience life to the fullest? To truly taste food, see the moon, enjoy a kiss, wake up choosing your life again....

The Temple painting process is designed to facilitate a deepening of your connection with your body as sacred. When we think of our body as a temple or sanctuary, it changes our orientation. Yet many of us need to have healing because we have been so disconnected and fragmented.

How can it become a good day to be in a body?

We will be working with the senses that are known and many that may be a surprise! I have been teaching the Temple of Senses curriculum for over ten years, yet this is the first painting class totally devoted to it. I will be offering a guided journey yet you will plan to spend creative time on your own in between sessions.

The painting will be somewhat abstract, yet include aspects of the body that you choose. We work in lots of wet layered color prisms with symbols and patterns. There is nothing you can do wrong. We will work to transform suffering into a potential for pleasure.

This isn't about what you look like or what the painting looks like - but about how you choose to feel as you swirl the brush and move the energy.

During our time you will also be invited to work with sleeping, eating, walking, dancing, and bathing to develop a sensual awareness at a new level.

TEMPLE Schedule

Begins January 4th, 2024

We will have two days of painting together with Shiloh Sophia and women attending Temple in Sonoma Broadcast LIVE from MUSEA Center for Intentional Creativity.

Additional video teachings will be provided in January by Shiloh Sophia + regular Zoom Connection Circles.

The Connection Circles will include a combination of storytelling, sharing, stories and painting and be guided by the MUSEA team and alternating with Shiloh Sophia.

The idea is that you will get all the primary painting teachings delivered in the first month and then the following two months we dive deeper into the process, relationship with our body and healing and writing and ritual.

Everything will be recorded for you to participate as it works for you.

Click here to view the full schedule.

Amazing News! After providing education since 2000 to tens of thousands of women we are transforming our school into a university. This change will enable women to embark on a journey of study with us that leads to a sovereign degree in the field of Intentional Creativity. The degree title is CURATE which is an archetype of the person who cares for the soul of the village.

Choosing to receive Uni-Credits is completely optional.

Requirements to receive Uni-Credits are photographs of your completed coursework and a one-page paper about how you will use the material in your business endeavors demonstrating an understanding of the subjects presented and must be a MUSEA member. Once you submit your course work your work is witnessed, and the unit course will be added to your student profile as you work towards future credits.

The hours per unit is a combination of 10 hours of content from Musea + 4 hours of studio time from you as you work on projects. For Example: 42 hours of Education and Experience equals approximately 3 units.

Students who already completed and submitted course requirements for MUSEA Certification Training courses qualify to receive Uni-Credits. The process to add them will be shared once it is put into place.