If you combine journaling with scrapbooking and collage, you have Creative Journaling. The purpose is still the same, however rather than expressing your feelings and thoughts purely through words, you use photos and images as well.

Apart from photos and images, you can use poems, quotes and sayings to represent your feelings and thoughts.

Remember, there is no wrong way to journal. You do what you want and that is right for you at that particular time.

Happy Journaling!

Feeling a little stuck? Not sure what to write or how to start? At a loss for ideas? There are a range of journaling techniques that you can use to get your thoughts on to paper.

In the Journal for the Modern Goddess we have allowed space to use three different journaling techniques.

Asking Yourself Questions - In our guided sections (Dreams and Inspirations; Moving Forward; Gratitude and Happiness), we provide a number of questions that allows the journal owner to ask herself. By asking herself the questions she can start to journal her answers and allow her answers to flow.

Our questions are guides; therefore any journal writer can ask herself a range of questions such as “how do I feel at this moment in time?” “What makes me happy?” “What changes are going on around me and how do they affect me?” etc.

Asking yourself questions provides you with prompts to move from not writing to writing, and from there you can allow your pen to flow.

Guided Meditations - Our journal comes with a companion guided meditation CD and we encourage the journal owner to write down her experiences from the meditation and if there are any actions she may need to take to move her forward in her life.

Meditation allows a person to relax and journaling directly after listening to a meditation CD is powerful because the insights you gained through your journey can be put onto paper immediately.

Free Flow Writing - We have also offered journal pages for the journal owner to write whatever she feels like without being guided. Some call this “intuitive writing” and others call it “free writing”. Free flow writing has one rule, and that is, there are no rules.

Free flow writing is you put pen to paper and write whatever comes into your head. If it is “I don’t know what to write”, then you write that and any thought or feeling, you write and you don’t stop. At first you may set yourself a time limit of 10 minutes and over time you may increase the time.

During this time you do not worry about punctuation, spelling, grammar, capitalisation, paragraph breaks etc. Do not worry if it doesn’t make sense, because you are writing purely for you. Free flow writing leads you places you never would have imagined. Allow your thoughts to flow and your pen will naturally move without you having to think about it.

Other techniques include:-

Qualities and Attributes - Write down the qualities and attributes you possess and then write down ones you wish you did. Identify one quality you demonstrate well and write about the how and the why, then identify on quality you wished you possessed, and write how you could demonstrate it in your life. You’ll be amazed what comes forward during the writing process.

This technique can be adapted to use words that describe how you are feeling in this moment and you can write about why you are feeling the way you do.

Dialog - Another technique is to dialog. Dialogs are imagined conversations between two or more people or higher beings. It could be a dialog between two parts of a person.

Dialoguing could involve writing a conversation between a present or past relationship, someone who is living or deceased. It could be about your role as a mother, sister, aunty or friend. Dialoguing could involve writing about an event or circumstance, traditions, cultural background, marriage, religion.

Dialoguing helps you move through any patterns, resistances or disagreements you may be having with yourself or with others. If you need to discuss a situation with someone, this technique can be powerful as it will allow you to form your thoughts so that you can say what needs to be said in a constructive and diplomatic way.

List Making - List making is a great way to help writers block. You could create a list of 100 things you are grateful for, or if 100 is a little daunting start with 25 or 50. Some examples are listing ways you could nurture yourself, how you can improve your life, what you wish for, places you would like to visit, things you value in life, ways to be more creative, ways to be more productive etc.

Once you have your list you can ask yourself questions to get the writing process flowing.

Overall journaling can be an effective tool of healing and self-empowerment for everyone. There are many more techniques beside the ones I’ve mentioned; however it is recommended that you find the techniques that suit you. Once you become confident in journaling, explore and experiment with other techniques.

Happy journaling!

*****

Benefits of Journaling

Journaling is the practice of keeping a journal that explores your thoughts and feelings surrounding the events of your life. It is more than keeping a diary and recording the activities of your life, journaling allows you to clarify your thoughts and feelings, thereby gaining valuable self-knowledge.

Below are some examples of the benefits to keeping a journal.

Reduces Stress – Journaling has a proven benefit of reducing stress. The process of writing your thoughts and feelings down allows you to let go, and not carry as much with you throughout your day. This is a powerful form of self-expression, and through that expression you can gain clarity, release, and relief.

Increases Focus – Taking the time to journal can help you disentangle thoughts and ideas so that you can identify your true feelings and bring a clearer focus to what you want. This allows you to begin to live your life to the fullest.

Promotes Self-Healing – Through journaling and reflection you can uncover and record patterns and cycles as well as heal the past, heal relationships and soothe troubled memories. You will gain surprising and valuable insights into yourself as you journal, and again when you revisit past writings.

Encourages Personal Growth – As you express yourself you can integrate life experiences and learnings, explore night dreams, day dreams and fantasies, which in turn allows you to move forward in discovering who you really are.

Better Know Yourself – Journaling helps you create awareness of your beliefs and options, as well as help identify your values. This self discovery reveals different aspects of yourself, and allows you to better know yourself and make changes where you feel there is a need.

Better Communicator – Instead of saying something you may regret at a later stage, journaling is a safe way of expressing feelings and half-formed thoughts until you are ready to communicate them to others in a healthy and constructive way.

Setting Goals – You can clarify what you want and what is most important to you through journaling. Once you have identified those, you can begin to set goals and create action plans to support you in achieving what is important to you.

No Structure – Start today, stop tomorrow and that is how it should be. Journaling allows you to write whenever you feel like it. It is your journal, and your journey – record what you want and when you want based on your personal needs.

Overall journaling can be an effective tool of healing and self-empowerment for everyone, from those suffering great personal battles to those who wish simply to empower and clarify their own unique light and wisdom.

Your journal is your own sacred space, where you honour yourself and the unique light that you bring to our world.

A virtual book tour works the same way as a real-life book tour however, instead of stopping by actual bookstores, gift stores and the like, we are touring the virtual world and stopping by blogs, websites, online stores and radio shows. The virtual book tour enables us to travel the world, three times over without needing a passport or a packed suitcase. 

We had a great response with our tour lasting for 5 weeks travelling all around the virtual world all from the comforts of our home.

We set up a Virtual Book Tours blog and all our participating sites and blogs are listed in the Blogroll as well as profiled each week.  We also held a competition throughout the tour and each week there was a clue to guess a particular ancient goddess.

The winner of our competition won a meditation kit consisting of a ‘How to Guide’ to Meditation, a pack of incense sticks, gratitude/meditation beads, 5 Goddess affirmation cards and an Amethyst Gemstone (the stone of meditation).

The room was decorated in flowers donated by Flax Florist, and Tara had each woman write an affirmation on a painting she painted especially for the day. All who attended received Herbal Teas from The Medicine Room. The lucky door prizes were $100 gift voucher from Boomshankar, a goddess pampering pack from Modern Goddess Gifts and gift cards from Nirvana Visions.

On the day we sold 12 journals, sold 9 White Ribbons and received $25.00 in gold coin donations. 10% of sales were donated to the White Ribbon Day fund. A total of $84.95 AUD was raised.

Here is the painting from the day.

Thank you to all those that participated.

The purpose of our journal is for women to uncover the beautiful, unique and powerful Goddess that they really are. As a beautiful Goddess, we encourage you to focus on aspects of your own life path - the inspiration and happiness you feel, the strength and wisdom you find in times of change, and the dreams and visions you have for your own future.

Each section offers questions for you to explore as well as affirmations for moving forward.

Our companion guided meditation CD provides you with sacred journeys that will inspire and encourage you to create positive life patterns. This will help you recognise and invite magic, inspiration and loving energy into your life.

As part of our launch Tara organised a ‘Goddess Gala 2007′ fundraising event in support of White Ribbon Day, an International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.  The Goddess Gala offered a unique guided meditation experience and showcased newly released tools for the empowerment and celebration of women.

Each year White Ribbon Day is held on 25th November so if you would like to know more about White Ribbon Day, please visit their site, www.whiteribbonday.org.au.

The past 10 months have been hectic with the design, production and release of our journals, Journal for the Modern Goddess and Journal for the Pregnant Goddess, and their companion guided meditation CD.

We aim to write in our blog on a regular basis… we’ll be writing about self publishing, painting, journaling, meditation, empowerment etc.  We will also catch you up with what we’ve done in the last five months, and profile some of our avid supporters.

In the meantime, feel free to explore our site and if you would like to get know more about Tara and I, please visit our About Us pages.

Please don’t be shy… leave a comment or if you have a question, feel free to contact us.

With magical love and light,
Tara and Nicole