Photo credit: Graham Hebel
“I’ve experienced Ann’s depth of knowledge, genuine kindness, and sincere guidance for over 30 years. Her healing ways and keen perceptions come from a simple, true love of people, coupled with a strong conviction that each of us has within us the wisdom and birthright to craft a joyous fulfilling life.”
Mission for Persons Ready for Real Change
Based on the belief that all clients are naturally creative and resourceful, the collaborative goal is to help individuals connect with their inner authority, the true Self. Clients lead the agenda to identify a need, set an intention, determine a goal, and commit to action steps for sustainable change. Repeated over time, this process deepens contentment, builds resilience, and enhances quality of life.
About Ann West
Jungian Life Coach, Mandala Practitioner & Cellist, and Integrative Nutrition Health Coach
I have been fascinated by human behavior all my life. When a long withheld truth surfaced about the early childhood loss of my father, my desire for wholeness led me onto a new path of healing and growth. I underwent the transformative Hoffmann Quadrinity Process of Integration, and trained to become a Bereavement Counselor at the Branford Hospice and Connecticut Cove for Grieving Children.
Becoming a certified Life Coach, I learned how to ask insightful questions to guide others to find their inner authority and make right choices for themselves. To deepen my understanding of the unconscious psyche, I dedicated another year to immerse in Jungian and Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Jung’s respect and extensive use of the mandala led me to become a certified Mandala Practitioner.
Lastly, to raise the bar for optimal living, I became an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach. Respecting each person’s psycho-spiritual-bio-diversity, Integrative Nutrition fosters healthy lifestyle and food choices. We are what we eat, and we become what we do!
Expressive Arts for Insight and Care of the Soul
I believe the Arts are a vital part of what makes us human, enriching lives and providing healing comfort for people going through difficult times, bereavement, or trauma. I’ve played my cello at Branford Hospice for patients and families. Volunteering for the CT Cove for Grieving Children, I organized Hope Springs Eternal benefit concerts with my colleagues and students, and visited 5 family sites to do Music and Mandalas (sacred circle drawings) with grieving family members, ages three to seventy-five.
How Can We Become Conscious of the Unconscious?
Music•Mandalas•Visual Arts•Poetry•Dance•Drama•Reflective Writing•Dream Work•Mindful Meditation
Mandala Cello Woman
“Mandala Cello Woman” is my newest endeavor. Ancient Traditional Mandalas have been used for focus in Asian meditation. Drawing a personal mandala today provides a pictogram of one’s present physical and emotional state, and helps all persons gain insight and deepen self-awareness. Accompanied by live cello music and materials provided, I guide individuals or groups to draw their own mandalas. Group sessions end with a circle sharing of new mandalas and voluntary comments from participants. For those seeking further insight, I offer individual sessions to work with MARI* symbol and color cards as they relate to the personal mandala.
Photo credit: Graham Hebel
Introduction to Mandalas
Depth Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung is credited with introducing the Eastern concept of the mandala to Western thought and believed this symbol represented the total personality - aka the Self. Jung noted that when a mandala image suddenly turned up in dreams or art, it was usually an indication of movement toward a new self-knowledge. He believed the mandala to be a symbol of wholeness, that held the tension of opposites and allowed their unification, serving as an expression of the self, and representing the sum of who we are.
Art therapist Joan Kellogg spent much of her life developing a system of understanding the wisdom of the mandala, which she called the "Great Round." In her theory about patterns, forms, and colors in mandalas, Kellogg integrated parts of Jung's discoveries with her own research that spanned several decades. She believed that our attraction to certain symbolic shapes, configurations and colors found in mandalas conveys our current physical, emotional, and spiritual condition. Kellogg developed a series of symbol & color cards to represent the evolving unconscious through cyclic life stages depicted on her “Great Round.”
According to Jung, mandalas symbolize "a safe refuge of inner reconciliation and wholeness." They have the potential to call forth something universal within us, perhaps even the proverbial archetypal Self. At the same time, mandalas give us an experience of wholeness amid the chaos of every day life, making the "sacred circle" one of the most effective art therapy interventions for both soothing the soul and meeting oneself.
Integrative Transformation Workshops & Classes
These workshops take a holistic approach to open pathways that lead to authentic happiness and optimal well-being. All workshops utilize breath-work, guided visualization, reflective writing, poetry, discussion, and Music & Mandalas to provide stepping stones to true Self.
Workshops typically meet weekly for a total of 12 hours, in two-hour sessions over a period of six-weeks, or over an extended weekend. Workshops and classes meet in retreat and healing centers in Guilford and neighboring towns on the Connecticut Shoreline. For a current schedule of dates, times, locations, and fees, please call Ann West at (203) 453-0291.
Authentic Living: Inside–Out
Inside Out will provide a safe, confidential space for Self-exploration and Transformation through Writing. This will be an opportunity to revisit your past, foster new awareness, identify core values, breathe into your authentic voice, play with perspectives, step into your Future Self, and speak the big truths. The focus will be on process, not product.
Integrating Loss, Writing to Heal the Soul
Based on Susan Zimmerman’s book, Writing to Heal the Soul, this workshop is a healing balm for everyone, not just writers, suffering from any kind of loss, — whether from injury, disability, loss of a job, loss of a dream, end of a relationship, or death of a loved one. Combining breath-work, expressive arts, and simple yet inspiring writing exercises aimed at easing and ultimately healing sorrow, participants will be led on a journey that is ultimately deeply fulfilling and full of hope.
Happiness is a Choice, not a Chance.
Based on Foster & Hicks’ book, How We Choose to be Happy, the 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People, Their Secrets, Their Stories, augmented by writings of other happiness and positive psychology gurus, Andrew Weil, Tal Ben-Shahar, Martin Seligman, the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, and Thich Nhat Hanh, and enhanced with poetry, quotes, and discussion, this workshop will provide much food for thought and transformation.
Resilience & Grace: The Soul of Aging
Depth psychologist Carl Jung believed Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you’re just doing research . . . The right way to wholeness is made up of fateful detours and wrong turnings . . . The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. This workshop will consider what he meant, look at challenges and opportunities of aging in a time when people are living longer lives, and learn how to lean into our strengths with resilience and grace through wisdom years.
Guided Memoir: Re-visioning Your Life
Anais Nin found that we experience life twice, once in the past and again in memoir. Memoir reconstructs memory. This workshop provides an opportunity for older adults who may be living through involuntary transitions to re-vision their lives as meaningful and something to be proud of. Through reflective writing, sharing, and discussion, participants will develop new friendships and increased feelings of self-sufficiency and well-being.
Soup & Salad Sundays
Enjoy a hands-on Integrative Nutrition Class, preparing wholesome plant-based foods to be shared together at a celebratory candlelight dinner.
“I find it impossible to separate Ann West, the teacher, from Ann West, the human being. She has a talent for both, and she combines them to create a lasting effect upon those with whom she comes into contact . . . She helps others find peace when there seems to be no hope, to discover a path when the world seems very dark indeed. What greater gift can one person give to another?”
