Oracle Art Apprenticeship
A 6 month Photography Apprenticeship for Seers and Mystics
There are stories that our bodies long to tell.
Our body image not only holds the story of who we are, but who we think and feel ourselves to be. Our over all health and wellbeing can be greatly shaped by the mental representation we hold of our bodies. When we combine photography and embodiment we create new experiences of being a body while at the same time generating images that mirror back to us our inherent beauty.
Our bodies are art that tell the healing stories of our time.
My creative work weaves together somatic embodiment practices, nature connection, ritual and photography to create a healing container in which pathways for Authentic Self Expression, so that the Core Self is able to feel brave and safe enough emerge.
For the first time ever, I am inviting you inside that process with me.
The alchemical magic of our body is a creative intelligence that is capable of creating culture. Hidden and unseen dimensions of the body and of our cultural emergence can be represented through photography.
This is your invitation
to photographers and embodiment guides who wish to take others on a journey into their mythic depths through embodiment photography
An apprenticeship requires us to be in deep relationship with an art form.
I see so many new photographers getting into this work, often because of social media trends, or the need so many of us have to visually capture ourselves to share with the world. But I believe there is a much deeper dimension to this work.
This isn’t about channelling our inner goddess or divine feminine in the ways we often see portrayed in nude photography on Instagram. In fact, there are many ways in which participating in that cultural norm can be harmful.
My work is about shifting culture, and integrating profound healing into the photography experience.
This apprenticeship is my way of offering a grounded teaching framework for the therapeutic photography I practice.
Unleashing the Muse is for those who desire to hold therapeutic photography sessions for other people.
Over our six months together, I’ll teach you my personal methodology of therapeutic photography. Together, we’ll explore techniques, principles, and processes for holding brave space for the authentic self to emerge.
Body Art Alchemy has four core pillars. We’ll be building our creative learning and practice on these foundational elements that will offer us a sturdy anchor for our experimentation
Pillar 1/
Portrait Photography
It goes without saying that photography, including specific techniques, tools and approaches, will be a cornerstone of our work together. I see the tool, our camera, as a portal into unseen realms. The camera is a conduit for capturing the interconnectedness of all things. The lens serves as a magic mirror through which the unseen can become seen, the unknowable, known.
While I’ll share my own wisdom and expertise with you, this isn’t about teaching you how to replicate my work. It’s about connecting you to your own approach, your own eye, so you can capture how the world beyond transforms through your unique lens.
Pillar 2/
Embodiment and Somatic Practice
This work requires us to be embodied. And in order to fully embody, we need the skills and practice to do so. Through our time together we will learn how to land deeper in our own bodies, while simultaneously being in a space-holding capacity for the person we are guiding into embodiment space while being photographed.
In order to hold brave space for others, we need to learn to hold that same space for ourselves. You’ll cultivate a deep trust in your capacity to hold yourself through your own vulnerability edges as we join together as a cohort to truly see one another. We’ll build trust in your ability to hold that space for others and be supported to expand our capacity to do so within the program.
This type of work is inherently vulnerable. Discomfort will inevitably arise, sometimes intensely so. Together we’ll develop your capacity to grapple with your own discomfort in grounded, embodied ways. I’ll share practical knowledge about how trauma is stored in the body. You’ll learn to identify cues of trauma patterns being activated in sessions, along with techniques and practices to meet those patterns in a way that holds nurturing space.
Pillar 3/
Animism and Nature Connection
“When we idealize image instead of bodily experience, we find ourselves living in the image. Now most of society is organized in ways that set it apart from its own nature. Nature itself has become an image, an idea, a symbol, a picture in the brain- and so has the body. We live in the image of the body, not in the body” - Stanley Keleman
I believe the body and the self are not separate from the rest of existence. I centralize and weave an animist world view into my creative work. One of the aspects I love about my work is letting the land speak to me, inviting bodies to have direct experience with nature while at the same time creating representative images of earth and body. When I prepare to take images of a client, I tune into their story and their energy, and I ask the land where our ritual work together needs to take place.
We’ll explore how to ask permission to the land when you’re doing a session so you can build a reciprocal relationship with nature. We’ll discuss tools and rituals for orienting people to their bodies using their connection to nature, and how to lean into the elements in the ecosystem to support the container you are creating. We’ll talk about how to co-create with the land and with the body.
Pillar 4/
The Mythic Lens
Mythology is the way that our culture organizes the body’s experience. The images of myth speak to the living process of being human. The archetypal symbols in myth are actually animating patters that live in our bodies. When we have abandoned our bodies, the mythic lens can be used to guide the way out of the somatic wasteland, to point the way to watersheds of somatic vitality, and to symbolize the healing process of our personal and collective mythos.
We'll explore how to create mythopoetic portraits and storytelling sessions in which clients are able to tap into the mythic images that live inside of their bodies, bringing embodiment and creative expression to transmute
The Apprenticeship
Together, we will learn to safely and bravely take people to raw, stripped down places where they can wholly be and express themselves.
While there is a structure to this apprenticeship, the details of how our time together unfolds will depends on the shared needs and desires of the group. I’m committed to weaving in magic and mystery, and finding ways to tap into the poetry of the group’s unique flow with eros, beauty, and life.
Some of what we explore together will be emergent and iterative depending on who is in the space. After all, this is not a course. This is an apprenticeship, and there will be space for everyone’s unique needs to be unearthed and met. In fact, I believe that’s the magic of this space.
That being said, here’s what I know to be true about how our six months together will unfold…
I am actively learning and practicing this work myself. I am not an expert. But I am an experimenter and an emergent strategist- I sense and feel what wants to move, what wants to be expressed, I am at the feel of the Muse and she opens me to the creative life force.
There’s one more thing I want you to know… I struggle to be seen sometimes. I find it incredibly unnerving to show up and do this work. I’m deeply afraid of being vulnerable. And yet, I have learned how to show up in spite of all this.
In our first two months together
we’ll begin by explore our unique creative process by taking self-portraits. Self-portrait is a powerful tool for you to deepen into your own embodiment, to personally experience the power of being on the other side of the lens while experimenting within your creative process
In our first third and fourth months together
we’ll practice leaning into the vulnerability of being photographed by someone else. You will be encouraged to connect with other photographers in your area and to ask them to hold therapeutic space for you. They do not need to be trained as a therapeutic photographer but you will work collaboratively with them in co-creating a therapeutic container
In the second half of our time together
we’ll focus on holding therapeutic photography sessions for other people. This is the deepest edge and you will be mentored through the process of calling in the right clients who are ready for this work, fine-tuning your rituals and embodiment practices and crafting your container.
Meet your guide
I am Jenny Ann Holden
I know deeply in my bones that the artist’s path is the most authentic path for me.
I am a self-taught, self-guided photographer, and I’ve held well over a hundred therapeutic photography sessions.
Therapeutic photography as a form of self-therapy has been a field of study and practice since the 1970s. The traditional form of therapeutic photography is how I began. But offering these types of sessions as a practitioner is a whole new unique terrain I’ve developed over many years of engaging in this work.
I intuitively picked up the camera as a therapeutic tool 10 years ago during a deep depression, struggling with PTSD, living far away from home, and in a toxic relationship.
I remember the day this journey began. I couldn’t leave my apartment because I was so anxious. I was desperate to make art, but found myself trapped in my anxious body. Looking around me, I realized I had a camera. I put flowers in my hair, and I took a photo. And that’s how this all began.
At the time, I simply wanted to experiment with self-expression because I felt so disembodied. But when I saw the photo I took, my own image reflected back to me, something cracked open inside of me. “There I am,” I thought to myself. And I kept going.
For years I’d make an image, edit it, and learn to hold my nervous system, flooded with the emotion and vulnerability of it all. Through my photography, I began to collect these fragmented parts of myself and weave them together into a whole. As I shared my images, I integrated the lost parts of myself and practiced embodying all of me.
My Mentorship Approach
What would it take for us to reweave ourselves and our work back into the dream, into a story that is bigger than ourselves, into a reciprocal relationship with the living world?
What would it feel like to fall back in love with the land and the other-than-humans we share our lives with, to be in communication and kinship with them, to experience the tides, flows and cycles of our own nature again?
These are the questions that I am constantly guided by and helped me to form an animate world view that is at the root of the mentorship that I offer. I am in service to a shift in our culture and believe that as individuals we need to support one another to embody this new story.
We are each seeking our deepest belonging. It’s not my job to tell you what you need in order to live well. I don’t know your life story or path more than you do. It’s my job to hold space for the process to emerge, and to witness and acknowledge your desires as vital to your wellbeing. I will look out for patterns (energetic and habitual), reflect what I’m seeing, ask great questions to help you find your truth, and support you in unraveling what’s entangling you.
We are all inherently good. We are here to remove anything obscuring your brilliance, or your ability to see it. We are here to unhook you from comparison, criticism, and being liked. We are here to help you honor your unique brilliance, and be free to lead in your unique ways.
Our wild, embodied genius is needed. Our most authentic expression is such vital medicine to ourselves, to others but also the culture that we live within. I am here to affirm and create safe pathways for you to authentically express your genius, your embodiment, your stories, your truth.
Our embodied edge reveals the way. I don’t like to dictate what success or accomplishment in this work looks like. What feels true is that when we slow down to listen to our bodies we are letting our bodies move outside of our survival systems in order to experience other ways of knowing. It is from this place that the regenerative path forward emerges and we are able to find our way into the unknown.
