Faces of Your Soul: Rituals in Art, Maskmaking, and Guided Imagery with Ancestors, Spirit Guides, and Totem Animals

This is an excellent book. The exercises are easy to follow and very thought provoking. Anyone who wants to make their life go more smoothly would find this an excellent roadmap.

This book grows on you. It offers wise, creative, transforming practices, draws on many traditions with authenticity and respect. Fascinating journey!

Elise and Kaleo Ching's beautiful new book touched me deeply. The radiant writings and pictures of masks, artwork, and ceremonies are intensely moving and aptly capture their inspiring teachings. Faces of Your Soul allows readers to benefit from the authors' wisdom and sacred artistry. What's so great about this book is that it shows you how to do deep inner work using ritual, art, journaling and guided imagery to reveal your own spiritual essence. Faces of Your Soul takes you off the page and into your own healing path into your center. The book is practical and inspirational. In addition to being visually striking and delicious, the book features Elise's amazing poetry and Kaleo's prayers and stories. As a Jungian psychotherapist, I find this kind of process work to be immensely valuable as a healing modality, and I plan to use many of the guided imagery, art, and journaling exercises with my clients. Elise and Kaleo show us how to bring the archetypal domain to life by unfolding our own healing personal symbolism. If you follow their instructions, you will create masks, art, and rituals that serve as enduring catalysts and representations of inner initiations. I highly recommend this book to all readers who are looking for something to ignite their passion, their inner light, and their connection to the creative principle. Greg Bogart, Ph.D

Overflowing with creative ideas, Faces of Your Soul is a wonderful collage of systems of healing knowledge and wisdom, integrated with art. There is nothing like this anywhere. Kaleo Ching and Elise Dirlam Ching are deep souls who have mastered a startling variety of therapeutic, artistic and spiritual traditions. Adding insights from their fascinating and poignant life experiences, many of which are exquisitely communicated in this book, they've created an amazing blend. The Appendix Gallery of Kaleo's stunning masks combined with Elise's profound poetry is a metaphor for the sublime effectiveness of this synergistic collaboration. Pouring their hearts into this project over many years, they've created something transcending an outstanding book, having the potential to guide many readers to life transforming experiences.

This is a wonderful book that can be read on many levels. The authors combine their years of practice in many traditions including Chinese Qigong and Native Hawaiian lomilomi massage with art, journaling, meditation, mask-making, guided imagery, herbs, poetry, and personal story. The casual reader will gain insights of immediate value. One that I read upon first opening the book was about creating a sacred space for your work. Not only was it a good reminder, but also the book offered specific, practical advice on how to do it. For those who want to go to a deeper level, this book is an invaluable guide. There are dozens of lessons with step-by-step instructions. For example, to access ancestral realms there are directions on how to dress, where to sit, physical postures, breathing, and what to observe, then a guided imagery process, followed by journaling and art. This is followed by two more exercises for ancestors, one of which lasts several days. The areas the book covers are exploring the creative process, spirit guides, totem animals, ancestors, mask sculpting, faces of your soul, and body totems. There is also a great appendix of healing herbs, both Western and Chinese. The book is filled with wonderful photographs of the authors' art and journeys in Hawai'i, their students' art, and their own teachers and kupuna (elders). If you were to practice one lesson a week or even once a month, long before you finished the book your life would be transformed!