Collage for Creative Integration

Collage has become one of the funnest and most helpful ways for me to connect to my subconscious and see what is simmering beneath the surface. Whether receiving intuitive messages, hints for the future, or closing chapters, they have gotten me out of my head and into my body and hands every time. Over the last year I often used them as visual inspiration for my writing, or to figure out what was going on in my head. They helped ground ideas and concepts, or showed me what I had to share – either about my personal life or collective themes.

If you’d like to take part in a small and intimate group collage for creative integration session or series please reach out (and let me know which appeals more: one-off or a four-time group relationship). I love facilitating these spaces, punctuated by sharing circles during different stages of the evening, and would love to expand them more. There’s nothing quite as beautiful as moments of witnessing each other and realising how we’re going through similar experiences in being human. Message me directly if you’d like to get involved in Berlin:

Here’s a more inside look into a year of collage-ing my subconscious (all on paper from 2025 and 2026, scanned):

1. Time was turning from winter to spring, pastel tones were emerging, pulling at my attention. I was thinking a lot about cycles of time, spirals of time, and the wisdom of snails in their slow way of being – always abundantly eating, mating with whoever they want, and steadily moving from one end of life to the other, home always in tow. The snail is so anti-capitalist, trading freely with the Earth and adapting to new circumstances non-stop in a nomadic, free-loving lifestyle that we as humans are often not even allowed by the systems that are.

   The archetype of Diana/Artemis, with her deer and owl friends also came up, eternally calling me into much-needed outdoors time. I was integrating a lot of lessons about slowness and how to take small steps in life in order to grow something big and long-lasting. I found out later that the “deer” is actually a unicorn! And ended up seeing it in person in Zürich by chance.

2. The colours of the heart: green and pink. Fertile rabbits, abundant bees, blossoming flowers. Spring hit with its interlocking springtime symbols, as well as the number three: the maiden, the mother, the crone.

3. This is probably my favourite collage of the year. I made it a couple days after a big mushroom trip and was trying the capture and integrate the wintery tones and cathedral-like structures that were coming up in the session. It was a surprising journey, with emotions and visuals that reflected the wintery season more than I would have expected. Angelic singing, wintery beasts, geometric fractals and shapes all made an appearance. I love the archetypal landscapes that we tune into in these types of journeys, and it was beautiful to see many shapes in it that helped me recognise how we humans are constantly channeling beauty and information from the “other side”. That session helped me really embody an experience of being able to hold a whole spectrum of emotions all at the same time – the classical music I listened to opened up a lot of different emotions within a short amount of time and it was a beautiful paradox of joy and grief, coexisting.

   

4. Early summer brought more questions about creating a lasting legacy while still enjoying the fleeting beauty of life at the same time.

   While making this one I realised how it was bringing out masculine and feminine principles or energies to the forefront: the inner feminine force, desiring beauty and creation and enjoyment. And the inner masculine force wanting to create a kingdom, structure, stability and legacy.

   Reading a couple myth-inspired fictional books last year also drove home the importance of storytelling - in itself something fleeting. But a good story can create a legacy for thousands of years to come, as well – offering up language and imagery that we collectively still draw upon across time.

5. Looking back, I was craving freedom when I made this one. Still in my last corporate job, I was feeling increasingly squished and squeezed and restricted. Portals into the stars, wise owls with wings to fly, the playful freedom of dolphins, the hint of universal connection reached in an intimate embrace, and the connective magic of mushrooms – all symbols of flow and getting lost in the sauce.

6. Listening and relating to the land was a big theme for me in late summer. Feeling like part of the ecosystem as opposed to outside of it.

   There’s a very earthy side of me that sometimes likes to come out, decked in a flannel shirt and boots, knife in hand, senses switched on, reduced to the the bare minimum. With a primal kind of sensing the forest or landscape - the part of me that wants to pack her tent and take off for weeks, living simply, off grid and fully present. Only there with the land, no need to perform. She wants more space. And more tending of the soil.

7. The seventh collage of the year that includes wings! Bird wings, bee wings, angel wings… This collage marked my leaving my last job and the choice between security/predictability/steadiness and the space of pure potential where I don’t know what comes next. I made it before that decision was fully made, but it brought out my own truth in front of me. A message of courage to myself.

8. This collage was bringing me back to Falmouth in Cornwall, England, where I went to art school in 2010–2014. Close, small community. Art and the ocean. The first seeds of where my life on my own terms would take me… the inspiration of the nature there, the food there, the food we cooked together, the art that moved me, the ideas that still sprout in my life, and the mental health issues that I struggled with at the time: slipping between anxiety and depression, struggling to bring my dreams out onto paper.

   And yet it was the beginning of my understanding of what I really need in this life: good food, good movement, good ideas, acknowledged emotions, play, lots of nature, smaller (than Berlin) community, long walks.

9. How does energy enter the body and stick? How do we integrate what we experience? How do we help realisations land? Thoughts on integration were writhing around in my mind as we came closer to the end of the “year of the snake”. Snakes are a symbol for the Earth: with their bodies nearly completely grounded, always moving along the dirt, they are an animal archetypal image of our root chakras in certain traditions, or feature in the fierce appearances of various goddesses and myths around women and healing and wildness. Beautiful and scary, they remind me of intense spiritual experiences where the “good” and the “bad” sit right next to each other.

10. The wild and mysterious feminine, cloaked and elusive, vivid and colourful. In an ideal world: free, blooming, alive, abundant, rooted like long-lasting lichen in a balanced ecosystem. She wants to be unveiled and set loose.

11. Naked in the dark, in the void – the wild place where you find unexpected opals: purity, hope and innocence in the abyss of the unknown caves of the Earth. The dreamtime, the moon, the dimly lit spaces that hold so many answers. Our world is going through so much at the moment: sometimes we need to remember that the void is a beautiful place of unexpected creation. Its scary, we feel naked, but what is coming next is better than we expect.

Thank you so much for joining me in my first year in Substack – whether you recently hopped on or have been with me from the start. With love, Olivia.

I offer quantum healing hypnosis sessions, in Berlin or online: 3-to-four-hour guided journeys that can help you connect to your imagination and intuition, answers around the questions you have in life at the moment, self-healing capabilities and knowledge about your life path. These sessions can also function as a deep nervous system reset, integrating new lessons and energies into the body – or for processing emotions we’ve been unconsciously holding onto.

If you’re curious, check out my website whiterabbitjourneys.com here. I love this method because you and your soul are the boss of where the session goes - I am just there to provide structure, safety, and to amplify our combined energy. In Berlin Kreuzberg in a private praxis, or in online safe-and-cozy-at-home sessions if you’re not in Berlin. Preparation or integration sessions are also possible.