Mark [0:00] Hello Sharon. Welcome to the Heart Of Connection Podcast. I’m your host, Mark Randall. And it’s lovely to have you as a guest today for conversation regarding the heart of connection to self, others and All That Is.
Sharyn [0:13] Thanks for having me Mark.
Mark [0:14] No worries Sharyn. We’ve had a number of conversations now, we’ve got a bit of a therapeutic history behind us. Sharyn, just by way of introduction would you mind giving yourself a little bit of an intro to what makes Sharon tick and way from and all the rest of it?
Early Childhood training to the Portiuncula centre in Toowoomba
Sharyn [0:38] Well, I started this work when I was in looking at myself for not about 40. I started training with early childhood, I did my training with early childhood development. I’ve really found that there was so much more to who I was by working with the child because it just bought up a lot of emotional stuff within me. I ended up going to work or do my training in Emotional Release at a Portiuncula centre in Toowoomba. And from there I sort of got on a roll. I really wanted to know more about who I was, so I did interactive drawing therapy because I’m such a visual person. I then worked at Lifeline and the lifeline training, telephone counseling. After this, I went to do family constellation work learning the family patterns because we just not born into a family for no reason at all. We seem to carry the patterns from past generations, emotionally and physically. I found that really helpful in whom learning about myself. I think grief and loss counseling. I went on to do soul collage card, which explored the soul at a different level where and the shadow. So was that was fairly good me and it was a good tool to take into my counseling practice. After this, I did mixed media artwork and I feel that that’s where my calling is because I’m such a visual person. Now I do workshops using mixed media art and it takes clients into a different space altogether. It gives them, they can see where they are emotionally within their work or their collage. I find that that’s the most fascinating place for me to be at the moment. So, I don’t know if that helped you to know a little bit about who I am?
Finding My Art Work Calling
Mark [2:58] Do you enjoy your work?
Sharyn [3:00] I love the artwork, and I really enjoy, you know, people think with their artwork, that’s all it is, it’s just art. It is a calling from the soul. I really loved the energy change within the person who was sitting at my table or in my studio and just watching them. They think, gosh I didn’t realize that that image held so much importance to who I am and the messages it contained, that my soul has brought up for me to look at. It’s a great, great way and a gentle way of looking at your emotional being.
People think with their artwork, it's all it is, it's just art. It is a calling from the soul. Click To TweetMark [3:49] Does it allow people to connect to their emotional being?
Sharyn [3:52] Yes. It sort of gives them that distance. I find that working with people they said oh, I don’t look at my emotional stuff. I don’t want to go there and it’s frightening to a lot of people to really get in touch with their feminine side. I’d rather run up mountains or go for a jog or go for a swim rather than sit and talk about their emotional being or the emotional health. When you do artwork with them, it sort of gives them that distance. This is just sticking bits of paper on a sheet or a board or something. When you really work into it, they really touch a deep part of your soul and their emotional hurts. This surprises them.
Art Work Connects Really Touches Deep Part of Your Soul
Mark [4:45] Does it enable them to externalize it? Does it enable them to externalize it by putting it out on paper? Is it external to themselves, it is themselves but it’s external to themselves?
Sharyn [4:57] Yes it is and then I think and I feel so much more settled within themselves. After they’ve done a piece of artwork and then I encourage them to talk to that image and for them to get out, what this image is actually saying to them. I had a lady at one last workshop and she said I’m really really not liking what I’ve produced today. I said, “what is it,” she said, “oh it’s just too busy, it’s very messy and I just don’t like it. I said well can you tell me what’s going on in your life now? She stopped and she looked at me and she just burst into tears and that’s it! That’s what’s happening in my life and I don’t like being there. So it’s the image brings it all out and the soul brings it up for her to look at or for the person to look at and then they settle within themselves after that.
Therapy Modalities Can all Blend
Mark [6:05] When you said before about talking to the image, is that using your ‘voice dialogue‘ training. Is that incorporating some of that?
Sharyn [6:13] I feel that a lot of the modalities or blend into one another. Yes, you can Gestalt a particular image in your artwork and you can do it through ‘voice dialogue’. I think they all blend. It is about the image telling you a story? Can you tell me the story behind that image? So it is, allowing and just you write down or journal with the image that you’ve produced? That generally leads onto what is the message that it is giving you? It goes into Soul Collage modality of asking the image what message to the have for you? What gift is it presenting today? It goes that much deeper? It does bring in Gestalt and does bring in Voice Dialogue but most of all, the best part it’s all about who you are!
Connecting to Others Is Bring A Gift of Self Reflection
Mark [7:21] As you’re working with people, what’s the connection to yourself? Can you describe what happens to the connection to you?
Sharyn [7:28] Well, I believe that every person who sits opposite me is a part of who I am. They also bring a message to me. So, it is a gift. Working with people is a gift. I think, well what is the gift that this person is bringing to me today? So there’s that connection. It is a heart connection. I can go with that and the energy that is presented to me is the energy that I work with within myself.
Working with people is a gift. I think, well what is the gift that this person is bringing to me today? So there's that connection. It is a heart connection. Click To TweetSeeing Myself in that Other Person
Mark [8:02] Can you describe what happens in your heart when you have that connection?
Sharyn [8:08] Well, I see myself in that other person. I have that instant connection. It’s like, I believe that when a person presents or comes to me for any counseling, we have a lot in common anyway. Otherwise, that person will not be there. I see them as a mirror image of myself and we have something to share. We have a gift to give to one another. It does make my heart sing and I feel sort of very uplifted after the session.
Mark [8:45] Just listening to share that story, it sounds like there’s a lot of energy in that connection.
Sharyn [8:50] Yes, there is.
It is Deeper than Empathy Touches the Soul
Mark [8:56] Would we call that an empathy? Or is it deeper than empathy?
Sharyn [9:08] I think it’s soul deep Mark, I think it’s deeper. It touches a deeper place and I think I know that sometimes when I share or do a speech, I did some speeches at the centre against sexual violence and I shared my story. I had a lot of other people come up to me and say, that could have been me talking. You could have been me, talking up there. So it does go deeper than just empathy. It is a soul connection. I do believe that. You know, we are part of the one, so we’re all connected somehow.
So it does go deeper than just empathy. It is a soul connection. Click To TweetMark [10:02] How do you work at keeping your connection to your soul active?
Continuing to Work on My Self-Development
Sharyn [10:11] I continue to work on myself. I do believe that around the corner there’s going to be another something else to look at or that’d be something more to see. At the moment I am learning and learning different things but in running courses, in sharing, I am continually looking at who I am. I think I have more clarity around and now realized going through my life for 67 years I haven’t really known who I am. I think I’m basically or just getting in touch with, who the real Sharon is. It’s not to please anybody else. It’s not just doing a job. It is about getting a great satisfaction for me. It’s not for anybody else, it’s really for me. Though it’s taken me this long, to get to be in this space.
Mark [11:35] When stuff comes up from around the corner, what do you notice happens to your soul connection and connection to yourself?
Sharyn [11:43] Well, sometimes it zonks me. I could just want to curl up in a ball and sleep. I get some sort of lung thing happening like an asthma start. I get sick, I can get sick from it. So I am thinking, there’s something here that’s bringing up past issues and I need to look at it. Some past emotion that’s coming up to present itself, what is it.
Past Emotions are needing our Connection
Mark [12:17] Is the past emotion is that needing our connection in the here and now?
Sharyn [12:25] I think it comes up yes it does. It’s past happening, a past behavior patterning that hasn’t served me. I need to clear it or I need to do more clearing around that. I think as an example of that, is might be where I feel threatened and someone’s going to take something from me and going to do it forcefully and they’ll go away gratified and I’m going to be left in the heap. So it goes back to childhood sexual abuse. It is the sense that I’m going to be raped again. I’m going to done over, I’m going to trapped, you know, it’s that sense of my energy is going to be drained from me. So, it is about thinking, working and honoring that inner child and saying you know looking at, there it is again.
Healing the Inner Child Within
Mark [13:26] How much connection does she need from you?
Sharyn [13:28] The child? Now and I’m satisfying my child because I’m doing a lot more artwork. As a child artwork or just sitting down was being lazy. You’re trying to get out of doing stuff. It wasn’t encouraged. I think my mother did it when I was six. She would always set me up with a coloring in book or collage work. Now I’m looking at it as a way to satisfy myself and it is the way it pleases me. I can invite people in to enjoy it with me as well.
Mark [14:10] It sounds like it sounds like an amazing connection to the inner child?
Sharyn [14:14] Oh yeah, we both happy (laughter). It makes other people happy too.
Mark [14:22] Is she smiling as your sharing this story?
Sharyn [14:25] Laughing really. It really and it is nice to share that because I have workshops here and I’m running workshops with women who run with the wolves. Reading a story than doing some artwork and then doing the sharing. Everyone who comes here said, just love coming to your place as it so relaxed and you seem to be really relaxed in running the thing (workshop).
Workshop Collective Connection to Heal Ourselves
Mark [14:54] Is there a collective connection there in that space?
Sharyn [14:59] Oh yes. A lot of the people have been trained in other professions like accountants, office workers, hospital administrators, and nurses and are known as caring people. When they’re allowed to play, I think it lets or gets your inner child at play. They love it. They love the work they go home with. They’re very satisfied with their connection to other women. They’re satisfied with the connection. We share food, we share a whole day together and it just works out beautifully. I just feel like a family because we all have such a great rapport. Sometimes my husband comes down and joins in as well. There you go it works for men too.
Men & Self-Development A Much Needed Growth
Mark [15:59] I think we men are needing it much more and we do really need it. Hopefully, the door, men can open the door to start looking in there and do the healing on their inner child. I think the world would be a better place if we did.
Sharyn [16:14] My husband was in a bikie gang in Melbourne in the 60s and now he has men sitting around him listening to his family constellation work. What has come up for him in family constellation work and how he’s found out about his mother and his father and the past family patterning, so he gets a better understanding of who he is. It can work for everybody. I think he’s a great example, where the blokes use to come up to his shed, to drink beer now they sit up there and drink cups of tea and share stories about their children and their grandchildren. They like to explore what Jim’s been doing with his emotional stuff.
Mark [17:03] That’s great. How do you connect to others? There was that collective connection before that you have in the workshops. What happens to the connection when people are bit disconnected?
Sharyn [17:21] What disconnected from the work or during the art you mean?
Mark [17:25] Yeah, both.
Love Holding the Group Space
Sharyn [17:29] I think being in a group it’s my joy for a start that holds the space. If there is a disconnection, I usually get everyone working on their artwork. I will take that person aside and we’ll go around and work through. What is happening to you and can you talk it through with me. It works that way or I’ll get them to get a symbol to tell me where they are now. They will choose a symbol so we’re going and Gestalt that and that usually brings them to a blockage in a childhood where it might be at school. Their art was never as good as anybody else’s. Their art teachers ripped their artwork to bits into it and a beam and they’ve never gotten over that emotion. It can be bad or I had a person here who was a psychiatrist and she was saying that she wanted to go to art school after high school. Her father said no you’re not going to do that you’re going to get something that will earn you real money. She followed what her father wanted and she is such a brilliant artist, but she doesn’t believe her work is good enough and will never be good enough.
[19:07] Old Childhood Message Holding People Back
Mark [19:07] Those childhood messages from school. If we comparing yourself to other artists that are really talented and we can view ourselves as not being good enough. When you get triggered by stuff, can those triggers sometimes throw you off your connection and make it and trigger a disconnection and yourself?
Sharyn [19:34] Very much so and a good example of that because I joined a group who were doing mixed media art journaling. It was the heroines journey and the teacher of the group, it wasn’t intentional but she said, I was doing my art in my way. She said, “you really do think outside the square don’t you Sharon”? All of sudden, I just took that on straightaway the negative. That is how I was brought up. Everything was negative. There weren’t any positive message messages given to me much as a child. So it is that I took it as a negative and I’m thinking what does that mean. What does she mean, isn’t my work was enough and I went into that not good enough part of myself.
Moving From Heart & Soul into Old Mind
Mark [20:31] Did you go back up into your mind there?
Sharyn [20:32] Yes I did.
Mark [20:34] What happened to your Heart and your Soul?
Sharyn [20:40] Just dropped.
Mark [20:42] Just dropped. By being in the mind, were you then disconnected from your heart and your soul?
Sharyn [20:46] Disconnected from the group.
Mark [20:50] And disconnect from the group?
Sharyn [20:51] That’s part of my patterning in life, is I don’t fit into the family. I don’t fit in anywhere. I am a misfit. The sexual abuse (early childhood) when I was such a young child. That sexual abuse set me apart from everybody else in the family. I was dirty, I was unclean, I was disgusting. So how would fit anywhere being so dirty?
Mark [21:21] And so disconnected.
Sharyn [21:23] Exactly. Those sorts of things now I’ve got quite a good handle on it. Thinking here’s that patterning coming up again. It took me a long time to believe that I was any good. It didn’t matter what anyone said to me. They say I love your artwork, it’s different. Being different to me is another big trigger for me. Is being different is like a swear word, really. Being about being different too is like that okay to be different. Like that’s okay. Okay, to be different.
Soul and the heart is a really important place for you to stay connected
Mark [21:59] Would it be fair to say that what I’m hearing today is that the soul and the heart is a really important place for you to stay connected? Otherwise, if you step outside of that, or lose connection to that and go back up into your mind, there are all the old tapes?
Sharyn [22:16] Yes and it makes you sick, Mark. It makes me sick if I go back into the past reruns of some of my childhood. It makes me sick because I was a very sickly child. I asthmatic and covered in eczema. So it sends me back to that place. The most important thing for me now today’s is I can breathe. I’m not reliant on asthma drugs. I have changed by looking at my emotional issues. It has cleared my heart chakra, it has cleared my lungs and it has cleared my way of feeling or being in the world. Does that make sense?
Mark [23:07] Makes lots of sense. Oh, yeah for sure. I’m following it. It is beautiful to just listen and follow the story. To follow your story and follow your energy there. The clearing for the lungs to just open up, your heart and lungs. That’s all that hearts chakra area.
Sharyn [23:23] It is very much emotional stuff.
Emotions in the Body
Mark [23:29] I wonder where is our felt sense of emotion lives in our humanness?
Sharyn [23:36] Well if you look at a differently, my husband thinks through his stomach, which is like, I had a gut feeling about that. So he will think from his gut. He said, “I shouldn’t have trusted that person. I had a gut feeling that wouldn’t be any good. So now, he’s depending on what his gut is telling him. We operate out of the three, either head, heart or gut. It depends where you operate best from.
Mark [24:07] How do you stay? Sorry. I was just wanting to check in with, do you have a daily practice or a daily process that enables you to stay connected to your heart and soul?
Head can be a Busy Mind but Art is My Connection
Sharyn [24:21] Well, it’s mainly I if I get any busyness, like, if I start going into my head too much, and I get too much business there I go out and I do art. Art is my connection. It is, I can do a piece about work every day. I think that’s one thing. Another thing is like, I do really love to look at plants and I love taking photographs of them. I love the birds I can just go and stand in my yard and just watch the birds. I think that’s a part of my daily practice. Someone said here’s Sharon watching the trees growing again. That is what I do, I blissed out and nothing else. I can’t hear anything else except where I am. I might be focusing on a bird and might be just looking at the leaves in the trees. It’s just sitting in nature really and feeling. Mark for me, just to be able to breathe is just an amazing gift to me.
Nature of Birds and Trees Is a Connection
Mark [25:41] Where does that connection take you? When you’re there looking at the birds and the leaves of the trees? Where do you experience that connection taking you?
Sharyn [25:52] Peace. It is complete peace.
Mark [25:58] Is that like an infinity?
Sharyn [26:04] It’s a connection with everything. It’s like we are “all that is’ yeah, we are part of it. It’s a part of my life. It is like I am that leaf on the tree. I am a part of this scene. It is like a complete connection to everything.
Mark [26:29] Does your sense of self-dissolve?
Sharyn [26:32] I’ve never looked at it in those words, I just feel like I blend in.
Mark [26:39] Become one with the universe, a is sort of a oneness?
Episode 24 ~ The heART of My Souls Connection – My Conversation with Sharyn O’Brien Murfett Click To TweetPart of Everything is A Oneness and Light
Sharyn [26:42] Just become part of – part of everything.
Mark [26:48] What happens to your body when you become part of everything?
Sharyn [26:51] It just light. I can just feel completely I can breathe, it’s like I’m breathing with all that’s around me. Everything goes so much deeper. When I look at a tree, I’m not just looking at the tree but it’s so much deeper.
Mark [27:07] Are you breathing at a cellular level?
Sharyn [27:10] I don’t know. I don’t think about it, I just do it. It comes automatically to me I don’t think about what I’m doing, I just relax into it.
Mark [27:22] What’s that light, like in your body?
Sharyn [27:26] The light?
In the Lightness, I Dissolve like Something Dropped in Water
Mark [27:28] Yeah, the lightness in your body. When you said before, it is just light, I feel light, it’s peace. How does your body respond to that?
Sharyn [27:37] Just so relaxed. I just feel really relaxed. I never, you know, I just find it’s hard to explain. It’s like I dissolve into it. Does that make sense? It’s like when you drop something into the water you can just watch it dissolve and that’s how I feel. Just like I dissolve into that, into that place. I know I can do it quite easily and then I can stay in that place for a long time. I do it with my husband as well. I can be with him, like on the drive down to Melbourne, he listens to cricket and everyone says doesn’t that drive you mental? I don’t even hear it like I can block it out and I’m in my own space. I don’t know how to put that in words so much. He’ll say are you with me? No, not really. He said, did you hear that? No, I can block those sorts of things I’m just going to myself.
Inner Child Is Happy in Solitude
Mark [28:50] What happens to your inner child when you’re in that space?
Sharyn [28:53] She is very happy. I think it was because I was always sent to my room for being obnoxious as a child. I was always sent away from the family because I’d be kicking out or screaming or whatever. Mum would send me to my room and I think that’s the best gift she could possibly give me. I’d go into my room and that’s what I feel like I do now. Go into my own room, my own space and I can just bliss out, I don’t have to connect. So in sending me to my room, I think or that’s what I call it now, I’ve just blocked off everything else.
Mark [29:38] Just checking in on the space there. It sounds so peaceful and sounded so healing and just being so present there.
Sharyn [29:47] To my friends who are very busy people they don’t understand because I like to have a lot of people around them. I don’t necessarily need that. I’m happy in my own little world. I think mum used to call me she’s gone off to La La Land again. That is okay because in that in that world, I’m happy. I feel completely relaxed. I don’t have to take anything else on board, except maybe the birds singing or the trees or something like that.
Mark [30:25] Its such a powerful connection to yourself?
Finally getting to Know Me
Sharyn [30:27] Well, yes. I think I have done a lot of work. As you know, the work we do is very powerful. I think now as I said before, I feel like I’m getting to know Sharon. It’s taken me this amount of time to get to know who I am without having to please anyone, without having to do anything much for anybody else, unless it pleases my heart. Unless it pleases me, I don’t necessarily want to do anything to please others anymore.
The Gift of my Deep Empowerment
Mark [31:13] It sounds like a real empowerment?
Sharyn [31:17] It is powerful and it is nice (laughter). I think I used to wear myself out doing for everybody else. Making sure everyone else was happy. Making sure everyone else was seen to and I think, in that I couldn’t see myself. I couldn’t see that I needed the help.
Mark [31:52] Can I ask what’s it like now to see Sharon?
Sharyn [31:58] Yeah, it’s a whole new experience. A whole new experience.
Mark [32:00] Is she pleased to be seen by you?
Sharyn [32:20] Well this is new to me, as I said. I was talking to my husband the other day and I said to him what is it that we are afraid of? What is it that was afraid of doing? It is stepping into our power or my power. Because when you step into my power, there’s that fear because of these more learning experiences. The fear of getting ridiculed, the fear of being tested, the fear of being disliked. This is a real test for me speaking to you today. One of my family patterns is, I don’t have the words, I am not articulate, I don’t have the knowledge. No one’s going to understand what I’m saying. My abuse was when I was 18 months old, wasn’t able to speak, I was preverbal. I couldn’t express what was happening to me. Now I still carry that pattern a little bit. It is to have that belief in myself that I do have the words. I do know what I’m saying. I can stand in what I know to be my truth because I’ve experienced it all.
My Message for Younger Women
Mark [33:26] Sharyn do you have any messages for any young women coming through the world today?
Sharyn [33:37] Is that the question?
Mark [33:39] Yeah, any messages that you have? You know, what would you encourage them from your experience? What would you encourage them to do?
For Younger Women to Believe in Themselves
Sharyn [33:48] To believe themselves and really to put yourself first. I think as young women and as young mothers, I think we do put everything, put ourselves on the back burner. I’ve said to my daughter when she said, I’m just the mother. No, you’re not just a mother!! The mother is the hub of the household. She is the key to the family. So you’ve got to believe in yourself that a woman is all powerful so that we are a long time to believe that what I was doing because I always wanted to be a mum. If someone asked me when I was a child, what do you want to be? I want to be a mum want to get married and be a mother.
Mark [34:00] Sharyn, I just want to thank you for the power of that connection, I just felt, as you shared that story, just then. It was really powerful just to hear what you just said to your daughter. There is so much power in it.
Sharyn [34:15] She is a powerful woman. I think being a mother is the most powerful job in the world.
To believe themselves and really to put yourself first. Click To TweetDivine Mother She Got me through
Mark [35:04] The Divine Mother?
Sharyn [35:07] Just a mother!
Mark [35:10] Yeah, I’m wondering sometimes on whether women to connect to that divine energy of the Divine Mother?
Sharyn [35:16] Well, I think that’s what saw me through. I think, in all my drawings or mandalas after a lot of the sessions that I did do I had drawn the mother, the Divine. That was powerful for me. So I hope I am answering the questions okay.
Mark [35:36] It’s lovely, there’s no judgment and it is what it is.
Sharyn [35:41] Yeah, I truly do believe that if women, the young women out there, I really do believe put themselves the first time it’s not about pleasing the men in lives, it is really about pleasing themselves.
Mark [35:59] Sharyn, just really mindful of time I trying to keep the conversations to about 30 minutes for travel time for people. Thank you so much for what you’ve shared today. It’s beautiful to have that connection to and listen to your story and feel the energy of connection as you’re sharing the narrative around it.
Sharyn [36:19] You’re welcome Mark always lovely talking to you.
Mark [36:22] Ditto and let’s stay in touch and I look forward to us doing a Soul Collage Cards workshop in January.
Sharyn [36:28] I’m looking forward to that to.
Mark [36:29] Namaste.