The Dance of the Critic & the Muse – Shiloh Sophia

Experience proven, hands-on practices to tame your Inner Critic, open to the joy of authentic self-expression, and invite your Muse to dance with you!

How would it feel to access the deepest place of clear wisdom within you?

Are you compelled by the idea that you can curate your own consciousness?

Ready to take an adventure into the unknown that will rock your world?

If so, we have an invitation for you!

Join us… for a “dance with the Critic and the Muse,” led by visionary artist and poet Shiloh Sophia.

This is an experience you’ve never had before… revealing the keys held by your hidden self.

Sound like a big promise? It is.

The Dance of the Critic & the Muse: A 7-Step Initiation Into the Voice & Vision of Your Soul is a map —  and you are the cosmic pilgrim, the only one who can unlock the deepest insights that impact every area of your life.

You may wonder what the Critic and the Muse have to do with this? But we can’t tell you all the riddles now, because you have to say yes first…. Will you come?

Liberating Your Unique Voice & Vision

Do you sense something — within you — blocking your ability to clearly SEE, HEAR, and embody your true Self… something that’s been there for a long time?

Or, perhaps, you’re feeling stuck, or seeking a new approach to an old challenge, health issue, or lifelong desire…

Get The Dance of the Critic & the Muse – Shiloh Sophia

The truth is, we’re ALL creative, and we can all revel in the liberation and fulfillment of a self-expressed life. This has nothing to do with talent, but with the reality that you have a unique voice and vision!

Many of us have unknowingly blocked our way to the space within. A place that can be playful and yet deeply wise — where we actually live and where body, soul, and mind unite.

How would it feel to heal the fragmentation of all the voices, all the selves, and all the stories?

If you’re ready for a new story, you’re in the right place.

Many of us have experienced our own brain and mind as a battleground, where our Inner Critic is in constant conflict with our creative desires.

Yet, have you met your Muse?

The Muse holds the juiciness of our senses and body — what we feel, love, desire, and need to embody and express our wisest and wildest self. The Muse creates the new neural pathways in the brain in connection with the body.

For many, this creative place of the imagination is cluttered with misbeliefs, negative behavior patterns, unreasonable standards, and unhelpful stories (exactly what the Inner Critic often feeds upon), causing our inner dialogue to run amok with confusion and criticism, killing our self-confidence.

Even if you’ve done lots of inner work to discover “who you are,” your core identity can remain illusive in this familiar chatter.

Your limiting default settings can become invisible, and you can become oblivious to your own misperceptions about yourself and the world around you. You might not even know that your soul’s truest voice has been squelched…

Perhaps you haven’t heard it clearly… ever.

It’s time for change…

Ignite Your Self-Expression — the Pathway to Your Hidden Self

Despite the barriers you and your Inner Critic may have created, the way to your hidden self, which holds the keys to your true self, is not lost…

To be guided by the self-aware and self-expressed you, there are changes that need to happen in the mind, the body, and the field. When these three aspects of self are not in alignment, there’s a lack of coherency.

We may try a number of approaches to heal the fragmentation between our inner and outer worlds and selves, but unless allaspects of us are in for the journey, the changes won’t be long-lasting.

There’s also a “Gatekeeper” that masquerades as your Inner Critic…

… an inner guardian that can be difficult to get past, blocking new ideas, growth, and pathways. It cannot be coerced or taken by force. It cannot be silenced or cut off. You have likely tried that already.

Get The Dance of the Critic & the Muse – Shiloh Sophia

You have to be more clever than the Inner Critic, which is difficult to do. You have to feel much more than desire, because the Gatekeeper is there to protect you from making choices that make you too vulnerable.

What we haven’t learned enough about until now, is how to actually alchemize how the Critic operates, returning it to its natural design and function.

The key to taming your Inner Critic, and engaging your Gatekeeper, is to invite your Muse to dance. The Muse can then show you the shortest route to where you’re going…

… into the place where you’ll find the voice and vision of your soul.

Discovering how to dance with the Muse is what this course is all about.

Muse is the vocabulary that Shiloh Sophia uses to be able to speak to your creative flow. We are all quite familiar with speaking about the vocabulary of the Critic, but not as familiar with speaking about the part of us within that is playful, daring, wild, and wants to have a good time! The Muse also holds the insights into your personal domain of genius.

In this transformative 7-part adventure with Shiloh, you’re going to discover clever, risky, and enjoyable ways to get past the Gatekeeper, tame your Inner Critic, and access the vision and voice of your soul.

What at first may seem like an unresolvable paradox — getting your Inner Critic to let down its guard and allow the often illusive Muse to come out and play — dissolves into a dynamic relationship that takes place in the brain, in collaboration with the heart, hands, and senses within the body.

You will learn a practice called Metacognitive Drawing that enables you to quickly bypass the way the Critic operates.

The Critic isn’t as much tamed as it is alchemized into the most natural state of operating that part of your brain. When this transition happens, you set your creativity free… and it has nothing to do with talent.

You’re going to learn ways to make peace with your Inner Critic, which will not only allow you to lure the Muse out of hiding and allow your authentic self-expression to flow… it will also open up your life to more possibilities, magical synchronicities, and greater joy, as your outer world starts to align with the desires, loves, and dreams you hold inside you.

During this exciting, 7-part exploration of authentic self-expression, you’ll take a deep dive into uncharted territory and:

• Listen to the voice of your Inner Critic and discover how it may be causing you to miss important messages from your soul
• Discover how your brain holds outdated ways of being in place, and how you can start to rewire your neural pathways to expand your creativity — and your life
• Learn how to invite right-brain access in first, when considering your ideas, and how this give you access to your genius
• Use the powerful tool of Intentional Creativity® as a healing and resiliency practice
• Learn the freeing process of Metacognitive Drawing and how it helps you access and listen to your thoughts, voice, and vision
• Begin a practice of intention and inquiry and be delighted at how asking unanswerable questions invites the brain into the future
• Begin to access your hidden inner world more successfully than you have using other approaches to healing and self-expression
• Increase your capacity to think clearly and make distinctions between the voice of your Inner Critic and the voice of your soul
• Discover creative practices that activate insight — almost on demand — that you can easily continue to use every day to make important life choices
• Take a look at how our ancestors used creativity, and how the overculture is influencing us without us even knowing it
• Learn surprising and enjoyable practices for accessing the place within you where the voice and vision of your soul live
• Bring your mindfulness into another dimension through combining your meditation with physical actions
• And much more…

The transformation that is possible through Intentional Creativity is beyond what I could have imagined for the work. When I was starting out in my early twenties, I witnessed the very efficient alchemizing results in my students. So I set about discovering how to speak to that change, giving language to the invisible happening.

Combining quantum physics, neuroscience, psychology, the senses of the physical body, making form and the field as my matrix of discovery. When I finally found out how to share it easily, through being able to name the phenomena, I knew I had to share it with the world. What took me most of my life to learn, I can now teach in a few hours of depth diving. That’s what I call “tea with the Muse.” I learned it from my teachers Sue Hoya Sellars and my mom, Caron McCloud, and now I share it with others around the world.

When I began to truly see that all of our ancestors in every place in the world created in this way, it rocked my world. This isn’t so much a new technology but rather a re-membering into our earliest origins of communication in image and language.

— Shiloh Sophia

Experience the Healing Power of Intention

In research done through The Intentional Creativity Foundation, it was discovered that over 80 percent of those working with creativity to heal were able to move from victimhood to self-empowerment, and experienced significant healing from emotional, sexual, and physical trauma. They also cited that Intentional Creativity was a more effective and efficient approach than most other therapies they had tried.

In research with more than 500 Intentional Creativity students, 93 percent said they experienced creativity as a mindfulness practice; 90 percent have experienced a shift in recurring emotional pain through creative process; and 90 percent said that creativity helped them maintain a healthy outlook.

Shiloh Sophia, founder of The Intentional Creativity Foundation says, “When we find freedom from the trauma of our stories, we can invent our own legends, and do the sacred work of organizing our consciousness.”

She has dedicated her soul work to the study and practice ofcreativity as a pathway to consciousness and healing.

Her prolific intuitive painting process is the foundation of her groundbreaking work on how Intentional Creativity® can give voice to the soul.

Her proven methods for “creating with mindfulness” have helped tens of thousands to gain the insights needed to unlock the hidden self. Her creative processes have been taught by University MA and PhD programs, at the United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women, and by hundreds of certified teachers and coaches.

In this exciting new course, unlike any online program The Shift Network has offered before, Shiloh will skillfully, yet playfully, show you the way to discovering, embodying, and enjoying your authentic self-expression…

She believes that each one of us has our own information, our own content to bring forth. By gaining access to your often hidden interior spaces, you’ll begin to know what you already know in an expanded and exciting new way.

This sort of informed intuition, you’ll discover, thrives on what lies beyond the obvious and known…

Don’t worry about your artistic skills!

This isn’t traditional drawing, and it isn’t drawing or writing what we see outside — it’s drawing from within, and working with intuition. You’ll also be invited to be brave, and share what you’re working on in the Muse Salon and private community group.

Why drawing and writing?

When you engage your hands to write or draw, you access the right and left brain, which expands your capacity to think in divergent and original ways.

You’ll discover a type of drawing that isn’t about knowing how to draw, but about what happens in the brain, your eyes, and your body WHILE you’re in the act of creating.

The Dance of the Critic & the Muse is an invitation to cease the inner battle of your Critic and Muse, set down your armour, and embody more amore as you enter the liberating flow state…

Yes, if you show up you will experience flow. And for the first time in a long time, the Critic will lay down the weapons of abuse and take up the tools of building something new.

That’s when the love, spontaneity, and creativity that’s available within you — AND your authentic self-expression — can truly ignite!

Greater Connection Through Video Teachings & Interactive Muse Salons

Shiloh’s engaging (and enchanting!) teachings will be brought to life through video — and our first-ever Muse Salons! The Muse Salons will be interactive “circles” with Shiloh and your global community where you’ll share Q&A time, receive guided practices, and deepen your experiences together. You can start and stop and take your time to move through these processes.

Connecting via video is easy (plus we’re here to help you if you need support). You can also connect via audio, either through the internet or on your phone.

What You’ll Discover in These 7 Modules

In this 7-step transformational journey, Shiloh will guide you through the fundamental spiritual skills and competencies you’ll need to tame your Inner Critic, rewire your neural pathways, and open you to authentic self-expression.

This course will feature Video Teachings and Muse Salons with Shiloh, plus guided experiential practices. Each session will build harmoniously upon the previous ones so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to heal old wounds and bring more pleasure and clarity into your life.

Module 1: Gate of AWAKENING 

Encounter the Gatekeeper

A new voice awaits you… Will you dare to listen with the ears you only sometimes use?

Have you been curating your consciousness or is it forming without your consent? Your mind has been shaped by what you hear, take in, and give meaning to, but how can YOU help “shape” your own mind?

Unlocking Gate 1 is an initiation into waking up and becoming conscious about how your inner voice works and how to take charge of the stories you tell about yourself.

At Gate 1, you’ll:

• Prepare for a New Inner Guide: Become conscious of how much impact your Inner Critic has had on you, and get ready for a much needed “change in management”
• Shift Your Neural Pathways: Learn the science behind “making form,” as you explore and play with what is actually happening in your brain when you create… You’ll learn to shape your brain by choice!
• Explore Image & Language: Discover the powerful, mindful practice of Intentional Creativity® and how your local and non-local mind collaborate to help you form insights
• Learn Metacognitive Drawing: Become conscious of thinking and feeling, while you’re moving the pen, to awaken your brain for the journey and ignite co-creation
• Awaken to Your Inner Voice: Encounter the Critic and the Muse within you and engage in an internal narrative to hear what you’re truly saying
• Transform Your Story: Explore the story that is “running you” and enter into a relationship and dialogue with your Gatekeeper
• Heal Your Imagination: Explore what’s needed by the Muse to help you experience your true Self and flow state expression
• Cross the Veil of Form: Make the invisible visible through drawing as an embodied experience to expand your connection to your inner world
• Inquire Into Dreaming: Explore the part of your dream that wants to come forward, and embody its feeling tone, which your Inner Critic may have been hiding
• Meet Your Inner Narrator: Discover how you listen to your soul’s voice, and why what you’ve been doing isn’t silencing your Critic’s “attacks,” so you can start to shape your own inner narrative

Module 2: Gate of ACTIVATION 

Integrate Your Inner & Outer Worlds

Who looks out from your eyes? Who is it that is doing the seeing? Will you dare to look yourself in the face and see who lives there?

We are all images, we even see our self as an image… And at the root of an image is imagination. So, how you think about yourself and your self-image are then quite integral to one another.

Yet, seemingly magically, how you perceive yourself, you’ll discover, shifts as you integrate your inner and outer worlds, dissolving the illusion of separation.

In this module, you’ll discover how Intentional Creativity works within your brain and neural pathways to make change — you’ll think it, inquire into it, draw it, see it, move it, know it, be it, and share it.

You’ll develop a somatic wisdom of the Muse and Critic as an integrated voice. They’ll continue to move separately, yet, you’ll strengthen the voice and vision of the Muse, while also becoming aware of the overtones of the Critic, and learn to make distinctions between the two.

You’ll experience an expanded sense of freedom and capacity to invite the Muse in, and bring an idea into form.

At Gate 2, you’ll:

• Hear Shiloh’s Story: How she almost gave up being an artist based on not being talented. The Critic almost won!
• Discover Your “Content”: Find out where your own “information” lives, and finally have full access to your own imagery
• Declare Your Creative Being Creed: Step into seeing yourself as creative, and begin to experience yourself as a creative being — having nothing to do with your skills or talents or hobbies, just simply because you are
• Receive a Call to Make Form: What have you been wanting to make happen that just won’t get off the ground? What have you been avoiding? What has the Critic been keeping from you that you can now more towards?
• Experience Activate Integration : Create a connection between the inner and outer self, crossing an invisible barrier that has kept you trapped, and forging a conscious connection between your inner and outer eyes — a distinction that’s been holding you captive.
• Grasp Da Vinci’s Imprensiva: Discover the science of how your eyes “perceive” information, and explore energy and matter, inner and outer, particle and wave, to assist you with integration.
• Expand Your Feelings of Freedom: Discover how play and curiosity strengthen the relationship with the Muse.
• Experience Intentional Creativity: Experience the power of creating with intention and how it influences the outcomes and potency of what you focus on.

Module 3: Gate of ALCHEMY

Transform the Critic Into Fierce Wisdom

In the studio of the Alchemist, we encounter the Phoenix… Will we dare to set fire to our own nest? Miracles can change Critics into Muses, if we pay close attention…

The inner voice of the Critic is alchemized into fierce wisdom through your choice to be at CAUSE for transformation.

In this module, you’ll experience increased freedom from and healing of your old stories. You’ll make room for transformation through the emotional burning up of lies you’ve told yourself and the emergence of self-expression.

You’ll meet the Critic and the Muse at the Gate of the physical and non-physical mind, and engage in a cosmic and ancient wrestling match.

Who will win?

Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better, so you’ll have access to lots of “power tools.” You’ll use them to make a change and keep that change in your evolution — moving away from stuck energy and stagnation and into powerful real-time action.

You’ll be creating a connection between two places that were cut off, but are now becoming integrated — this is how healing happens.

At Gate 3, you’ll:

• Lick the Fire: Poetry invites you to encounter your Phoenix story. Are you willing to surrender your old stories to make room for what’s new and ready to emerge?
• Discover the Science of Creating: Explore and experience the impacts of creativity on the brain, heart, and body
• Play Deeply: Dive into a wrestling match with the Critic and the Muse to understand how much impact their conflicts have had on all of your stories
• Experience Transformational Rituals: Name the lies, and experience a cathartic ritual of transformation and letting go
• Direct Flaming Arrows & Flowing Spirals: Learn to move between energies and symbols, and not have them cancel each other out, to see how the Critic and the Muse have their roles to play — but that you’re the one in charge
• Create an Alchemical Affirmation: Discover transformational affirmation as a practice for deepening the work and warding off Critic attacks!
• Engage in Visual Knowledge: Watch your ideas collapse from a quantum superposition into form to illustrate a point — something that may have been invisible will become visible
• Go on a Date With Your Muse: Document what happens and share it with us!

Module 4: Gate of COLLABORATION

Embody Your New Story

If you are 93 percent stardust, what is the other 7 percent, and what does it have to do with your voice? AND, what can happen if the Critic and the Muse actually begin to dance?

In this module, you’ll experience an initiation into conscious collaboration and co-creation — with you becoming the true author of your own life story.

You’ll step into a “gorgeous weave” connected with your identity and your own greatness –– your own alchemical robe! A powerful ritual through which to gather your own energy.

Ritual is often an invisible part of transformation work –– we engage in it, but not always with conscious intent. Even what you wear and how you organize your desk or studio is part of the physical ritual that creates the space you work in.

At this Gate, through conscious ritual, you’ll gather yourself together, and dive into what healing fragmentation and inviting in wholeness looks and feels like. You’ll enter into a spaciousness that allows for greater coherency and new possibilities to arise — in how you create AND in how you live your life.

At Gate 4, you’ll:

• Experience Poetry Meditation: When everything you think you know changes, what becomes possible?
• Engage in a Collaboration Ritual: Experience and curate an integration between often fragmented parts of yourself — your inner and outer worlds, physical matter and energy, and the field — the visible and invisible
• Don Your Alchemical Robe: As you are drawing, something is also happening within you. This imaginary robe is used to help clear your field — you put it on when you need it
• Learn the Creative Phases: Discover the 4 Phases of Creativity, and how Intentional Creativity elaborates and focuses on your experience of creating, instead of on what you make and how good you think it is — or isn’t
• The Muse on Electrons: Create with the idea of electrons catching thoughts in mid air
• Immerse Yourself in Deep Listening: Hear the voice of the Muse, perhaps clearly for the first time
• Adventure With Your Muse: Take an adventure out in the world, a Muse date that will surprise and delight you

Module 5: Gate of EMERGENCE

Catalyze Your Archetype

Who are you, really? Who is inhabiting this vessel of Self? 

What hidden default settings have been keeping you back? 

Will you invite Mystery to tea?

Your Inner Critic is often hiding who you are from you, and you don’t even know it. And, since most of us aren’t living out who we truly are in our lives, we don’t have a lot of practice BEING who we are…

Yet, when you can hear your voice more clearly, there’s the opportunity for your truest archetype (or Self) to emerge…