hi I'm cim Wyland and this week I am super excited to announce that I am releasing what is kind of been my secret summer project and that is six archetypal character guided meditations which are designed to help you brainstorm deeply resonant and uh correctly structured stories so in this video I'll be intro that uh telling you about archetypes and how the meditations will work and how they can be used to help you discover archetypes for yourself um ways to use the meditation how to set it up and of course there are links down below to
the actual meditations if you're interested in learning more about that um or experiencing them for yourself hi I am km Wyland and welcome to these writing archetypal character arcs guided meditations um in my own experience um throughout my life but also particularly in relationship to creativity and outlining and brainstorming my novels there are two tools that I have found incredibly helpful for accessing the Deep wisdom of my own subconscious creativity and those are archetypes and what I call Dream zoning or what you may have heard also called active imagination or even journeying and basically what
this is is an exercise in which you are just sinking as deeply as possible into your imagination and letting your subconscious tell you a story and I dare say most writers have experienced this um at one time or another and for me dream zoning is just facilitating that in a way where I'm doing it in a very conscious and structured way allowing me to access its benefits whenever I want and that is the the essence and the idea and the gift that I intend these guided meditations to be and that they allow you to take
off the stress of trying to figure out your story brainstorm your story and instead move into a space where you can dream storm it while allowing me to guide you through the structural beats um with prompts and things that will help you visualize all the important parts of your story and particularly obviously we're going to be accessing archetypal character arcs and specifically these six archetypal life arcs which talk about in my book writing archetypal character arcs um which you will find in your dashboard for this a 25% off coupon for the ebook on my website
if you haven't already read it but you don't need to have read it to access um the um guided meditations I will walk you through the entire archetype whichever Journey that you've chosen so the archetypes as we're going to be dealing with them specifically deal with six initiatory Journeys that happen throughout life um depending on what you've chosen perhaps all of them you'll be going through the maiden the hero the Queen the king the Crone and the Mage all of these um guided meditations are between 45 minutes and 60 Minutes depending on which you've chosen
and they're all designed to help you sink in and visualize your story I focused very much on symbolism as we walk through all of the structural beats within each of the journeys so via that symbolism the idea is that you're able to tap in to your own innate and instinctive understanding of archetype in a way that is truly resonant and truthful for you while still being able to access the aesthetic and bring to life the visualization of your story however that looks whether it's fantasy or historical or mystery or romance or political thriller or whatever
it may be so the idea is not that you are necessarily seeing what I'm I'm seeing or explicitly what I'm evoking in the meditation but using it as a way to sink in even deeper into your own story and however that archetype shows up and that symbolism manifests for you making it as personal a journey as possible so how to use these meditations the simplest and most obvious way to do this is to listen to a single Journey with the intent of using it as a character Arc for for one character in one book and
you can listen to it through the whole thing you may then choose to listen again as many times as you want to go deeper or explore different angles you can also choose to perhaps pause it after you've listened through through the whole thing once to go back again and pause as you reach each SE each structural section for example the first plot point or the midpoint and then just take that time to pause and really go deep and journal and outline and write on that section before progressing again you can also listen to all six
for a single book since um all six archetypes are in fact inherent within a single archetype Arc which is something that I do talk about a little bit more in my book if that's of interest um you can also take these for yourself I think that um necessarily when you are doing an archetypal Journey for a character you are accessing that archetype for yourself and it can be very powerful but you can also choose to do it um simply for yourself remembering a time when you felt like you yourself embodied or went through one of
these archetypal arcs or perhaps one that you feel like maybe you're going through right now or on the cusp of going through and that can be quite powerful I've also included a complete transcript of every um meditation so that you can then if you choose either just use it as easy access for referencing something rather than having trying to have to find it in the uh audio clip um but you can also use it to switch from uh the subconscious dream storming Zone into the conscious brainstorming and use it kind of as a workbook and
just go through it um all of the questions and prompts from the meditation will be there and you can just kind of switch gears and use that either um as a prompt to help you remember whatever you experienced or visualized in the meditation but also simply as more of a workbook experience where you can just brainstorm your way through the entire Arc now I will say that necessarily by their very nature archetypes are very powerful and the experience of going deep with an archetypal Journey can be very intense so my um encouragement to you would
be to be aware of that and to use self-awareness and self-care in doing these Journeys um if you uh feel in any way like there may be triggers and you can discover whatever would be in an entire um Arc by looking at the beat sheets that are provided in the links in your dashboard to my website and also in the corresponding chapters in the book writing archetypal character arcs you can see the entire beat sheet so you'll know whatever you're in for for any given archetype um just to get a sense if there would be
something that would possibly trigger you for example the cron Arch is an exploration of mortality and therefore death um and it does go deep um because that's that is the essence and the power of archetypes is that they're able to act access these deep parts of our psyche and uh trigger transformation but I would encourage you be aware and uh use um your own awareness of yourself and your own U mental health and if you feel like you're not in a place at any given moment where that's uh something that you want to encounter or
experience then maybe put it off um and a time when you are ready I would also encourage um self-care afterwards to a point um what I mean by that is mostly journaling which hopefully you're going to be doing anyway for your characters but you may also find it helpful to just set aside some time so you yourself can integrate anything that you've experienced or encountered in these um meditations all right so how to actually set up and do this experience for yourself so each as I say each meditation is either between 45 minutes or 60
Minutes depending on which one you've chosen I recommend uh trying to be in a distraction free space where you can sink in as deeply as possible without distraction for the entire um period of the journey you can be in a seated position or lying down if you're not going to fall asleep my personal recommendation and this is my secret hack for dream zoning that I've used um with great success over the years and that is to bring in Fire and that could be that you're actually at a fire at a fireplace or a a fire
pit outside if that's available to you which is fantastic um but you can also just do it with a candle light a candle and then Focus your Gaze on the flame let that be your point of focus and that can be very helpful for just helping you drop even deeper into your own deep imagination so that you're not focusing on what's around you but you're able to just focus on the visualizations that arise for your story so um I have provided two versions of each of the meditations one has some gentle background music to help
you sink in um even deeper um if you prefer not to use that there is one without any music so either you can listen to it um with silence in the background or you can uh create your own playlist or bring in a movie score or something that for you evokes your story and is going to help you find that space and that aesthetic um that you want to be in for your own personal experience with this and once you're there you know you're just going to drop in and start start dreaming start imagining um
use the prompts that I bring up to help you just see your own story again the language is very symbolic you can you know choose to work with it literally um but you can also hopefully my idea is that you're then able to use that as a reference point for how that might show up in any sort of story in your specific story so allow that to just Rise um and just follow those those visualizations um wherever they may take you there will be pauses throughout as I give you a little space to imagine your
own um story and let that arise without my questions interfering and you of course can pause at any moment if you feel like you need more time to explore something a little more deeply at the end of each meditation there will be a little bit more time than there has been throughout and just so you know and so you're not wondering like is it over at the end of every meditation I will say this journey is now complete thank you and then offer an encouragement for you to go and journal whatever you've um come come
up with so when that happens you'll know that the the journey is at an end and up until that point you can just relax and stay in the Dream Zone so I hope that you um find these uh archetypal uh Journeys as incredibly powerful and exciting and transformative as I have um for myself and also as a storytelling tool so I wish you all the best uh let me know what you think um if you have any questions or um you want to share your experiences I would love to hear that and yeah happy adventures
all right so if you're interested in trying the archetypal character meditations for yourself um you can purchase each of them individually um the maiden the hero the Queen the King which I will tell you is 100% my favorite of the six of them uh the Crone and the Mage um but I'm also offering them in a bundle with all six um at 20% off which means that you get one free so you can find links for that down below along with way more information let me leave me a note if you have any questions and
I will see you again next week