Andrea Hendron is a Life Coach, Mindfulness Practioner, Reiki Master, and the Creator of Andrea’s Soul Chats. My plan was to do a solo episode talking about future visioning and creating vision boards and as I was preparing I began thinking about my friend Andrea. She took the idea of vision boards and expanded on it to develop intuitive Oracle Board coaching sessions, workshops, and retreats. Her approach goes deeper than mine ever will so I knew that I had to invite her on the show to share her experience in this area.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello and welcome to episode 33 of Sing! Dance! Act! Thrive!
I have a special guest for you today. Andrea Hendron is a life coach, mindfulness practitioner, Reiki Master and the Creator of Andrea’s Soul Chats. My plan was to do a solo episode today talking about future visioning and creating a vision board. And as I was preparing, I began thinking about my friend Andrea. She took the idea of vision boards and expanded on it to develop intuitive Oracle Board coaching sessions, workshops, and retreats. Her approach goes deeper than mine ever will. So I knew that I had to invite her on the show to share her experience in this area. If you have no idea what I’m talking about when I say a vision board, it is a collage of images and sometimes quotes and affirmations that represent your future dreams or goals. Represents the life that you want to have. It became all the rage after the documentary and book The Secret. I did one back then I filled it with everything that I thought I wanted. But there was no real soul searching to figure out if I really wanted those things or what I really wanted. And I didn’t really know how to set achievable goals to get the things I thought I wanted. So my life today is nothing like the one I pictured 10 years ago or whenever it was, and I’m thankful. I didn’t want those things. I’ve come a long way. And I’ve learned a lot about future visions and goal setting. So I created a vision board last year, full of everything that I actually want. And I have goals and action plans in place to achieve it all. So it really is a motivation board. And one year later, it is still my future vision, everything on, I’ve accomplished a lot this year. And I’m on my way, I will achieve everything that’s on that board. Because it’s the end of the year, I thought this is a good time for to do it. It’s good time to evaluate where you are, where you want to go, you know, in every area of your life, and there are so many different ways of how vision boards and future vision, meditations can help you figure out what you want. And I think you’ll enjoy hearing from Andrea. Stay tuned to the end, as Andrea offers us a beautiful guided meditation. Well, hello, Andrea, welcome. I want to talk a little bit of why I wanted you on the show, though on on this episode. So I was thinking that the end of the year is a great time to take a step back. Evaluate your life, evaluate where you’re at, and what you want for the future. I did this last year and created my own vision board. I remember we’ve known each other for a long time. And we’ve gone through learning coaching together and vision boards and we’ve done these exercise. And I always thought that I approach it very differently from you, in the sense that I’m only doing the one vision board. That’s it. I’m not doing this over and over again. I also, I know exactly what I want to put on the vision board. So much so that I will find the images I want on the internet, print them out, put them on my board, there’s no intuition happening. It’s just, I want this, this and this. So I was thinking of doing a podcast episode about vision boards and visioning and just the general idea of figuring out what you want in life. And then how can you start setting goals to get there, it’s a good time of year to do that. You specialize in this. I thought it would be valuable for listeners to hear how you approach it and how you what you think of vision boards and how you’ve incorporated it into your coaching and what you offer. Maybe introduce yourself and tell everyone a little bit about what you do.
Andrea Hendron 5:16
All right, Diane, it’s been a good time. We’ve had a good time together. We were. Yeah, we took some of the same trainings and then we did some accountability work together and things have evolved this last year. And yes, I do, like an Oracle vision board project. And it’s a delightful experience, I have to say, and it gives a person a chance to go deeply into themselves to find to intuit what’s underneath the surface, what’s going on deeper than your conscious mind. And so you touch a little bit into a higher consciousness or an unconscious state when you’re doing my kind of vision board and when you go through finally go through your magazines, your advertisements or whatnot that you’ve collected. We’ve already done a relaxing exercise, we’ve already done a lot of journaling around what it is we want, why we want what we want and what the feeling state is that were want. Why what’s the feeling state that we’re really really after? And then going through all of that. You’re you’re in a bit of a different mindset, a mindset that is more open, and then you start going through magazines and the job is to look for things that give you a little bit of a hit. That that looks interesting. Yeah, let’s tear that out. And there’s no rhyme or reason. You just stay in the state of a playful mindset, and flipping through maybe that color looks fantastic. I don’t know why I like it, you tear it out. And so you go through the magazines with that mindset of just being light hearted. You’ve already set your intention by doing the journaling on the prompts that we’ve suggested. And you’ve already entered into a bit of an altered state. So that when you’re done with your, you have the stack of papers, then go through another time and you go, let’s just cut out this, let’s cut out that. And then we start to put it on a small board. Sometimes there’s more than one board, I’ve had clients wind up with two piles of papers. And the end result for her was, was very distinct. Her unconscious mind was telling her you need to work on yourself. And you need to work on your business. But you need to work with yourself and it came very clear with all the things that she picked out. And then one step farther, you can take this, you can look at what is on your board. And if there’s a predominant color of green, which is all the green mean. And if there’s a predominance of a certain kind of flower, what does that flower represent? What’s the meaning to it, and then write a little story about what you’re seeing on your page and that is your Oracle. That’s what your unconscious is trying to get through to you in a very unique way. So like an exploration of excavating what is going on in here?
Diane Foy 8:14
Right. So what are some of the prompts and like, so we kind of, I guess we jumped ahead to, okay, we have a finished board. So what are some of the beginning stages that you guide your clients through?
Andrea Hendron 8:30
You know, when is it you want it? Let’s say you’re wanting this specific red car. Then what does it give you? And and why does that give that to you? And so you journal about that. And then the end was, what does it feel like to own that car? It is really that car that gives it to you?
Diane Foy 8:56
Right.
Andrea Hendron 8:56
So there’s a lot of uncovering that goes on before you ever start tearing pages out of a magazine.
Diane Foy 9:04
Right like it, it is kind of some of the work that I do in coaching. And the sense of not necessarily journaling about it. But we, I do coach through finding your why. And what do you really want? And I talked to a lot of performing artists, and some of them are like, What do you want? What do you want in five years? What do you want in 10 years? And if they’re new and eager, they’re like, I want a Grammy I want a Juno, I want an Oscar I want you know, and I’m always like, well wait, hold on. Why do you want that?
Andrea Hendron 9:41
Exactly. So that’s why you would take those answers, then feed them through the journaling process of what does it give you? Why do you want it? What’s the feeling state you want from it? And then let’s find out let’s create an Oracle.
Diane Foy 9:56
Right? And it’s like, why is that important? I get that. And what are some of the other prompts that you?
Andrea Hendron 10:05
Those are the basic ones that we journal around? Those are the basic questions you’re getting with the bottom line, you’re getting to the feeling state of what it is and why it is you want what you want. And it might be perfectly fine to want that red car that ultimately might be it. It might be and then sometimes for some people, they’ll look at it go after the journaling, they’ll go No, that really wasn’t what I wanted. And then so it prompts them to keep going deeper or in a different direction. What is they really want?
Diane Foy 10:34
Right because this thing, it’s what it represents. Right.
Andrea Hendron 10:40
It was interesting. I had a college student go through this and it brought tears it deeply seated tears of she didn’t know why she was going after the degree she was going after and what is going to give her what the feeling state was. So the vision board for her was profound. It was an the vision board process was the Oracle is a coaching session in and of itself. It is coaching right then in there for the two or three hours that we spend doing it and you do it with other people it is it is coaching at its best, but it’s not me doing it, it’s them. excavating.
Diane Foy 11:16
Right. Cool. And so when you offer workshops, either in person or online, how does that work?
Andrea Hendron 11:29
In person, we have a little bit more time, online because we’re online. It’s a little bit faster paced. And some of the things I might send out the questions ahead of time to start them in the journaling process. So that we are not doing that online. But it really needs to be done. And online it can probably take two hours if that is done ahead of time.
Diane Foy 11:52
Yeah and then the retreats that you have.
Andrea Hendron 11:56
All retreats can be fun they can they can be three hours, they can be four hours, just depends, because all the journaling is done there. But what’s the exciting part about being in both of them, I think is the feedback from this whole process to each other, because there is something to be gained about hearing other people’s process of what they might have learned of what they might have gained by doing it this way, what their Oracle board then can tell them about some of the questions they were asking, or what they were wanting. And then how to use it afterwards. You know how to elicit that feeling state you look at it and you know, there’s a feeling state that comes from looking at the board just like in your visioning board. There is the state of looking at and going yeah, those are the things I want. All right. Like yeah, elicits at a state of feeling where ours are just a little bit different and Alyssa feeling from a different place.
Diane Foy 12:57
Right, right. And also I know a lot of people suggest really doing everything through vision boards, kind of like there’s even I’m sure you know that book about business plans as the right, the right brain business plan. And the book is, it’s really cool because it’s for creative artists who the last thing they want to do is a business plan. She knows this, and I suck at it, too. I somehow I’m in business forever, but I don’t have a business plan. But I’m going to go through that book again, because it’s really cool. And she encourages basically, it’s a vision board business plan. So she’ll go through all the topics that you need in a business plan. But then, if you’re a painter or draw or visual artists, okay, you can draw and paint Create what that looks like. Or if you’re ripping out of magazines and pictures, basically, you’re doing these mini vision boards for each category of a business plan.
Andrea Hendron 14:16
Cool, that would be fun. That would be awesome. Because in mind, too, it’s not just one a year. It’s like one for every aspect that you want to work on. It can be the wheel of life or it can be. Yeah, whatever. So that you have a book with several different pictures in it. Oracle’s for you to ponder.
Diane Foy 14:36
Yeah, and I’ve seen some, I didn’t really go into my vision board with the plan in the sense of addressing every part of my life. But I think that’s an interesting thing to do is have a corner that’s your, your home life, have a corner that’s your relationship have an area that’s your work business. That’s interesting. Another way of doing it as well. Mine was mostly it still is I look at it now and go, yep. Um, there’s a couple images that I’ve pulled off that I want to replace with something else. But I, you know, I hadn’t started the podcast yet. So I had my logo of my podcast, and then I put some pictures of kind of artists that I would love to have on the podcast. So they’re like my dream plans. And so they’re not necessarily, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that particular person, but it was like something like that, like I had questlove on my board. But somehow throughout the year, I talked to Timbaland. That’s the same thing to me. So doesn’t have to be that exact person. So it’s been great. And then I put a bunch of travel on there. And I knew going into last year, I’m like, no matter what, in December, I’m going to a beach. So where am I going? And I almost didn’t put a picture from Cuba on there. But I was like, I don’t know something says Cuba. So I’m going to Cuba in a week or two.
Andrea Hendron 16:07
Oh cool. Cool means that’s awesome.
Diane Foy 16:11
And there’s a little section of Jennifer Lopez and someone else I love that works out. And it’s pictures of her working out with heavyweights. So it’s to motivate me to exercise because that woman’s 50 years old, and looks like that. That part hasn’t worked yet, but it’s still I look at it and think, yeah, I really should work out.
Andrea Hendron 16:32
Okay. See, they’re coming from different aspects, and they do address parts, different parts of our brain. Yeah, that brings a different state instead of overthinking it all the time. Now, this is logically how I have to do this. You’re entertaining a different part of your brain which might elicit feelings, which to me always brings an end result because you’re getting into the feeling state.
Diane Foy 16:57
Yeah I put a lot of like, I put a picture of $100,000 on there, you know, the money thing and the coaching stuff. And so yeah, it’s still kind of the same as what I visioned a year ago. And I’m like, yep, no, I don’t want to change much on it. But it has opened up that oh, let’s expand on this, snd I have been reading different ideas like that business plan or having a journal.
Andrea Hendron 17:22
I like that business plan idea, yeah I got to play with that one. That sounds awesome.
Diane Foy 17:27
Yeah, it’s really cool. And it’s just it’s for artists, that do not want to do business plan. Really don’t we really don’t. So yeah, I’ll send you the link to that. And, yeah. And so how did you get into this? What did you do before you were coaching?
Andrea Hendron 17:49
I’ve been in the healing arts for 25 years. I started off Reiki Master and then I became a body worker, massage therapist, and they did that for 20 years, and so, all of this has been around circling around with the healing arts of how do we move forward. And I knew there was a shift coming and I wanted to leave massage and do something. And I didn’t know what the next step was. And so I started investigating, coaching and taking classes and going. Yes, stay with it, stay with it. And there’s wonderful, beautiful things I learned in the coaching. But I also knew there was this deeply spiritual, creative side to me, and somewhere along the lines, Diane I think when we were in our accountability group, it came to me and I don’t know you know, how things just come up on maybe algorithms on the Facebook page, I don’t know. And I started seeing vision boards. And I talked to a woman about her vision board process and it stimulated something in me, and I immediately made my own vision board but he had nothing to do with the typical form. It was that intuitive Oracle form that I like to do. And so from there, it was like, every night, I would wake up in the morning and go, okay, and I have to add this. And these are questions I have to add. And this has to be part of it. And on the backside of these Oracle boards, and we’re going to include this little packet of information. And it was like, it was a process that wouldn’t let go. So it was very inspired, and very inspiring. And so it was a matter of a month where I came up with all kinds of ideas around it. And it hasn’t changed much since then. And I don’t think it needs to it’s now a process that I can assist people to go into in through to come up with their own bit of coaching for themselves and their own Oracle that’ll tell something about what’s going on in their unconscious. And then a story and then a vision board or Oracle board that they can look at that will help them elicit that feeling state, for them to have what they want.
Diane Foy 20:07
Right. It’s really how we evolve. And I did find when I was getting into coaching and connecting with other coaches like you, it was really cool. The ones that I think are, were further ahead were the ones that we bring our old life experience to coaching. So it wasn’t like we were, we woke up one day and oh, what do you want to do with your life? I want to be a coach. No. Follow these steps and you do that. No. But it’s like you bring all this everything that you’ve done before that the healing, the Reiki, the massage, it’s all connected. And now coaching just brings it to a whole new level.
Andrea Hendron 20:54
A lot of the wonderful things I learned in my massage practice of the healing arts actually are very good healing tools are very good coaching tools. They influence my thought process when it comes to helping someone which is I step back quite a bit and but I offer the word is used too much but I offer space for that person I hold of a vessel of energy for them to explore their own inner realms themselves and see what comes out and see what comes out.
Diane Foy 21:29
That’s cool.
Andrea Hendron 21:31
Yeah, so it does. Yes. Just like you with the music. It’s like there’s so much there that came before this. That wasn’t just your typical coaching you have. Yes, a different arena that you came from. That is part of this now.
Diane Foy 21:47
And now it’s like, bring all that branding, marketing PR and being able to coach on it has been great because it’s not like a typical consultant where I’m going to tell you, well you need to do this, this and this, hear all this marketing speak. And whereas coaching, it is helping you figure it out for yourself, I give you the tools, I give you everything I know, and then help you figure it out for yourself, which is great. There’s still more I want to do. I want to, you know, I took those creativity coaching classes, and courses, and that is still part of what I do, because it’s still understanding the creative spirit. That’s what most of that those courses were about. It was understanding how artists look at life and how and the struggles that artists deal with and how to help them through it. So definitely, it comes into play in everything that I do. But I think in the future, I also want to get more into that where it doesn’t have to be an agenda of branding, marketing. It could be just like your creative life? And wherever that goes, you know, we’re helping you around.
Andrea Hendron 23:07
Right. I think there’s so much the creative mind that actually the creative mind knows intuition better than a lot of people because if they’re already using it, and it becomes a natural way to flow through then for them to find what it is they’re looking for, or even what it is they need to heal, to move forward. They’re accustomed to a different mindset.
Diane Foy 23:42
Yeah, most artists, They’re digging deep, and expressing themselves through their art. And so it, they’re already kind of in touch with their feelings, and they’re bringing that out and they’re bringing their stories out in song or bring their experiences out in acting and bringing it out on the canvas. If they’re a painter, or writer, it’s like coaching them is just their ideal coaching clients because, you know, they’re, they’re into all this stuff that we are.
Andrea Hendron 24:20
Exactly.
Diane Foy 24:23
That’s cool. So where can people find you? So your Facebook?
Andrea Hendron 24:29
Yeah, I have a Facebook page and that’s where I operate from right now eventually we’ll go beyond that. But right now, it’s Andrea Soul Chats. I love deep conversation. So that I think is a very healing art as well, but it’s Andrea’s Soul Chats.
Diane Foy 24:44
Okay, cool. And I was wondering, I know you’re amazing at guided meditations. I’m wondering if you want to leave us with one.
Andrea Hendron 24:54
Certainly.
Diane Foy 24:56
So I will say because this is a podcast and a lot of people listen to podcasts while they’re driving. Don’t do that now.
Andrea Hendron 25:06
Exactly.
Diane Foy 25:09
Press pause, and do this later when you’re at home. So go ahead.
Andrea Hendron 25:15
All right, one of my favorite things, and I like to teach around this thing I call the column of light. So, let’s right now in this moment, if you would pull yourself back, pull yourself back from other places and spaces you’ve been today. Bringing yourself back home to your center. Literally, you can even take your hands off to the side and bring them together in front of you and feel yourself being pulled back to the center of your being from times in the past worries of the future. And let yourself be here. And as we settle in even more deeply into our skin into our beingness we feel our skin we feel our breathing in and out. Just noticing No need to change anything. We slipped down even deeper down, down down into our legs and down into our feet. And we feel the earth in whatever form we like to feel it with our bare feet. Is it on sand? Is it on a mossy surface is it on black soil, digging your feet deeply into the mud. Whatever you want to feel on the earth, feel with your feet and feel it deeply. Let your feet and your energies run deeply into the earth into that soil. Likewise, roots of a tree going deep, deeply in feel that groundedness know now that you feel more grounded than before. bring yourself back up through those routes, giving yourself that replenishment of all the earth, the earth it has to offer. Maybe the crystals have spoke to you maybe the stones have spoke to you maybe a certain color Earth has spoke to you. And it’s coming, that vibratory field now is coming up through the feet into your legs and into your torso. Feeling the replenishment now going up even higher, into your body, going up into your head going up into the heavens to whatever you call the creator of all it is your higher self reaching up higher into the sky into the stars into your special place of connection with source. Seeing that feeling that as maybe a beam of light coming towards you, coming into you connecting with that beam of light and seeing it reaching down now, reaching down to the top of your head, this beautiful golden light from your Creator. Sinking now not only in your body but around your body so that your body starts to glow. Integrating that with your grounding coming together throughout your whole being. Feeling the integration of being here on earth with this light body this light this golden light penetrating all parts of your being coming now down into your heart. And you have a beautiful chamber there a room that is specifically for you. Your a place to sit in to contemplate life to ask questions. It is a higher heart. And it is filled with opportunity to speak to your guides, your masters, your teachers, your creators. whatever questions you want to bring, you write them down on a little piece of paper that’s in front of you on the table. Notice later this evening tomorrow, how it is answered. What speaks to you of that question? Knowing now that you have put your question out into the universe, knowing that an answer is here for you, and it is coming maybe in a dream tonight, maybe in a Oracle board or a vision board, maybe in any number of ways, but notice what you notice. Now from this place of centeredness from this place of having your question asked and answered. You can open your eyes and you can be here now.
Diane Foy 30:46
Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Andrea Hendron 30:49
You’re welcome specially designed for whoever’s listening.
Diane Foy 30:54
Yes. And now I hear your dog coming in the room.
Andrea Hendron 30:58
Oh, yes. It will always always with me.
Diane Foy 31:04
Yes. Wonderful. Thank you so much.
Andrea Hendron 31:08
You’re welcome. You’re welcome.
This is the Right-Brain Business Plan book that I mention in this episode:
