The Consciousness Collaborative Network

Walter Bacigalupo

Nathalie Blitz

Carol Burnes

Liz Giargiari

Dawn Lipinski

Joanne Lutz

Beth Sutton

Jamie Thurber

Bob Vinson

Adrian Wilkins

Lysa Wilkins

WOW
Ways of Words~Wisdom of Words~Wonder of Words
Wizardry of Words ~ Wildness of Words
 Whisper, Whitter, Wamble of Words
Wow of Words


Finding Voice, Finding Self
With Carol Burnes

About Finding Voice...

No speech will be dull, no story flat, no poem the same, no novel shallow, no presentation will have been said before if its expression comes from your deeper self, and in your own true voice.

In Carol Burnes’ Discoveries™ programs the focus is primarily on the creation and polishing of any kind of written or spoken project, be it dissertation, technical report, essay, or creative novel, poem, play, story. It is through the process of exploring potentials in a piece and developing it that discoveries are made leading to growth and change.

Carol Burnes explains, “Language is one thing that distinguishes us from other beings, it both lifts us and limits us.  Learning to use it more effectively is a life-long journey. It involves intense attention to all the elements of communication; content, construction, delivery.  It requires one to connect to who one is essentially, how one wishes to present oneself, and what one wishes to convey.  All of this is involved in finding one’s own, pure voice and expressing it.”

If you have anything you wish to communicate, and would like to express it more clearly, write more powerfully, and learn about communication in the process, this work will help you achieve our goal. The method Carol has developed is lively and engages all ages and backgrounds: professionals of any kind, doctoral candidates, teachers, businessmen, trial lawyers, nurses, doctors, professors, poets, artists, storytellers, actors, bag ladies, and those who have no idea what they “do”. All have thrived in her workshops or working with her one to one. Any one who wishes to adventure, mess around with words and be challenged to take risks and discover will benefit.


Working with Carol Burnes

Working with her involves exploration through developing a piece of your choice, written, spoken or performed. Any genre of writing may be worked on, from dissertations to inter-office memos, books and poetry, to ransom notes and love letters, and any kind of speech or presentation.

“This process sometimes feels like a writing workshop, an acting workshop, it feels like coaching, sometimes it feels like therapy during which issues arise to be explored through creative expression,” says Carol.

Finding one’s voice and giving it expression can be an essential process in personal and professional development. It is a journey of discovery involving body, spirit, intellect and psyche, and is a basic claiming of self.  It is an exercise in becoming more present by erasing the shadows, be they transparent or thunderous, that cloud expression, and dealing with demons that might keep us from our full potential and expression.
This is more than finding the words needed to say exactly what you mean and perfecting them. It’s more than writing prose or poetry, more than speaking or performing, though these activities provide the context within which we work.

It’s about discovering   
    •new direction in work and life
    •new power with words and ways to manage language
    •fresh insights and new potentials in self and work
    •links  between conscious and unconscious worlds
    •connections, deeper awareness
    •ways to explore feelings & where they come from

When asked how this works in action, Carol responds, “My first focus is on writing, how to spark and generate it, how to develop a piece, and then how to go deeper with it, and finally, how to revise it.  Through this process of creating with words and refining them people gain new personal awareness and make discoveries.

In both group and individual work, I invite people to participate in a wide variety of creative activities for purposes of exploration. Spontaneous exercises in art, music, movement, visualizations and simple improvisation are a few.  I help people focus on how physical movement informs and impacts mental activities, particularly writing.

We consider basic ingredients in all effective communication and focus first on poetry as an immediate illustration of them. Clients often try writing poems. Due to their compression, many technical considerations are magnified, made more obvious and are therefore more readily discussed. The writing of poetry is an excellent vehicle for working with many aspects of communication, spoken or written.

We explore economy, the power of image and metaphorical language, the linking of inner and outer worlds, how to engage audience, who we are and what we really wish to communicate. We focus on what inspires our work and the critical voices that can block us.”

Carol Burnes recognizes that everyone works differently and  has created a variety of working models for her clients. These modes of “finding voice” include: Discoveries™ programs, Sessions for individuals on specific projects, and a series of Coaching sessions over time. She works long distance by phone and Skype. Offering a wide variety of workshops in professional and private settings, she creates an atmosphere of safety and fun in which people take chances, discover, and begin to implement change in their lives and work, as well as create great pieces, written, spoken, or performed.

About Carol

“I suppose it all began in the back row in first grade where I always sat and said nothing, or at best, ‘I can’t’. There my journey to find words and to be ‘heard’ began.  All the way through school I became an artist of evasion keeping my words to myself, or at best, to my close friends, although I always excelled at writing.

By thirty I was determined, reading poetry into microphones on City Hall Plaza in Boston, performing in most of London’s prestigious poetry venues. More recently I was commissioned to create and perform a piece as keynote speaker to open the Deer Island Sewer Plant in Boston, and was featured on the BBC Breakfast News trailer as a well recognized performance poet in London.  

All my life I have focused on words, how to use them, how to create with them, how to teach others to use and discover with them, and how empowering words are in healing, therapy, and self-discovery.

Communication in it fullest meaning is my passion and always has been, with animals, with people. With a masters Degree in Education I began teaching, then teaching writing working with young people of all ages, then training teachers to teach writing using my method, and developing my Discoveries™ programs. I have offered them widely in the United States and abroad to highly varied audiences for over twenty-five years.

I have been performing poetry and stories on small stages in England, in Europe and Ireland as well as the US. My one-woman show, Suddenly Single™, has been enthusiastically received on both sides of the Atlantic; I have three books of poetry published, two in England, one in the US. All of these are exercises in communication.

I have learned that powerful communication, be it written, spoken or performed, involves both taking risks and learning. Inherent in each piece is a whole journey. Through keeping the focus on the written or spoken piece and how to make each more vivid and powerful, issues that arise in the process, often from the past, may be explored and more clearly understood. This kind of examination is essential to finer, deeper, more eloquent self-expression.”