I have found a number of techniques that I use in my work, both as a teacher and also with clients. Many of the experiential techniques are valuable.

Counseling is an educational process and also an affirming process for people. The word educate means to move out, to help, bring out, to lead out. As a counselor it is your role to lead the client out in terms of understanding their life's story, their life's myth, and the present issues in their life. If you can give them one or two of these techniques, your counseling sessions will be more powerful and profound. Clients who are consciously working on themselves over a period of time, need an affirming experience. They need a sense of how things are starting to move. Having an objective person as a counselor, can validate their feeling of their life. It is tremendously relieving.

There is a wonderful quote by Paulo Friere: "If education is to be truly liberating, it must focus upon the existing situation of people, allowing them to reflect upon their condition and empowering them to change it."

How can we do this with clients? There are three known techniques: by using image, analogy and storytelling. This is good not only for counseling sessions, but also for those who want to learn astrology.

The artful use of an image can bring a powerful, dynamic element into your work. Here is a quote from Jean Houston: "Numerous studies have confirmed the fact that vividly experienced imagery that is both seen and felt can substantially effect the brain waves, blood flow, heart rate, skin temperature, gastric secretions and immune response; in fact, the total physiology."

As practitioners we have to realize that half of our clients are visual thinkers. We have a left brain and a right brain. The left brain processes with the rational and analytical approach and the right brain through the more intuitive wholing process. Our culture and education has honored and gone to an extreme with the left brain. We have to be more conscious of the right brain. If you are actively using your own brain in terms of left and right hemisphere and introducing methods for your students and clients to do that, they are going to learn more deeply.

How can we recognize visual thinkers? By strongly aspected Moons, prominent Neptunes, emphasis on water in the horoscope, and planetary emphasis on the lower half of the chart. One of the most extraordinary voices for the use of image was Marsilo Ficino who lived in the middle of the Italian Renaissance. In my opinion he was the first psychologist. He ran the Platonic Academy in Florence which was funded by the de' Medicis. He did the Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, and brought the Hermetic teachings into Europe.

Ficino was relentless in teaching his students to imagine deeply and constantly. His main message was to invite the opening of a rich imagination, and to develop a disciplined imagination to use in understanding life. I think, today we are impoverished in that regard. Much of this experiential attempt is to bring "soul" back into the horoscope, as opposed to predictions as the focus for the horoscope. Ficino considered a person to be in good psychological condition to the extent that he enjoyed a warm, well-nourished and practiced imagination.

He wrote about talismans, the power of image, working with herbs, the timing of working with metal, etc. The benefit of talismans was the idea of practicing conscious resonance with the Cosmos. At this moment if there was a Venus talisman you were trying to create, you would work on it when Venus was well aspected. You employ the power of the heavens in your magic and in your alchemy. Ficino invites us to reclaim the zodiac as an alchemical vessel for planetary workings of the imagination. He was also the teacher of Giotto, Michelangelo and Botticelli.

Botticelli's painting "The Birth of Venus" was done between 1477 and 1479. I have been working with this picture for a year now. It is an extraordinary, evocative piece of the imagination. Between 1477 and 1479 Botticelli did three paintings. "The Birth of Venus", "Primavera" and "Pallas and the Centaur". These were all done during the Uranus-Neptune conjunction on 29 degrees of Scorpio.

Ficino often labeled himself a melancholic type. He had Saturn on the Ascendant. We do not know the birth date of Botticelli. He was born in the year 1445. The early history talked about him as being sickly and depressed. Botticelli was also melancholic. Ficino had remedies for the melancholic type, and for Saturnian depression, that is every bit applicable now as it was then. With Ficino's Neoplatonic teaching, when Botticelli had the Uranus-Neptune conjunction, this extraordinary energy came through him as a personal therapy for his own depression. For those of you who feel melancholy, I suggest you get "The Birth of Venus" and "Primavera" and hang them on your bedroom wall. It is a wonderful counter-remedy to Saturn. Much of this work is connected to ameliorating archetypal symbols and influences, by surrounding yourself with the opposite: countering Saturn with Jupiter or as Ficino recommends with Venus.

You know the myth of Venus being born out of the sea. There are actually two Venuses. Venus-Urania and Venus-Pandemos. Venus-Urania was born from the myth of Cronus cutting off the testicles of Uranus and throwing them into the sea. We have the testicles of Uranus: manhood cut off, dropped into the feminine sea, Neptune, the collective unconscious, where we have the birth of Venus. In the painting, "The Birth of Venus", we get the moment that Venus has come up out of the sea on her shell, out of Neptune and the winds of the Zephyr and Cloris are being blown in from the sky. We get the symbol of Uranus and the Uranian energy coming in. This literally represents the moment that the god and the archetypal energy of Venus are about to step on to the earth. That love is coming to mankind.

On the side of the painting is Humanitas who has a robe which she is about to put over Venus's shoulders. Humanitas is the seasons in the order of nature. What is literally being put on the shoulders of Venus are the twelve signs of the zodiac as she is about to manifest on the earth plane. I do a workshop on this. This is an example of what an image can evoke from us.

In my office I have an image of an exploding volcano. I put that picture in front of people who are in the intense throes of Pluto, and I will wait for a response. In the corner of the picture there is a tiny little man in an asbestus suit waving his arms. Sometimes they don't see him, but when they do, they say: "That is exactly what is happening to me right now". I will talk about how deep that process has been. How long it has been for that volcanic eruption to hit the surface and to come to the consciousness. If you can direct people's attention back to the trauma of the past, to the past repressed emotion, it can give them a metaphor for an image with which they can work.

Another picture that I use is the San Francisco Bay bridge in fog. This is useful for Neptune transits. When someone needs to get the drift of what Neptune is in their life, I put that in front of them. They understand their confusion right away. I also have a picture of an asteroid belt which I use for people who have a hard Saturn transit. The asteroids represent obstacles, some little, some big, and you are impelled to move through this field.

There are several things I have in my office. The one that I really love is the metaphor of turning lead into gold. I literally have one ounce of lead, which is a fishing sinker (sea anchor???) and one ounce of gold. I frequently hand to clients in painful situations, these two, equal in weight pieces. We talk about how to move the process into something that is more integrated, healing and positive. There is every bit essence of gold in lead. If people can take their leadened experience and translate it into gold by being more conscious, more integrated, it is a very useful tool.

I have a piece of the Berlin wall in my office. When people come in with that Saturn return, I let them hold this piece of wall which is very dry. It cracks. There is no life force left in it. The Berlin wall fell on its Saturn return. Saturn-Neptune were at 10 degrees Capricorn within days when the wall fell. We can see that as a potent symbol. Then I give them a piece of some permanent soft clay to play with. Frequently I will give the client a piece of this to take home. This represents the new foundation that is trying to be born.

The last technique is storytelling. Another function of the astrologer is to help people tell their stories to themselves. A counseling session offers an excellent venue for being able to help people draw out their own story. They are the protagonists of their own unfolding story. We are the protagonists of our own unfolding transits. If we can recognize that we are authoring this life's myth, this life's story, how are we going to choose to write it? An apparent way is through studying the myths that are appropriate to the different psychological processes through which we are going.

With that Uranus-Neptune conjunction of last year, a lot of astrologers have been turned on to myths as a teaching tool. What is the myth of the horoscope that is unfolding at the moment? Learn about Aphrodite and her different stories. They can be appropriate for women (and also for men) and also for turning a woman on to her Artemis function. I literally suggest that women get swords. If they have a Mars in Libra and they really need to empower that, they should learn how to wield a sword. It helps to be more conscious of that Mars function in the life.

Sharing a story that you had with similar transits can be helpful. One of my favorite stories about how problematic Mercury retrograde can be, is about a friend who works for a non-profit organization. She is a marketing person. They were putting together a conference in Chicago. The print materials were coming out of an agency in New York. They faxed back and forth for the brochure and she signed off on it. The brochure arrived and 4,000 people in Chicago received a brochure without the date and place where the conference was to be held. The conference topic was "Strategic Communication"! Luckily she has the Moon in Sag and has a wonderful sense of humor. She quickly sent out postcards and said: "Now that we've got your attention..." It could have been catastrophic with a different personality.

For those going through the mid-life Neptune transit, I suggest that they imagine themselves on a mountain road. It is late at night. It is foggy and they are in a hurry. If you are in that situation, what would you do? Slow down, would probably be the first thing. You must put your attention on the center line, right in front of you. When you look up high, Neptune tends to completely obliterate the vision and where you are going. When you are in a fog you put on your high beam. It blinds you. You must keep on your low lights and keep your attention on the center line. With Neptune transits, keep your focus day to day. Wait until the fog shifts before you make elaborate plans.

I would encourage all who are counselors to try some of these techniques. It might make a difference in your relationship with people.