I had the amazing opportunity this week to host another tarot for mindfulness workshop as a workplace wellness event. We called it “Demystifying Tarot” and I really enjoyed demonstrating how tarot can be used not so much for divination or fortune telling, but as a tool to seek clarity, engage creativity and be playful.
I was really pleased to see how many participants were engaged with the interactive session, and I got great feedback both from folks who had never been exposed to tarot cards before and those who have done some reading for themselves. They also said they appreciated my strong sense of play and slightly bent sense of humour. The organizers were pleasantly surprised by the number of folks who signed up for the workshop offered through the corporate wellness network.
Tarot for mindfulness is a perfect session for an employee wellness program. The session can be run in about an hour, and participants will leave with the ability to do basic tarot readings for themselves, plus some resources for further learning. The session focuses on tarot as storytelling, learning to trust your intuition, and ways to read tarot that are not fortune telling or predicting the future.
The tarot for wellness session is very interactive. I encourage participation throughout the session with questions and prompts to make sure people are engaged while we lay a foundation with the following topics:
- What is tarot and how does it work?
- Tarot card history and deck structure
- Major and minor arcana
- The Fool’s journey and the quest for a better self
- Suits, numbers and court cards
- Tarot as storytelling
Then, in the second half, the participants take over and begin interpreting the colours, symbols, numbers and suits for themselves with my guidance, without having had to memorize a single keyword or card meaning. Tarot card reading is such a broad and deep topic that we can only scratch the surface, but attendees will leave with the basic knowledge and tools they need to get started and keep exploring on their own.
Tarot reading is a great fit for a wellness program, alongside topics like mindfulness, meditation and reducing and relieving stress. Mindfulness means learning to be fully present in the moment, paying attention to thoughts, feelings and sensations without judgement. The benefits of mindfulness include reduced stress, improved attention and concentration and better decision-making. Tarot gives a rare opportunity to slow down and contemplate, to ponder, and to consider. But the language of tarot colours, symbols, numbers and icons also unleashes our intuition and creativity, so often repressed in our Western society that down plays the intuitive brain in favour of logic and conformity.
From pulling a single card to answer the question, “what did today mean?” or “what energy is most dominant around me right now?” to a Jungian psychology consideration of archetypes and individuation through study of the Fool’s Journey in the major arcana, tarot for mindfulness is a spectrum of possibilities and opportunities to contemplate the the profane and profound experiences of our everyday lives.
When I first started delivering this session to a corporate government office, I was worried that folks might be too skeptical or dismissive of reading tarot, but just the opposite is true – I’ve found folks are hugely curious about tarot cards, and my secular “non-mystical” approach seems to engage even the skeptically curious. In fact, these sessions have been very well received by the participants and the organizers.
I can deliver a tarot for mindfulness session in person here in the greater Ottawa area, or online anywhere, and I can tailor the presentation to your wellness program’s objectives. If you’d like to know more, or would like to book a session on how to read tarot cards for mindfulness as part of your workplace wellness initiatives, please reach out to me at dani@curiouscrone.ca. I’d love to work with you! You can also see more about my tarot workshops and overall approach to tarot on my tarot events booking page.