Healing Through Art the Scientific Basis!

 "More specifically, there is evidence that engagement with artistic activities, either as an observer of the creative efforts of others or as an initiator of one’s own creative efforts, can enhance one’s moods, emotions, and other psychological states as well as have a salient impact on important physiological parameters. Chronic diseases are a nationwide burden, with cardiovascular disease being the leading cause of death during the past century and the incidence of diabetes continuing to increase,now affecting more than 20 million Americans. These diseases are associated with psycho-social difficulties such as depression and chronic stress, contributing to negative cardiovascular outcomes. Engagement with creative activities has the potential to contribute toward reducing stress and depression and can serve as a vehicle for alleviating the burden of chronic disease. Over the past decade, health psychologists have cautiously begun looking at how the arts might be used in a variety of ways to heal emotional injuries,increase understanding of oneself and others, develop a capacity for self-reflection, reduce symptoms, and alter behaviors and thinking patterns. Given the ubiquity of creative expression, as well as the relative ease of engagement, the extent to which psychological and physiological effects are sustainably health enhancing is an important area for public health investigation. We reviewed research in the area of art and healing in an effort to determine the creative therapies most often employed. Four primary therapies emerged: music engagement, visual arts therapy, movement-based creative expression, and expressive writing. In these forms of expression, arts modalities and creative processes are used during intentional interventions to foster health."

February 2010, Vol 100, No. 2 | American Journal of Public Health Stuckey and Nobel | Peer Reviewed | Framing Health Matters | 263.

My first physical healing painting!

The other day I was speaking to someone about doing my Art and Healing class. In trying to answer her about the class, I said that this work was not a new age idea and that there is a scientific basis for it. I've read quite a bit about this, including the article that the quote at the beginning of this blog is from. As I thought of a way to explain how it works, I came up with the idea that the work we do in Art and Healing is like photo synthesis in a plant. We take in everything through our senses and all of our experiences are imprinted into our cells. And much like a mother duck with her chicks, those things follow us around forever unless we work with them to help release them. And just as a plant takes in light and expels carbon dioxide, our bodies release our negative feelings and emotions around what has happened to us and we can put healing back into those places through the expressive arts. If we do not work on healing, eventually we will get ill. The colors that we use to help our bodies release the negative is the light spectrum, plus black and brown. In the next few weeks I hope to be reporting that my Art and Healing work is continuing!

My own healing is evidenced for me by my new work in painting portraits!

It is work that I wouldn't attempt before I began my healing work. It is exciting to me to show from where I began to today. Lindsay's (my daughter) picture was the only one I had done prior to this year. I seem to be exploding with things I want to paint. I have found my style, too. 

Before I put together my art show (I've done another!) there were several pictures that I didn't think of as important works. They were some of my healing pictures that I've had to reconsider because other people have expressed interest in them. Thanks to my friend, Amelia Cloud, I took some of those images that came out in my training and framed them to show. The one above is one of those that has generated a great deal of talk about what it is. 

The artwork that heals us also has the power to heal others. It has been my privilege to show my work at a couple of venues and to have people look at them. This blog has allowed me to share my work with those of you who view it. And I appreciate the scientific basis for using the expressive arts but I've also experienced this healing in a very real way. I am grateful to have been given a talent that I can share with everyone. Using that talent is a gift from God and allows me to develop my life's work. It is a spiritual endeavor for me that gives meaning and purpose to my life. And it is wonderful that I can share this work with anyone, no experience necessary!

I share the very first portrait I did. I painted this when I was pregnant with my daughter. I didn't have any idea how important painting would become to my life! And the Art and Healing fuses together three of my favorite subjects art, healing and science!

Mt. Rascel, Augusta, Kentucky

Art and Healing Portraiture and Floral Fusion!

 I love to paint portraits, which is a new thing for me. My most recent portrait is of my granddaughter Mariel.

Mariel and Dinosaur

When she was three she became obsessed with this dinosaur exhibit and her mother and I had to take her to see it at the local museum every day. I captured this experience in this portrait of her. I love to do art that captures something about the person. To some people this may look scary! But to her, it was this thing she was loving. The next portrait is of my granddaughter Lyla!

Lyla on Tire Swing

I will bring it back when it is finished! This work is very healing for me. Painting my family has become a wonderful part of my life. I can't wait to begin them and then to reveal them!

Last week I participated in Georgetown Art Museum's Floral Fusion. This was a different venture for me! I chose a painting and created a floral representation of it! I got 3rd in the judging. 

One of the best parts of this was getting to meet the artist Roger Bain and his wife Pat! I lived with his painting for a week as I worked on the floral offering! It was so great to see and participate in so many different artistic works! Another of Roger's paintings won for best painting.

 The back showed something that was hidden from view, just like the ocean hides so many wonderful surprises!

I also participated in painting a birdhouse to benefit the local homeless shelter for Women and Children in Georgetown.

These birdhoused will be auctioned off to raise money and awareness for the shelter. I brought this idea back to our own Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless which I joined. This group is beginning to pull together ideas to help the homeless in Mt. Sterling and Montgomery County. I hope to bring my own work to this endeavor!

I'll bring more as I continue to work with Art and Healing! Blessings!

Art in the Garden 2014

This past Saturday, I displayed my art at Art in the Garden in Augusta, KY, my hometown!

It has been a long two years! In between has been my daughter Lindsay's wedding to Michael Blazer, the birth of Amelia Rose, the wedding of my son Mike to Adria Parsons both of which happened in Florida. I had no time to think of blogging. I shared my day with my friend Ruslyn Case-Compton who is a photographer. It was the first show for her and the first in Augusta for me (I showed in Lexington Theological Seminary with other artists when I was there!)

It was shocking to me to find I had so much to show. Most of mine was my Art & Healing work and Ruslyn's was from Hawaii, Italy, and Germany! Many people stopped by to look and talk about our work. One of the things I teach about Art & Healing is that it is important to display your healing work. I was privileged to do that this weekend with a great friend! She said that it was the cousin show, because every time she turned around I had another cousin coming to give me a hug and marvel at what I had done. Most had no idea I was an artist. 

Now I didn't sell much, about 7 pieces that day, but I can tell you how thrilled I was to show my work and to have so many people come by and point different pieces out. While you may not feel like showing the world your art, it is something you want to display for yourself as a gift from God!

This is the latest portrait I did of Michael Blazer at the wedding!

I gave this to my son Mike for his birthday this year, it is a compilation of pictures because Mariel is 5, Lyla is 4 and Amelia is 18 months! This was one of my transformation pictures!

These three are some of the images I found to frame and make into tshirts!

I also have some 4x5's of all of my work which you will be seeing as I write more blogs! I feel privileged to have gotten to do this! Thanks to my husband John! I hope to continue to show. I will be glad to sell my tshirts and prints! Contact me if you are interested! I will continue to share my healing work! If you have something, please send me a picture! Glad to be back! Blessings!

Access, Release, Transform!

 Soul Purpose

I was preparing for a session of Spiritual Direction with someone, and went to the book "Visual Journaling: Going Deeper than Words" by Barbara Ganim & Susan Fox to see if there was something I might need that day. I found "Discovering your Soul Purpose." I felt called to sit and see what would come up. This picture is what happened...there are several images that have come up over and over for me. The snail, the sun, the heart (double counting the one in the sun), and the mermaid. And then there's teeth on the heart and tail. The more I look at this image, the more I see. It leads me back to the poem I wrote many years ago called "Breathing Water." I found the second part of that poem. Contact me if you would like to read it! This picture represents a step in my own healing work that means I am breathing freely. The hurts and pains that I have carried around for years. I said to my own Spiritual Director the other day that my prayer life is whatever I am called to at the time. I am truly blessed that art is part of that! And that I can help share this with the world. It is beyond my wildest dreams! Thank you Lord! Thank you Mother! Thank you Jesus!

This beautiful piece was done by a 16 year old as her healing piece after learning how to Access, Release, & Transform.
In a spiritual direction session, to have such a beautiful piece come out for her, was exciting (for both of us)! I requested to take a picture to show on my blog. Isn't it amazing? Over and over, having shown people this work, I'm constantly amazed at the power of the healing work! This work is for the world!

About a month ago, I worked with a group of women at The Nest: Center for Women, Children, & Families, for their Relationship Recovery Workshop. There wasn't a lot of talk but I hope you agree with me, their art is powerful! There are issues of safety and sharing the work for them. Issues I hadn't thought of before. I am cautious about asking people to talk about their work, especially where trust is an issue. I hope to be able to go again! Thanks to Elizabeth Morton for bringing me in to work & meet them and to the women for allowing me to take a picture of their work!

   
I am busy sewing for my daughter's wedding in June, but after that, this fall I will be looking for places to bring more healing work.

I am so grateful to be able to share with you!

My prayer for this next period is one of my favorite prayers from the book "Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle" by Ted Loder. It's called

Loosen My Grip

O God, it is hard for me to let go,

most times,

and the squeeze I exert

garbles me and gnarls others.

So loosen my grip a bit

on the good times,

on the moments of sunlight and star shine and joy,

that the thousand graces they scatter as they pass

may nurture growth in me

rather than turn to brittle memories.

Loosen my grip

on those grudges and grievances

I hold so closely,

that I may risk exposing myself

to the spirit of forgiving and forgiveness

that changes things and resurrects dreams and courage.

Loosen my grip

on my fears

that I may be released a little into humility

and into an acceptance of my humanity.

Loosen my grip

on myself

that I may experience the freedom of a fool

who knows that to believe

is to see kingdoms, find power, sense glory;

to reach out

is to know myself held;

to laugh at myself

is to be in on the joke of your grace;

to attend to each moment

is to hear the faint melody of eternity;

to dare to love 

is to smell the wild flowers of heaven.

Loosen my grip

on my ways and words,

on my fears and frefulness

that letting go

into the depths of silence

and my own uncharted longings,

I may find myself held by you

and linked anew to all life

in this wild and wondrous world

you love so much,

so I may take to heart 

that you have taken me to heart.

Bless you Ted Loder! 

Art and Healing with Tweens!

Quilling 1

What I truly love about working with Art and Healing is that you can work with it at any age! I use the same techniques regardless of whom I am working! I was asked to come to McKee, KY, to work with a youth group of girls in grades 6-8. And so I got everything prepared. The girls were very cooperative although they had lots of questions about whether they would be "allowed" to do their own thing or would I be telling them what they "have" to do. I was able to assure them that they would be making their own art.

I had them sit up straight with their hands on their laps. We did the sideways figure eights and then the breathing. They of course giggled when I asked them to make a noise! They had no problem with drawing with their non-dominant hand and got pretty quickly to putting on paper something that was bothering them. They really enjoyed tearing this up and burning the pieces. One girl brought a letter out and burned it at the same time. I didn't ask them to turn to each other and talk about how it felt. I was hesitant, because in a small group like that they may not have felt comfortable. I felt for the first time working with this that I wouldn't ask them to share anything. If I do this with this age again, I think I will have them write on the back of their paper how they felt after doing the Access and Release.

They were really ready to settle down and begin the Tranformation artwork and didn't have any problem searching among the bins provided to come up with their own artwork! Here is their finished work:

  

    

They had an easy time picking their colors for the background of their artwork. This time though one of the girls asked for black and I was able to speak about black as the absence of color and that for this artwork they should pick a color. They seemed okay with this idea. I hadn't thought about how a lot of young people now really resinate with black. I explained that when they used black on their release picture it meant that they had more to work on with this issue. To help heal that place inside of them they needed a color to begin with for their transformation.

As they worked they talked a lot about a movie they were all going to see called "The Hunger Games." And they were busy needling each other about being stalkers. There were a couple of sisters in the group. I encouraged them to take a square of color with them to keep in their pockets, since several of them would be leaving their artwork to dry. It would be fun to get the chance to work more with them and to have them try different mediums and to get a chance to talk about what they have done. We had an art showing with everyone.

I showed them how to quill paper and used it on my own artwork in the first image. This is an old form of art. According to Ann Martin, "Quilling, the coiling and shaping of narrow paper strips to create a design, has been around for years — hundreds, in fact. During the Renaissance, nuns and monks would roll gold-gilded paper remnants trimmed during the bookmaking process, and use them to decorate religious objects as an alternative to costly gold filigree. Quilling later became a pastime of 18th and 19th century young ladies in England, who would decorate tea caddies and pieces of furniture with paper filigree. The practice crossed the Atlantic with colonists, who added quilling to candle sconces and trays as home decorations."

One of the girls actually used some quilling on her picture! It is always nice to pass on something you love! Thanks to Rebekah Koury for inviting me to come share this work with this group of great young women!

Retreating with Art and Healing

It has been too long since I last wrote for this blog, but in that time there has been Christmas holidays and I was relieved of my phone. So the pictures I was going to use are gone! It has been hard to get myself to write because I rely so much on photo art!

In November I lead a retreat for Westside Unitarian Universalist Church of Farragut, TN. This church gets together every year at Pickett State Park.

 

I worked with a group of 13 of the campers, both adults and children. I taught them the stress releasing techniques that I have talked about in other blogs.

They were receptive and worked some beautiful artworks. One remarkable couple that came were both colorblind and legally blind. They had no problem with doing the artwork that released a negative emotion. I worked with the legally blind one by telling him that he doesn't have to know what colors he is using, but to go with what he is attracted to. I spread out his crayons in front of him and helped him find the center of his paper. I didn't know his partner was color blind until later! They were open to working how they could. I talked to them about the scientific evidence of the vibration of colors and that they might need someone to tell them what color they were working with but that they could do the work if they were open. Each color is assoicated with a point on the body which corresponds with the energy points (or chakras).  

The next day we worked on the transformative piece of artwork. I wish I had pictures to show you what they created! I lead my legally blind man to the modelling clay. He was delighted that he could connect with something that he remembered doing when he was younger. He fashioned a small blue travel trailer. I was honored that he would participate! What a wonderful witness! His wife didn't come back to the second part (we did one part in the morning and then the next in the afternoon.) I honor what each person's needs are. There are other ways to healing through voice, music, and movement. Art happens to be my own particular mode of healing!  Part of the weekend was a wonderful time of singing a Taize morning service. We moved and sang songs! It was also a healing time for me! What a wonderful group of people! They asked me if I would come join their church! I think 4 hours is a little difficult to do every week!

Later in November I visited Quest Farm in Georgetown, KY to do Art and Healing with the residents of the Farm! They are developmentally challenged adults who live together and work the farm. They sell ink pens and flowers which they grow themselves. The three pictures above were three that two of the residents did for me after we did our Art and Healing work.

We went through the breathing exercises as I always do when I begin. I asked them to find a place in their bodies that felt bad and to put it down on paper. We gave them each seven crayons: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and black. They each came up with a picture. I had them fold them up and tear them up (if they wanted to, some didn't). Then they chose their own color squares to do their healing pictures on. We did the breathing exercises again and when I asked them to do a noise this time they were louder! I asked them to go back to the same place inside of their bodies they went before and to ask for a picture or color that would heal this bad feeling. They were receptive and did some beautiful pictures that they were proud of! We hung them up so they would be able to see them every day. I heard that they were talking about what we did later in their houses.

Not every person participated but they all were into the pictures I took. I got many hugs that day too.
The above pictures were done after I showed them how to make turkeys from their hand prints! Ruth also did a picture of Quest Farm for me. It was a great afternoon!

The rest of my time was spent making dresses for my granddaughters. I find sewing soothing and healing for me. This is a smocked dress with frogs on ornaments. Mariel loved it and didn't want to take it off! I also made a red dress with Christmas flamingos for Lyla, but I didn't take a seperate picture of it to show you! If you have an outlet for your healing, I'd love to hear about it!  Blessings on the new year! 

Do Over! I Wish!

Being Foxy!

A huge part of healing is giving ourselves the chance to work with those things we wished we hadn't done! I've had a couple of those things happen to me lately and it made me think about this exercise we did at the Expressive Arts Institute at Salve Regina University in Newport, RI.

They had us begin by thinking of an incident where we did something we wish we could take back or do over! The first part of the exercise began with writing stream of consciousness (non stop writing) that is telling about how this incident felt using any words we wished including our emotions about it. We did this for two minutes. The leader timed it! (Thank goodness, we didn't share these because mine was full of swear words!) We talked to our partners about how this felt.

Then we were invited to write a report about the incident, no emotions, just the facts maam! We were reporters of what happened (for two minutes again). We talked about how this felt.

Next we were invited to write just telling the story as a story. Both emotions and facts. It was surprising to me how this felt! Like telling something but not being caught up in emotions or just telling the facts. It was a narrative! We once again had two minutes to write.

The next step for us was to sit back, breath and ask our bodies for an image that would help us with this story. Who were we in the story? My image was that of a little goat:

 I haven't looked at this for a while and didn't notice that the goat has blue eyes, tongue, and feet! Blue is always about communicating. It is the throat chakra. And yellow horns! Yellow is a power color for me which is the solar plexis chakra.

So this little goat was communicating seeing, speaking up and being able to move and having a power in her horns! Nice! Never saw that before!

Anyway, next we were invited to write a fairy tale beginning, "Once upon a time..." Mine was: The Little Scape Goat! It felt so strange writing this way and coming up with a tale for the circumstances! We didn't have much time (2 minutes) but I came up with a neat little tale using the idea of animal characters.

Next we were invited to think about what kind of character would have the skills we would need to help us out of the situation and to handle that situation differently. We were given these half poster boards with the paint sticks stapled on the bottom and invited to cut holes for the eyes the first thing. I chose to do a fox mask:

 This is a creative kind of thing that I absolutely love doing! I shaped it and worked on it until it got to this place. Notice the blue eyes? We were then invited to write on the back of our masks what qualities this mask had that would help us the next time we felt like a scape goat! I put down the ability to be stealthy, to gauge the situation and change directions fast. It's hard to outsmart a fox. I think of the Ginger Bread Man and how the fox talks him into riding on his back. So the fox is able to convince other's of her way of thinking. You get the idea!

Now I want to know if you decide to do this exercise! I would like to be your partner whom you tell about how it felt to do each step. Send me a picture of your drawings and your mask! Let's see what things you come up with. I have to admit that I've never quite felt like the scape goat who couldn't do anything about what was happening to her again. I've had times where I still did things I didn't want to do, but mostly I've seen these times as my having stopped thinking or moving. This exercise helped move me another step towards my healing. And now even after all these years since I've been there, I'm still learning from it!

I may go get that mask and think about what it means to see through the eyes of the fox for me! And I remember that St. Paul spoke about the things he did not want to do: "What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate (Romans 7: 15)." He was speaking of sin to the Romans, but this passage has always stood out to me, because there are many times when "I do not do what I want to do, but I do what I hate. " It's as if I am watching myself from a distance as I do something I don't want to. As an artist, this exercise has helped me get beyond myself and my embarrassment at what I have done and at what other's have done to me!