Being Creative!

Desk which I painted for my daughter, Lindsay.

Being creative often means you seldom do anything the same way twice! Sometimes you weave in things that don't seam to go together or use language as pictures. This desk was a labor of love for my daughter, Lindsay. I love using the unexpected as a canvas for my art. The picture on the front of the desk is of an island with sun and plane on one side and an erupting volcanoe on the other. She really loves lighthouses so the legs are painted like lighthouses from around the world! What a wonderful time we had planning and executing this project! And she is very proud (as am I) of the finished project. Being creative means thinking outside the box. What does your creative tool box have in it?

I showed you pictures the last time of my altar ego "Lizzie" and "Snailgirl" as well as "Dragon Lady." Even if you have trouble (or are afraid) to draw, you can start to know your inner self by beginning to map out or image (imagine) who are your different personalities. I am beginning to have stirrings about getting back into professional leadership in the church again. So I called some people whom are mentors for me and went to talk to them about doing this. That night I had a fitful night sleep and woke up at 5 a.m. questioning myself. What am I doing, why am I doing this, do I have what it takes to do this, will I be accepted, will I mess it up, etc., etc. you get the picture. So I prayed first of all and then sat down to do my art and healing work. My release picture looked like this:

In working with my emotions and using art to heal, I've discovered that I have to talk about things and then sleep on them (hopefully to dream an answer) but if I wake up more confused and questioning myself, it's time to get out the craypas! This whole picture has to do with my own fears, desires, issues of safety and connection problems. This release really was that. I calmed down and have been better able to be more clear about my own motives and whether I really am feeling a call (which I am!)

To help heal this space inside of me I used what I had at hand (I don't always paint!) and that one looks like this:

This snail energy is what I need to sustain through the next few weeks! Slow and steady. Carrying around what I need and trusting myself. Fear need not take over! I am beginning to be ready if I am called and appointed to the new position. I'll let you know.

If you are still getting started and need some help with beginning the inner pilgrimage, try to think about how you react when you are scared. Are there characteristics that you could name? What kind of animal, insect or inanimate object would that be? Look through some magazines and find a picture that you can cut out and put in your journal (yes an art journal is good. I use solid black ones because when I take them on retreat people are less likely to pick them up when I have carelessly left them somewhere. Pictures invite people to look inside them! I'm not always ready for that!)

You can do this with any emotion that you are feeling right now: happiness, excitement, stubbornness, anger, pain. If you need to heal these things (and that could come from not liking that part of yourself as well as something that has been hurting you), use the healing artwork steps I talked about in the last blog. I'd love to know what you discover about yourself!

How do I use art to heal?

Meet "Lizzie"

This week my spiritual advisor and I were talking about feelings. He asked me to tell him what image I would put to the feeling that I happened to be talking about right then. I told him about "Lizzie" who is a lizzard who climbs trees and is very fast and free! There is that part of my personality that is a climber! And when I am joyful this is how I feel! We each have many parts to our personalities. Some we like and others we'd just as soon not have!

The dragon is also a part of my personality. When she comes out I am so angry I breath fire! She was one of those parts of my personality that I had to make friends with! I tend to come up with animals to describe what I am feeling. When I need to protect myself my snail side comes out. I carry everything on my back and am quite slow at times to move on. It was a great way to discuss what has been happening to me. It is an important step in healing to be able to accept yourself and who you are. But sometimes we need something beyond words to help us grasp that which goes deeper than words.

Try this when you notice yourself being overwhelmed by a feeling, (it works especially well when you get stuck) place an image to it. First try moving. Swing your arms around, move your legs. (I like to walk a labyrinth when it's available) Sit down with crayons or color pastels with a piece of paper (8 x 10). Crayons or pastels work best because they are like those sticky emotions! Put your feet on the floor and close your eyes. Begin to breath deeply, taking 3 deep cleansing breaths in and out. On the third breath, make a noise as you exhale. Ask your spirit to give you an image or color that will represent this feeling. Try to find where in your body this feeling resides. And when you are ready open your eyes and begin to draw with your non-dominant hand (if right handed use your left). Even if you don't get an image see which color you are drawn to and just begin putting something on the page.

Let yourself draw until you are satisfied with it. Remember it doesn't have to be a Rembrandt. One of the things you won't be able to do is bring the part of you that is your critic to this process because you are using a different side of the brain than you are used to using. Did you get an image? Sometimes I get no more than scribbles on the page. How do you feel? Is there a difference? Look at your picture. What was the first color you put on the page? The colors correspond to different energy places on our bodies called chakras.

If you don't know why you are feeling a certain way this is a great way to help yourself map out your emotions. Red has to do with family of origin issues, safety and security. Orange has to do with our ability to accept our feelings and emotions. Yellow has to do with our peers, friends and enemies and our personal power. Green is where we hold our ability to open our heart, to give and receive love, and to release judgement. It is where we hold our life lessons and our abilty to teach others what we have learned (my favorite color!) Blue is where we hold our ability to speak up and to communicate our truth. To defend ourselves and others and to express what we are feeling and what we know. Purple is the place where we hold our ability to tune into messages from the body and it's energy. It provides us with knowing about ourselves, others, and what may happen. This is where we hold our creative energy. White is our spiritual center. The place we hold our ability to release and surrender to a higher power. Black is a place where something is still hidden from us (a place of no light). It will come into the light as we are more able to work through our emotions. And so Brown then is something coming into the light almost ready to take on a color.

Once you've had time to work with your cleansing image to see what you are working on, next pull together a form of art supply that you love to work with. I like acrylic paints for this part of the healing process. You could use water color, pencils, pastel chalks, clay, oils, material, collage, sculpture. (Make it bigger than an 8 x 10) This time you will create a healing image to replace what has been stuck in you. And this time as you create use whichever hand you want. Give yourself time to work on this creation as long as you need. You use the same proceedure (sit with your feet on the floor to begin, close your eyes, breath in 3 times and make a noise on the third time, ask your body and spirit for an image to heal this emotion. And then begin.

Put this creation in a place where you will see it every day for three weeks. And then display it where you will see it all the time. Looking at a healing image will help the cells of your body take in that healing! You will know when it is time. I am always amazed at the results and how beautiful each creation is. Honor what is given you because it is a gift from God (or your Higher Power!) When I have done this during a day retreat the diversity of images is breathtaking. I leave you with another of my own healing creations! Write to me with questions! They help!

               

As I was working with this artwork I followed my instincts. It needed to be 3 dimensional. You are free to use whatever you are drawn to. It could be quite surprising!

Healing is a Pilgrimage

Art is Powerful!

The journey for inner healing is not a straight path! It looks more like a labyrinth with many levels and peels like an onion! At least that is how my spiritual journey has been. Over the years I have felt compelled to seek help from others. And as I peeled back those layers, I could look back to see where I was being led.

The thing about a labyrinth is that you are physically turning back on yourself and just when you think you've reached the center you find yourself thrown back out to the edge. Things that don't seem very significant now come back to you when you least expect them and they add to or strip away from what Picasso called the "dust of everyday life." You know what happens when you let dust accumulate!

In one of the more painful times in my life, I sought out a spiritual advisor. Didn't know what they actually did but kept reading it in books and magazines. This lead me to a wonderful Sisters of Charity nun whom I connected with. I got to a place where I had no words for what was happening inside of me and she asked me if I could put an image(!) to the feeling. I realized that I had been given an image not long before of a snail. The snail has become part of who I am! And it describes my personality. I carry everything around with me (past, present, worries about the future) and I am slow on the uptake sometimes! Then there are those times when I seem to slip and slide my way along a path leaving a slime path behind. Just making that connection helped me be able to go on and talk about what was dammed up inside of me. (I got the image from a video where Maria Harris had asked us to find a shape in the clay we were holding. Art, of course!) I've made it part of my signature (if you look at the first blog I did you can probably see it in the bottom corner). It is an image that comes out for me as an aspect of who I am.

Movement inside the self may also take some movement on the outside or physically for anyone to access what needs to be healed! I always ask people to draw with their non-dominant hand to access what the body is calling for them to heal. Our dominant side hosts the judging/criticizing part of our brain which blocks or controls what we think. It is not always the wisest for our healing. Just that small movement from one hand to the other allows the body to free up our spirit. I also have asked groups to walk the labyrinth before they sit down to do a piece of art to help them get to a different place than they have brought with them. Dance is a powerful form of expressive art and one that people who need movement must use to help themselves to heal. I find walking the labyrinth immensely helpful when I begin my work with art and healing. My preference is with images, but I find a more well rounded response when using movement and voice (which I will speak of in another blog).

My son at 4.

Children are naturals with art, moving, and singing. They don't worry about how it looks or what color things should be! Blue noses and green feet are wonderful! Working with art and using your non-dominant hand takes you back to childhood. It frees up that child within to show what is happening inside of you. Each color you use corresponds and vibrates to a different energy center or chakra. It can help you find out what is happening with both physical pain as well as emotional and spiritual pain. I have lead one day retreats with Art and Healing, weekend retreats and used it in spiritual direction. There is something that is freed up by the use of art and I found that by understanding the process, I have been able to teach others how to work with it themselves.

Some of my work has been images, but some of it is abstract too. My son Michael offered one of the artworks I did for his healing to put on this blog! Thanks! I leave you with that image until the next time!

He calls this the All Seeing Eye!

New Venture for Me

Blogging is something I've been wanting to try and it took a friend of mine Pam Lee Miller to get me started. So thanks Pam!

My spritual journey began many years ago with becoming an artist in grade school (that is Catholic school!). The nuns noticed that I was good at copying the little pictures they gave us and asked me to do a poster one day. From there I began copying things from the encyclopedia. I have a cousin who is a very good artist and I thought I would try it out. I didn't have much training, although I took a couple of classes when I first went to college.

My college career ended early when I found out I was pregnant and I didn't get back to it until my second child was 4 years old (my oldest was 8). I decided to try something that I might get a job in and ended up with an English degree with a Woman Studies Minor. I took one art class: sculpture. Loved it! My journey continued with seminary where I earned a Masters of Divinity. I was expected to write my own theology as part of this program and I found this very hard to do. One of the exercises for class was to be creative and write our eschatology. (I will show this with an explanation in a later blog).

It was a revelation for me! I could paint what I had a hard time explaining in words. Writing came easier because of my artwork! I began showing my work at the Seminary. It was a great opportunity to talk about my artwork and to show what I had been doing. Then the spirit brought my life's work to me. One day while walking in Barnes and Noble, there was a book sitting on the floor facing me: Art and Healing by Barbara Ganim. I picked it up immediately.

Somehow I knew this was going to be important! I began working with the exercises in the book. But I kept getting frustrated because I wanted more information about what I was doing! I even tried using it with the spiritual direction I was beginning to do without much success. At the back of the book was a website from Salve Regina University in Rhode Island that offers an Expressive Arts Institute, a 3-weekend professional training program in the professional applications of the Expressive Arts. I drug my husband to two weekends and a friend to another!! Now driving from Kentucky to Rhode Island is a long way but it was so worth it!

I learned so much in those three weekends that I am using in my work with Spiritual Direction today. In addition to using to to create retreats and days of reflection, I have also healed many of the inner places inside of myself. The results of which I will share as we go along. This healing artwork is meant to be shared! It can and will help others heal by making them available for viewing. The above artwork is my healing sunflower.

This painting began as an exercise at one of the weekends in Rhode Island. I was surprised by a picture which I did that scared me:

I had to really work to like this dragon image. And to heal whatever this represented, I did another artwork:

 

This dragon is not so threatening!

 One of the things about healing and our inner journey that I have discovered through my work is that it is multi-layered and doesn't happen all at once. The image is more of an onion. And healing comes in many ways. I have found that doing art in this way has been more healing for me than anything I've ever done. The final healing painting I did was the sunflower at the beginning of this blog. It hangs in my kitchen and I share it here with you: