Spirituality and art therapy: living the connection

Spirituality and Art Therapy of related interest Art as Therapy Collected Papers Edith Kramer ISBN 1 85302 902 5 ...

Author: Mimi Farrelly-Hansen

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Spirituality and Art Therapy

of related interest

Art as Therapy

Collected Papers Edith Kramer

ISBN 1 85302 902 5

The Artist as Therapist Arthur Robbins ISBN 1 85302 907 6

Art Therapy and Computer Technology A Virtual Studio of Possibilities Cathy A. Malchiodi ISBN 1 85302 922 X

Psychological Aesthetics

Painting, Feeling and Making Sense David MacLagan ISBN 1 85302 834 7

Art-Based Research Shaun McNiff

ISBN 1 85302 621 2 pb ISBN 1 85302 620 4 hb

The Revealing Image

Analytical Art Psychotherapy in Theory and Practice Joy Schaverien ISBN 1 85302 821 5

Self-Mutilation and Art Therapy Violent Creation Diana Milia

ISBN 1 85302 683 4

Art, Science and Art Therapy Repainting the Picture Frances Kaplan ISBN 1 85302 698 0 pb ISBN 1 85302 697 2 hb

Medical Art Therapy with Adults Edited by Cathy A. Malchiodi ISBN 1 85302 279 4 pb ISBN 1 85302 678 6 hb

Spirituality and Art Therapy Living the Connection

Edited by Mimi Farrelly-Hansen Foreword by Deborah Bowman

Jessica Kingsley Publishers London and Philadelphia

Acknowledgments Thanks to my family for their extraordinary patience and support. To my husband Paul for all the technical unravelings. To my colleagues at Naropa University. To those who encouraged me early on: Cathy Malchiodi, Roberta Shoemaker-Beal, Pat Allen, Susan Griffin, Brian Luke Seaward, Candace Walworth. To the generosity of the chapter contibutors. To Barbara Ciletti for her able guidance in the publishing domain. To Linda Cetrulo for her careful editing. To the Friday morning yoginis. To Bernice Hill, Jude Blitz, Clyde Reid, Deborah Bowman, Katy Diver, Sandra Laemmle, Nadeen Lester, Michele Morgen, Andrea Schweitzer, Lucia Cappachione and Tirzah Firestone. To my clients, who are also my teachers. To Mary Cane Robinson, an inspiration. To all the students who kept asking me the hard questions. To Jessica Kingsley for her faith in this project. And a special thank you to Emma Woolf, my tireless, cheerful JKP editor. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England W1T 4LP. Applications for the copyright owner’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher. Warning: The doing of an unauthorised act in relation to a copyright work may result in both a civil claim for damages and criminal prosecution. The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in the United Kingdom in 2001 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers 116 Pentonville Road London N1 9JB, UK and 400 Market Street, Suite 400 Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA www.jkp.com © Copyright 2001 Jessica Kingsley Publishers  Foreword copyright 2001 Deborah Bowman Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-13: 978 1 85302 952 3 ISBN-10: 1 85302 952 1 Printed and Bound in Great Britain by Athenaeum Press, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear

Contents

Foreword by Deborah Bowman 7 Preface 11 Introduction 17 1 Prayer, Sacraments, Grace 29

Catherine Moon, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL

2 Each Time a New Breath: Buddhism, Art, and Healing 52 Bernie Marek, Naropa University, Boulder, CO

3 Emuna and Tikva: Art Therapy from a Jewish Perspective 77 Edit Zaphir-Chasman, Art Therapist, East Bay, CA

4 The Yoga of Art and the Creative Process: Listening to the Divine 97 Michael Franklin, Naropa University, Boulder, CO

5 Pilgrimage: Celtic Spirituality Revisited 115 Cam Busch, Art Therapist, Chattanooga, TN; National Arts in Healthcare Consultant

6 Nature: Art Therapy in Partnership with the Earth 137 Mimi Farrelly-Hansen, Naropa University, Boulder, CO

7 Art, Nature, and Aging: A Shamanic Perspective 159 Madeline M. Rugh, University of Alberta, Canada

8 Loving Body is Embracing Spirit: Coming Home Stories 182

Suzanne Lovell, Sonoma State University, CA

9 The Heart of the Lion: Joining Community through Art Making 204 Janis Timm-Bottos, Art Street Studios, Albuquerque, NM

10 Inner Necessity – Inner Balance 227 Carol A. Sagar, Art Therapist, Norfolk, UK

Afterword 253

Mimi Farrelly-Hansen APPENDIX: FACTUAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROFESSION OF ART THERAPY 254

Becky Olivera, Robin Toler, and Claudia Trevithick: Louisiana Art Therapy Association THE CONTRIBUTORS 259 SUBJECT INDEX 261 AUTHOR INDEX 267

Foreword

Mimi places a hand-woven basket of natural objects before me. She invites me to set an intention from Spirit for our work together this afternoon. I have come to her as a friend with a question in my heart. She offers quiet moments of reflection and the opportunity to explore creatively the career dilemma I face. The basket is full of wondrous treasures and textures including bones, shells, fox fur and snake skin. Following her suggestion I release my conscious intent and choose items that intuitively draw my eye and hand. Together we contemplate the white bowl that was home to a soft sea creature and play with the crab claw grinning with trickster teeth and squinting eyes. I stroke the downy coat of the fox and arrange my chosen remnants of the natural world into a mandala. From an array of art materials Mimi presents I select pastels and allow the totem objects to inspire a drawing. Mimi watches and waits with spare yet encouraging words when I hesitate. The 15 or so minutes with chalk dust on my hands are fresh and absorbing. She pins the work to the wall and invites me to vocalize the sounds I imagine emanating from the bleached vessel and the animated marks appearing on the paper. The art is speaking to us, and we listen with intrigue and delight. I remember a resonance to deeper chords of my being that yearn for the reverie of art making and the contemplative space that it offers. We discuss the balance of family and work that we share in our differing yet similar ways as women. The journey is complete. I leave holding an expanded container that is home to my own soul’s longing for wholeness and expression in the world. Spirituality and Art Therapy: Living the Connection offers us a container of rich experiences that weave the transformational nature of art with the ineffable. Mimi gathers friends and colleagues to share their stories with the artistry and elan that she offers her nature basket. As one of the leaders in the field of transpersonally oriented art therapy, she has a unique talent for creating a vision and coaxing it forward. The opportunity she offered me as a friend, she offers her clients, students and readers. This book is a presentation of artifacts of living

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SPIRITUALITY AND ART THERAPY

experience. We may not directly experience the movement of Spirit or hope that the contributors document yet we have the opportunity to connect to the essence of their healing encounters through these writings. Like Mimi, this book is as practical as it is inspiring. Lay people can get their hands into the materials with the suggested exercises and professionals can choose among an array of approaches to expand their practice. The illustrations give us possibilities of where to start or a destination to which we may aspire. Working with Mimi as she developed the art therapy program at Naropa University I sensed she embodied Angeles Arriens’ counsel to ‘walk the mystical path with practical feet’. In Spirituality and Art Therapy she brings together a group of art therapists to show how this can be done, changing the lives of many individuals one footstep and one brush stroke at a time. The path we follow in this journey is trod with both deliberation and spontaneity. Psychiatrist Carl Jung turned to painting and sculpture throughout his lifelong investigation into the depths of the psyche and the nature of what makes us whole. He painted his dreams and the characters of his reveries and meditations. Late in his life he returned to the playful activities of childhood to recover essential elements of his being. His life exemplified the creative edge he encouraged his clients and students to explore. The examples in this book are a continuation of the tradition that Jung began and embodied. Jung saw the religious experience as essential to healing. He described this experience as intensely personal and beyond a collective or societal construction. Jung demonstrated how art channels and contains the powerful images portrayed in the transpersonal encounter. In these chapters we witness the symbols of transformation made personal and real through crayons, paint, clay, photography and a host of natural and found objects. In Jung’s model we also witness the expression of the dark aspects of the psyche if we are true to an unflinching investigation of the phenomena of the mind. The transpersonal art therapist willingly follows and amplifies these elements in pursuit of the hidden gift in the shadow. Bernie Marek describes how he recovers the artistic vision his alcoholic father helped him to acquire in the slums of Chicago. We see Catherine Moon assisting her hospitalized client to realize her true beauty beneath a narcissistic veneer through encouragement to paint self-portraits. Edit Zaphir-Chasman helps a woman to discover a torch of hope in therapy as they uncover the devastation of a family lineage destroyed in the Nazi concentration camps. These examples are a few of the treasures expressing the personal and professional passion of the contributors. In your reading I encourage you to trust

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your intuitive leanings and explore the methods and metaphors of art that configure spirit and touch your own heart. Mimi has placed in our hands a bountiful basket from which to choose. Deborah Bowman Chair, Transpersonal Counseling Psychology Department Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado

Preface

Compiling this anthology required a delicate balance between the eye of the eagle and the eye of the mouse. How to combine the broad panorama of truth or meaning with the reality of life on the ground, in the narrow passageways of a thousand hospital corridors, mental health agencies, community art studios, nursing homes and prisons where art therapists seek to alleviate suffering through the use of imagination and media? Eagle offers the high place, the view beyond the relatively brief history of psychology and art therapy to centuries of art making which expressed social and spiritual concerns around the world. He reveals the recently discovered extravagance of over 200 animal drawings, presumably used for ritual purposes, from the 30,000-year-old Chauvet cave in southern France. He turns us to face innumerable cultural traditions where shamanic forebears using imagery for healing. He invites us to meditate on Tibetan thangka paintings, Byzantine icons, medieval mandalas, and Zen landscapes which seek to express the non-dual nature of ultimate reality. Mouse moves closer to the ground. She mutters as she hauls water to a multipurpose basement room in which she conducts regular art therapy sessions for drug addicted youth. Keenly attuned to her environment, she engages all her senses to create a suitably safe and aesthetically pleasing space for authentic creative work. She appreciates materials, augmenting tightly packed cupboards of pastels, paint and clay with bits of nature and reusable ‘junk.’ Unlike eagle, she embraces brokenness, chaos and disarray. She is patient with the unraveled psyche, accepting of mystery and frequently awed by the courage of those who fashion images of deepest yearnings, fears and pain with the materials she provides. When I began soliticing the chapters in this book I sought to integrate eagle’s broad cross-cultural view of spirituality, art and healing with the wisdom of mouse, for whom spirituality is an everyday event. It was 1995. I was coordinating Naropa University’s master’s degree program in art therapy and transpersonal counseling psychology, a program I had founded in 1992 and

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whose scope continued to challenge me. Like many artists I had an intuitive understanding that art making, therapy and Spirit were related, were, perhaps, inseparable, but I lacked language to describe the many facets of that interrelationship. Consulting the literature on transpersonal psychology, the established arena for exploring the link between psychology and spirituality, shed little light on the topic. Even to this day its journals and texts rarely mention art therapy; references to imagination or image, although occurring more frequently, generally refer to work in Jungian or psychosynthesis models of treatment or to the widely practiced use of guided imagery as a gateway to non-ordinary states of consciousness. Working at Naropa, where East meets West on a daily basis, I saw students and faculty incorporating contemplative practice into the teaching environment. Beginning meditation classes and classes in transpersonal counseling psychology compared theistic and non-theistic approaches to spirituality. I wondered, therefore, how art therapists practicing Buddhism or contemplative Christianity or involved with Jewish Renewal addressed the spiritual dimensions in their work. What about others, myself included, whose spirituality was more eclectic? What impact did their faith have on how they understood themselves and their clients and the healing journey through art? Thus, I prepared a list of questions and sent them out to colleagues with the invitation to create a book on this little explored topic, the spiritual in art therapy. My own interest in the topic was more than academic. It seems that Spirit has always been strongly present to me. Throughout childhood and adolescence Catholic liturgies and ritual occasionally transported me to states of transcendence and bliss, while regular contact with the natural world brought comfort and a sense of connection to predictable cycles of growth and change. After college, a 12-step program taught me valuable lessons about a God within and among, not above, humankind. In my late twenties art making, moving from classes in pottery, stone carving, drawing and painting to a regular regimen of both spontaneous and refined creative expression, proved a dependable avenue to self-knowledge and the delights of beauty. At the same time I discovered Jung and began, with both Jungian analysts and in personal growth groups that paired dream work with art making, what has now been a 25-year pilgrimage of paying attention to my dreams, gaining confidence in the reoccurring descent into darkness that heralds all growth and healing. Over time the combination of spiritual discipline, community, art making and the witnessing of my imagery by a trusted guide/therapist provided a solid foundation for my subsequent

PREFACE

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graduate studies in art therapy and 20 years of clinical work with abused and neglected children and adults. Like many raised in orthodoxy, I had a spiritual hunger which led me far from my roots. Feminist theory and theology opened many doors as did the introduction to hatha yoga and a Buddhist meditation practice. Since 1990 I have become more intentional about exploring my Christian inheritance. Robert Coles’ (1990, 1992) research on children’s spirituality shed new light on the link between faith and resiliency, while also empowering me in my ongoing use of art activities with Sunday school students at the Congregational church attended by our family. Edward Hoffman’s (1993) investigation of peak experiences of childhood stimulated a pilot study which combined his verbal query with guided imagery and art making. As a result I intentionally began to ask clients about their sources of strength, tangible and intangible, and actively helped them investigate their own religious and spiritual histories as well as their relationship to topics like prayer, faith and membership in a community that supported their spiritual growth. Still, I found talking about spirituality to be tricky business; how, I wondered, did my art therapy colleagues incorporate this important multidimensional yet elusive element into their work? Following the pedagogic example of spiritual traditions, the so-called world wisdom teachings, I specifically asked all contributors to emphasize story in their writings. What you will encounter are stories about the human experience – people struggling to make sense of their worlds, be those the worlds of boredom, confusion, anxiety or grief, or the more extreme worlds of mental illness, depression, homelessness or life-threatening disease. Each author’s personal vignettes highlight how topics like meditation, relaxation, prayer, pilgrimage, practice, community, and earth relate to explorations in drawing, painting, photography, collage or clay. Each story is shared with permission from the person it describes, often with a change of name to ensure confidentiality. I also requested that contributors discuss their own artwork along with that of clients. We live at a time when many artists have joined the ranks of service providers in medical and educational facilities across the United States. In the scramble for funding, art therapists and artists have often become polarized, with the art therapists being perceived as the ‘clinical’ (more credentialed, more expensive) employees, while artists are viewed as more skilled creatively. This seems an unfortunate simplification, even a distortion. The fact is that I could not continue to function as an art therapist were I not actively engaged with and growing as a painter, writer, and dancer. Nor could I function in a healing

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capacity with others were I not willing to welcome my own often frighteningly dark nature which emerges through creative work. In titling this book I have chosen the word spirituality, from the Latin spiritus, meaning breath, courage, vigor, or soul. Spirit is that which animates; though variously expressed, it is innate within all, thus requiring our attention within a counseling or psychotherapy session. The subtitle, ‘living the connection,’ addresses the ordinary quality of working within this paradigm. I have tried to make this an approachable and practical book, one which will be welcomed by professionals already using art with clients or by those who are curious about the possibilities therein. While the concepts addressed are deep, I believe that the commingling of story, illustration and commentary makes the work tangible and engaging for any adult learner. The book begins with five chapters on the link between art therapy and five established spiritual traditions: Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Yogic, and Celtic. Following those, a central section of plates allows the reader directly to experience the transformative possibilities of images. The five remaining chapters draw on the influences of feminism, ecopsychology, shamanism, archetypal psychology, and objects relations and Tara Rokpa theories to describe more eclectic interweavings of art making and the spiritual. The legacy of Carl Jung, perhaps the first modern transpersonal art therapist, is brought to light by Dr Deborah Bowman’s foreword. In a somewhat more academic tone, the book’s introduction and conclusion define both art therapy and transpersonal psychology and discuss spiritual thrusts in counseling and the visual arts, thus providing a theoretical frame for the collected contributions. At the end of each chapter you will find a section called ‘creative explorations’: two or three art-making exercises related to the chapter content. These deserve more than a cursory glance or the making of a mental note to ‘try that’ with such-and-such a student or group of clients. As is discussed more fully in the book’s appendix, part of art’s curative power lies in its ability to bypass verbal defenses and directly communicate emotions well beyond our day-to-day consciousness. At the same time, different media evoke different responses for different people. Please get to know the possibilities for yourself before sharing any exercise with someone else. Your hands may get dirty, but you will become a more responsible, trustworthy guide for the non-verbal domain. Finally, this collection of writings represents a sampler, not a definitive listing, of possibilities for combining art, therapy and spirituality. As will be described in the book’s introduction, a number of other art therapists and visual

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artists have spoken or written about the spiritual aspects of their work since this project began in the mid-1990s. If we have done our job well, Spirituality and Art Therapy will inspire reflection, dialogue, and debate. I hope that all who use art in some health-promoting, spirit-enhancing capacity with themselves or others will benefit, as have I, from the wisdom of these chapters. More specifically, I hope that this broader, more inclusive view of art therapy will move us and our clients closer to the fruits of wisdom teachings worldwide, promoting more compassionate service of all life forms on the planet.

References Coles, R. (1990) The Spiritual Life of Children. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Hoffman, E. (1993) Visions of Innocence: Spiritual and Inspirational Experiences of Childhood. Boston, MA: Shambhala.

Introduction

This book rests upon two premises: that art making is inherently spiritual and that spirituality is an important ingredient in therapy or becoming more whole. Examining these ideas will create a context for the chapters that follow. But first it is important to acknowledge the general climate in which the work was conceived. We in the West live at a time when science and religion are once again, after a 200-year hiatus, on speaking terms. Today topics like prayer and wellness are researched and discussed by popular and professional authors alike, yielding a plethora of books and periodicals which invite us to reconsider our relationship to that variously named reality beyond the human: God, Goddess, Spirit, Krishna, Allah, Brahman, Higher Power, Universal Mind, the Tao, the Atman, the One (Borysenko 1999; Chopra 2000; Dossey 1993; Walsch 1999). Many within our industrial, technological society appear disenchanted, hungry for something of substance, something larger than self, something both mysterious and apprehendable whose value endures beyond the temporary glow of accomplishment or acquisition. Subjects such as love, forgiveness, revenge, humility, hope, optimism, and wisdom have gained national attention as potentially significant variables in physical and mental health and social well-being (National Institute for Healthcare Research 2000). Most medical schools in the United States offer courses on spirituality and medicine, teaching doctors to demonstrate their interest in what patients value most by taking a spiritual history (NIHR 2000). The use of imagery in healing, much of it based on ancient shamanic practices (Achterberg 1985), has found widespread applications within the medical community. Not only did science and spirituality part company as a result of the Industrial Revolution, spirituality and mainstream art became similarly estranged. Prior to that time, art had been an acknowledged vehicle for illuminating spiritual truths, be those the visions of shamans or the sacred narratives of the great theologically based cultures; heavens and hells of other worlds came into color and form through art (Lipsey 1988). But in the newly industrialized 17

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West realism became the norm, with the technical virtuousity needed to achieve it highly valued. Not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century would large numbers of artists return to exploring dimensions of reality beyond the material. Impressionists focused on the depiction of light. Expressionists sought to portray their true inner feelings. Surrealists aligned themselves with 1 the world of dreams. Of major significance to the early twentieth-century art world and to successive generations of artists who sought artistic freedom in both form and subject matter was the leadership of a Russian painter named Wassily Kandinsky and the ideas he put forth in Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1914/1977). Deeply influenced by Theosophy and spiritualism, Kandinsky believed that art should go beyond the technical skills of observation and execution, or creativity, to provide a method of spiritual growth for the artists (Wilber 1990). Having developed their own souls to the point of directly intuiting the spiritual dimension, artists must express that larger metaphysical reality via subtle manipulations of non-objective form and color harmonies whose vibrations evoked a soul response in the viewer (Kandinsky 1914 /1977). This mandate to develop spiritually and the permission to do so in abstract or non-objective formats was articulated more fully by some of Kandinsky’s successors, like Malevich, Marc, Klee, and Brancusi, who agreed that: true and genuine art, the highest art, involved: First, the development or growth of the artist’s own soul, right up to the point of union with universal Spirit and transcendence of the separate self or individual ego; and second, the artistic depiction/expression of this spiritual dimension, particularly in such a way as to evoke similar spiritual insights on the part of observers. (Wilber 1990, p.13)

By valuing art as spiritual expression, Kandinsky helped validate a small but persistent current of mystical and visionary art evident in the West for the past 900 years, produced by such artists as Hildegard of Bingen, Hieronymous Bosch, William Blake and others. Furthermore, he broadened the definition of who could be called artists. The Blaue Reiter movement which Kandinsky founded promoted diversity of artistic expression, bringing attention to such forms as folk and primitive art, children’s art, Asian and African art, medieval woodcuts and sculpture, musical and theatrical pieces (Hartley-Gorham 1998). Kandinsky also acknowledged the spiritual validity of art produced by those with mental illnesses, a group of artists brought into the public view by German

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psychiatrist, Hans Prinzhorn (1972), and his collection of more than 5000 works of art by 450 mentally ill patients from Central Europe. Spirituality fell 2 out of favor before and during the two world wars, but in the 1960s art museums worldwide began holding exhibitions based on the rediscovered relationship between modern art and spiritual ideals, with artists openly discussing their interests in the spiritual psychology of Carl Jung, as well as the spiritual beliefs and practices of Native American and non-Western cultures (Tuchman and Freeman 1986, cited in Hartley-Gorham 1998). Of particular significance were two exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the catalogs which described them: The Spiritual in Abstract Art: 1890–1985 (Tuchman and Freeman 1986) and Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art (Tuchman and Eliel 1992). Kandinsky and Prinzhorn’s influence notwithstanding, acceptance of spirituality as a legitimate artistic focus remained more undercurrent than mainstream within the professional art world throughout the last two-thirds of the twentieth century. Within that undercurrent, four groups of artists deserve mention as their contributions relate directly to one or more chapters within Spirituality and Art Therapy. First, the visionary artists. Alex Grey’s (1980) life-size self-portraits radiate energy in a way that is palpable, offering the viewer healthy possibilities for a life which embraces various dimensions of physical and metaphysical realities. Many others who call themselves mystics are highlighted in Mary Carroll Nelson’s Artists of the Spirit: New Prophets of Art and Mysticism (1994). One Source - Sacred Journeys: A Celebration of Spirit and Art (Markowitz and Rhoads 1997) showcases the art and writing of 43 individuals, Nelson among them, who find spiritual direction, wisdom and healing through making art. Many, like Kandinsky and his followers, feel called to lead viewers into higher and deeper parts of themselves. They often refer to some startling event which radically altered their psyche, allowing them to perceive an expanded range of vibrations affecting the web of connections between self and stimuli, and they acknowledge the various practices and experiences which help them access those unconscious or superconscious domains: meditation, prayer, body disciplines, play, dreams, and shamanic journeying (Markowitz and Rhoads 1997). In the words of Gary Markowitz: Painting is one way I connect with myself – my higher self – that spark of golden light that lies within… My art is about other dimensions and realities coming together with ours – angelic realms, the Central sun, dimensions of light. It is about accessing distant memories and remembering our origin and our selves. (Markowitz and Rhoads 1997, p.91)

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A second group of contemporary artists has rejected the pronounced individualism and materialism of mainstream art (postmodern deconstructivism) to engage with their communities and society in new service-oriented ways (postmodern reconstructivism) (Gablik 1991). For example, Lynn Hall collaborates with zoologists and biologists to create ‘art for animals,’ such as sculptural rock carvings that trap water for desert animals and wooden sculptures for the prairie that offer safe perches for birds of prey endangered by powerlines (Gablik 1991). Krzysztof Wodiczko worked with homeless residents of New York City to make shopping cart-like creations that made visible the easily overlooked plight of many marginalized citizens (Gablik 1991). Third, there are artists who focus on teaching, but not in a traditional artschool format. Among them, Cassou and Cubley’s (1995) ‘process painting’ eschews technique or the interpretation of imagery to highlight the act of creation as a meditative practice. New Mexico artist Meinrad Craighead (1986, 1991) offers creative ‘praying with images’ retreats for women. Judith Cornell (1994, 1997) believes that mainstream art has become disconnected from its original purpose of uniting the artist with the inner light of Spirit; her classes and workshops stress the role of color as a conduit for energy and vibration, teaching students to combine free expression with the drawing of mandalas with colored pencil on black paper. Finally, paralleling the work of these professionals are the ongoing efforts of countless individuals worldwide whose untrained creative efforts place them within the field of ‘outsider art’ or what French surrealist painter Jean Dubuffet termed ‘art brut’ or ‘raw art’: ‘raw’ because it was uncooked by culture; ‘raw’ because it was a link to the raw nerve of psyche. Whether featured in The Musee de L’Art Brut in Lausanne or in Raw Vision, the international journal of outsider art, this group of artists represents ‘not just the work of the mentally ill or unstable but a source of true creation carried out as a result of inner compulsion. An art as natural and free-flowing as a child’s, but with the full intensity, sophistication and commitment of an adult’ (von Schaewen and Maizels 1999, p.12). It is interesting to compare the ebb and flow of the spiritual undercurrent in mainstream art with its presence in the world of psychology, where the inclusion of a ‘religious or spiritual problem’ (V62.89) in the American Psychiatric Association’s DSM-4 (1994), suggests a level of professional acceptance previously unseen. As early as the mid-1960s the concept of spiritual well-being appeared in the counseling literature (Burke and Miranti 1995), with a series of related assessments developed over the years. More recently Ingersoll (1998) enlisted a

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panel of eleven leaders of diverse spiritual traditions to evaluate ten dimensions of spiritual wellness: conception of the absolute or divine, meaning, connectedness, mystery, sense of freedom, experience-ritual-practice, forgiveness, hope, knowledge-learning, present-centeredness. His study attempted to create a ‘starting point to continue research and dialogues about healthy spirituality and provide a cross-culturally affirmed vocabulary for discussing spirituality’ (Ingersoll 1998, p.164). Of subsequent note was the 1999 publication of a ‘white paper’ on spirituality by the Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling (ASERVIC) which, while acknowledging the difficulty of using words to define as numinous a concept as spirituality, urged counselors to better assist clients in the areas of relationships, self-concepts and problem-solving by attending to their religious orientations and their spirituality (ASERVIC 1999). Transpersonal psychology, a field which bridges psychology and spirituality, provides the largest umbrella for the inclusion of spirituality within the scope of mental health services (Boorstein 1996; Cortright 1997; Scotton, Chinen, and Battista 1996). Officially founded in 1968 by Abraham Maslow, Anthony Sutich and others, and often called the fourth force in psychology (following behavioral, psychoanalytic and humanistic models), this branch of psychology concerns itself with both the development of the self and the urge to push beyond the boundaries of the self into those areas of consciousness identified by every major metaphysical tradition throughout history (Wilber 1977). Early contributors to the movement included the American philosopher-psychologist William James, whose study of consciousness within the framework of evolutionary biology included mysticism (James 1902), Carl Jung, who developed the concept of an individuation process which transcended the personal (Jung 1934), Roberto Assagioli, who asserted that healthy adult development included both personal and spiritual psychosynthesis (Scotton et al. 1996), and Charles Tart, who collected interpretations of human psychologies by various spiritual traditions in his massive Transpersonal Psychologies (Tart 1975, new edition 1992). A common misperception about transpersonal psychology is that it overlooks personal ego development in favor of more transcendent or mystical states of consciousness, that it is all light and no dark. On the contrary, the very definition of the term indicates movement through and beyond the personal. As noted by McClure, Carter, and Franklin in a special transpersonal edition of Guidance and Counselling (2000), ‘descendence rather than transcendence might be a better descriptor, albeit less romantic, of the actual spiritual journey’ (p.1).

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The field of art therapy was formally organized in the late 1960s, at the same time as transpersonal psychology. At its most basic, art therapy can be defined as a human service profession that utilizes art media, images, the creative process and patient/client responses to the created products as reflections of an individual’s development, abilities, personality, interests, concerns, and conflicts. (American Art Therapy Association Board of Directors 1995, p.5; see Appendix for more details about the profession of art therapy)

Like psychology, its American roots were strongly influenced by psychodynamic thinking. Subsequently it has journeyed through Jungian, behavioral, cognitive, and humanistic thought, finding ways to adapt each theory with a core set of beliefs about the usefulness of creative expression in relieving suffering and promoting health. Art therapy has much to contribute to the larger conversation about spirituality and wellness. Yet, until recently, relatively few of its members have spoken out about the transpersonal dimensions of their work. Noteworthy pioneers in this area are: Florence Cane (1951), who integrated meditative awareness into a series of art exercises for body, breath and voice; Joan Kellogg (1978), whose use of mandala drawings led to a collaboration with Stanislav Grof ’s consciousness research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Institute throughout the 1970s (Thayer 1994); and Joseph Garai (1976), who developed eight methods for inner exploration through meditation and concentration which sometimes resulted in artistic images and symbols that led to self-transcendence and a redefinition of the personality. Since the 1970s, while the majority of art therapists have tended to focus attention on professional issues closely allied with mainstream psychology, a small number of individuals have continued to discuss the spiritual nature of their work. Catherine Moon (1989) was an early voice speaking out at national art therapy conferences about the analogies between art and prayer. In 1991 Roberta Shoemaker-Beal and Phoebe Dufrene convened a provocative panel discussion called ‘My God left me? Spirituality, wholism, and the transpersonal in art therapy’ (Dufrene and Shoemaker-Beal 1991). More numerous were those who followed in Jung’s footsteps, notably Edith Wallace (1987) and Margaret Keyes (1983), who used active imagination and a variety of art experiences to help clients explore and integrate archetypal symbols from dreams and the unconscious. Others, like Chickerneo (1993) and Feen-Calligan (1995), blended art therapy with the 12-step recovery model. Within a more clinical

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context, Horovitz-Darby (1994) developed an art-based spiritual assessment whose results were correlated with Fowler’s (1981) stages of faith, and Lewis (1997) discussed the private practice implications of a transpersonal arts psychotherapy approach which included past-life work. In the medical arena Malchiodi (1999) noted how art making helped physically ill patients transform and transcend their immediate circumstances. Writing from a contemplative viewpoint, Franklin (1999) expanded on the potential benefits of the witness in meditation, art, and supervision. As was outlined above, integrating spirituality into art therapy can occur in a variety of therapeutic settings, among the most recent of which is the community-based art studio. Influential leaders in this area are Shaun McNiff, whose Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination (1992) incorporated Hillman’s (1989) view of psychology as soulmaking and encouraged art therapists to consider models of shamanic healing and the use of art as religious ritual, Pat Allen, whose Art is a Way of Knowing: A Guide to Self-Knowledge and Spiritual Fulfillment through Creativity (1995) advocated a return to working in community within an open studio as the avenue for spiritual connection, and Bruce Moon, whose Art and Soul (1997) recounts memorable client stories which illustrate his deep respect for the curative powers of the creative act. Those who have focused more on educating the general public about the use of art for personal growth and holistic healing include art therapists Lucia Capacchione (1979, 1999), Aviva Gold (1998), Mandala Assessment Research Institute (MARI) practitioners (see note 1 in Chapter 6 for details) and expressive art therapist Barbara Ganim (1999). Deborah Koff-Chapin’s Touch Drawing technique and the SoulCards it inspired (Koff-Chapin 1998) are yet another example of the ways that art therapists have included spirituality within the scope of their work. For the most part the contributors to Spirituality and Art Therapy represent new voices in the conversation about the spiritual aspects of art making and healing. A few are gaining recognition outside the field of art therapy. For example, in 1998, Janis Timm-Bottos traveled to Egypt to tell participants at a conference on world hunger about her Albuquerque, NM, ‘ArtStreet’ center for the homeless. In 1996, in Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland, at a conference on Celtic Christianity, ‘Celtic Vision,’ Cam Busch exhibited photographs from her pilgrimage in Ireland and led workshop participants on meditation walks through the exhibition. Carol Sagar regularly travels throughout Great Britain and mainland Europe leading Buddhist-based Tara Rokpa workshops.

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A key word in spiritual literature is transformation, which, as the noted Zen teacher Joko Beck (1998) instructs, means ‘taking your life as it is and working with it’. This is a process well known to artists, taking raw materials and manipulating them in various ways to create new form, and it is transpersonal by its very nature for it requires a committed relationship to a source of being beyond the skin-clad ego. The contributors to this book know firsthand that intentional creative work transforms lives, beginning with their own. Their type of art making is not about fixing but about entering into a relationship with what is. Some call it witnessing, others listening, still others attending to the needs of soul. However described, its fruits resemble the outcome of many spiritual practices: a heightened awareness of self and other, a reawakening of the senses and the body, a new ability to inhabit fully the present moment, a sense of awe at the mysterious ways that the images which visit us speak of realities beyond our conscious understanding, a greater sense of acceptance for all aspects of ourselves and others, love, compassion and gratitude for some larger, deeper, ineffable presence to which we all (human beings, animals, plants) belong. Distinguishing transpersonal content, context and process, as proposed by Vaughan (1979), provides a useful vehicle for conceptualizing the contributions of these authors. Many of the above-listed benefits resulting from a blending of art therapy and spirituality could be described as transpersonal content. Other examples from the book which fall into this category are: Suzanne Lovell’s encounter with cancer, documented through authentic movement and art (Chapter 8); Madeleine Rugh’s description of how art making facilitated shamanic experiences for two elderly clients (Chapter 7); the everyday encounter with myth and archetype that occurs in Timm-Bottos’ Albuquerque studio for homeless persons and other community members (Chapter 9); the perinatal work elicited in Carol Sagar’s Tara Rokpa therapy group murals (Chapter 10). Common to all of the chapters is a respect for simple art media and the inherently transformative possibilities they contain. Transpersonal context refers to the therapist’s non-judgmental attitude about the client’s symptoms, the therapist’s mindfulness of his/her own process, a commitment to service and a non-salvational mentality. Several contributors, like Catherine Moon (Chapter 1) and Bernie Marek (Chapter 2), invite clients to make a relationship with that which they most want to discard. Common to all authors is an emphasis on mindfulness and a referencing back to the practices which support his/her work. Common to art therapy in general is the welcoming of mystery and a high tolerance of chaos, for both destructive and constructive aspects of the creative act. The urge to create is understood as a

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bodily instinct, and the art process and product are respected as sources of truth and wisdom. Facilitating non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSCs) through ritual, guided imagery, shamanic inductions, energy work, breathwork, chanting, and hypnosis are considered types of transpersonal process. The contributors to Spirituality and Art Therapy describe many instances where NOSCs have been accessed. In some cases, clients are led through extended relaxation periods before creative work (Sagar, Chapter 10) or asked to prepare for painting by quieting the mind through a simple breath awareness practice (Marek, Chapter 2). The importance of playing with art materials without any preconceptions of what will emerge is stressed by several writers (Farrelly-Hansen, Chapter 6; Sagar, Chapter 10), as is the surrendering of one’s conscious control through drawing an object, either oneself or something from nature, without looking at the paper (Moon, Chapter 1; Farrelly-Hansen, Chapter 6). In these instances art making becomes a type of meditation. Any relief from suffering by the client occurs not through catharsis or insight, but through the powerful experience of focusing outside the self, fully entering the present moment with all of one’s senses, successfully negotiating boredom and frustration, and occasionally being rewarded by a profound sense of awe or bliss. In conclusion, as summarized by the foregoing discussion, there exists a long and intimate history of relationship between art and spirituality, on the one hand, and between spirituality and healing, on the other. Beginning in the mid-1980s and growing stronger in the 1990s, that relationship has come back into focus within both the helping professions and the world of the visual arts, challenging practitioners to meet suffering with knowledge of both Western science and the world’s spiritual traditions. Mind/body, body/soul…all the old dichotomies come into question. The reality of our radical interconnectedness and our capacity for direct experiences of the divine through art making have begun to gain public acceptance. Working within this paradigm art therapists are challenged to transform both their own woundings and those of their clients, staying grounded in all that Western psychology has learned about human behavior and remaining open to new possibilities for self-acceptance and self-transcendence via spiritual practices and/or perspectives. None of the past is lost. A wider view is gained.

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Notes 1.

For more about the relationship between surrealism and art therapy, see ‘A link to the “art world”’ in McNiff 1992.

2

For an in-depth discussion of how the rise of Hitler impacted theosophy, spiritualism, Kandinsky, and other early twentieth-century artists, as well as beginning attempts to adapt Prinzhorn’s methods in France, see Hartley-Gorham 1998, pp.25–33.

References Achterberg, J. (1985) Imagery and Healing: Shamanism and Modern Medicine. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Allen, P. (1995) Art is a Way of Knowing: A Guide to Self-Knowledge and Spiritual Fulfillment through Creativity. Boston, MA: Shambhala. American Art Therapy Association Board of Directors (1995) ‘Revised Definition of Profession,’ Art Therapy: The Journal of the American Art Therapy Association 13(1), 5. American Psychiatric Association (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Washington, DC. Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling (1999) ‘Board Approves White Paper on Spirituality,’ Interaction IV, (1). Alexandria, VA. Beck, J. (1998) Talk given at Boulder Shambhala Meditation Center. Boulder, CO. Boorstein, S. (ed) (1996) Transpersonal Psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Borysenko, J. (1999) A Woman’s Journey to God. New York: Putnam’s. Burke, M. and Miranta, J. (eds) (1995) Counseling: The Spiritual Dimension. Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association. Cane, F. (1951) The Artist in Each of Us. Craftsbury Common, VT: Art Therapy Publications. Capacchione, L. (1979) The Creative Journal: The Art of Finding Yourself. North Hollywood, CA: Newcastle. Capacchione, L. (1999) ‘Losing Yourself in the Divine.’ In T. Meyers (ed) The Soul of Creativity (pp. 192–199). Novato, CA: New World Library. Cassou, M. and Cubley, S. (1995) Life, Paint and Passion: Reclaiming the Magic of Spontaneous Expression. New York: Putnam’s. Chickerneo, N. (1993) Portraits of Spirituality in Recovery: The Use of Art in Recovery from Co-dependency and/or Chemical Dependency. Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas. Chopra, D. (2000) How To Know God: The Soul’s Journey into the Mystery of Mysteries. New York: Harmony. Cornell, J. (1994) Mandala: Luminous Symbols for Healing. Wheaton, IL: Quest. Cornell, J (1997) Drawing the Light from Within: Keys to Awaken Your Creative Power. Wheaton, IL: Quest. Cortright, B. (1997) Psychotherapy and Spirit: Theory and Practice of Transpersonal Psychology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Craighead, M. (1986) The Mother’s Songs: Images of God the Mother. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Craighead, M. (1991) The Litany of the Great River. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Dossey, L. (1993) Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine. San Francisco, CA: Harper.

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Dufrene, P. and Shoemaker-Beal, R. (Speakers) (1991) My God has Left Me? Spirituality, Wholism and the Transpersonal in Art Therapy. (Cassette recording #25). American Art Therapy Association annual conference. Denver, CO: National Audio Video. Feen-Calligan, H. (1995) ‘The Use of Art Therapy in Treatment Programs to Promote Spiritual Recovery from Addiction.’ Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 12(1), 46–50. Fowler, J. (1981) Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Franklin, M. (1999) ‘Becoming a Student of Oneself: Activating the Witness in Meditation, Art and Super-vision.’ The American Journal of Art Therapy, 38(1), 2–3. Gablik, S. (1991) The Re-Enchantment of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson. Ganim, B. (1999) Art and Healing: Using Expressive Art to Heal Your Body, Mind, and Spirit. New York: Three Rivers Press. Garai, J. (1976) ‘New Vistas in the Exploration of Inner and Outer Space Through Art Therapy.’ The Arts in Psychotherapy, 3, 157–167. Gold, A. (1998) Painting from the Source: Awakening the Artist’s Soul in Everyone. New York: Harper Collins. Grey, A. (1980) Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Hartley-Gorham, L. (1998) The Therapeutic Use of Art as Meditation in Transpersonal Art Therapy. Unpublished masters thesis. Boulder, CO: Naropa University. Hillman, J. (1989) A Blue Fire. New York: Harper & Row. Horovitz-Darby, E. (1994) Spiritual Art Therapy: An Alternate Path. Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas. Ingersoll, E. (1998) ‘Refining Dimensions of Spiritual Wellness.’ Counseling & Values 42(3), 156–165. James, W. (1902/ 1985) The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Penguin. Jung, C. (1934/ 1968) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kandinsky, W. (1914/ 1977) Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Toronto, Ontario: Dover. Kellogg, J. (1985) Mandala: Path of Beauty. Lightford, VA: ATMA, Inc. Keyes, M. (1983) Inward Journey: Art as Therapy. La Salle, IL: Open Court. Koff-Chapin, D (1998) SoulCards. Available through Center for Touch Drawing, PO Box 1089, Langley, WA., 98260. Lipsey, R. (1988) An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth Century Art. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Lewis, P. (1997) ‘Transpersonal Art Psychotherapy: Towards an Ecumenical World View.’ The Arts in Psychotherapy, 24, 3, 243–254. Malchiodi, C. (ed) (1999) Medical Art Therapy with Adults. Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley. Markowitz, G. and Rhoads, A. (1997) One Source – Sacred Journeys. Paia, Hawaii: Markowitz Publications. McClure, B., Carter, B. and Franklin, M. (2000). ‘Theme Editorial.’ Guidance and Counselling, 15, 3,1–2. McNiff, S. (1992) Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination. Boston: Shambhala. Moon, B. (1997) Art and Soul: Reflections on an Artistic Psychology. Springfield, IL: Charles Thomas. Moon, C. (1989) ‘Art as prayer.’ Proceedings from the Twentieth Annual American Art Therapy Association Conference. San Francisco, CA. National Institute for Heathcare Research (2000) Research Reports. On the Internet at http:www.nihr.org.

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Nelson, M. (1994) Artists of the Spirit: New Prophets of Art and Mysticism. Sonoma, CA: Arcus Publishing Co. Prinzhorn, H. (1972) Artistry of the Mentally Ill. New York: Springer Verlag. Scotton, B., Chinen, A. and Battista, J. (eds) (1996) Textbook of Transpersonal Psychiatry and Psychology. New York: Harper/Basic Books. Tart, C. (1975/ 1992) Transpersonal Psychologies: Perspectives on the Mind from Seven Great Spiritual Traditions. New York: Harper & Row. Thayer, J.A. (1994) ‘An Interview with Joan Kellogg.’ Art Therapy: The Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, 11(3), 200–205. Tuchman, M. and Eliel, C. (eds) (1992) Parallel Visions: Modern Art and Outsider Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles Country Museum of Art and Princeton University. Tuchman, M. and Freeman, J. (eds) (1986) The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890–1985. New York: Abbeville Press. Vaughan, F. (1979) ‘Transpersonal Psychotherapy: Context, Content and Process.’ The Journal of Tranpersonal Psychology, 11(2), 101–110. von Schaewen, D. and Maizels, J. (1999) Fantasy Worlds. Koln: Taschen. Wallace, E. (1987) ‘Healing through the Visual Arts – A Jungian Approach.’ In J. Rubin (ed) Approaches to Art Therapy: Theory and Technique (pp. 114–133). New York: Brunner/Mazel. Walsch, D. (1999) Friendship with God: An Uncommon Dialogue. New York: Putnam’s. Wilber, K. (1977) Spectrum of Consciousness. Wheaton, IL: Quest. Wilber, K. (1990) ‘In the Eye of the Artist: Art and the Perennial Philosophy.’ In A.Grey, Sacred Mirrors. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International.

1

Prayer, Sacraments, Grace Catherine Moon

Introduction In my studio I have a box full of beads, broken windshield glass, flattened pieces of tin can, buttons, copper wire, miscellaneous hardware, small stones, and other bits and pieces of lives discarded. They are my treasures. It is not so much what I do with them in my art as it is what they do with me. They inspire me, excite me, pain me, and help me to see new possibilities. Each piece of windshield glass came from someone’s broken car, broken life. Each button came from someone’s coat or pants or dress, worn to embellish a life, or to hold it together. Each screw and bracket and brace came from some life being built, falling apart, being built again. These found objects find me and I release the stories embedded in them through what I make of them. When I engage in the creation of art from these bits and pieces of lives, I am engaging in religious activity. I am taking what has found its way to me in my life and making something of it. This is an act of faith. It is an admission that no matter what worn, broken, barely held together, damaged, discarded pieces of life find their way into mine, I am still willing to participate in life, willing to make something of it. Even when I don’t think of it as such, this is a faith statement about my belief in the ultimate goodness of life. Engagement in creating is an act of manifesting faithful devotion to an ultimate reality. In this chapter I most often refer to that ultimate reality as God, though other words such as Mystery, Creator, or Higher Power are also words I use in a vain attempt to name that which is unnamable. No matter what term is used to refer to this ultimate reality, it is clear that our senses alone cannot observe and come to know the object of our faith. It is through our imaginations that we apprehend God, Mystery, Higher Power, Ultimate Good. What cannot be seen, heard, felt, touched, smelled, tasted, or logically understood can still be

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imagined and so the imagination is an instrument of faith. This faith becomes concretized – becomes something that can be seen, heard, felt, touched, smelled, perhaps tasted – through the act of making. I will be focusing on the act of making visual art, though there are other modes of creative expression that may serve to concretize experiences of faith. This idea that creative activity is a means by which to apprehend the divine has its basis in theology. Dorothy L. Sayers (1941) argues that the only quality ascribed to God by the author of the book of Genesis to explain in what way humans are made in the image of God is to be found in the assertion, ‘God created.’ She writes, ‘The characteristic common to God and man is apparently… the desire and ability to make things’ (p.22). In her exploration of the nature of creative activity she invites the reader both to a clearer understanding of the nature of God and to a clearer understanding of the human calling to co-create with God. Meinrad Craighead (in Peay 1990) asserts that the theological concept of the Incarnation, the invisible becoming visible, has its correlation in the artistic process. She is an artist who views her work as religious in that it is a manifestation of God’s life within her. Linda Sexson (1992) offers a view of religion as a ‘quality that pervades all of experience’ (p.7) rather than something set apart from the mundane and secular aspects of life. She writes that the created object cannot contain religion but is an admission that religious meaning ‘shows itself ’ via metaphors. She writes: Religion is made up of nothing special – the ordinary is holy or potentially holy; since the object of the religious is no-thing, its images can be improvised from…the ephemera and scraps of the ordinary world by means of metaphor. (Sexson 1992, p.10)

Both Sexson and Dissanayake (1988) ascribe to artistic behavior the essential role of making the ordinary special or holy. Dissanayake describes the behavior of ‘making special’ as a fundamental human tendency underlying all the arts. She writes: One intends by making special to place the activity or artifact in a ‘realm’ different from the everyday… Both artist and perceiver often feel that in art they have an intimate connection with a world that is different from if not superior to ordinary experience. (Dissanayake 1988, p.92)

It is from this basis in religion that I work as an art therapist. Many people understand a Christian therapist to be one who ascribes to specific religious dogma and who frames treatment interventions according to particular

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religious beliefs. While this type of approach may be helpful with some clients, this is not what I discuss in this chapter. Instead, I discuss how traditional elements of a Christian belief system can inform a therapist’s practice in a way that is affirming of the creative process and responsive to the client’s needs without imposing any particular dogma or beliefs. In fact, I write out of an understanding that these religious concepts are a helpful way of framing experience, even when an art making or art therapy session has no particular religious or spiritual focus. This is not to say that this discussion will be bereft of religious beliefs or theological concepts. In the ‘politically correct’ contemporary environment it is more acceptable to speak of spirituality than of religion, of the transpersonal than of the theological, of a Higher Power than of God. While these terms have their place in creating a spirituality that is accessible to those who have become estranged from organized religion, they do not capture the deep sense of history and tradition that is part of a religious perspective. Having been raised in the Catholic faith I have a great appreciation for symbol, ritual and mystery as expressions of the faithful. Through my studies at a Methodist theological school I came to understand theology as no more than the humble quest of faith seeking understanding. My writing reflects my deep appreciation for Christian history and tradition, as well as my belief that history and tradition are made meaningful only through the encounters of our everyday lives. The three aspects of Christian theology I write about in this chapter are prayer, sacraments and grace. Each of these elements of a Christian belief system addresses the interaction between the human and the divine. Each offers a glimpse of how this divine–human relationship might be understood as attending to the brokenness in the world around us. They have been particularly helpful concepts for me in my work as an art therapist, when I have been confronted with what seems, at times, to be an unbearable amount of human pain and suffering.

Prayer I suppose my first definition of prayer was that series of words I used to say as a child at the family dinner table. Eager to dive into our food, we rattled those words off as quickly as our mouths would release them. ‘Bless-us-oh-lordand-these-thy-gifts-which-we-are-about-to-receive-from-thy-bountythrough-Christ-our-lord-amen.’ Over the years my ideas about prayer have changed, though one view has remained constant: that prayer is an attempt at

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spiritual connectedness. Even in those early, blurry-word recitations it was an acknowledgment of something beyond my mere humanness. There are a multiplicity of forms that prayer can take, from the hushed, spontaneous expressions of a single individual to the words spoken in unison by the members of a large church congregation. Whatever form it takes, prayer has a social nature, a communicative function. The making of art can be an alternative prayer language. A Methodist minister I once knew understood the prayers of confession in the Protestant liturgy to be an acknowledgment of our humanness. He did not refer to religious dogma or abstract ideas about sin but instead read headlines from the newspaper, without comment. The reading of these was an acknowledgment of life as it is and of our capacity as humans to contribute either to the brokenness or the healing of ourselves and the world. The making of art can be such a prayer, a laying claim to who we are in order that we might come to understand the possibility lying dormant in our strong, frail, hurting, hurtful, fearful, courageous selves. Art as prayer involves the drawing or painting or sculpting of the everyday, ordinary images of life as they present themselves. It is the willingness to extend expression to images whose meaning is unknowable. The doing of art requires an openness to the salvific value in the accidental (Apostolas-Cappadona 1984) and in the capacity to ‘make do’ with whatever is at hand.

Janette Janette, a patient in my art therapy group, had no trouble with ‘making do’ with what was at hand. On her first day in the group she created an outfit for herself with the materials she found in the studio…fabric, glue, glitter, tissue paper, beads, buttons. Her outfit even included breast cups, reminiscent of the singer, Madonna, made out of styrofoam cups and covered with gold glitter. She was quite a sight as she walked back to the unit after her first art therapy group! Her ‘making do,’ while creative, was impulsive and directionless. She slipped in and out of rooms, moods and commitments like a woman nearly drowning, though not quite…only endlessly bobbing. She seemed able neither to succumb completely nor to breathe freely and deeply of life. At times she seemed to be asking to be rescued, pulled from the waters that threatened her, that kept her from finishing law school, that made it impossible for her to attend to the responsibilities of adult life, that created chaos in her relationships. Then, just as the rescuer’s hand would near, she


seemed to dive underwater and pop up nearby but out of reach, only to resume her endless bobbing. Janette was viewed by many on the treatment team as a performer who delighted in her dramatic calls for help, her narrow escapes and unexpected returns. They resented this in her, called her narcissistic, saw this as something undesirable. I tried to view how she presented herself not as pathology, not as something wrong, but as pathos, as movement. I thought of how to join with her in this movement. Her flair for the dramatic and her narcissism seemed to offer points of access and were characteristics that could be used to her advantage in the studio. My role was to help her learn to use them in a way that helped her rather than hindered her. It seemed to me that the art process might offer Janette a way to claim the truth of who she was so that she might see the possibilities lying dormant in her strong, frail, hurting, hurtful, fearful, courageous self. But I knew truth could not be found through creative flair alone. As an artist, I know that uncovering the truth of oneself comes from a mixture of letting go of control and disciplined attentiveness to the work. It seemed clear that Janette needed help with the discipline aspect of art making. I suggested to Janette that she might try a technique called contour line drawing, as a way to help her focus. She was willing, and so we began. I set some objects on the table – a plant, a bowl, a small sculpture – and taught her how to keep her eyes focused on the object she was drawing and her pencil on the paper in a continuous line. The discipline of contour line drawing is the discipline of seeing with one’s full attention. I was afraid Janette would get distracted, restless or bored and rebel against this disciplined way of working. On the contrary, she became immediately intrigued with the process and delighted with the surprising results when she finished drawing something and could look at her image for the first time. The characteristic, slightly askew, look of the contour line drawing seemed to be pleasing to her. After a week went by she seemed to be losing interest in this drawing method. Perhaps the discipline of it was becoming too tedious for her natural inclination toward the dramatic. On an impulse, I went into the storage room and dragged out a full-length mirror. Suspecting that her narcissism might be the key to re-engaging her in the art process I set the mirror up in front of her and said, ‘Why don’t you try a self-portrait?’ Her eyes widened in delight, as if she were surprised that here, in the art studio, it was acceptable to indulge in self-absorption, something frowned upon elsewhere. She gathered her paper and pencil and went to work. In the weeks that followed she created many self-portraits, both during the art therapy session and at home in her sketchbook. Some were drawn with delicate pencil lines, simple impressions of herself barely visible on the page. Some were drawn with dark black charcoal and captured a fleeting expression, as if she thought no one was looking and so neither hid nor put

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herself on display (Figure 1.1). Some were drawn boldly, with fervent detail and areas of bright color (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.1 Self-Portrait 1


Figure 1.2 Self-Portrait 2 She would often ask me what I thought of her portraits. She would remark on her progress and note features that resembled herself, looking to me for agreement. Didn’t I think this one looked like her? They all did look like her, and every one of them looked different. I trusted that she was coming to know the multiplicity of her strong, frail, hurting, hurtful, fearful, courageous self and the possibilities coming to life from within her. While Janette and I never spoke of prayer during these art therapy sessions I thought of what she did as a form of prayer. She was open to mishaps, accidents and surprises in her creations, but she also worked with disciplined attentiveness and intention. In this way she allowed herself to be open to the unfolding mystery before her. She had not done artwork since

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she was a child and she seemed awestruck by what came out of her hands onto the paper. She did not respond to her images as if they were something to be ‘figured out’ but rather as if they were small miracles or bits of revelation. As I sat by her and worked on my painting, my own attempt at truth, I ‘prayed’ alongside her. What I brought to the art therapy session was not religious dogma about the nature of prayer, but a religious view of art making as a form of prayer. This allowed me to approach Janette’s images, my images and the images of others working in the studio as I would any mystery. They stopped me short; I was touched deeply; I was caught up in them.

What has influenced the development of my ideas about art making as prayer making has been the tremendous sense of awe I have for the creative process. My own experiences as an artist and my experiences as an art therapist since 1980 have led me to recognize that there is something much bigger than I, much bigger than any single individual, involved in the art-making process. I have experienced it myself; I have witnessed it; I have heard other artists speak of it. It is referred to in many different ways and not always as spiritual or religious phenomena. It is the sense that people have of transcending themselves, going beyond what they considered possible, being startled or shaken or awed by the things they create. It happens when we are able to engage in art making in an intentional but not controlling way, able to actively let go. This leaves room for mystery. There is an opening up to the mystery in such a way that we are both very much involved in that mystery and simultaneously getting out of the way so that the mystery might move through us rather than have to detour around us. It is this active letting go which enables or empowers us to change through and to be changed by art as prayer, to experience transformation. That art therapy occurs in the context of relationships is another significant aspect of my ideas about art as prayer. While some forms of prayer emphasize a withdrawal from the world in order to connect with God, other forms of prayer, particularly those based on liberation theologies, developed out of the experiences of the oppressed, emphasize engagement with the world as the path to connection with God. Liberation theology provocatively suggests that the place of prayer ‘is at the center of life and not just at the borders. Prayer for others, for the poor, for the Jews at Auschwitz, when action is what is required is an abuse of prayer’ (LeFevre 1982, p.19). In a parallel vein, Suzi Gablik (1991) calls for a re-visioning of art ‘that transcends the distanced formality of aesthetics and dares to respond to the cries of the world’ (p.100). These understandings of art and of prayer are particularly relevant to my work as an art therapist with the


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mentally ill. The people who seek art therapy are often the rejected, marginalized, oppressed people of our society. I see my role as one who is ‘in the trenches’ with them, helping them to become empowered through action. I work on my own art while they work on theirs. They see me dare to put my suffering out in images painted on canvas. I see them dare to shape the hope within them out of a lump of clay. They are with me when my hope peeks through my pain, surfacing as bits of bright color or the image of a consoling figure. I am with them when their suffering becomes manifest in the clay sculpture lifted from the kiln in broken fragments. We are all changed by these courageous acts. We are not merely praying passively for the end of suffering and abuse; we are acting on it, changing the face of oppression one person at a time through the very ordinary, very miraculous act of making art. The act of creating empowers us to have a say in how we will shape and respond to the suffering and hope within us. By creating art we participate in the creation of ourselves. Viewing art making as prayer helps keep prayer grounded in the nitty gritty reality of life as it presents itself. At times art as prayer confronts me with what I have worked hard to avoid; at other times it surprises or delights or comforts me when I don’t even recognize my own pain. It deepens my understanding of myself and helps me come to touch the boundaries of who I am, to know my own limitations. In so doing it also helps me recognize what is beyond me, bigger than I am, unknowable. As a therapist, and as a human being, this helps me stay firmly grounded in the knowledge that suffering, even the suffering of a single human being, is beyond my capacity to heal. I need God, Mystery, a Higher Power to work through me. It’s a relief to know I’m not in this alone. At the same time, art as prayer helps me to recognize the awesome responsibility I have as co-creator to do what I can about the suffering in the world. Art as prayer helps me lay claim to who I am in order that I might come to understand the possibilities lying dormant, or coming to life, in my strong, frail, hurting, hurtful, fearful, courageous self (Moon 1989).

Sacrament A sacrament is, in the simplest terms, an outward and visible sign of a spiritual and invisible reality. Myth and ritual are component elements in the sacramental rites where God’s saving grace is believed to be uniquely active. Sacraments take place in the context of community and engage the whole person through actions that involve the sensing body as well as the mind and the spirit

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(Shepherd 1958). Sacraments are the ‘assertion of “the beyond” in the midst of our life, the holy in the common’ (LeFevre 1982, p.10). From the perspective of traditional Christianity the sacraments take place within the context of worship, and the priest or minister performs the sacramental rites. However, the intention of worship is that it functions as a ‘rehearsal’ for life in the world. At the end of a worship service the congregation is sent out to continue what the worship service has set in motion, through action in the world. The sacramental rites call for communal myth and ritual actions in daily life, which bring about recognition of the holy in the everyday. In my role as an art therapist I have the opportunity to carry on the work of the worshiping community in the context of the art therapy studio. The individuals who come to the studio are those who are vulnerable, scared, hurting; those who have been abandoned, abused, outcast. They are in need. I offer them tubes of paint, pastel sticks, paper, canvas and crayons as if I were offering starving persons food by which to be sustained. Sometimes they balk or turn away, suspicious and fearful of what I offer. I let them know this is okay, but I leave the art materials there anyway, in case they decide they are willing to risk being fed. I don’t try to convince them that art will provide emotional and spiritual nourishment. Instead, I let them witness it. They see others dab creamy paint colors on canvas, carefully glue beads on the edges of a frame, sweat and strain to saw a board in two or smooth the rough edges of a clay piece. They bear witness to a community of people who, in the midst of their own emotional starvation, not only are being fed but also are feeding each other by the small acts of their creation. It is the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the squalor and wanting that is transformed to plenitude by the faithful act of ‘making do’ with what is at hand. If the reluctant one is to be convinced to join in, it will be by the activity of the community. The sacramental is contained in the coming together of the community, whether that be two people or twenty, to make visible the invisible, to bring about recognition of the holy in the every day. At times the art therapist may be instrumental in creating a sacramental atmosphere and at other times the art therapist must only ‘take a back seat’ and support the sacramental process as it unfolds. The following are descriptions of two specific types of sacraments and how the carrying out of these sacramental activities might be understood from the perspective of art therapy practice.


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The sacrament of reconciliation As a child I knew this sacrament by the name of Penance or Confession. Changes in the understanding of this sacrament by Catholic theologians brought about an emphasis on the restorative, rather than the punitive, aspects and also brought about a corresponding change in names. The concept of reconciliation more closely aligns with the biblical description (Leviticus 16: 21) of the ritual of atonement whereby the sins of the community are transferred to a scapegoat, a white goat, and then disposed of by casting the goat out into the desert to die. In this enactment the emphasis is not on the confession or the penitent behavior alone but on the role these actions serve in the process of reconciliation. Joy Schaverien (1987) describes how the picture in an art therapy session may function as a scapegoat, a positive enactment of ritual transference and disposal. She describes this as a two-part process. First, there is a ritual transference of attributes and states to an art object, which then becomes empowered as a talisman. In order for this empowerment of the picture to occur she believes that the image must be an embodiment of feeling, rather than an emotionally detached diagram or illustration of feeling. As such it takes on significance and import, and is invested with power. Second, some act of resolution in relation to the object occurs, thereby effecting a type of ritual disposal. ‘This act is empowered through ritual, and so becomes an “enactment,” as opposed to an “acting out” ’ (p.82). The confessional aspect of reconciliation in the context of art therapy might be bothersome to some people because they connect confession with sin and the judgment of human behaviors as moral or immoral. This is not the kind of confession I am referring to here. Confession in the context of art therapy is a laying claim, an acknowledgment, of the broken, vulnerable, hard-to-look-at aspects of who we are. This ‘laying claim’ occurs through the act of making tangible. The creation of a tangible art object is, in and of itself, the acknowledgment. It becomes a thing that must be reckoned with on its own terms. How one responds to or deals with the created object may foster the process of reconciliation. McNiff (1992) suggests that we treat artistic creations as if they were ensouled and ‘approach them as we would a person, who similarly cannot be explained’ (p.99). Hillman (1975) believes that ‘we sin against the imagination whenever we ask an image for its meaning, requiring that images be translated into concepts’ (p.39). Allen (1995) writes: ‘let the image instruct you…try to restrain from coming to conclusions; instead, follow your image like a trail of bread crumbs as far as you can. Then let it go’ (p.74). These authors

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are all advocates of approaching images with an attitude of respect and humility. With this kind of attitude one views an image not as a problem to be solved but as a mystery unfolding.

Ryan Ryan began outpatient art therapy with me when he was 13 years old, the normal upheavals of adolescence further rocking his already rickety selfimage. He carried inside him the stories of the women who had abandoned him – the birth mother who had disappeared from his life and the stepmother who had recently moved out, to visit only on weekends. Naturally, he regarded me with some suspicion. His father and stepmother told me they just wanted him to act normal. Instead he acted odd and dodged his household chores and ate junk food that made him fat and watched television all day and tried to kill himself. He seemed to think that no one heard his odd, dodging, stuffing, numbing, slicing claims of who he was. So I offered him my listening eyes and ears and hands and helped him shape his truths into visible forms made of wood and clay and twine and paint and objects here and there, so that what once was invisible now became a thing to be reckoned with on its own terms. Ryan seldom talked about his feelings, as his parents wished he would. But his art spoke volumes. One day he decided that he wanted to go outside to make something. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘Fire,’ he said. So we gathered rocks to make a ring to contain the fire. We braved poison ivy, prickly vines, sticky pines, and ants to gather the moist, musty logs that were to fuel our fire. As we began to stack them, tepee style, it started to rain. We ran inside. Ryan was disappointed, but I said, ‘Let’s build a fire inside.’ So we shaped colored clay balls, called them rocks and formed a fire ring. We found dowel rods to be our logs and once again built our tepee-style fire. Ryan unwrapped red, orange, yellow, and blue crayons and stuck them in the top of our ‘logs’ to make the flames of our fire. After the ‘fire’ was built I asked, ‘But what will we burn?’ He replied instantly, ‘Evil.’ ‘Hmmm, where will we find evil to burn?’ I wondered out loud. Without saying a word he opened his mouth and reached inside with thumb and index finger poised to grasp. He pinched his fingers around the invisible strands coming from deep inside him. He pulled them out, one by one, and deposited them in the fire. He stared at our created fire as if he could see the flames lick at and devour what he offered to them. I stared too, in awe and amazement. When he was finished we just stood and watched the ‘fire’ in silence. The flames wrapped themselves around their prey; colored tongues of red, orange, yellow, blue hungrily devouring while we bore witness.


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The sacrament of the Eucharist The sacrament of the Eucharist is at the heart of the Christian worship experience. It is the sacred meal of the community in which the sharing of bread and wine is celebrated in a ritual re-enactment of Christ’s last supper with his disciples. The bread and wine are consumed by the community as a faith statement regarding the living presence of God within them. The celebration of a sacred meal in which the worshippers feed upon the life of their God predates Christianity. In primitive sacrificial societies, the meal was a core aspect of communal life and the worshippers partook of the life of their god through this taking in of material substance. Indeed we can say that the notion of the sacred meal probably preceded belief in God. In primitive societies the social organism was seen as a single animal with one corporate life-blood. From time to time the common life was in need of revitalization… The link between divinity and food was thus one with which early human communities were very familiar. (Leech 1985, p.266)

The eucharistic act is an acknowledgment of human dependence on the divine, of a need for connection with something beyond our finite existence. Alone, we cannot be sustained. We need to be spiritually fed in order to be fully alive. At the same time it is an acknowledgment that we are sustained by the very ordinary, very tangible ‘stuff ’ of our existence. The experience of the divine is encountered through the material substance of bread and wine. In the eucharistic celebration God is encountered through taste, touch, smell, and action, through encounter with the material world, within the context of community. The bread is often seen as a symbol of human labor and human struggle. In the offertory prayers of the Roman Catholic rite it is referred to as the bread ‘which earth has given and human hands have made.’ It is symbolic of that which we have created from the life we have been given. The golden loaf of bread is evocative of the goodness of life, the aroma of baking bread, the taste of being nurtured, the feeling of being filled. In the breaking of the bread there is a reminder that we are also sustained through the sharing of our brokenness, our pain. The wine is often viewed as a symbol of fellowship and celebration, as the communal quenching of our spiritual thirst. Together, the bread and wine are about ‘taking in good things…about changing from the inside out’ (DeBrular 1992, p.3).

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In the context of the art therapy sessions the eucharistic experience occurs when two or more people gather to create, in an act of faith, out of the life they have been given. The raw materials that go into these creations are the pain and the bleeding paint; the shattered trust and the bits of broken glass; the persons stretched to their limits and the canvas stretched taut on the frame; the barely contained rage and the movement of the saw ripping across the wood; the unbearable sadness and the weeping of liquid color across the paper. The faith statement is made in the act of creating. The people who come to the art therapy studio do not create because it is fun. They create because they are in pain. I cannot guarantee that making art will make them feel better and it might even make them feel worse for awhile. What I can do is make art alongside them. This is my faith statement, my belief that ultimately we will be sustained by the act of creating out of the raw material of life as it presents itself, even when it presents as something we do not want to work with. In the sharing of our brokenness and in daring to imagine the hope within us we are a eucharistic community, open to encountering the living presence of God, of Mystery, of a power greater than ourselves within and among us.

Brenda’s Bitch Painting Brenda Miracle-Bova is an art therapist whose adolescent boys’ art therapy group gave her an opportunity to create a eucharistic community in the art therapy studio. There was no dearth of brokenness to work with. The boys were older adolescents, the majority of them members of minorities, hardened by the experiences that had brought them to the children’s home where Brenda worked. They had become experts at hurting others because they had been hurt so often themselves. The adolescents often brought music to share during the art therapy group. One day the boys brought a selection of rap music with lyrics degrading to women. They would watch Brenda to see her reaction when the lyrics said, ‘Bitch!’ They would swagger with their distorted senses of power, puffed up by the words. They would recite the lyrics along with the music, as if in repeating the words they could be transformed into invulnerable beings who could never be hurt again. Brenda cringed when she heard the harsh word ‘Bitch!’ She wanted the boys to understand the shaming connected to the use of that word, the abusiveness. So she tried to talk to them about it. They were unable to understand her perspective, unable to understand how the word pierced her ears, burned under her skin, seared through her eyes, and lay heavy in the pit


of her stomach. They seemed to seek, through their use of the word, a sense of power not just over the single female in their midst but over all women. Brenda was aware of her own brokenness in reaction to the word ‘bitch,’ and she recognized that the boys probably sensed her underlying vulnerability. She also understood that their desire to wield the word as an instrument of power came from their own broken relationships with the significant women in their lives. She saw an opportunity, precisely centered in this brokenness, for the adolescent boys to be sustained. She knew that her task was to lead the way by creating out of the raw material of their and her own brokenness. The next day she abandoned the idea of talking to them about her concerns and decided to try a different way of reaching them. The path she chose this time was directly through her own sense of brokenness and vulnerability. While the boys busied themselves with work on their own art

Figure 1.3 My Bitch Painting

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projects, she set her canvas on an easel and began to paint in silence. Her image was a self-portrait, later to be titled, ‘My Bitch Painting’ (Figure 1.3). In the image she depicts herself firmly grounded on a hill of earth that contains the word BITCH. Her intent was to claim the destructive label these boys, and the society they were a part of, were giving to women. By creating an image of the bitch, by owning it, she hoped to transform it and the way the community of adolescent boys viewed ‘the bitch.’ She also hoped this would help them to claim the racist labels they had been handed in life, to re-frame them through the experiences of their own lives and to transform them from the inside out. At first the boys seemed to be threatened by the image of the bitch. They stayed clear of it, walking in a circle around Brenda and her painting with wary, watchful eyes. Only when Brenda moved back away from the painting did they dare to ask, ‘Why are you painting that?’ She told them that she painted it because she was trying to understand it. The boys appeared to be puzzled by but curious about Brenda’s painting. She had taken the very weapon they brandished and the vulnerability it stirred in her and claimed it. She cooperated with the image of the bitch, became its partner. They saw the vulnerable yet powerful female figure emerging in the painting and were witness to Brenda being empowered by the very thing they expected to defeat her. Over the three-weeks’ time that Brenda worked on the painting the boys came to understand that her image was not to be feared. They allowed themselves not only to observe the claiming of the vulnerable, wounded self, but also to participate in its transformation. They helped Brenda complete sections of the painting. One boy, the one who had brought in the rap music three weeks prior, became the protector of the image, warning others to be careful that they not bump into it or spill paint on it. ‘The Bitch’ had become an image of power and respect without losing her sense of vulnerability. An unexpected encounter with the painting occurred one day when Brenda left it out to dry and her adolescent girls’ group arrived in the studio. They looked at the painting and appeared shocked. ‘Why did you paint this?’ they asked. ‘Do you think you’re a bitch?’ Brenda replied, ‘I must be. People call me that.’ A conversation ensued among the females in the group about what it means to be a bitch. One girl summed it up by saying, ‘People call me a bitch when I stand up for myself.’ ‘Yes,’ Brenda responded, smiling. ‘When people call me a bitch I will remember that.’

A eucharistic experience occurs in the art therapy studio when a community is able to create out of the suffering life they have been given. There is no sense to this. It is human nature to avoid pain, suffering and humiliation. To create out of the circumstances of a broken life is to make a leap of faith. Brenda, by her own


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leap of faith, was instrumental in creating a sacramental atmosphere where the image became an outward and visible sign of the faith of the community. She recognized her own broken and hungry spirit and, in turn, the broken, hungry spirits of the adolescents she was with. She enabled the brokenness to take form, to become a living presence in the group, through the act of creating and the resulting tangible art product. She ‘fed’ the hungry by offering them art materials with which to shape their own hurts and hopes. By this sacramental activity, this sharing of brokenness, the community was sustained.

Grace Grace is the theological term which refers to ‘God’s love for humanity …unmerited and unclaimed by any right on the part of a person and unexacted or freely given on the part of God’ (Haight 1979, p.16). This gracious, loving activity directed toward the created world is a spontaneous gift which cannot be controlled by humans. William James (1902) likened an experience of God’s gracious presence to the analogy of human love, where there is a continuous sense of another’s presence, even when attention is focused on other matters (p.72). Horovitz-Darby (1994) suggests that a relationship with God demands more than just passive receptivity and calls for a willingness to plunge deeply within ourselves where ‘authenticity…is an archaic life force that pervades our inner being and exists solely for the purpose of being awakened, revitalized and released’ (p.26). A theology professor once told me that grace is like a body of water. It has the power to hold us up, but its effectiveness in so doing depends on our active response. We can refuse its holding power, we can passively demand its holding power, or we can actively cooperate with its holding power. Water, like grace, may buoy us up when we expect it or when we don’t, but its effectiveness depends on our cooperation with it. The idea that grace is like water is a particularly effective one for me. I have always had a slight fear of water and my fear centers around the idea that I will not be able to conquer the water, that it will conquer me by swallowing me up. My fear was greatly lessened when, some years ago, circumstances occurred that resulted in my going on a white water rafting trip. Literally ‘scared shitless,’ I embarked on a daylong journey that was to change my relationship with water forever. The guide on our raft informed us that if we went overboard we were not to try to swim but instead we were to make sure our feet were pointed downstream (so that feet rather than heads would encounter any rocks in the water) and then float. I thought the guide was crazy, but after surviving the first

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white-water rapid still seated on the raft, I was sure that he was absolutely right. The power of the water was such that any attempt to swim would be futile. I managed to make it through that day without going overboard, my rear end practically glued to the edge of the raft and my arms paddling furiously each time we went through a rapid. However, that was not what was the most memorable part of the day for me. Instead, it was the point in the trip where we pulled our raft ashore and were given the chance to climb up 15-foot-high ‘Jumping Rock’ and dive in. It was not something I had to do, and no one tried to coax me into it, but something compelled me to climb up that rock and run screaming across its top to hang momentarily in mid-air before falling feet first, splitting the surface of the water and allowing it to take me in. Miraculously (isn’t it always a miracle?), the water spit me back out and held me up. I came up sputtering and fully alive. I experience grace most fully when I am able to dive into that which will hold me up, in spite of all my fears and my desire to be in control, and allow myself to be taken in and spit back out, sputtering and fully alive. I know of no better way to do this on a continual basis than to engage in the act of making art. ‘The grace of our profession is nurtured through our capacity for innovation and our undaunting fearlessness in the face of creative challenge’ (Moon 1994, p.173). Making art is an act of diving into the waters deep, where only faith leads the way. The salvific value is not in the promise of what one will find but in the act of making, in the experience of being held up even when what one finds seems like it will surely be too heavy to bear. One spring I decided to go on a personal retreat. The burden of bearing witness to countless images and stories of abuse in my work at a psychiatric hospital had taken its toll. I packed up the essentials – food, clothes and art supplies – and went off to spend a week at a friend’s cabin in the woods. I wanted to create art that would uplift me, pull me out of the heavy place I had sunk to. Instead, what came was a dark, blood-red color, images of broken bones, a vein-filled heart, and two women’s faces, one of them in anguish and the other naive and horrified (Figure 1.4). Around the edges of the piece, but barely discernible, I wrote the names of women I had come to know over the years who had been abused. I wanted to create a painting that I would hang on my living room wall, something pleasing to look at. Instead I created an image of my ancient woman anguish and my innocent child horror, my brokenness and my tender-heartedness. The image was not what I wanted, but it was what came to me spontaneously and I gave it room to be seen and ‘heard.’ The image


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was not what I wanted, but at that time it was precisely what I needed to sustain me. I came up sputtering and fully alive.

Figure 1.4 Untitled

Like the body of water, creative engagement has the capacity to hold me up if I actively cooperate with its holding power. This means I do not attempt to contain or control the creative impulse as if I were its ultimate master. It also means I do not expect the creative experience to be something that carries me along without my input or effort. My ideal relationship to that which I create is one of cooperation. I try to respect the autonomy of the creative impulse and have faith that it appears as a particular image because that is precisely what needs to be expressed. I try to stay out of its way and allow the image to move through me, taking concrete form in the objects of my creation. At the same time, I honor my creations through the disciplined practice of developing artistic skills. In this way I am expressing the importance I ascribe to the creative process – it is worth my time and effort to practice it – and I am owning my role as servant to the image. I try neither to abandon nor to have absolute control over what I create. Then my relationship with what I create is one of loving, respectful cooperation. In this cooperative relationship I find that my art holds me up and sustains me, no matter what life hands me.

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The fundamental tenet of the Christian faith, that God’s gracious activity is with us always, is of great comfort to me. However, there are times when the experiences of life make me wonder about this gracious presence. In my work as an art therapist, exposed as I am to images and stories of horrific abuse, it is sometimes hard to reconcile God’s loving presence with the suffering, tragedy and pain that is around me on a daily basis. Though I have not resolved this to my satisfaction, and don’t expect to in my lifetime, my activity as an artist provides me with a framework within which to gain a glimpse of understanding. This understanding comes from the experience of my relationship with what I create. As I described above, I try neither to bully nor to abandon my creations but to serve them in an act of love. Ultimately, this is what works best artistically and is most satisfying as a creator. My efforts go toward trying to bring to concrete form the intentions of the creation, so that what comes from my hands is of me, but also autonomous. If humans are created, in the image of God, to co-create, then maybe I am best able to understand the relationship of the human and the divine through creative acts. Ultimately, to preserve both the role of grace and human freedom …one must conceive of grace as operating in human life in such a way as not to undermine that freedom, and this demands a relationship involving some sort of cooperation between God and human beings in the exercise of freedom and the doing of good. (Haight 1979, p.46)

Perhaps the cooperative relationship between Creator and created can be glimpsed in the ordinary, human acts of creation that occur many times over every day. One thing I learn, over and over again, from my work as an artist is that whenever I try to abuse the power of my role as creator by attempting to enslave my creation to my will, my intentions are turned upside down. This happens, as in the example above, when I try to paint pleasant images but pain is what pours out in the image instead. It also happens in the experiences of surprise and delight, when I am able to see through my intentions to the accidental. These are small epiphanies, the breaking through of what was right before my eyes but still I could not see. I found the inspiration for one piece of art in a place not uncommon for me – the trash pile. It came in the form of worn, partially rotting pieces of wood. Sun and rain and time had peeled away some of the protective layer of paint, exposing what was raw beneath. The wood had been part of some outdoor furniture at the hospital where I worked. I thought of the human lives it held,


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cradling them in their pain and vulnerability, silent witness to the stories of their lives. I carried the wood back to the art therapy studio, unsure of what to do with it. Over time I began to lay down new layers of paint and to glue on bits of fabric. Images emerged – snakes and teacups and saucers and flowers. They were an odd juxtaposition of things, but somehow they seemed to belong together. I envisioned nailing the wood together in some configuration of a relief sculpture, but one day I set the pieces of wood down on the counter and saw in them a new possibility. They fell into place as the sides of a frame. This was something I had never considered using them for, but it seemed right. As a frame, the wood reclaimed an aspect of its former function as a chair. It again became something that served to hold and contain. After securing the pieces together and attaching them to the outer edges of a square sheet of masonite I had the problem of deciding what the picture would be inside this elaborate frame. I gessoed the masonite board. I painted it over and over again with different images. None of them seemed right. I became frustrated trying to make the right picture for this embellished frame to hold. I brought the frame home and painted the background of the picture part a deep green, intending to let it rest that way for awhile. Then I noticed, lying on the floor of my studio, a scrap of canvas that I had spontaneously painted in the art therapy studio one day. It was a simple picture of a bowl and fruit. I looked back and forth, from embellished frame to simple scrap of painted canvas. I picked up the canvas, laid it in the frame, and knew it was just as it was meant to be. The resulting art piece (Plate 1 in center section) surprised and delighted me. Out of the trash, the scraps, the accidental, the happenstance of life came something full of a sense of aliveness. It came when I wasn’t expecting it, wasn’t particularly feeling like I deserved it. Grace. In a worn piece of wood painted to new purpose. Grace. In a forgotten scrap of a life reclaimed. Grace. In a rawness embellished to hold and be held. What happens in the art therapy studio on a daily basis is a constant source of awe and inspiration for me. I witness people who are weak and vulnerable, who are weighted down by nearly unbearable pain and tragedy, risk diving into the depths of their creative process. I see them take what has found its way into their lives and attempt to make something of it through small acts of creation. I work alongside them so that I never forget how hard the work is that I ask them to do and so they don’t have to dive alone. What I experience and what I bear witness to in the studio is an abiding reminder of God’s grace in action. We dive into the depths, allow ourselves to be pulled under and are spit back out. Miraculously, we are held up.

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Creative Explorations Art and prayer Keep an art journal, the focus of which is to document, through visual images, the way life is. Make time to work in your art journal for a short time each day. Attempt to capture the images of your daily life without analyzing or judging them. The images can be about experiences you have, objects you see, or emotions you feel. The key is to be willing to lay claim to these experiences, objects or emotions by allowing them expression. These are your prayers, your acknowledgment of life as it is. Try to respond to them not as something to be figured out, but as small bits of revelation to which you are privileged to be witness. Your job is to pay attention. If you find that you have difficulty focusing when you attempt to record something in your journal, you might want to try the technique called contour line drawing. It will help you to engage in drawing while disengaging from the distractions of an analytical or judgmental mindset. You will need paper and pencil or felt-tipped pen. Choose an object. Begin recording what you see. Keep your eyes focused on the object, not on your drawing of the object, so that you discipline yourself to really see what is there. With much practice, you can become skilled at this kind of disciplined seeing. You eventually may find that you can record even internal experiences with the same kind of non-judgmental attentiveness.

Art and sacrament Make a commitment to meet with a small group of people (four to eight) who are interested in experiencing the sacramental in the everyday actions of art making. Make a commitment to meet for at least 11/2 hours once a week for at least six weeks. Begin and end each meeting with some kind of ritual action. It can be as simple as placing a bowl of stones in the middle of the group circle, having each person choose one that symbolizes the concerns they bring to the group, and passing the stones around the circle so that group members symbolically ‘hold’ and share the concerns of the group. Spend the time together in silence, making art. Have traditional art materials available as well as a wide range of found objects that might be used in the art making. At the end of each session, spend some time honoring what has been made by bearing silent witness to it. End the session by passing the stones around the group circle once


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again, then placing them back in the bowl. Once the six weeks have passed, provide an opportunity to reflect on the experience in a discussion format. At this time the group members may decide to disband, to continue meeting with a similar format or to continue meeting but with a different format.

Art and grace Spend a few days scouring your home, neighborhood and work environment for objects that might be used for making art. Don’t worry about how you will use them or what you will make of them. Simply collect whatever catches your eye (and will not constitute theft!). Set aside at least half a day to work with what you have found, in combination with more traditional art materials that you might have. Try to allow the materials to lead you. ‘Listen’ for what they express about how they are to be combined, about how they are to be modified or embellished, about what is to be included or left out. Try to cooperate with what you are making rather than attempting to control it. Allow yourself the gracious experience of being ‘held up’ by the collected bits and pieces of your life.

References Allen, P. (1995) Art is a Way of Knowing. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Apostolas-Cappadona, D. (1984) Art, Creativity and the Sacred. New York: Crossroads. DeBrular, D. (1992) ‘The Eucharist.’ Unpublished manuscript. Dissanayake, E. (1988) What is Art for? Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. Gablik, S. (1991) The Reenchantment of Art. New York: Thames & Hudson. Haight, R. (1979) The Experience and Language of Grace. New York: Paulist Press. Horovitz-Darby, E. (1994) Spiritual Art Therapy. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. James, W. (1902, 1985) The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Penguin. Leech, K. (1985) Experiencing God: Theology as Spirituality. San Francisco: Harper & Row. LeFevre, P. (1982) Radical Prayer: Contemporary Interpretations. Chicago: Exploration Press. McNiff, S. (1992) Art as Medicine. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Moon, B. (1994) Introduction to Art Therapy: Faith in the Product. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Moon, C. (1989) ‘Art as Prayer.’ Presentation at the Twentieth Annual Conference of the American Art Therapy Association, San Francisco, CA, November. Peay, P. (1990) ‘Making the Invisible Visible.’ Common Boundary, November/December, 16–23. Sayers, D.L. (1941, 1987) The Mind of the Maker. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Schaverien, J. (1987) ‘The Scapegoat and the Talisman: Transference in Art Therapy.’ In T. Dalley, C. Case, J. Schaverien, F. Weir, D. Halliday, P. Hall and D. Waller Images of Art Therapy. New York: Tavistock. Sexson, L. (1992) Ordinarily Sacred. Charlottesville, NC: University Press of Virginia. Shepherd, M.H. (1958) ‘Sacraments.’ In A.A. Cohen and M. Halverson (eds) A Handbook of Christian Theology. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press.

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Each Time a New Breath Buddhism, Art, and Healing Bernie Marek

Beginnings I’ve known since I was a child that art is more than making pictures. As a young boy, I was fascinated with the cracked, deteriorating, discolored storefront facades of West Madison Street in Chicago. Rows of pockmarked red brick exposed themselves under weathered, worn, jagged shapes of whitened, calcified cement and plaster. Reds, siennas, and ochres from ferrous oxide lead left dry discolorations upon old, scaling images of Lucky Strikes, Atlas Tires, Burma Shave, and Johnny Walker ads. There were unsigned collages everywhere. Even the empty lots appeared as gardens with bizarre and uncultivated ways. The wet heat of July and the late afternoon, soot-laden light gave me that feel of being in the desert, the wilderness, as I galloped home, imaginary reins in hand, from the West End Theater where I had just gotten my weekly hit of ‘men who are men’ from Tom Mix, Lash Larue, and Gene Autry. I galloped through box canyon oases filled with fractured brick and chunks of cinder block, rusting metal scraps, and the amber necks of broken beer bottles; the alleys of Chicago became the western range, and the yellow, parched newspaper became tumbleweed and prairie thistle caught in the punctured embrace of scrap barbed wire and skeletal bedsprings. Then there was my father, who coached me on how to take short, imaginary excursions into the low-lying, canyon lands of West Madison Street. He would point to the side of some crumbling wall and teasingly say, ‘See it?’ He would help me hone my sight and then describe a face or animal his mind’s eye had conjured. Of course, a shot of Johnny Walker with a Bud chaser helped to relax his gaze. It was fun discovering pictures with my dad, seeing them appear and 52

EACH TIME A NEW BREATH

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disappear. Imagine my disappointment when, upon returning to the same site, I was left with only the surface of the building and an edge of frustration; I didn’t know that my position and the change of light were crucial to the reappearance of my father’s images. Little did I know then that visual ambiguity and impermanence would become large components of my ability to embrace creativity. Little did I know then that I was learning appreciation for the changeable and unfixable nature of knowing and understanding an image. As a teenager, I resonated with artists who mixed the spiritual aspect of life in their working life. I read Paul Klee’s published notebooks and Van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo. I spent many Saturdays roaming the galleries of the Chicago Art Institute, absorbing myself in the magical worlds of Miró, Matisse, Braque, Chagall, Kandinsky, Dali, Bosch, and so many others. I loved reading about the Bauhaus in pre-war Germany. I was in love with people like Frank Lloyd Wright. He knew about the spiritual in everyday life.

Art and the sacred world As a young boy I knew there was a connectedness between all things. I knew there was a relationship between the visible and invisible, between the world of matter and the world of spirit. Although I could not put words to my experience at the time, I already knew that the broken neighborhoods of west Chicago contained a world that was sacred. Fragments of amber glass, peeling billboards, telephone lines criss-crossing my backyard sky, the sound of distant, chugging, skidding locomotives powering their way through the pre-dawn stillness seemed to offer magic emanations from out of nowhere. Everything is alive and connected to everything else in a way that is vital to the world’s existence. We have perceptions and awareness, so that all of this beautiful and Fpowerful world comes within our experience. Everything works together. It is so ordinary, we usually don’t think twice about it. But that ordinary world is sacred and magical when we look again, when we feel it, see it, hear it, open all our senses to its profundity. (Hayward 1995, p.3)

Our perceptions, our senses, our skin, our illness and health, our pain and suffering are precious doorways to the sacredness of our world. The dichotomies of imagination and rationalization, intuition and intellect, heart and mind, heaven and earth, feminine and masculine need to be viewed less as polarities than as partners in a delicate dance of balance and harmony. Only by

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embracing all parts of ourselves are we able to know the wholeness of the world and our inherent inseparability and interdependence with it. We cannot control or conquer this sacred world, although we spend much of our life trying to do just that. We can connect with it and feel that we, too, are a sacred part of it. When we relax all of our ideas about the world, all of our interpretations, and just let ourselves see and hear it as it is, we connect ourselves directly to it. This experience of direct connection might seem extremely simple, but it is profound. It is a glimpse of the sacred world. (Hayward 1995, p.3)

Because of this notion of sacred world, I have a certain fascination with ambiguity, sensuality, imagination, and unpredictability. Whenever I step into a fresh experience, I am often startled or exhilarated or inspired or suddenly very awake. My breath is taken away. My usual reference points are dropped and perhaps I am left in awe with the ‘Aha’ of seeing a radiant crimson sunset or a hummingbird poke-feed its young in a nest no larger than a golf ball. How can we appreciate the power of our experience, which is quite ordinary? How can we see that our ordinary experience is related to art, related to the meditation practice of mindfulness and awareness? How can we see that through connecting our ordinary experience to art and meditation we are healing ourselves, our community, and ultimately our planet? Art is spiritual. Art is about our world, our sacred world, inside and out, and our world is alive. Each breath is a new breath, a fresh breath, totally awake and intimate before being encumbered with the weight of conceptualizing, labeling, and judging. We breathe in through our senses. In fact, we take in through our skin, a very sensitive membrane, which is in continuous exchange with the seen and unseen, with the physical and the non-physical. My work as an art therapist has to do with provoking and cultivating this exchange. I call this exchange intrinsic health. The Tibetan Buddhist teacher who introduced me to meditation, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoché, referred to this intrinsic health as basic goodness, our natural state, common to all, beyond the notions of good or bad, beyond duality. He spoke of basic goodness in this way: We don’t reject our atmosphere. We don’t reject the sun and the moon, the clouds and the sky. We accept them. We accept that the sky is blue; we accept the landscape and the sea. We accept highways and buildings and cities. Basic goodness is that basic, that unconditional. It


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is not a ‘for’ or ‘against’ view, in the same way that sunlight is not ‘for’ or ‘against.’ (Hayward 1995, p.14)

If we are neither for nor against, we are left with uncertainty, ambiguity. We are unsure of where we stand; the ground below us is not firm, but always moving. When I tear and cut, touch and see, paint and draw, form with clay, reduce or enlarge an image and place it in juxtaposition with unfamiliar colors, textures, edges, and shapes, I often touch this sense of ambiguity, which fascinates me. This is the world before we label it; this is our life before we name or categorize it, diagnose or treat it. It is that raw connection before you judge, like watching two images, shapes, or colors intersected by an edge, flip-flopping between foreground and background, or like watching two dancers moving in tender balance and equipoise, only to realize in the next moment that one has tripped and lost his footing. There is groundlessness, a flipping back and forth between facing the image and naming or interpreting it. Trungpa Rinpoché once spoke of the power and beauty of unobstructed perception. He talked about looking at a dog on the street that had just been run over by a car. He spoke about dropping the notion of dog and just seeing the red and the movement and the fur and the guts splattered and disarranged. He was asking us to jump into that experience, to jump into our perceptions, and to touch them before naming and judging, to let our hearts become raw and soft. We often push our experience away, reject it, judge it, intellectualize it because there is something intimate and unbearable with which we prefer not to become acquainted. Our bodies tighten and constrict. Our world is too painful, and yet this pain is the very doorway into our heart, the very key to feeling the openness and brokenness of our heart. When we do open to the rawness of the world, we have both profound clarity and compassion. In the early 1990s, intrigued with my experience of groundlessness, openness, and rawness, I made a series of assemblages entitled ‘imedges’ (Figures 2.1 and 2.2). They were executed with black sumi ink, charcoal, and Xerox photo images. I was particularly interested in exploring that place of visual ambiguity and uncertainty, that edge of visual experience before you can name it.

Art as healing At one moment we are in control and comfortable with our usual frames of reference; in the next we may plunge into relationships with others and our world that do not make sense. There is, in some very fundamental way, a rhythm

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Figure 2.1 Imedges I

Figure 2.2 Imedges II



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of building up and breaking down, of construction and collapse, of breathing in and breathing out, of touching and letting go at all levels of experience in our daily lives. This rhythm is ordinary, but we have lost touch with the importance of the deconstructive and impermanent aspect of our experience. We need only pay attention to the seasonal round of our lives – spring moving into summer, summer’s fullness decaying into autumn, winter’s drawing in until spring’s blossoming – to remind ourselves of the natural health inherent in change. Working as an artist and art therapist alongside people who have been hospitalized for psychiatric and medical reasons has given me a tremendous appreciation for the unbearably deep levels of suffering, anxiety, fixed preoccupation, ambiguity, and unpredictability in our lives. I have come to understand that we all live on a continuum that goes from relaxation to paralysis, from the free movement of energy to its constriction. People who are hospitalized are the ones who have become paralyzed in the activities of everyday life; they have fallen, their worlds have collapsed, if you will, from what we know to be secure and agreed upon. In a sense, they have lost their ability to breath in, to see and touch their world. They have constricted their ability to freely exchange and resonate with their inner and outer life. Working with them over the years has left its mark on me, relative to my interests in perception, the heart, and work in my studio. For many the arts can be deeply transformative, emotionally and spiritually. We in the field of the arts and healing, art therapy, are faced with a dilemma: how can we maintain the integrity of art and creativity as a healing form? Further, how can we bring a spiritual approach to healing in the face of the changes and breakdowns within the health care field and even our environment and society? How can we heal ourselves and assist others to heal themselves in the face of the speed and demands of our everyday lives, in the face of quick and premature fixes given by short-term, goal-oriented, ‘patch-’em-up’ treatment? How can we weave spirituality into our everyday worlds as artists and art therapists and know it to be primary to our health and well-being? How can we bring soul back into the work of healing? What is healing? Healing is natural, naturally occurring. It is knowing who we already are, complete and whole. It is also, in the words of Diane Shainberg, to make whole. Both modern science and ancient spiritual teachings remind us that all things in the universe are in flux, are related to one another, and that each thing is itself complete as it is. Both science and spiritual teachings indicate that at birth we are whole, full, complete, happy, for otherwise we would not look for it later in life; we would

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have no sense of its existence if we had never known completeness or if it were not natural to us. (Shainberg 1983, p.xi)

Painting and making art, like meditation, are ways to connect to our inherent health, our basic goodness. This is not something we have to strategize or fabricate. We cultivate our wholeness. We bring our sense of uncertainty along. Healing has to do with allowing all the aspects of ourselves to be there, without judging ourselves. Healing through the arts is for all of us, not just for the chronically and acutely ill, because healing is far more than clinical. It is not about fixing a person who is wounded and hospitalized, rather it is for anyone who is desensitized or ignorant about their heart, their senses, their creativity, their spontaneity, their playfulness, and their relationship to the earth and the cosmos. Healing occurs when we are attentive, absorbed, involved, and in tune with our experience and the world inside and around us. We have to put healing into a transpersonal context, into the spiritual, knowing that all dis-ease is ultimately a spiritual concern.

Art and intimacy Art therapy is grounded in the art experience. The practice of art therapy is very much a discipline of the body; it is about seeing, touching, and allowing the energy of our imagery and our perceptions to move through our body. If a client comes to me and says, ‘I want to paint a dog,’ I say, ‘Paint the dog.’ When they say, ‘I can’t paint the dog,’ I respond, ‘Let the dog paint itself. Feel the dog inside you. Get close to it; touch it. Maybe the dog inside you is different than the dog you have fixed in your mind.’ The image has a life of its own. A dog on canvas does not have to have four legs; it could have two heads and three tails all wagging at the same time. The image is energy that moves inside you, alive, dynamic, always changing. The image challenges you to feel and express its vitality. Images are always ready to communicate with you. Take the energy of grief. Before we name it there is just sensation. The challenge is to experience and express grief in its rawness. Too often we want to expel it or stuff it away rather than simply be with it. When we have the desire to expel it, we reject our own experience; when we stuff it, we constrict the flow of energy. I might ask someone who is grieving where the grief is. Is it in your chest? Is it in your stomach? Invariably, they point to an area of their body. I say, Okay, you found the place where you’re angry. Now I want you to pay attention to it. If it has a shape and color, size, texture, if it is thick or


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thin, loud or quiet, bright or subdued, has sharp edges or soft, let yourself paint or draw with these pastels what that is. When you draw, let ‘it’ do the painting. Let it make its own way onto the paper. It has a life of its own and perhaps has something to teach you.

A few years ago, while working alone in my studio, I had a powerful experience. I was listening to a tape by the violinist Itzak Perlman playing Klezmer music, Jewish music from Eastern Europe. I was overcome with a deep heaviness and hollowness in my heart. Suddenly, I was in touch with my childhood when I was a small, skinny kid living in what I considered to be a perilous, desert-like, inner city landscape, a land of aliens; everybody was a threat: Polacks, Spics, Niggers, Wops, Dagos, Kikes, and Hillbillies. Each had their ways and territories. I was the Kike running scared, the ‘Jesus killer’ as the Catholic boys would call me, yet I knew I had one of the fastest horses alive.

Figure 2.3 Slapped Around I

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Figure 2.4 Slapped Around II

Surviving into adulthood meant distancing from my shame, fear, and selfloathing, denying my own Jewish roots. The urge to use black ink and a large calligraphy brush to honor the feelings in my heart was overwhelming. Scared and not knowing what I was getting into I began painting the image of a small face. Memories locked away in my body came to consciousness. For the first time I was literally face to face with the deep grief and humiliation of a small Jew boy on the run. Over a two-day period, I painted a series of faces entitled ‘Slapped Around.’ Not only did I experience grief and tears, but a surprising joy. I was touching and sharing cellular memories, first with myself and later with others, at an exhibit in ‘The Art of Return,’ a show about Jews reclaiming their heritage (Figures 2.3 and 2.4).


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Staying with my experience is how I come to value the role intimacy plays in my work with others. My work as an art therapist has to do with cultivating people’s ability to first resonate more immediately and intimately with their bodies, with their sensations and feelings in their moment to moment experience. We have to come home to the body. We have to come home to the earth. As Michele Benzamin-Masuda writes, ‘We are part of the planet, in symbiotic relationship with and interconnected to all life – human, animal, vegetable, and mineral’ (Benzamin-Masuda 1996, p.235). The body lives in the imagination; it is not separate from the imagination. The body is our medium, our paint, our clay; the art process is the extension of our body in relationship to the world. Richard Heckler, co-founder of the Lomi School, has written extensively about the body As we reinterpret the Newtonian idea of the body – the body as a thing, the body as an object – we come to see the body as a living field and through this field is the possibility of coordinating action, of making intimate contact with another, and the possibility of awakening. (Heckler 1994, p.16)

Through our breath, we exchange with the world; we take in the world and let go of the world, take in the world and let go of the world. We ride our breath, rhythmically, taking in through our lungs and then letting go. For many, their experience of body and breath in the studio begins to rub off on the rest of their life and begins to be art in everyday life. They can relate to washing dishes or taking a shower or being with people in a way that’s more immediate and synchronistic, and they feel it; they become integrated and part of their own experience. When people come into the studio and start to see blue or red paint or a whole array of different paint containers, their eyes open up and become full of light. The studio and the act of painting are unknowns that beckon them into this brilliant meadow of glistening, sunlit illumination. Often, for the moment, they forget their fears and doubts, their hesitations and their hopes about art or painting. They are transfixed in a moment of total absorption by the colors, shapes, and images before them. They are intimate with their immediate environment. They are the warmth of red or the expansiveness of yellow or the calm of green. They are merged with the color. This connection with the environment is meditation, a way of being in your experience right now and that’s all you are. It is an intimate experience, when perceiver and perceived are one, and it is also a healing one.

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Art and aggression In my studio I have worked with many people who have deep-seated aggression and paralyzing beliefs and behaviors. My interest is in cultivating an environment of inquisitiveness, mindfulness, and acceptance. I might say, ‘Let’s get interested in your experience right now. Why don’t we pay attention to and perhaps embellish what’s already going on. Let’s work faster,’ which is exactly what I said to Jon.

Jon Week after week Jon, a 26-year-old man, would come to my studio raring to go. I could feel a buzz about him; a wired, electric agitation emanated from him. He was ready to paint before he even arrived. He would paint vigorously for long periods. I encouraged him to paint more vigorously. I would respect his urge to work faster than his already speedy pace, instead of saying, ‘Slow down, relax.’ That would have been my trying to change him because of my own discomfort. That would have been a disservice because I would have been asking him to be different than who he was right then; I would have been saying, ‘I don’t accept you right now just as you are.’

Figure 2.5 Jon’s Rooms I


Frequently, I asked him to pay close and gentle attention to his body, to notice his sensations or feelings or any tension he might be experiencing as he worked. I wanted Jon to be aware without asking him to change anything. Over a period of months, Jon began to notice through his painting and drawing process that there was some underlying, continuous state of anxiety, a sort of tremulousness or angst. His images were more often than not dark and heavy in color and emotional tone. Often there were figures of a single person, usually a male, who was sitting in a darkened, bleak room empty of furniture, except for the hard skeleton-like chair he was sitting on. He would be doing nothing except sitting there, stooped, his head down, his eyes transfixed to the floor. At other times his drawings would simply be of empty rooms (Figures 2.5 and 2.6). Jon painted this theme for weeks, never seeming to tire of painting the same image.

Figure 2.6 Jon’s Rooms II Supporting Jon to paint the same images repeatedly was a way to allow Jon to honor and befriend aspects of his self that had been locked away. I felt it was important to let those repetitive images paint themselves until they no longer wanted out. Such images, not unlike archetypal images, press to be seen, felt,

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and responded to, emerging until there is completion, until there is the willingness to open and receive guidance and make new choices. My intention was simply to support his awareness because out of awareness, organically, comes change. All images are healthy at core because no matter how vile or terrifying they might appear, they are energetic offerings in the service of the soul. Transformation happens when we become intimate with those very aspects we consider the enemy. Healing begins when we allow our images the space to be seen and felt. Jon’s work triggered my own discomfort, my own sense of isolation, and my similarities with him. Being with my own was crucial to accepting his experience, I briefly told him my own story about how I healed from my own depression and loneliness. Over the months, Jon got in touch with his depression. He moved from living in a place of isolation and alienation to living in a large communal household where meals were prepared together with others, care of the environment was negotiated as a family, and a general sense of life vision was shared.

Aggression and acceptance The challenge for all of us is making a connection with our individual worlds, becoming curious and inquisitive about our experience – our sensations, feelings, and thoughts. What shape are they? What color are they? How fast are they? How do they speak to us? What in its wisdom is the body asking us to look at?

Anna I remember once working with a downhill Olympic skier named Anna, a slender woman with a forceful demeanor who was in the hospital for acute manic-depressive or suicidal episodes. She would come into the hospital studio agitated and worn, talking incessantly. She would talk about her doctors, saying, ‘They tell me to come to art because they think I will be able get my feelings out here and relax.’ That’s often the impulse on the part of clinicians: send a patient to art therapy so he/she can get his/her feelings out. But art therapy is not about ridding yourself of something inside you; it’s not about purging your interior demons. The importance of art therapy is that you can begin to see and touch what’s inside you and make a relationship with it. Whenever Anna came into the art studio, her life in the moment was filled with a sense of speed and urgency, what Larry Dossey in his book Space, Time, and Medicine (1982) calls ‘hurry sickness,’ an aggressive momentum that seems to have its own life, an internal pushiness that propels us forward without our volition. Anna would talk of her difficulty sleeping, that she felt


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she was racing down the slopes with her mind. She would look at a piece of paper on the table and say, ‘It’s too small for me.’ More than once, I suggested that we roll out a piece of paper until she said stop. We rolled the paper out until it was 4 or 5 feet long. She put it on the floor and began working in an increasingly hurried manner. The large paint brush in her hand seemed to take on a life of its own. It moved with frenzy and excitement, going in this direction and that with an incredible sense of randomness. Paint dripped and splashed everywhere; there was color everywhere. She did a boogie with paint, fast and jerky, with a synchronicity of movement that was confident and powerful. She exclaimed, ‘I love it, I love it!’ She was skiing with paint on paper. She got higher and higher and so did I; at the same time, I thought, ‘Something’s off here. She’s just on another downhill speed trip.’ She would go for an hour or more, non-stop. ‘We’ve got to stop here. Too fast,’ I thought. ‘I’m on my own downhill slope.’ I struggled with my discomfort, and yet I didn’t want to stop the process. Instead I encouraged her to work faster: ‘I don’t think you’re putting yourself completely into it. This isn’t a criticism, Anna. Let’s just see where this takes us.’ Every so often I would suggest that she pay attention to her experience: ‘Notice your sensations, your feelings. Whatever they are, they are all okay.’ There was something so habitual about her style, a kind of electric pace, an energy that was out of control, running her faster and faster. ‘Keep going,’ it said. ‘Keep flying, don’t stop, don’t touch it, don’t feel, just keep moving.’ What a rush for Anna as well as me! She was, in fact, a jet-setter, which she later acknowledged. Her addiction, her habit of mind and body, was speed. After a number of sessions like this, however, she was exhausted. The entertainment had worn itself out. She stopped painting, gently slumped to the floor and started crying, exclaiming through deep sobs that she couldn’t go on. Breathlessly, she uttered, ‘This is the story of my life.’ Her body collapsed into a sadness that was wrenching. Feelings emerged from a place she called ‘deep and old.’ In fact, she talked of a bottomless pit of despair. She began to talk about the abuse she had endured as a child.

Aggression manifests in many ways. In the case of Anna it was through speed. Other times it takes the form of denying those things in life that bring us pleasure, as with Maureen, a woman who ‘hated’ the colors brown and yellow.

Maureen Maureen was attending a weekend workshop, Process Painting and Meditation, which I offer at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. She spoke of her love of painting and drawing, while at the same time

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acknowledging a very old part of her that felt blocked and constricted. ‘It’s the part of me that wants to spontaneously sing, to dance, to let my guard down, to have fun and enjoy life.’ Her first painting had a big yellow spiral, a blue lightning bolt, and a brown circle. She wondered why she had painted with yellow and brown, colors she ‘hated.’ Her second painting consisted of a yellow circle, but this time she spoke of her desire to throw brown paint at it. Her husband next to her said, ‘What are you waiting for?’ And then she turned to me as if looking for permission. I encouraged her to follow her impulse while at the same time paying attention to her body. I suggested that she pay close attention to the color brown, its particular feeling, its weight and vibration. ‘How does it feel to be brown in your body? Where does it reside in your body?’ She said later, It brought tears to my eyes, your giving me permission to let go. After the first few throws, I started to get the hang of it, and I loved it. I was moving with a forward movement of doing something that wasn’t structured or something I had to think about. I just did it. Something was trying to break through.

In her next painting Maureen started with long brush strokes of purple and blue. Again, she threw brown paint at her images, this time becoming angry, sad, and wanting to cry. She spoke of wanting to tear her painting to pieces; beneath her tears she was provoked. ‘I wanted to paint over it, but something inside me was curious. What was causing such emotional and physical distress? I felt sick to my stomach.’ In this particular workshop, I incorporate a simple practice of mindfulness meditation before each painting session, a practice where people are encouraged to sit quietly, follow their breath, pay attention to their body and posture, and when noticing they have drifted off in fantasy or thought, simply to return to their breath and body. Later, Maureen reflected that she had had ‘urges to paint brush strokes up and down’ while sitting. Before painting, she spoke of being drained and exhausted from the previous day’s painting sessions. In the same breath, she said she was ready to begin fresh. She began her new painting by filling the paper with vertical red and blue strokes (Figure 2.7). After some time, she stood back from her painting and spoke of being bored. I encouraged her to continue painting. ‘Just be with your boredom. Paint right through your boredom, Maureen. Let yourself feel it.’ I reminded her that painting through her feelings, letting them have their own voice, their texture, their shape, was not about getting rid of them. Again, turning to the brown paint, she began painting the image of a house. Later, she reflected,


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I had no idea where the urge to paint a house came from. I began to feel so sad. Tears came to my eyes. I painted a little girl all alone in the house. Then I painted four faces (childhood friends) to the left of the house and three faces (my sons) to the right of the house. I was so sad. I had painted the isolation of my childhood, and now the isolation I was feeling as an adult. Not until now did I realize the house of my childhood was painted brown and yellow.

Figure 2.7 Maureen’s House

When you allow people their experience, they often relax and healthy change simply occurs. If they are not hurting themselves or another, and you don’t have an agenda to change or fix them, they can make friends with their aggression. It is paradoxical, like meditation; change happens when we stop trying so hard. When we relax our agendas and meet ourselves where we are, we can also meet others where they are.

Art and paying attention When I was a new student in the ceramics department at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland and had been there only two weeks, my teacher contracted with me to throw nothing but small, cylindrical, cup shapes on a pottery kick

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wheel for two weeks, eight to ten hours a day. Part of the contract was that I had to throw away everything I made and reuse the clay. What a lesson in change! What a lesson in impermanence, something so basic to Buddhist teaching. I came in every day, sat at the wheel and threw cup after cup, trying to use my body and mind synchronistically – kicking with my legs, focusing with my eyes on the clay, touching and shaping the moist, gritty, slippery clay with my hands – tired and exhilarated, my back sore, sometimes drunk after going out for a pokey of fish and chips and a pint of stout. I went through states of boredom, depression, and anger, a regular teeter-totter of emotion. Progressively, I began to appreciate the value of paying attention, of bringing my awareness to the matter at hand – the misshapen cup, my aching back, the frustration, the joy, the panic of wanting to flee for the door because I was paying such close attention to the details of my experience and feeling more under my skin. Each pass I made with my fingers moving along the clay, each cup, each movement became fresh and alive. I was alive. There was no such thing as throwing the same cup twice. I was mindful, a term I learned years later when I became a practitioner of Buddhist meditation. Today with my students and clients, I am relaxed about formal sitting meditation. It is not my intention to teach Buddhist meditation so much as to provide a space where people can get the gist of what meditation is about: the notion of sitting quietly on a cushion or chair and returning to one’s breathing and the literalness of one’s experience. Meditation is ordinary. It is a gentle way to be with one’s self. Off-the-cushion meditation involves different and perhaps fresh ways of paying attention. How do you express yourself ? How do you hold the brush? How do you see, touch, listen, and respond to an image, color, or shape? How do you synchronize your mind and heart? How can you return to the concreteness of your experience if you are lost in a stream of thoughts or fantasy? Henri Matisse once spoke of the effort to see in this way. The effort needed to see things without distortion takes something very like courage; and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time: he has to look at life as he did when he was a child and if he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is a personal way. (Matisse in Flam 1978, p.148)

My whole approach to art and paying attention is trusting that the technique will come when it is needed. Our minds are deeply resourceful when we relax


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and trust them. I am reminded of Ram Dass and Paul Gorman’s beautiful description of the ‘listening mind’: Because the mind’s capacity to think is so brilliant, we tend to be dazzled by it and fail to notice other attributes and functions. There is awareness itself and what we sometimes think of as the deeper qualities of mind. Most of us know how supportive it is merely to be in the presence of a mind that is open, quiet, playful, receptive, or reflective. These attributes are themselves helpful. Moreover, there is something we frequently experience – perhaps we can call it intuitive awareness – that links us most intimately to the universe and, in allegiance with the heart, binds us together in generosity and compassion…This resource of awareness can give us access to deeper power, power to help and heal. (Dass and Gorman 1985, p.94)

You have to learn the technical piece and then forget it. When you are learning the violin, you don’t spend all your time on scales and bowing techniques. You listen. You listen with your heart as well as your ears. As a child, when I went to the concert hall and heard the violinist Yehudi Menuhin play the same cadenza from the Mendelssohn violin concerto or a Bach sonata over and over again, I wondered, ‘How can he do that? Doesn’t he get bored?’ How can any rock group or vocalist sing the same song twice? How can people read their poetry 20 or 50 times? How can the Italian artist Morandi have painted the same still life, his bottles, over and over? They are paying attention in the moment. They have opened to the sounds, to the shapes and color, to the words and the meaning, so each time they read or see, it’s fresh. Every time you sing the song, you’ve never sung it before. You are starting fresh. Each time a new breath. You are a beginner. You have, in the words of Suzuki Roshi, Beginner’s Mind (1970). In fact, you can’t even call yourself a professional artist because you have to forget everything you know for the moment and simply engage your world. When you are painting, it’s the same thing. In fact, when you are painting, how can you even say you are a painter? If you are really paying attention, if you are really fresh and awake, you are painting for the first time. You learn to drop discursive mind and just listen. When I was teaching ceramics in a small art school in Michigan, years before I became an art therapist, I often found myself challenged because I was less interested in teaching only technical aspects and more concerned with helping people become genuine and honest through their art. I noticed my students were different from one week to the next. One week they were able to center a

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ball of clay on the potter’s wheel with a sense of ease and the next they would be struggling. They were struggling with their ability to be centered, personally, which was such a rich metaphor to me. I became curious about who they were as a people and would relate to them at that level. I was more than just a teacher of technique and method. I would point out what I saw and heard in terms of their present behavior and suggest that whatever feelings and thoughts they were carrying into the studio with them impacted their ability to focus and literally to be ‘in touch’ with what they were doing. I knew that the only way to learn to throw on the potter’s wheel is to pay attention. The only way to pay attention to the clay is by touching it, and I don’t mean just touching it; you’ve got to bring mindfulness, the fullness of your being, to the touching, the movement of your hand, literally the matter at hand, the way your fingers move and the way you hold your body, the speed at which you are kicking the fly wheel, the way your eyes are working. Often, I would encourage people to work blindfolded. It prompted them to pay even closer attention. Is your mind out there somewhere else, lost in thought, while you center a piece of clay? Are you frustrated? No wonder you are having difficulty; you have this expectation that the clay is supposed to be centered before it’s centered. I was learning how to support my students. I too was paying attention. I found this kind of open questioning and curiosity, this kind of intimacy, facilitated their process in learning to work with clay more effectively on the wheel. The more I could relate to them from myself as a fully responding person, the more their skills in pottery seemed to improve. Offering technical assistance in conjunction with attending to them personally seemed to help them enliven their passion for working clay.

Art and working with others My approach to working with others slowly evolved. My experience as a potter, my eventual involvement with Gestalt therapy, and especially my time on the meditation cushion became foundational to my work as an art therapist. I grew to value the role of meditation and also how the art process and therapeutic process are parallel in many ways. I appreciated the value of meeting people in the present more – who they were, what they were about, what they were experiencing in the moment. My purpose came to be more about providing an environment in which mindfulness could flourish. As an artist/healer, I needed to explore and befriend my own pain and suffering as the ground for compassionate action, as ground for working effec-


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tively with others. Meditation taught me this important truth. It changed my perspective. I realized that we are not born into this world in a state of original sin, that we are not born with something wrong with us, but we are born instead with an ‘original blessing’ as Christian theologian Matthew Fox says in his book of the same name (Fox 1983). In other words, we are born with natural joy, compassion, openness, vulnerability, and intelligence. We have come into this life because we have lessons to learn. I realized that art making and viewing art is far more than a vehicle for interpreting, diagnosing, and treating pathology. My focus on treating pathology changed to that of looking for and cultivating the inherent health, creativity, and goodness in others. What is important to me now is making a commitment to the practice of wakefulness, and this takes a willingness to face my own state of mind. Clear and undistorted perception is not easy. In the hospital, I saw clinicians, nurses, and doctors look at and relate to patients through medical concepts, labels, and diagnostic categories. I struggled with this. In my view they were often not meeting people directly. From my point of view, the shell called professionalism – the ingenuine warmth, the mental strategies, and the depersonalization that cuts off the heart – needs to be cast off. To have empathy, to feel into another, to listen and witness and to know their heart as your own, takes courage. You have to rely less on mental strategy and manipulation and trust what information and intuition are available in the moment. You have to be discerning, receptive, trusting, and willing to risk being out there, like arranging a bouquet of fresh prickly roses or vibrant yellow daisies or painting that first stroke of red or yellow. You simply know the right thing to do. When I worked with groups in the hospital, patients would often comment to the medical staff how soothing and helpful art making was. Of course, I was expected to bring patient artwork to patient staffings. Nurses, psychiatrists, and social workers wanted to look at pictures and would ask me for my interpretations. I’d throw the question back to them and suggest that they just look at the art and simply respond. I’d hold the picture up, and suddenly, there would be silence in the room. Eyes would open wider than usual. Mouths might drop. For a few moments they were knowing their patients through art. There was insight. Their experience was visceral. They were responding honestly from their experience rather than quickly lapsing into mental constructs. There was often a tension in the room. Do we stay with our feelings or do we move into our intellect? I am reminded of Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist and Buddhist meditator, who said:

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although we may be able to talk about feelings, we don’t really understand the extent to which our emotional states are physical experiences. I think the defensive strategy that most of us adopt is to jump away from the physiological sensations and into our minds. We try to turn our feelings too quickly into thought, which means the bodily aspect of emotion is being pushed away. (Epstein 1998, p.19)

I encouraged the staff to pay attention to the art. ‘What are you looking at right now?’ I’d ask. ‘This is the person you are working with, the person you are treating. The images are alive.’ I was doing the same thing with the staff that I was doing with patients. We were looking at art and responding intimately without removing ourselves from the experience. All experience is valid.

Art and community Creating an environment of mindfulness includes sitting with one another and sharing our experience. After making art separately we come together to talk or write or tell stories. People find so much value in listening to each other’s stories. The important thing about groups is creating community so that support and honest sharing can happen. In healthy community, no matter how short lived, all members can heal. We learn to respond to the physical qualities in imagery rather than eagerly searching, interpreting, or analyzing for meaning. We learn to open, be playful, and respect the image as a guide in provoking deeper connection with ourselves. We learn to receive and reach out. Coming together is a way of holding each other in the dark of the night. When looking at each other’s art I ask people to describe their experience, for example ‘When I look at your picture I feel hot or dizzy or gleeful or uncomfortable.’ I discourage people from responding with ‘I like it,’ or ‘I don’t like it.’ We practice our ability to touch our experience, to come out of our preoccupations and mental discursiveness and resonate with the images in front of us. The way to do that is by paying attention to our body and our senses. When we have had too much trauma and pain in our life, we disconnect from ourselves as well as others in order to survive.

Bobby Bobby, a 10-year-old boy I worked with at the hospital, is an example of someone who struggled with becoming part of his peer group. He was


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speedy and couldn’t stop running around the room. He would talk loudly, disrupting conversations and my attempts at giving instructions to the group. One day we were all standing in a circle, and I suggested to Bobby that since he was so full of life, we could play a game. He could run around the outside of the circle while the rest of us talked and moved. I told him it was important that he keep moving, that he had a special part to do in making the group work, that he had a different role. I told him it was very important that he continue to keep moving no matter what, that we would do our thing and he would do his, and I wouldn’t forget him. I went along with what Bobby was doing. I accepted him for who he was in that moment. He was just moving to a different drumbeat. He ran around as fast as he could. I yelled to him as he ran, ‘Faster, Bobby, faster! Bobby, you can go faster than that!’ He must have run for 20 minutes. All of a sudden, he stopped and stepped into the circle of the group. It wasn’t just about getting the energy out. I gave him permission to have his speed, to be who he was, and then he could enter the group and actually engage with the other children.

When we embrace our moment to moment experience without being so attached to it, the separation between ourselves and our experience vanishes, and we are more able to simply be who we are and what we are doing. This is the world of spirit. The work of the artist/therapist is to help others make friends with all aspects of themselves. Making friends has to do with seeing, touching, and letting go of physical, emotional, and mental constrictions that impede the flow of our vital energies. If we make friends with ourselves, then we can make friends with others. If we make friends with others we begin to create community, and community is healing.

Conclusion Our world as healers is that of the contemporary shaman, the artist mystic, the contemplative art therapist. The arts are very much about exploring the edges of convention, where habits of mind and collective mindsets are tampered with, inviting perceptions that often confound our usual ways of holding ourselves together. Of course, this is exactly what Buddhist psychology and meditation are about, guiding us to be curious, awake, friendly, and accepting while at the same time gently undermining fixed beliefs and solidified habits of perception that keep us constricted and confined to ‘business as usual.’ The art experience, when joined with meditative awareness, is all about relaxing our usual modes of

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perception, opening our senses, and dropping our habitual frames of reference, the ways in which we hold ourselves and our world together. Combining these two disciplines trains you to pay attention, to observe just what is before you in your world, what is arising and dissolving in your own experience…breathing in, breathing out…each time a new breath.

Creative Explorations Being mindful is a way to be with ourselves deeply and profoundly. It is a simple and natural thing to do. It is a way to practice being human, to practice being who you are. Many spiritual traditions embrace practices of being awake, of paying attention, of being present in our everyday experience. Guiding our attention to the present is our natural birthright. Only in the moment when we are attentive to our lives are we really living at all.

Practicing Mindfulness Take 15 minutes out of your day and spend time with yourself, alone, in an environment where you won’t be disturbed. Sit quietly in an upright, dignified posture on a cushion on the floor or in a chair with your back upright, not leaning against the back of the chair. Begin by paying attention to your posture. Your posture should be relaxed, yet upright and dignified. You might think of lifting your head toward heaven while letting your body gently settle on the ground. Allow your hands simply to rest on your thighs. Your eyes are open, softly gazing at a spot on the floor about 6 feet in front of you. Try to sense that your mind naturally fills your body and radiates out from beyond your skin. (Contrary to what many of us believe, our mind is not in our head, nor is our body necessarily ‘down there.’ Our mind is not particularly fixed or localized anywhere.) You are not trying to attain a particular state of consciousness described by any spiritual tradition, nor to achieve an altered state of mind. You are not trying to fix or change anything. You are practicing bringing your wandering attention back, over and over again, to your experience in the present moment. Whatever we give our attention to is our experience. Bring your attention to your breath as it goes in and out, touch it, experience it fully, then let go, relaxing your grip on your experience as it continually changes. When thoughts arise – and with them images and emotions – notice them, but then


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return to your body and breath. You are not trying to stop your thoughts; you are not trying to rid yourself of thoughts. You are not trying to achieve anything.

Mindfulness of body and art The body scan is a form of paying attention to your body. Gently allow your mind to scan your body. Give yourself the time and space to find a place in your body that might feel tense, tight, or numb. Perhaps there is a place where you are holding energy. Now, without trying too hard, ask yourself if this place in your body has a color, a shape, a texture, or a movement. Let yourself be with whatever arises, without particularly trying to hold it fast in your mind. It might be an abstract image or something you can name. The image could have a feeling sense more than a visual sense. It doesn’t make any difference. The important thing is to let the image have its own movement, its own life. Next, working with paint (or pastel or clay) allow this image to make itself on paper. This is a starting place. Your intention is to give the image all the room to move and be what it wants to be. It is important that you do not attempt to make a rendition of the image in your mind. It’s not fixed. It is alive and wanting to grow. You help it along while it guides you.

Listening and learning from your images: writing and telling stories In a different way, you will bring the practice of mindfulness to being with others. This is a way to receive and give support and build community. Working in small groups no larger than eight, preferably smaller, begin looking at your art: the imagery, the color, shapes, and movement, etc. Then let yourself write. Here you have three options: to write descriptively, to write a story, or a combination thereof. Writing descriptively means writing in the first person, writing as if you are the image or color or movement, etc. Writing a story is letting your imagination run wild. Every color, every shape, every image is in relationship to each other. What do the dog or tree or cloud or color have to say to each other? The task here is to let the words come through you, just as you let the image come through in painting. As you write, don’t take your pen off the paper. Keep your hand moving. You are not trying to analyze or figure anything out. Don’t worry about grammar or spelling. I often tell my students, ‘Be a slob.’ What is important is your process, your ability to make connections naturally. It comes

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without trying. There is no strategy to accomplish anything. What you are doing is entering the imaginal realm, the realm of metaphor and analogy, the world of the symbol. Allow the muses to communicate with you for they are completely at home with the language of the artist. This takes relaxation and practice, and the courage to be present. It takes discernment, of paying attention to the details and first thoughts of your experience, and it takes openness and receptivity to receive them. You can approach telling stories in this same way. Instead of writing, talk to each other. Tell your story aloud. When you lapse into talk about the image, come back. Drop the word ‘it’ and speak in the first person.

Acknowledgements My heartfelt thanks to Leland Williams who graciously supported me through this endeavor.

References Dass, R. and Gorman, P. (1985) How Can I Help? New York: Alfred Knopf. Dossey, L. (1982) Space, Time, and Medicine. Boulder, CO: Shambhala. Epstein, M. (1998) ‘Two person meditation: Psychotherapy with Mark Epstein.’ Inquiring Mind 15, 1, 18–19. Flam, J. (1978) Matisse on Art. New York: Dutton. Fox, M. (1983) Original Blessing. Santa Fe, NM: Bear. Hayward, J. (1995) Sacred World. New York: Shambhala. Heckler, R. (1994) ‘Through the Breath and Body.’ Inquiring Mind 2, 1, 16–17. Shainberg, D. (1983) Healing in Psychotherapy. New York: Gordon and Breach Science. Suzuki, S. (1970) Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. New York: Weatherhill.

3

Emuna and Tikva

Art Therapy from a Jewish Perspective Edit Zaphir-Chasman

He who saves a single life…is considered as if he saved an entire world. (The Talmud)

Introduction I grew up as a second generation Holocaust survivor in the land of Israel. I feel cheated by this unspeakable horror. My family was robbed of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and nephews. This was most evident during the Jewish holidays. I had no concept of relatives or of belonging to a larger community. Other families tried to give us this sense by inviting us to join them. It was only then that I questioned why others had an extended family and I didn’t. When I was about 5 years old, I asked where my relatives were. I was told that I was named after my aunt who had perished at the age of 16 in a concentration camp. Asking what that was, I was told of the grim reality of the Nazi massacre of 6 million Jews. In an effort to shield me from this shocking and frightening news, they tried to soften it by saying that some Jews were able to escape and even survive. In my family, the only survivors were my parents and my paternal grandmother. It was difficult to understand or to know what to do about what was just explained to me, so I turned to my art to deal with my overwhelming confusion. It was probably the first time that art making functioned as a safe haven for me. Only after that was I able to ask my parents about their stories. Slowly, over the years, more details of their individual stories filled in the gaps of my unknown family roots.

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My mother spent her teenage years hidden by 16 Dutch Christian families. She considers herself lucky because she was spared the terrors of a concentration camp. Her story is similar to that of Anne Frank’s. My father escaped persecution by leaving his homeland of Czechoslovakia at the age of 17 on the last boat to enter Palestine (now Israel). He soon joined the army where he played a part in liberating Jews from concentration camps and helping them to safety. My parents met during Liberation Day on the streets of the Netherlands. They married and settled in Palestine with the hope of never having to experience war again. Both my sister and I were born in Israel, a country whose national anthem reflects a collective hope of having the opportunity to exist freely in a Jewish state without persecution (Figure 3.1).

Figure 3.1 Israeli National Anthem

Memorial candles Diana Wardi (1992) refers to children of survivors as ‘memorial candles’ to those who did not survive. This is a bittersweet metaphor: sweet, because candles symbolize the holy light of the divine, as well as hope and renewal of the human spirit, and bitter, because of the loss of loved ones who passed away. Thus, these children, my sister and I among them, serve as a source of light and provide hope for their Holocaust survivor parents. On the one hand, ‘memorial candles’ preserve the family identity and link with the past. On the other hand, we bear the heavy burden of death and loss, of guilt and anger. Expecting children to ‘burn brightly at all times,’ to ‘be the bearers of their parents’ love,’ and to stay close to their family even in adulthood, places a heavy burden on children of the survivors. The following excerpt is a powerful message of one adult child of Holocaust survivors:

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I don’t think my parents ever told me about being hit or tortured. The most important message was that they had suffered and they were fragile. They appeared to be very strong people but we had to be gentle with them because they could shatter very easily. I had no right to get angry with them and they were the only people I remember feeling angry at. I felt they had imposed a burden on me and I had every right to feel a little resentful. What was the burden? I had to be happy in order to make up for everything that had happened. It was a tremendous responsibility. I didn’t know if I could do it. It was as if each of us was making up for a lost person. (Epstein 1981, p.146)

Miriam, a 32-year-old child survivor, expressed the complexity of her inheritance in this poem entitled ‘A Survivor’s Child.’ In this world I was born into a legacy My grandparents never witnessed my birth As a survivor’s child I am still a refugee My ancestors’ pain still lives on this One grandparent starved, two were gassed My father’s brother shot on the street My future gives me no relief of the past My parents’ survival too bittersweet They could never escape the death they saw They will never forget every cruel face Were held in bondage under tyranny of a law Saw the murderous concept of a supreme race I can’t feel I have the right to be happy When my family had their rights taken Through their torture I can never be free A dark shadow always waits to beckon I try to understand why someone would do this I wonder of stories my grandparents never told I stare at books like Schindler’s List

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But it’s what I don’t know that has its hold I don’t know the voices of my dead family I don’t conceive of why it happened at all I don’t know how not to look behind me I don’t know who’s next for a fall So much hope, talent. And life sadly spent All in the name of supreme ignorance Streets still echo my forefathers’ accent My soul harbors the rage of their innocence. Not surprisingly, many children of survivors experience intense separation anxiety (‘Don’t you leave me too!’), feel overprotected (‘Be careful! Watch out!’), and are burdened with often excessive demands and expectations (‘Make something of yourself because I didn’t have the opportunity’). Many survivor parents were ripped away from their schools, denied an education because they were Jews. They often tried to live their lives vicariously through their children’s accomplishments. Children of survivors would either rebel, or more often, become overachievers, perfectionists, overwhelmed by their parents’ expectations. Some Holocaust survivors needed a reason for having been spared. Others manifested existential doubts with the need to be needed, which led them to preventing their children from growing and maturing (Zaphir-Chasman 1986). Miriam’s story illustrates how some of these issues can be worked with in art therapy.

Miriam Since most of Miriam’s family perished, her mother clung to Miriam with a bond so intense that it discouraged autonomous functioning, and therefore formed unhealthy dependence. Miriam’s attempt to leave home and lead her own life implied rejection to her mother and an abandonment of the role she had played as the ‘memorial candle.’ In an attempt to deal with this separation issue, I asked Miriam to divide a large clump of clay into two parts and shape one portion to represent an image of the life that her mother led, and the other, the life that she inherited. She proceeded to shape her portion into a heavy weight. Together we identified the burdens her mother had imposed upon her that she no longer wanted: guilt, victimization, and fear. Then I encouraged her to tear three parts of clay from the image symbolizing

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her life; each lump was to be a different size, each representing the amount of guilt, victimization, and fear that she held onto. Next I asked her what she wanted to do with the three pieces of clay. Without hesitation Miriam took the clay parts and physically attached those pieces of clay to her mother’s symbolic image. After doing so, it appeared as though her spirit lifted. She felt a great sense of relief, saying, ‘I feel as if I just returned the inappropriate feelings that were imposed on me back to where they belong, to my mother.’ Miriam was transformed. Her face beamed. She was now free to form a life of her own choosing. I too felt excited. Miriam had become her own person glowing with hope. I suggested she shape the leftover piece of clay into a symbolic representation of her new life. Feeling excited, Miriam took the clay previously shaped as a heavy weight, which symbolized her burdened life, and transformed it into an Olympic torch, representing her newly acquired life. It seemed to me that her choice of the torch (light) became her way to non-verbally communicate her new sense of hope. Saying, ‘I feel so empowered! I actually got the opportunity to change my destiny,’ Miriam left feeling euphoric, taking this clay image home with her as a tangible reminder of her power to choose the life she wants to live. Miriam’s experience illustrates the ‘art’ of art therapy, how the art process itself can give a client the chance to become autonomous and begin the move towards individuation. After Miriam and I worked together for five months, she moved to another city, and our therapy together ended. However, she had begun to take command of her life, leaving her mother emotionally and physically, yet staying in touch. At last she had established a healthy boundary between herself and her mother. For Miriam, the main issue had been overprotection. Her parents were so overprotective that she had not been permitted to take risks. As a child, she was not allowed to learn to ride a bike (‘G-d forbid! You could fall and hurt yourself ’). She could never join friends on a supervised overnight outing. When she started art therapy she primarily used pencils. I challenged her into taking risks by working with unfamiliar art media (clay, pastels, paint etc.). For someone like her, exploring new techniques was a frightening experience that required a lot of courage. Miriam had the faith to overcome her fears because she believed that it would indeed lead to healing.

In my art therapy session with another client, I addressed a different dynamic experienced by some children of Holocaust survivors. Our time together dealt with the unrealistic overexpectations imposed upon many adult children of survivors.

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Joseph Joseph’s parents demanded he become a doctor rather than letting him find his own life path. He came to me feeling somewhat depressed during the midst of his first year of medical school. He hated it. With a serious face he said, ‘I wonder what I want to be when I grow up.’ At 28, he hadn’t yet had the chance to explore his interests. I introduced him to a technique called ‘the power of the other hand’ developed by prominent art therapist Lucia Capacchione (1998) in a book by the same name. I asked Joseph to choose two different colored markers, one for each hand. Next I directed him to write a question with his dominant hand (asking anything he desired) and then to respond spontaneously, by writing or drawing, with his non-dominant hand. Thanks to this intervention my client was able to identify his life purpose, make peace with having disappointed his parents, and gain faith in his sense of worthiness. I call this sudden revelation the ‘aha! factor.’ I was greatly satisfied to have been able to help Joseph in this process. This form of inner conversation described above is often a spiritual experience because the subconscious G-d-self intimately connects with the conscious self, resulting in true communication. Joseph liked this method, feeling as though he had tapped into a wise, all-knowing higher power with which he had not connected in years. He was not a religious Jew nor did he appear to be spiritual in nature, yet somehow art therapy helped him to kindle his faith in G-d and to trust and believe in his inner knowing. Joseph continued therapy for four months and switched careers, from medicine to architecture.

There was one survivor issue that I found particularly challenging. A dilemma, unique to the children of concentration camp survivors, is the constant visual reminder of victimization manifested by the tattooed prisoner number etched on their parents’ forearm. The tattooed number cannot go away. It attests to a reality that cannot go away. This negative image, a reminder of the Holocaust, can neither be reframed nor transformed. However, drawing the image gives clients permission to externalize the feelings of sadness and helplessness they have carried inside of them since birth. I could only feel empathetic with their dilemma. I thank G-d my parents did not carry that reminder daily. (They were not in concentration camps.) Working with Miriam and Joseph touched many resonant chords within me. At age 22, seemingly well adjusted, living on my own and working as a professional art teacher and graphic designer, I suddenly, with no warning, suffered a severe depression. During therapy I learned about a post-traumatic stress disorder common among the children of Holocaust survivors, virtually unrec-

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ognized until the 1960s. In recent years it has been noted that an unusual number of children of survivors seek professional help (Epstein 1981). My parents could not validate my depression. After all, they had gone through the hell of the Holocaust, while I had been raised in a loving home with every opportunity and advantage they could give me. My role in the family was peacemaker/mediator and my nickname was ‘Sunshine.’ My parents could not comprehend my sadness or suicidal tendencies. They continually reminded me that I would not be here if it weren’t for their survival, and I should be grateful for just being alive. Statements like these cause an irreparable gap between the generations. Ironically, both sides are justified. Through my own therapy I was able to see life as my parents experienced it during the Holocaust. The more I understood how my upbringing had shaped my outlook on life, my thought process and my mental health, the more complete my healing became. Years later, when I became aware of my life purpose, becoming a mental health provider, I realized it was time to serve humanity and share what I have learned from my own healing journey as a second generation Holocaust survivor. I felt this would be my way of putting the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam into practice.

Tikkun Olam Jews feel they have a certain mission to carry out in the world. It is called Tikkun Olam – ‘repairing the world.’ The concept of Tikkun Olam is to contribute individually to the betterment of the world, joining a cause that is greater than one’s self. By offering my services as a therapist I strongly believe that I am fulfilling the mission of Tikkun Olam. Working with second-generation Holocaust survivors has become one of my specialties, along with other post-traumatic stress syndromes affecting both Jewish and non-Jewish clients.

Emily I never thought of paralleling the Holocaust with the horrors of satanic abuse until I met Emily. A 42-year-old non-Jew, Emily sought me out specifically to be her therapist because she thought that I, as a Jew, whose people for centuries had been the object of persecution, would understand and not judge her victimization. Emily was well read and loved the Jewish tradition. She seemed to trust me instantly and wanted me to help her integrate her multiple personalities and treat her eating disorder. When she started art therapy, Emily was already aware of her sub-personalities (alters) and felt safe

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enough to expose as well as to express their authentic nature in their intensities. For eight months she was in individual therapy and also attended an art therapy group run by a colleague. With me, Emily used a wide range of creative arts therapies, including poetry, music, art therapy, visualization and sandplay, a Jungian technique where clients arrange many small figures in a little sandbox (Kalff 1980). Ultimately her hope and faith gave her the strength to be transformed into a functioning member of society, what she called ‘being whole.’ Emily’s childhood was as dark as any holocaust. From ages 7 to 19, her father took her into the mountains at night against her will to participate in satanic rituals. The worship of Satan involved fire, darkness, caves, pits, snakes, and rape, among other horrors. Through numerous sandtray sessions, we learned how Emily had been put into trances and forced to mutilate and eventually murder stolen babies. When she discovered this about herself, Emily felt overwhelming guilt and anger and believed she had no right to live. At this time she was getting more depressed. She lost her faith in humanity and couldn’t remain hopeful, which was what had fed her spirit through all former dark times. I reminded Emily of her reason for staying alive until now, since many times she had felt suicidal: she wanted to heal not just for herself, but to help other survivors of ritual abuse. She wanted to write a book about her abuse and how she survived it, and how, slowly, she began the healing journey. By connecting to this larger vision of a book, Emily was practicing the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam. This undertaking became Emily’s life purpose. Once she identified it, she spent many hours in and out of sessions praying for forgiveness from her Goddess. I was continually moved by Emily’s spiritual strength. Her painful journey finally ended when she asked me to light candles and recite with her, in English and in Aramaic, the ‘Kaddish,’ the 2500-year-old Jewish prayer for the dead, which, interestingly, contains no direct reference to death or the dead. Beginning with the words, ‘Magnified and sanctified is the name of the Lord,’ it is simply an affirmation of faith in the wisdom of G-d’s decrees (Kertzer 1978, p.96). Emily mourned the babies she had hurt, her lost childhood, and the years she had ‘lost’ while in therapy. We were both deeply touched by this sacred ritual. Last I heard, Emily was a spiritual counselor and still uses art making, poetry and song writing as a creative-therapeutic outlet. As I was unable to get permission to show her artwork, I am including instead a partial quote from ‘Sacred Storm – Spiritual Dimensions to Grieving Trauma,’ an article she wrote for her church newsletter. G-d is a spirit who gives us life. As we connect communally with that spirit in our grief, we heal more deeply. Ancient tribes, be they Jewish

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or Aboriginal, have known this. Jewish tradition holds that for each [person] that dies, a baby is born into the world. Each loss we face with courage holds spiritual triumph and the seed of a new life. Whether we grieve the loss of a childhood, a family, part of our soul, or someone who did not survive, our grief is holy, wholly ours, offering us wholeness. Our sacred tears water the earth with hope for life. Enormous losses, even those bestowed through betrayals, deserve to be grieved and honored. We stand in awe of the creator who gave us courage, resilience, [and] capacity for new life after unimaginable horror. (Spiritual Nurturances 1996)

Judaism teaches that each human being is born with two natures – ‘Yetzer ha-Tov’ (good) and ‘Yetzer ha-Rah’ (bad/evil) – and G-d has given humans free will to choose between them. Hitler, terrorists, criminals, and Emily’s father all seemed to have tapped into their Yetzer ha-Rah. One of the convictions in Judaism is that man is responsible for his own actions, and that he must accept the consequences of his acts, his words, his deeds, his very thoughts. The principle of free will is basic to the concept of man’s dignity and man’s worth. (Lichtenstein 1989, p.29)

Most evil in the world is caused by the choices we make, and there are things over which we have no control over such as disease and natural disaster. I do not believe G-d punishes people or purposely conflicts natural disaster to declare his anger with humanity. Nature pursues its own course. G-d is not a judging G-d. Not every bad thing is a punishment – it is simply bad. There are injustices in the world and unfortunately bad things happen that people do not deserve. There are things that happen that are beyond human comprehension. G-d grants us free will in order to live in a world where people sin, grow, and help each other. Suffering and tragedy are real, but they are not all there is. The world is filled with people who overcome suffering and tragedy by clinging to goodness, which they believe exists as well. That is where faith comes in – having the ability to see past evil and unfairness and believing in something better. For example, we have to remember that in the cruelty and barbarity of the Holocaust, there existed moral heroes of conscience. Holocaust scholars now estimate that there were between 50,000 and 500,000 Christian rescuers, like Oskar Schindler or the 16 families that risked their lives to hide my mother during World War II.

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I believe these rescuers tapped into their ‘Yetzer ha-Tov’ – their good nature. Why is this phenomenon of altruism so important to mention? It helps paint a more balanced portrait of human nature.

Emuna (faith) ‘I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when feeling it not. I believe in G-d even when He is silent’ (found written on a concentration camp wall; author unknown). What is faith? To believe without having any tangible proof is faith. To have faith is to assert trust in life, even in the face of unfairness (Schulweis 1994). Faith is the measured wisdom of what the psychoanalyst Eric Erikson called ‘the favorable ratio of basic trust over distrust’ (Goldfischer and Krauss 1988, p.54). In religious language, basic trust is an essential attribute of Emuna (faith). Faith expresses itself in seeing what can realistically be attained. Emuna, from a Jewish perspective, underlines a belief in an abstract transcendental G-d, a personal but not personified God (like Jesus or Buddha). Jews believe in a God whose ways are utterly beyond our comprehension. Believing in an unseen, abstract higher power has shaped Jews’ faith in an outcome that is miraculous rather than rational. Namely, we don’t have to see it in order to believe it. The Jews’ horrific experience in the Holocaust had occurred repeatedly before in many ‘ethnic cleansings’ (mass executions, pogroms, Inquisition torture, and many other persecutions). The driving force to survive in the face of such adversity stemmed from the strong belief (Emuna) in one G-d and the divine plan for his people.

Art making My own faith in the healing power of art making began at age 5 when I found out about the Holocaust and the devastating impact it had on my family. Using art as a creative expression of what was impossible to verbalize became a very valuable healing avenue for me, although at that young age I had no idea why the experience of art making was so special. Instead, I turned to the art process because I realized I felt better after expressing myself. Art making helped me through many difficult times throughout my life. To this day, the creative process centers me, gives me joy, and allows me to keep a personal sacred space.

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I feel that the process is guided by more than myself. I often feel a divine presence. I believe that art images come from the depth of human experiences. They are born of passion, creative conflict and disharmony. Art processes make meaning visible by elevating random events to the realm of potent experiences. The extraordinary gift of art therapists to the clinical setting is in our capacity to facilitate the art/soul making process. In the moments of our lives when aimless events are turned into meaning-filled experiences, soul is most present. The process of making art is a process of ensoulment. This is work that only creative art therapists can do. It is a sacred existential task. (Moon 1995, p.11)

Jill The client’s faith in G-d can become evident through his or her art process. I asked Jill, a 21-year-old sexually abused client, to draw herself as a whole figure (versus a stick figure or a cartoon) in the center of a 7½ to 9-inch circle (Figure 3.2). Then I asked her to free associate and draw any symbols that came to her mind around the periphery of the circle. Without hesitation she grabbed markers and started to draw her face. ‘ I love to draw,’ she said, and seemed pleased with what she had done. Jill then started to draw the first symbol above her head, an angel, and continued drawing four more symbols moving counterclockwise, ending with the star or light. Next, I invited Jill to tell me about her picture. Systematically she told me about each picture, starting with the angel: The angel: ‘The angel above me protected me through my ordeal.’ Jill believed that another entity was with her, in this case a guardian angel, that kept her safe in the midst of trauma. The clouds: ‘I love clouds. I used to pretend I was riding them and feeling close to G-d.’ She appeared to be a spiritual person, although she indicated no specific religion. The horse: ‘I rode away, far away from my father, into the woods where he could not hurt me.’ When I asked if she owned a horse, her response was, ‘No, but in my imagination there is one.’ A horse is a complex symbol. It can represent ecstasy, movement, or a desire for freedom. The child: ‘I have a 5-year-old. He’s my joy.’ This was a child born out of wedlock. He was her purpose for living. In her words, ‘I can’t let him down so I make the efforts to go on living.’

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The star/light: ‘When I was feeling pain I went towards the bright star’s light.’ According to Jewish teaching, it was light, a symbol of G-d’s presence, which began the world. Jill admitted that the red in the star was blood, but refused to elaborate any further. In her circle drawing, Jill is crouched, closed up, and child-like, which can suggest the need for protection. Robert Burns (1990) explains that the symbol at the top of the circle is usually the most important one for that individual. In Jill’s case it is the angel. This might suggest having faith in a higher power that could help her not feel so alone when suffering. The symbols around Jill’s self-portrait may possibly explain how she was able to cope and survive the severe sexual abuse inflicted on her by her parents. Also note that four of the five symbols drawn by Jill indicate the need to leave her body (dissociation). This is a common defense mechanism of sexually abused clients. The only symbol to help her feel grounded at that time in her life was her own child.

Figure 3.2 Circle Drawing

Jill did not continue individual therapy. Sometimes, therapists can only watch snapshots of a client’s journey; in Jill’s case, I witnessed only the initial pain that brought her into therapy. I hope her faith in a higher power continued to help

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her overcome difficult times and I also hope she found the right therapist to guide her through the ongoing healing process.

Tikva (hope) Hope…I understand above all as a state of mind, not a state of the world. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons… Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good. (Havel 1990, p.181)

Hope is a harbinger, a preview of that toward which one strives. ‘Hope is not deceiving you, it is making you receptive to good; in a forevision of what is awaiting you, it is giving you reason for trying, and evoking in you the powers for attaining’ (Lichtenstein 1989, pp.452–453). Lichtenstein’s book, Applied Judaism, defines hope as being fundamentally a reliance upon a power other than ourselves, upon some other force that is operating in our behalf. This is the power to which Jews have turned in all centuries of travail and from whom they always received the injunction to continue hope. ‘Hope in me,’ sayeth the Lord. ‘And I will redeem thee.’ When you place your trust and faith and reliance on a divine power, hope can be restored. But in placing your hope in G-d, you find yourself also hoping in your own powers (we are made in the spiritual image of G-d) and even in the goodness of your fellow-beings. When experiencing despair and hopelessness, some Jews turn to the holy writings of the Torah to find some solace through prayers, thus leading to a closer connection with G-d. The word ‘prayer,’ or ‘tefillah’ in Hebrew, is derived from the verb ‘polled,’ which means ‘to judge.’ Prayer is a form of self-examination and self-judgment in an attempt to correct one’s ways. To pray authentically is not to ask for some thing, but to ask for the means to repair the self and the world. Yael Danieli, a well-known expert on traumatic stress, eloquently states: Hope is the consciousness of optionality. You have no options when you are only seeing the past. It is gone already. Of course, you cannot plan, wish or dream. Living in [the] moment or [the] past is desperate … While there is life there is hope. (Danieli 1994, p.47)

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The previous proverb can also be read in this manner, ‘While there is hope there is life.’ Hope gives life. Hope sustains life as well as shapes our destiny. How one feels about a terminal illness, loss of job, or similar crisis, determines whether one is hopeful about it or not. In the concentration camp, the people who could no longer hold on had given up. Survivors described this phenomenon by saying, ‘ I saw it in his or her eyes: they were glazed over. I knew they would be dead in a day or two’ (Danieli 1994, p.48). There seemed to be three ways that hope was fostered in concentration camps: first, someone giving you a reason to hope (e.g. ‘Tomorrow will be better’); second, hearing an inner voice (e.g. a mother or grandparent saying, ‘Go on, you have to survive for all of us’); or third, receiving physical touch, a sign of comfort and presence (e.g. an encouraging hand on the shoulder). Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning: Those who know how close the connection is between the state of mind of man – his courage and hope or lack of them – and the state of immunity of his body, will understand that the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect. (Frankl 1963, p.42)

Mary An elderly client of mine demonstrated the truth of Frankl’s words. At 65, Mary suffered from breast cancer and was told she had two months to live. Her strong life goal, the desire to see her first-born granddaughter, helped Mary to stay alive despite her weakening condition. In one of her art therapy sessions, Mary painted herself holding her granddaughter-to-be. Her facial features expressed joy, contentment, and a sense of triumph. This powerful painting became a visual affirmation for her. Mary died a week after her granddaughter’s birth, three months past the date originally pronounced by the doctor.

I felt sad and happy at the same time. Hope, for me, feels like a flame blossoming out of darkness. It has guided me through challenging passages in my life and sustains me now as I pray for clients, like Mary, to reach their desired goals.

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David Finally, I would like to share a beautiful, spontaneous pastel drawing by David (Figure 3.3), a 50-year-old Jewish man who had recovered from a near-death experience following open-heart surgery.

Figure 3.3 The Tree of Hope ‘This is an oak tree overlooking a valley. It is strong and alive,’ David said, explaining his work. David was pleased to be alive. ‘It wasn’t my time yet,’ he would say. ‘I still had too much to accomplish here on earth.’ (He is an inventor.) In other words, he had to go on living because his life’s purpose was not yet fulfilled. By coming back to this realm he felt hopeful about being able to complete his mission. He called his drawing ‘The Tree of Hope.’

David came to therapy to acquire better communication skills and with the desire to learn to live his life more mindfully. As he put it: ‘G-d granted me a second chance at life. This time I want to live each day as if it were my last one.’

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Thus, I introduced him to the Jewish concept of spiritual mindfulness – an awareness of the presence of G-d behind all beings and things in the world. We are asked to see the miraculous in the mundane. With that in mind, David started practicing living more in the present moment and with renewed hope for what the future held for him. Art therapy gave him a chance to get in touch with his lost passion – drawing. I encouraged him to keep a drawing journal and a gratitude journal. In the latter, he was to notice those daily occurrences for which he could be thankful or which struck him with a sense of awe. He began to use his drawing journal, as well as our art therapy sessions, to express his inner world. Trees symbolize many things: the self or the self in process, growth, renewal, and the sacred. The tree of knowledge and the tree of life grew in the Garden of Eden and are important symbols in Judaism, representing the dualism of good and evil as well as their transcendence. It is significant that David chose to depict himself as an oak tree, a rooted, strong, and powerful person. The fact that the tree was drawn on a hilltop suggests, according to David, ‘feeling on top of the world.’ Yet his beautiful tree appears to be isolated, perhaps indicating a need to distance himself emotionally and physically. Often, when creating, a person needs to go inward. Ogdon, in his Psychodiagnostics and Personality Assessment: A Handbook (1986), notes that a tree leaning to the left can indicate a tendency to live more in the past and/or fearing the future, as well as being a contemplative person. Interestingly enough, David drew five birds in the sky, which could represent his five family members.

Conclusion Life is paved with pitfalls – deteriorating health, a lost job, failing a test, or feeling that we have failed ourselves, our parents, or our purpose. We all have moments of despair as we face life’s problems. To transcend our losses we must be sustained by the knowledge and faith that if we search hard enough and long enough, we can find and keep that essential window of hope open. A time of trouble is truly a time to grow. When clients feel hopeless, I begin by guiding them with the same processes that have sustained me over the years, using art as a path towards their own deepest wisdom, Higher Power, G-d. My intake sheet includes a question about my clients’ religious/spiritual orientation. This allows me to build rapport with them. Sometimes, I will mention a Jewish concept and ask if it resonates with them. However, I’ve noticed that I need not ask the question of whether or not

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my clients have faith in a higher power; it becomes apparent soon enough through their artwork. The symbols they use indicate their spirituality. As described in the stories of Miriam, Joseph, Emily, and David, helping clients to explore their interests, dreams, and life purpose with a sense of belief in themselves makes transformation possible. When it comes time to say goodbye to clients, I often give them a handmade gift that reinforces whatever quality they most need to nurture. These inspirational clay vessels unique in their shape and color, have the words faith/Emuna or hope/Tikva etched both in Hebrew and in English on their outer surface (Plate 2 in center section). I make them from Fimo clay, fire them in a toaster oven at 325° for 10 minutes, and highlight the words ‘faith’ and ‘hope’ with gold and silver markers. These parting gifts are often referred to by clients as ‘holy vessels,’ since they are written in Hebrew, the biblical language. They seem to provide an ongoing link between us, a reminder that they are not alone on their path; that they can trust themselves and use their higher power as a guide. As an art therapist I have been blessed to journey through many clients’ dark tunnels, helping them discover that inner flame of hope which burns so intensely and can, with its companion, faith, light the way to the tunnel’s end. Whether or not my clients share my Jewish belief system, I consistently find evidence of the power greater than ourselves that operates on our behalf and through whom we have our being. Making art is a key to this awareness. O Thou kind Lord! Unite all. Let the religions agree and make the nations one so that they may see each other as one family and the whole earth as one home. May they all live together in perfect harmony. (Bahai Assembly 1986, p.33)

Creative Explorations Candles Make homemade candles by using sheets of colored beeswax. Cut each wick to exceed the height of the candle to be; wrap colored beeswax around it. You can overlay different colored beeswax and create beautifully designed candles.

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Blessing Recite this blessing written by Rabbi Rami Shapiro and light the candles: Where the world is dark with illness, Let me kindle the light of healing. Where the world is bleak with suffering, Let me kindle the light of caring. Where the world is dimmed by lies, Let me kindle the light of truth. I vow to be worthy of this honor As I strike this match and kindle the flame That illumines the heart of the entire world. Blessed is the one beyond light and dark By whose power I sanctify life With the lighting of the candles. (Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity, Shapiro 1997, p.67)

Figure 3.4 Hamsa (Hand)

Hamsa Create a Hamsa (‘five’ in Arabic). Draw five fingers pointing downward (Figure 3.4).

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In the middle of the palm draw an eye. Decorate the hand with ornate designs. You have created a hand-shaped amulet. The hand symbolizes the protective hand of G-d and the eye represents G-d’s watchful eye, which is said to deflect the gaze of the evil eye. Today, the Hamsa has become popular as a good luck charm without the overt magical significance (Frankel and Teutch 1995). Place the Hamsa in your office or in the entrance hall of your home. It might bring you blessings.

Mandala Make a mandala (‘circle’ in Sanskrit). Trace a 71/2 to 10-inch plate or draw your own similarly sized circle onto black or white paper. Using pastel colors, fill the circle spontaneously. Let the design slowly emerge as a process of discovery. Focus inwardly, being fully absorbed by the experience. You have created a mandala. Now delight in the focused, centered feeling it brings. Go a step further and meditate. Use one of the Jewish mantras such as ‘Elohim’ (G-d), ‘Adonai’ (Lord), or ‘Baruch Ata Adonai’ (Blessed are you, Ineffable One). These mantras are from the book Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity (Shapiro 1997). Repeat your chosen mantra at least 30 times during the meditation.

References Burns, R. (1990) A Guide to Family-Centered Circle Drawing. New York: Brunner/Mazel. Capacchione, L. (1988) The Power of the Other Hand. North Hollywood, CA: Newcastle. Danieli, Y. (1994) ‘Resilience and Hope.’ Children Worldwide 21, 1, 47–49. Epstein, H. (1981) Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors. Toronto: Bantam. Frankel, E. and Teutch, B. (1995) The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. Frankl, V. (1963) Man’s Search for Meaning. New York: Washington Square Press. Goldfischer, M. and Krauss, P. (1988) Why Me? Coping with Grief, Loss and Change. Toronto: Bantam. Havel, V. (1990) Disturbing the Peace. New York: Alfred Knopf. Kalff, D. (1980) Sandplay: A Psychotherapeutic Approach to the Psyche. Boston, MA: Sigo Press. Kertzer, M. (1978) What is a Jew? 4th edn. New York: Collier. Lichtenstein, T. (1989) Applied Judaism. Jerusalem: Keterpress. Moon, B. (1995) Existential Art Therapy. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Ogdon, D. (1986) Psychodiagnostics and Personality Assessment: A Handbook. Los Angeles: Western Psychological Services. Schulweis, H. (1994) For Those Who Can’t Believe: Overcoming the Obstacles of Faith. New York: HarperCollins. Shapiro, R. (1997) Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity. New York: Bell Tower.

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Wardi, D. (1992) Memorial Candles: Children of the Holocaust. New York: Routledge. Zaphir-Chasman, E. (1986) ‘Holocaust Art and Post-War Psychological Effects on the Children of Survivors: Art as Therapy Used as an Assessment Tool.’ Master’s thesis, Emporia State University, KS.

4

The Yoga of Art and the Creative Process Listening to the Divine Michael Franklin

Introduction Yoga, meditation, and art are close neighbors. These practices invite a rich, present-centered relationship of awareness to unfold that I continue to fall in love with. At this point in my life they cannot be separated. The wisdom of yoga philosophy helps me as I try to understand the mystery of art and art therapy. Art, much like meditation, invites me inward as far as I wish to go. It is here that the voice of the Self, the divine inner realm, can be entered, observed, and expressed in manifest form. The endless source of inspiration embodied in these three practices will be discussed throughout this chapter. Yoga philosophy, and its influence on my work as an art therapist, is where I will begin and finish. First, I would like to share a personal account of a meditation sitting I recently had: I sit with eyes closed and watch my breath. Three deep inhalations and exhalations. My mind is still, or is it? It settles then skips, active in its insistence to be independent from my will. I become aware that I am aware of its slippery wanderings. There…it is still again, placid. My goal is to rest in this sensation. A pure velvety, almost syrupy, black space opens up and I enter it. Soothed by its vastness I wish to stay here forever! It is eternal in feeling, void-like. I marvel at where I am, inside. Then my thoughts enliven and engage me in conversation. This inner dialogue was not invited. It feels like minutes before I become aware that I have not been aware, again. The dark velvety space is gone, at least feels gone. I silently ask inside, ‘What happened? Where did I go?’ Inner chatter follows,

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then awareness of chatter; it is ongoing. There is a sense of unexpected comfort however. I like it, this moment of bringing my thoughts back to now. This is the sacred moment, now, and I was able to find it. However, I sense disappointment at having lost the feeling of devotion inspired by the open void-like space. Now my mind is critical. Who is doing the talking here? Ego? Self ? Skipping around, this voice reminds me of all that is wrong with me. Silent awareness presses to the foreground. I am present again, enough to witness this passage of time and my endlessly skipping thoughts. Rather than contract around the impulse to judge myself, I observe, simply observe. Spaciousness accompanies me as the inner criticism fades in and out, eventually becoming diluted to the point of cognitive flow. I realize, as this familiar inner conversation unfolds, that I have been here before. I peacefully strive to witness whatever surfaces to simply observe. Without a plan, I follow the pattern of thoughts; it is all stunning, this frantic dance of the mind. I sit like this for as long as I can. Eventually I lose the awareness that I am there, here, wherever I am. My thoughts settle and all is silent, almost empty. I rest here for a while, losing time. Eventually I open my eyes. My body is still, soft. Rising from my kneeling position, I realize that an hour has passed. Where have I been? I have not moved and yet I have traveled far, not into the outside world, but inwardly. As always I am deeply moved by this morning’s meditation. It is similar and yet different from previous sittings. As I walk away from my altar, I make a pact with myself to intentionally hold the space of my meditation. I now shift to the next event in my day, alert, refreshed, open. Many people say they cannot meditate. They insist that they have tried and failed. This all sounds familiar, not unlike people who insist they cannot draw! Inquisitive, I ask how they know this. How did it become a firm truth? They respond with self-convincing statements, such as ‘My mind is too active,’ ‘I do not feel relaxed,’ or ‘I can’t sit still.’ Ahh, I quietly wonder inside, and then aloud, ‘Perhaps you became still enough to finally hear the noise inside. This is meditation.’ Sitting still when the mind is not, is a significant accomplishment.

Meditation: from practice to application Meditation is an ancient, cross-cultural, and transformational practice. As natural and obtainable as the sleep state, it is available to us all (Muktananda 1989). As a practice it requires discipline. This is where I almost jumped ship in

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the early 1990s when I started to seriously meditate again. Sitting daily with discipline and intention to do nothing but sit seemed irresponsible. Where did I come off assuming the luxury of just sitting? And when I did, I mostly heard loud amplified thoughts, even disturbing ones! I could be doing something else, something more important, more productive. But that is just the point, in essence, to sit still with my thoughts and observe them rather than contract around them or run from them, not to abandon myself. In truth, what is more important than the relationship we all have with our minds? The mind is a friend; it is also an enemy as it willfully takes charge. Just who is in charge anyway? Me? And if the answer is yes, then why am I usually not aware of myself and my thoughts that flow from moment to moment? I used to think that I was in control of my inner life. However, as my practice unfolds, I realize that this was a false assumption. It is simple enough to test. Just sit and think a thought. Hold the one thought for as long as you can… Did it stay put? Notice what happens and how long it takes for the waves of the mind to move along even though you did not give it permission to budge. Meditation, as a practice, is best understood by me in terms of yoga philosophy (Feuerstein 1989; Muktananda 1991; Tart 1975). Going inward towards the great silence, perhaps the most sacred of all journeys, is facilitated with stunning precision through a disciplined yoga practice. The term yoga is related to English words such as ‘union’ and ‘yoke’ (Hewitt 1978). Hatha yoga, perhaps the most familiar to Westerners, is just one of many yogas. However, there are other branches of yoga that are less known. There is Jnana yoga (union by knowledge), for example, and Bhakti yoga (union by love and devotion), Karma yoga (union by action and service), and Patanjali’s Raja yoga (union by mental mastery). Common to all yogic practices is the goal of absorption in the Self, the Divine within, and the recognition of this same presence in all beings and in all things. Perhaps the most inspiring of all yogic systems is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (Castillo 1985; Feuerstein 1989; Hewitt 1978). Patanjali, often referred to as the father of yoga, methodically outlined a divinely inspired, esoteric method of unfolding the Self. As a profoundly complete yoga, Patanjali’s system addresses the workings of the mind with transformative precision. In many ways he created a systematic process that closely parallels aspects of cognitive theory. Cognitive therapists state that if people wish to change the way they feel, they must change the way they think (Persons 1989). Recognizing this truth over two thousand years ago, Patanjali goes even further than this premise of modern psychology by offering the practitioner a way to systematically transform con-

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sciousness towards self-realization (Feuerstein 1989). His yogic blueprint points out the fundamental dualities of consciousness, ‘personal consciousness and transpersonal consciousness,’ exploring this relationship with probing insight (Castillo 1985, p.391). There are four sections to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. A sutra is a highly condensed statement that contains expansive themes. The word ‘suture,’ to string together, originates from the same word root. Each sutra is meant to be contemplated, in connection with each other, repeatedly over time. Within the 196 sutras that make up the four major sections, Patanjali leads the reader into the mystical world of yoga. Section one addresses the multilayered practice of calming the mind by answering the question ‘What is yoga?’ Through meditation, the thinking mind is quieted, eventually arriving at a state of complete stillness. As the waves of the mind are subdued, the Self, or Purusha, which is our true identity beyond the empirical ego, shines through (Hewitt 1978). In its pure state, the Purusha is the only perceiver or witness, not the ego. It is inner consciousness, the pure ‘I Am,’ the Divine housed within the physical body. This is similar to Jung’s psychology in that the self-archetype guides the individuation process (Franklin 1999). Eventually the realm of the ego decreases its hold on the personality, and the self-archetype becomes the central integrating agent of the psyche. The individation process is filled with agitation, with the ups and downs of a mind that is uncomfortable with various aspects of transformation. The practice of modifying and ultimately stilling the waves of the thinking mind is an arduous process, most easily accomplished through meditation. Patanjali shows the seeker a way through the habits and patterns of the mind. He offers profound strategies, tested by time, that break the cycle of imbedded recursive behaviors. This is similar to the Freudian notion of repetition compulsion, which suggests that we will replicate emotional and behavioral patterns that we have not yet mastered. Sections two and three of the Yoga Sutras outline the eight limbs of yoga (Feuerstein 1989; Hewitt 1978). Following is a brief summary of the eight limbs, which consist of restraints, observances, postures, breath control, sense withdrawal, concentration, meditation, and self-realization (Chapple and Yogi Anand Viraj 1990). The restraints, also known as abstinences, include ethical principles known as the Yamas, non-violence (Ahimsa), truthfulness (Satya), non-stealing (Asteya), continence (Brahmacharya), and non-possessiveness (Aparigrapha).


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The observances of self-restraint known as the Niyamas consist of purity (Saucha), contentment (Santosha), austerity (Tapas), study (Svadhyaya), and resignation or devotion (Isvara Pranidhana). The other six limbs are the postures (Asanas), breath control (Pranayama), sense withdrawal (Pratyahara), concentration (Dharana), meditation (Dhyana), and self-realization (Samadhi). Each limb holds its own profound teachings. The Yamas cultivate moral development while the Niyamas breed the discipline necessary to walk a humanistic path. These are ancient templates for ethical behavior, constructed long before our current professional codes for conduct. Our ethical codes strive to identify standards for practice. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras imply a discipline for honoring all of humanity, the animate and the inanimate. I sincerely believe that these teachings have relevance to how we prepare ourselves to engage with our present ethical codes (Corey, Corey, and Callanan 1998). For example, we are obligated in our work to do no harm (Ahimsa), take care of our body and spirit (Asana and Pranayama), tame the idiosyncrasies of our minds as in countertransference reactions (Dharana), engage the mind to become absorbed in art images presented by those we work with (Dhyana), and to develop presence and concentration skills so as to not leave the precious moment, here, now (Pratyahara). And then there is the creative process, a place of great overlap with Patanjali’s yoga. Indeed, the creation of art is still a sanctioned way inward in Western culture. Spirituality and art is an obvious marriage since the artist is engaged in the creative act, a sign of the boundless divinity human beings hold within. Many authors have likened the creative process to philosophical evidence of the Divine’s presence within (Campbell 1988; Franklin 1999; Grey 1990; Khanna 1997). In essence, the creative act can be likened to the Self (Purusha) unfolding itSelf as the artist engages the creative act of manifesting what is hidden and unseen. Genesis in microcosm if you will. Paul Mueller-Ortega, a renowned scholar of Kashmir Shaivism from the University of Rochester, once described meditation on the inner Self, at a conference I attended, as a form of self-referentiality. By this he seems to mean the process by which a conscious system unfolds the inherent intelligence of itself by referencing itself over and over again. Both meditation and art are examples of self-referential processes. By entering into a devotional relationship with these activities, which in essence stimulates reflections of the very truths they try to awaken, the meditator or artist moves closer to encountering one’s true divine nature.

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Sustained efforts in art result in states similar to what Patanjali speaks about when describing the various levels of Samadhi. For example, when inwardly immersed in the creative act, a person often loses a sense of time, subject and object are no longer separate, and duality erodes. Absorption in the present moment unfolds, intentional action occurs, personal truth is fostered, and attention is heightened and focused. These elements of the creative process are similar to aspects of Samadhi. Sincerely following the imagery spawned by the creative process into the inner imaginal landscape is strikingly similar to meditation (Watkins 1984). One strives to flow with image without censoring its divine lead. Many art therapists refer to this as Soul (Allen 1995; McNiff 1986, 1989). Patanjali might refer to this state as a form of Samadhi. As a meditator and creator of art, I would say that there is definite truth to this premise. Seeing art and the creative process as reflections of the great Self and therapy as a reflection of service to humanity, it is clear to me that art therapy and yoga are a natural fit. With this in mind, I would now like to offer a brief account of my own personal experiences as an artist.

Art as a spiritual practice As far back as I can remember, creating with art materials was my favorite way to spend time. Art provided me with a sense of refuge, a place of safety as I struggled with the challenges of my young life. After many years of illness, my father died when I was in high school. So many emotions to sort through, so many unresolved moments, and the opportunity to untangle them gone forever, or so it seemed. Without the sanctuary of the high school art room, my adolescence would have been totally chaotic. It was during this time that I realized that art can save lives; it had saved mine. To this day I never doubt the potential of art and the creative process to heal, transform, and unfold truth. Both art and yoga, as I have discussed here and elsewhere, lead me inward, the greatest of all journeys. To experience union with the Self and the presence of the Divine within is the intention of yoga. Art, along with the many practices of yoga, eventually leads one to this tangible liberation, this promised state that all great beings throughout time have lived in and spoken from. When doing art, I float into direct contact with the great Self. Each image, as does each word, originates from the inner consciousness that is the Self. When actively immersed within the creative process, I feel myself to be performing acts of worship as I struggle to manifest the hidden and unseen. I try my best to forget about the formulas learned in art school and listen inwardly at


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the deepest of levels to the messages that surface as personal images, emissaries of God within. Listening leads to following; there is clearly some wisdom alive inside guiding me. I am not the doer in this process, just a traveler who strives to align himself with the inner Lord, the intelligent consciousness that inhabits all, moves all. I am just a traveler with a single destination and art, along with yoga, are my passports. As a participant I try to receive and cooperate with this magical birthing process. Manifesting the guiding themes of the images that live within is not an easy practice. I wish to craft the most helpful of containers for these themes to live in. Line, shape, color, texture, space, and time become image’s skin. As the creative process unfolds, I see a direct reflection of me, of how my body holds consciousness. The painted form, like my body, also represents an oil-based skin that holds a conscious presence living inside in the form of an image. It all feels like worship to me; it is. ‘As Above So Below’ is from an installation that was hung at Bowling Green State University in Ohio (Plate 3 in center section). A 70-pound block of ice, cast in the shape of a Shiva Lingam, hangs over sacred ground. The great Sanskrit mantra So’ham (I Am That), the sound of the breath inhaling and exhaling, is represented by several sets of ‘I-I-I/Am-Am-Am/That-That-That,’ which were randomly frozen inside of this symbol of Shiva’s infinite forms. Eventually the ice melts, the words falling indiscriminately onto the ground below. The lesson of the words, the sound of the breath, and how they fell on this sacred ground, reminded me of my personal sadhana, or spiritual path. My own random thoughts continue daily to form and reveal samskaras, or habitual patterns. As I looked closely at the patterns of the fallen words I saw where my work was and is, noticing that the wisdom of the breath remains my greatest support, for its inhaled and exhaled sounds are the great Self in motion. The second piece was inspired out of love and devotion for the great Indian saint, Bhagawan Nityananda (Plate 4 in center section). It is intentionally untitled, for now, out of affection for the deep wordless silence he has stimulated in myself and others. As a boy, he joyfully sits in this box above different symbols of duality – dark/light, delicate twigs/thorny twigs. Bhagawan Nityananda was an ecstatic being, fully absorbed in the Self, eternally present, and endlessly compassionate. Creating this construction was an act of worship, devotion to the mystery of the creative process and to Bhagawan Nityananda. Art of this sort helps me to articulate that which is beyond words, beyond my capacity to verbalize the sacred. Creating this piece

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allowed me to deepen my connection to a set of tender experiences that are extremely precious to me. With these examples of art as a spiritual practice along with the explanation of yoga philosophy outlined above, it is now time to look at how this material might surface when working in the field. The story that follows highlights a personal experience with the contents of this slippery, yet engaging, topic. It is an example of how I have tried to practice and live these principles in my work as an art therapist.

The picnic It is a struggle to keep my eyes focused ahead of me as I drive through these steep mountain passes. This landscape is still new to me. I am on my way to Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado, a well-known art retreat center. The landscape is breathtaking as well as humbling, each turn of the road unfolding a grand magnificence. I wonder what I will do when I arrive. For the next week I am to teach an art class for children with special needs. I know very little, actually nothing, about the group I am about to work with. Anticipating what will be spawns anxiety inside; I clearly feel it. Locating this sensation of trepidation in my body while driving is more than an attempt to pass time – it is yoga. There is a mindful intention directing my participation in this moment. Staying with my bodily sensations while witnessing my thoughts focuses me. Connection unfolds, connection to the tricks of the mind as well as my participation in this uncomfortable moment. Amused by this thought, I free myself up to consider various ideas for art projects. And the mountains, in their great silence, disarm me with their exquisitely carved shapes of shadow and light. I pull into Anderson Ranch in modest control of my state; I am still anxious. After meeting my hosts, I visit the art room and learn about my ten new students; ages will range from 6 to 14. The scope of special needs is also vast – Down’s syndrome, stroke, attention deficit disorder, cerebral palsy, and autism. At first this whole enterprise seems like a questionable endeavor, given the range of unique needs each child possesses. To try to create a cohesive group, a workable container that will adequately address each child, seems like a tremendous task. It all feels like a set up for uncertainty, more for the kids than for me. I’m worried. It is clear that I have my work cut out for me. As I scan my often erratic thoughts and check in with myself, I notice how information dissolves the fears. So I ask more questions. Change the way you feel, change the way you think!


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With knowledge of my circumstances, distortions in my thinking recede, some even vanish. Thank God I have an assistant, Jessie, an art education student with a love for children and art. Now that I have an idea of who the young artists are, along with a truthful assessment of my state, I can begin to compose my plans for the week. I still wonder about the range of ages and disabilities…this does have the ingredients of a benign calamity! As I start to write up some tentative ideas I am struck by what I have learned in just a few moments after arriving. I have not yet met these children and already there is a feeling of being humbled. I have heard brief descriptions of their backgrounds and I feel subdued by their stories. With vigilant focus, I inwardly resist turning them into cases. It is more work than I thought to avert my clinical reflexes and turn them off. In fact, I had thought I was beyond this in my work, given that I have written and presented on this topic at conferences for years now. Although unexpected, I am grateful for the awareness. It is hard to wake up from the sleep of habit. I am reminded of Patanjali’s guidance on ethical prescriptions as I notice my mental leaps to define the children according to my clinical reflexes. His yoga rises inside, reminding me of ahimsa (not to harm in thoughts or actions) and satya (to practice truthfulness with both myself and these children). Feuerstein’s commentary on Sutra 30 in section two states: The subjugation of one’s appetites and the regulation and harmonization of one’s social relationships are essential prerequisites of yoga. They are not only the first steps on the path but form the very foundation of the whole yogic enterprise. (Feuerstein 1989, p.80)

I sketch out my plans and share them with my hosts. They seem excited. A group called Challenge Aspen is also involved in this week of art making. As co-sponsors with Anderson Ranch, they tell me about their inspiring efforts to take the ‘dis’ out of the word ‘disability’ and to work with people who have distinct needs. For example, during the winter they take people with a wide range of physical challenges skiing. In fact, they are pioneers in innovative ski techniques to accommodate the special needs of multiple amputees. They are an enthusiastic bunch, committed to supporting both myself and the children during this week that is yet to unfold. Already the images are plentiful – kids with physical challenges skiing, precious children, potent landscape, devoted staff, studio space, abundant materials, and a fervent inner state. I am sensing that point in this work when the images lead …image begets image. Following the lead of these images is a subtle practice, a form of meditation, since this practice, for now, is about listening inwardly to the outward signs. Attending to the collage of thoughts and sensations, I see a split inner screen. On one side is my excitement for the kids and on the other

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are my worries and fears. As on the first day of any job, I struggle to remain embodied and clear so that I may catch a glimpse of the guiding themes spawned by precious children and a mind in overdrive.

Figure 4.1 Anderson Ranch Kids 1 by Michael Brands, Aspen Times The plan for the week is to focus on body image, affirmations, and the self-soothing presence of transitional objects. All ten of the children, even those in wheelchairs, will do life-size portraits. Although this is a common art therapy exercise, I plan to add a slight twist. I am told that many of the children come from differing art backgrounds. For some of them this could be a novel experience. So they trace their bodies, cut them out, and use the first tracing as a template for another piece of paper. After tracing the second half, the children staple both sides together and later paint them (Figure 4.1). It is a way to invite the children to think all the way around their bodies. An opening is left for the children to stuff the inside with newspaper shreds, the final product looking much like a three-dimensional figure. Included in the stuffing process will be at least five thin strips of paper with personal statements of what each child appreciates about him or herself. To illustrate this point, I use real fortune cookies as a prop. I tell the children that inside each cookie is something unexpected and unique, perhaps a special gift. They hang on to my words, not so much because of what I am saying,


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but rather because they are poised, ready and waiting for their cookies. ‘Just like the fortune cookie,’ I say, ‘there are rare treasures inside of each of you.’ Several of the young faces look up and smile; it is infectious. I go on to inform the group that it is up to them to consider their special inner gifts. A lively yet simple discussion unfolds around this theme. ‘Hey Michael, can I write whatever I want?’ a child asks. ‘As long as it feels right and true,’ I answer. ‘There is nothing special inside of me,’ one child says. ‘Nothing?’ I respond, ‘Absolutely nothing?’ I ask the others nearby what they think. They disagree and inform their doubting neighbor that they are just like the fortune cookies. I melt as they teach me how to be with them. The week unfolds with unpredictable twists and turns. I try to remember each morning to offer my actions to the highest good, aligning myself with a sense of offering without attachment to outcome. My intention is right, although it is not reflected 100 percent in my attitude. I wonder what 100 percent looks like anyway. It is something that I believe in but rarely am able to manifest fully. My devotion is strong but realistic as I mindfully step to the side of any emotional traps I might lay for myself. The kids, as well as the volunteers I am working with, amaze me. Art is happening. A working studio is at full throttle by the second day. Like true artists, we decide to do an installation piece. In fact, the other studios at the Ranch are populated with serious art students and internationally renowned instructors. I am biased; I like what is going on in our studio best! Still, it is not easy. Attention spans are erratic, all over the board. Between the morning art session and the afternoon outings such as river rafting, these kids, at times, seem overstimulated. I start to have some doubts, realizing that the structure I have been invited to work within, in some ways, does not take into account the combined synergistic needs of this new group that is forming. As the week unfolds I begin to see patterns of behavior with the children and myself. Some of them I like, while others are uncomfortable. However, it all points toward possibilities. As an art therapist, I enjoy that part of the process when the group members become seduced by what is possible with art materials and their ideas. I lead; they follow. They lead; I follow. Art is happening! Lots of crises as well. These kids have unique needs. Some lack confidence in their bodies, others are easily perplexed, and then there are those with short attention spans – four to six minutes in some cases. It is my job to enter their world and sense how they make meaning out of their experiences. Sometimes the seduction of the materials and the magic of the process are not enough to keep the children engaged for three hours. The soothing presence of caring people, in this case Jessie, the volunteers, and myself, is essential to the mix. As is often the case, the project changes as it takes shape. By day two I begin to realize that the entire proposal has expanded; the vision for the week has intensified. I don’t want to set the kids up for failure and yet, from

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what I observe, I am convinced that my expectations are generally realistic. I consult with my hosts who agree. By mid-week I find myself admitting that they were in fact too expansive. These children really needed to work on smaller, more self-contained, projects. However, it’s too late to turn back now. This lesson stings a bit; actually, a lot. Staying focused on my intention to balance careful assessments of abilities with realistic possibilities is where my energy goes. This is the equation that I constantly hold in my mind. For example, during the first day I had the children bring in a favorite toy or stuffed animal. My motivation for this was twofold: First, I was attempting to scale down the larger, life-size portrait into a smaller project. They traced their favorite toy twice, cut it out, stapled and stuffed it. Second, I wanted to invoke the safety of a comforting transitional object to soothe them during any moments of anxiety that might arise throughout the week. They also had a sample of the larger project and how to engage with the challenges that lay ahead. They also had a familiar object nearby to console them. All in all it worked, for a while at least. Once the self-portraits were finished, we began to tackle the additional elements needed to complete our installation. The ideas continued to unfold in unexpected ways. Since the group’s final decision was to do a picnic scene, the next order of business was to make a tablecloth for our outdoor lunch. I taped 6 feet of mural paper to the wall and invited all the kids in wheelchairs to the large blank paper. I gave toilet plungers to those who were capable of gripping and was ready to strap a plunger to the wheelchairs of the kids who could not hold one themselves. I selected the traditional colors of red and white and generously slathered the paint onto the ends of the plungers. Once armed with paint, much like knights training to joust, they rolled into the paper. CHLP-plup, CHLP-plup was the sound heard over and over again. Again, the smiles were infectious! Eventually the entire surface was covered with red and white circles. Its aesthetic presence was amplified as the other children, along with myself, painted inside and around the circles, filling in the entire space. The result was a stunning tablecloth! On day four I entered the studio, took one look at the week’s art that was hanging up, and lightened. This is why I do this work! We all leave with more than we arrived with. I believe this with intense conviction. It is easy and honest for me to leak my appreciation for all I am receiving. All that remains are the finishing touches. During this second-to-last day, almost all of the children create clay food and flying things. Planes, flying saucers, Millennium Falcons, birds, Superman, bugs, butterflies…it was all there. Symbolic food, and lots of it, is in abundance. At the end of the morning, each person has a place setting complete with a plate, cutlery (including a paint brush), cup, appropriate handmade bugs (ants, spiders), and lots of food: pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, spaghetti, pie, some sort of beautiful chicken or turkey-like thing, and more.


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Figure 4.2 Anderson Ranch Kids II by Dan Bamer, Aspen Times Early Friday morning we are ready and just moments away from our opening (Figure 4.2). Slowly people arrive – parents, volunteers, other instructors and their students, the press, and administrators from the Ranch. The kids are beaming with delight as they share their accomplishments with family members and interested strangers. Many of them choose to speak about their work. With innocent honesty, their accounting is deeply moving. Obvious tears are seen on the faces of our many visitors. The entire event surpasses what I had imagined was possible. All week long Jessie, the volunteers, and I had tried our best not to do anyone’s work for him or her. Sometimes we had to assume the posture of an auxiliary ego, or third hand, so that the process was maintained, particularly during the end when we hung and arranged the work (Kramer 1986). Unfortunately, we had run out of time and had to do the final hanging without many of the kids present, which was not what I would have preferred. We conclude the picnic with a reading. All of the personal statements sealed inside each figure have been recorded and compiled into one long poem, untitled.

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I went to Anderson Ranch Art Camp and my dad came yesterday. I love my mom and dad and all my family. I am creative and I am going to be an artist. I love flowers, seals, kittens and puppies, especially Barney. I even love my shoes. I go to church but not when I am sick. I have a great smile. I love my jokes and making other people laugh. My favorite animal is the tiger. Cindy loves Marlo and Marlo loves Cindy. But I love Minnie Mouse and the Indigo Girls. I love hockey and I am smart. I am compassionate with good personality. I am just a nice fun person in airwalk shoes and army pants who loves to snowboard. I love how I love my teachers and sports like soccer and basketball. Basically, I really like myself !

Conclusion My stay at Anderson Ranch stretched me. There were so many variables at work throughout the week. I was faced with integrating my skills as an art therapist with what I inherited on site. Negotiating the wide range of obstacles and blessings that came my way was ongoing. While I am pleased with what was accomplished, in hindsight I think we did too much. It was difficult for each child to sustain the needed attention span and motivation throughout the week. Clearly this group was too diverse; the special needs always present. If I were to do this sort of project again I would insist from the start on being a part of the process that chooses the membership of the group. I would also work in smaller, more manageable art-based segments with clear obtainable daily goals for each child. Finally, I would question the appropriateness of engaging the children with impressive yet overstimulating activities on a daily basis. Any well-trained therapist, I believe, is constantly evaluating their own work. The capacity to observe oneself, to witness the collection of efforts that one puts forth, is crucial. With honest intentions and inner compassion, self-examination becomes a welcomed practice. Eventually this practice becomes reflexive, resulting in informed intuition. Meditation, for me, is an essential part of developing this unique form of intuition. However, intuition and compassion are not enough. Neither is just being an artist. One has to blend the qualities of yoga with that of the artist and therapist, integrating and synergizing these into balance. This sort of blending also occurs when employing various strategies for working with the mind. Sitting with thoughts involves letting them go, witnessing them, relating to figure and ground, relaxing ego. Cognitive distortions such as emotional reasoning or black and


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white thinking can easily surface during this process and stare back at me. These styles of thinking reveal patterns or specific thought processes worthy of investigation. In my case, working with these schisms is best facilitated through art and yoga. There are many ways to talk about art, art therapy, and yoga. The examples outlined above are distilled from twenty years of diverse experiences as an art therapist and nine years of meditation practice (Franklin 1990, 1992, 1999, 2000). There is still much for me to sort out and my viewpoints are always shifting. However, there are certain beliefs that remain constant for me in my work as an art therapist. First, this: Creating art is a birthright; wherever it thrives, it humanizes! Second, this: Yoga is the frame that holds my life. It is where I learn about devotion, gratitude, Dharma (right action), discipline, and purpose. My goal is to offer back with the same enthusiasm that I receive. It is here that the heart space opens and fills with gratitude, as the privilege to do this work presents itself, over and over again.

Creative Explorations Seeing the Divine in oneself and others The world is not dual, it is as it is. The practice of cutting it up, carving it into dualities, separating subject from object, me from you, is what spawns much of our suffering. What if we were to recognize the Divine in ourselves and each other? If we were to see how our language often objectifies our experience of people, as we call ‘them’ client or patient. What if we were to begin with the premise that we are all divine beings? Using about 10 pounds of clay, take half and begin to open the clay into some form of vessel. As you do this consider that you are forming yourself. As you settle into a form that best represents you, begin contemplating a relationship with another person that brings up powerful responses in you. Consider how you inwardly experience this person. As you do, sculpt the inside of you to represent your inner response to this person. Simultaneously, also sculpt your sense of the Divine within you. In essence your emotional response to this person is existing alongside that which is Divine in you. Work the outside of your vessel as well and design the external surfaces to show how you outwardly respond to this person. While working keep some masking tape nearby. As you move through the entire process simultaneously track your

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somatic responses. Attach pieces of masking tape to your body throughout the entire process as you feel various somatic responses to this relationship. Notice how the body holds this relationship, how you carry it inside of you, and how you might gain awareness to your relationship through this exercise. The tape will help to catalog this information and allow for greater insights at a deeper, somatic level. Now take the second piece of clay and begin to form another vessel. As you do so, consider that you are forming this person. Imagine the emotions and experiences that make up the internal workings of this person and sculpt them out of clay. Similar to the first vessel of you, sculpt your notion of the Divine within this person. Also consider the outside surfaces and sculpt your notion of how this person presents him/herself to the outside world, to you. Once finished, take a large piece of paper and other assorted, perhaps found objects that seem fitting to this relationship. The paper becomes the ground, the spatial element or environment that your relationship takes place in. Design this space carefully. When finished place both vessels on the paper and arrange them as you wish. Are they close to each other? Distant? Enmeshed? Was there a shift in your relationship as you empathically imagined this person’s inner world? Does he or she have the same sculpted presence of the Divine within that you also created inside of your vessel? Also remember to look in the mirror and observe the tape on your body. Consider the physical experiences that have been stimulated by this relationship and how they are carried within. When finished, sit with the entire sculpture and write about what you see, what you hear the images saying, and what you observe and witness inside as you sit with this reconstructed relationship inspired by the Divine. Notice how the Divine, perhaps similar in form, lives in each of you.

Sorting out the voices of Self and ego How do we reconcile the two voices of ego and Self ? Learning to listen at deep levels and discern our participation with these voices during our inner conversations is tricky. When is ego speaking and when is Self speaking? Is this decision that I am about to make for the gratification of my ego’s satisfaction or my soul’s eternal journey? Alignment with our inner wisdom can be developed through art. The following exercise can help one to listen and know when the trickster of the ego is speaking and when the intuitive knowledge of the Self is speaking. First, read the words below and notice if you see some words as ‘good’ and others as having a negative connotation. Try to observe your pattern. What


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words are you drawn to? Which do you want to avoid? Consider that each column has a truth that we are all familiar with. Allow both columns to just be. EGO

SELF

I/me

I am

Limited

Spacious

Contracted/solid

Expansive/fluid

Form

Formless

Tarnished

Stainless/pure

Limited identity

Divine identity

Finite

Eternal

Spiritually material

Spiritually free

Limited individuality

Infinite consciousness

Anger, greed, attachment

Selfless, loving, surrender

Ownership

Renounce

Dogma

Truth

Solve

Dissolve

Samsara

Liberation

Outer spokes of the wheel

The center of the wheel

Now, take 10 pounds of clay and divide it in half. Take one half and begin creating a form to represent the words that you are drawn to on the Self list. Pay close attention to both the inside and outside surfaces. Inside is to be where the voice is speaking from. Outside is to be how you wear these thoughts, hide or display them. Take the second half and begin creating a form to represent the voice of the ego. Pay close attention to the inside and outside surfaces. As in your first piece, inside is to be where the voice is speaking from and outside is to be how you wear these thoughts, avoid or embrace them. Once finished with both pieces, place them side by side and imagine their voices in dialogue with each other. Let them speak in your imagination. Write down what they say, observing your inner responses to the process. Consider the kind of discrimination you are experiencing as you listen. Consider applying this awareness to your daily life, particularly when faced with challenging decisions.

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References Allen, P. (1995) Art is a Way of Knowing. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Campbell, J. (1988) The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday. Castillo, R.J. (1985) ‘The Transpersonal Psychology of Patanjali’s Yoga-Sutra (Book I: Samadhi): A Translation and Interpretation.’ Journal of Mind and Behavior 6, 3, 391–417. Chapple, C. and Yogi Anand Viraj (1990) The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Delhi, India: Sri Satguru. Corey, G., Corey, M. and Callanan, P. (1998) Issues and Ethics in the Helping Professions. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Feuerstein, G. (1989) The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali: A New Translation and Commentary. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International. Franklin, M. (1990) ‘The Esthetic Attitude and Empathy: A Point of Convergence.’ American Journal of Art Therapy 29, 2, 42–47. Franklin, M. (1992) ‘Art Therapy and Self-Esteem.’ Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association 9, 2, 78–84. Franklin, M. (1999) ‘Becoming a Student of Oneself: Activating the Witness in Meditation, Art, and Super-vision.’ American Journal of Art Therapy 38, 1, 2–13. Franklin, M. (2000) ‘Art Practice/Psychotherapy Practice/Meditation Practice: Sitting on the Dove’s Tail.’ Guidance and Counseling 15,3, 18–22. Grey, A. (1990) Sacred Mirrors: The Visionary Art of Alex Grey. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International. Hewitt, J. (1978) The Complete Yoga Book. New York: Schocken. Khanna, M. (1997) Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity. New York: Thames & Hudson. Kramer, E. (1986) ‘The Art Therapist’s Third Hand: Reflections on Art, Art Therapy, and Society at Large.’ American Journal of Art Therapy 24, 3, 71–86. McNiff, S. (1986) ‘A Dialogue with James Hillman.’ Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association 3, 3, 99–110. McNiff, S. (1989) Depth Psychology of Art. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Muktananda, Swami (1989) Where are You Going? A Guide to the Spiritual Journey. Ganeshpuri, India: Gurudev Siddha Peeth. Muktananda, Swami (1991) Meditate. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Persons, J. (1989) Cognitive Therapy in Practice: A Case Formulation Approach. New York: W.W. Norton. Tart, C.T. (1975) Transpersonal Psychologies. New York: Harper & Row. Watkins, M. (1984) Waking Dreams. Dallas, TX: Spring.

5

Pilgrimage

Celtic Spirituality Revisited Cam Busch

Blessed are the people whose strength is in you! Whose hearts are set on the pilgrim’s way. (Psalm 84: 6)

A personal journey Pilgrimage is at the heart of many faith traditions. It is a quest, a journey of body and soul in which the pilgrim desires to experience a greater awareness of God. Contemplative practices often assist that awareness. In a Christian context, contemplation involves listening in prayer for God’s guidance. In the summer of 1994, I embarked on a journey along with 35 participants in Washington, DC’s Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation’s pilgrimage to Ireland. Shalem’s ministry is grounded in the Christian contemplative path and welcomes the grace present in other religious traditions of faith. The ministry is dedicated to calling forth a deeper spiritual life in both person and community. I had recently completed Shalem’s Personal Spiritual Deepening Program, an 18-month course. My mentor in this program was Carole Crumley, an Episcopal priest who led the pilgrimage together with an Anglican priest, Marcus Losack, from Ireland’s Ceile De Centre. The idea of having my mentor as my guide, the possibility of exploring the roots of my Irish Christian ancestry, and the death of my father two years prior led me to ponder the invitation I felt in my heart that seemed to be calling me. With a real sense of the ‘rightness’ of this trip for me, I made plans to go to Ireland.

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What I describe in this chapter is my personal experience on this pilgrimage using the camera as a tool for spiritual deepening and contemplative awareness and I include information about the photography exhibitions that later resulted. I follow that by relating the stories of my journey and how this experience has affected the work I do with art therapy private practice clients and psychiatric patients. I include how my sharing the stories of the pilgrimage has inspired members of a women’s contemplative prayer group to reach deeper into their own journey through photography, poetry, and art. As part of preparing for the trip, our pilgrimage leaders asked us to discern through prayer our particular gifts that we might be willing to share with the pilgrim community. The early Celtic Christians were a community of service-minded individuals working for the good of the whole. In order to support the intent of our journey we modeled this practice. Persons were selected for each category of service, which included: illuminators (artists); bards (poets); sacristans (responsible for prayer service preparations); anamcharas (spiritual directors or soul friends); kitchenors (meal preparation assistants); hospitality persons (special event planners); music leader; medical volunteers; and others. I offered, and was chosen, to co-lead the pilgrims as an illuminator. Along with another artist, I would serve as a guide in assisting others to express personal and spiritual experiences through art processes during the two-week pilgrimage. The pilgrimage leaders gave us an extensive bibliography on Celtic spirituality and encouraged us to read about the sacred sites that we would visit as well as to become familiar with the Celtic people’s philosophy of life. We were invited to ponder the concept of the word ‘pilgrim.’ Our walk would be slow and reflective, sensitive to our environment, to our fellow pilgrims, to the people we would meet along the way, and to the presence of God in our travels. The arts played a very important part in the lives of the early Celts and were interwoven into the fabric of each day. Stories, blessings, poetry, calligraphy, music, drawing, painting, and dance were among ordinary daily activities that were cherished and enjoyed. Through my readings in preparation for the trip, I discovered that there has been a resurgence of interest in Celtic Christianity, which flourished between the fifth and twelfth centuries in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. According to Father Dara Malloy, editor of the Aisling Quarterly, which is distributed from Inis Mor, one of the Aran Islands in Ireland, ‘The Celtic model of church is communitarian, inclusive, and locally controlled. It is non-hierarchical; the people are

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the church’ (Molloy 1996, p.5). In Celtic Christianity, people had an equal job to do whether they were bishop, monk, fisherman, homemaker, abbess, abbot, or farmer. The Celtic people held a great respect for the land, for home and hearth, and for finding God in all of creation – plant, animal, and human life. Although the early Celtic Christian Church was destroyed by Viking raids and Henry VIII’s orders to destroy all the monasteries, the rich spiritual traditions remained. Today, pilgrims from all over the world come to rekindle the fire of Celtic Christianity as they listen to the stories and blessings, experience the beauty of the art and calligraphic illuminations, sing and chant the Gaelic music, and hear the spoken language from the tongues of those who honor and respect their rich Celtic heritage. Being a Catholic of Irish descent, I have long been interested in Celtic Christianity. My roots on both my mother and father’s sides of the family are Irish – Murphy, Lenahan, and McGovern. The mountains, nature, the sea, and the color green inspired me and called me to Ireland. For the trip, along with my belongings I packed ample art supplies, cameras, film, books, and a journal. My intent for the journey was focused on a desire to draw from the Celtic Christian experience in order to deepen my faith in God. Arriving in Ireland, I was captivated by the verdant landscape. The pastoral nature of the land and the beauty of the people touched my soul and I immediately experienced a connection with my Celtic roots, while feeling that I had returned to a place that was a deep part of me. This was an experience of direct knowing, a return to the heart. Esther de Waal, author of several books on Celtic spirituality, shares a personal reflection on Celtic Christianity: ‘This Christianity was forged with a fire and a vigor that spoke as much to the heart as to the head’ (de Waal 1992a, p.19). Traveling with a contemplative prayer community on pilgrimage replenished my spirit. Our days were filled with chanting, listening to the lives of the Celtic saints and stories of the early founding of the monastic communities, small group discussions, prayer, meeting Irish contemplative communities (lay and religious), and celebrating the richness that the arts provided. In Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland, my pace seemed so much slower than my busy schedule allowed me to be back home in Tennessee. With this slowing down I was better able to listen to the rhythm of life within me and around me. The sensuousness of the mountains, the rushing waters of the rivers and streams, the cool mist in the air, the rainbows which followed light rain showers, the genuine welcome of the Irish people – all this filled me with

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gratitude. We were often greeted with ‘Céad Míle Fáilte,’ which translated from Gaelic means ‘one hundred thousand welcomes.’ As we walked along the winding fern-laden paths, I sensed a resonance with my environment. I walked slowly, soaking up the visual treasure. Spontaneously, I began to use the camera as a tool for meditation reflecting the harmony I felt with nature. Tilden Edwards, Director of Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, offers this insight: Participative seeing marks the beginning of contemplative awareness. It involves a way of remaining innocently present with our eyes. In this awareness we can desire to live directly out of God’s vibrant presence. (Edwards 1987, p.142)

In the presence of a contemplative community honoring silence, I engaged the camera as a vehicle to express an inner and outer experience of solitude and connection with the Celtic Christian spirit. Thomas Merton, contemplative monk and author, used the camera to record images that reflected an inner wisdom (de Waal 1992b; Pennington 1991). Merton observed that art allows us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Like Merton, I was losing myself in nature and finding a peace and tranquillity in the interconnection. Through the use of the camera, external and internal realities were merged with images revealing common ground of soil and soul. My soul’s witness was congruent with that of my vision through the window of the camera’s lens. I was more readily able to ‘see’ in the stillness and silence of a contemplative community. Clearly, during this pilgrimage I concentrated on photography more than painting and drawing. Less interested in the technical aspects of the camera, I focused on composition and spiritual connection with the image. My co-illuminator and I frequently spent time together. With a shared intention of seeking God’s presence in nature and art, we began to develop a spiritual friendship. Ed Sellner, professor and author on the subject of Celtic Christianity writes about spiritual friendship, soul friends or the Irish anamchara: Christians began to realize much more explicitly as a result of their relationships with soul friends that words shared in honesty and openness transform those involved in the encounter – and make it possible for them to encounter God. (Sellner 1990, p.63)

Being together as co-leaders was graced with a sense of timelessness as we took many long pastoral walks. We both experienced art and photography as ways of


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deepening our relationship with God. We shared the belief that art mirrors the soul. For the pilgrim community, we offered art materials consisting of drawing paper, markers, pastels, colored pencils, and charcoal. The participants were free to select materials to express what might have arisen during silent times. Freedom was given to share or not to share these expressions with the group. Several persons executed rubbings of the ancient monuments and tombstones, and then used the images for reflection in silence and solitude. The daily art products and other creative offerings were often shared by those who chose to do so during the evening prayer. Drawings, rubbings, and mandalas (drawings in a circle) were placed around a candle that burned in the center of those gathered. Images that spoke to the heart sometimes prompted individuals to speak of their experiences. One person drew a rainbow and told the group that witnessing a rainbow while encountering God in nature felt like a blessing. Poetry was read by the bards, as well as by others who were inspired to write their own verse. Song and chant was a part of the shared time together, morning and evening. Often called the Garden of Ireland, Glendalough in County Wicklow yielded quiet images of God’s creation. Our journey to the Aran Islands for the second week of the pilgrimage would offer us very different images and experiences. We spent our time on Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands, which is only 9 miles long. The island was stark, sparsely populated, with stones and stone walls to meet the eye. Our pilgrimage leaders shared with us that this part of our trip would be our ‘desert experience.’ Thomas Merton describes the early desert fathers and mothers as ‘the first Christian hermits who abandoned the cities of the pagan world to live in solitude’ (Merton 1970, p. l). They were in quest of purity of heart and clear vision. As pilgrims to the Aran Islands, we were invited to consider how our living and dying are held together in one experience. Merton shares these thoughts about the desert contemplative’s sacrificial journey: He could not dare risk attachment to his own ego, or the dangerous ecstasy of self-will. He had to lose himself in the inner, hidden reality of a self that was transcendent, mysterious, half-known, and lost in Christ. (Merton 1970, p.7)

While on Inis Mor, we would find few distractions, have plenty of time to be alone for pondering the longing in our hearts and souls. Among the images I photographed were stone walls, a pilgrim with arms lifted in prayer, flowers

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growing among the stone, and pilgrims gathered to experience sacred presence at the site of the ruins of Temple Benan (Figure 5.1). It was during this time on the Aran Islands that I was able to achieve more closure to my father’s death. Confronting my own living and dying allowed me to deal with his loss more completely. According to art therapist and visual artist, Pat Allen, ‘Ungrieved losses are sources of deep pain that etch patterns into our deepest self ’ (Allen 1995, p.138). The making of art and the use of the camera for an expressive outlet became ways for me to further attend to my grief. The pictures titled ‘Pop’s Ride Home’ (Figure 5.2) and ‘Resurrection’ (Plate 5 in center section) are photographic metaphors for honoring his life and memory. The stone walls helped me to face again the harsh reality that my father, whom I loved so dearly, was not going to return. Being in the land of my ancestry was comforting and empowering. Using the camera while confronting my grief allowed me to capture images that evoked the feelings I was experiencing and helped me claim the depth of their meaning.

Figure 5.1 Pilgrims

Photographing the Irish people and places gave me the opportunity to experience a healing connection uniting the past with the present, weaving together inner and outer landscapes of memory and time. Again, I felt the


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sadness of my father’s life ending here on earth and I also experienced the joy of his spirit rising and soaring to new heights and in union with God. It is in the living and dying held together, the great circle of creation, that we exist. This symbol is poignantly expressed in the Celtic Cross. In route to the Aran Islands I was fortunate to view and photograph an especially beautiful and well-preserved example of this type of cross in the Cross of Muiredach (Figure 5.3) at Monasterboice, in County Louth, Ireland. The cross spoke to me of a God of inclusiveness, holding together the world in all of its brokenness and pain, joy and delight. It spoke to me of an interwoven, circular pattern of life and death, light and shadow, crucifixion and resurrection. Standing before the cross I was confronted with thoughts of my own daily dying and rising. What do I stand for? Die for? What is giving way in me in order for something greater to emerge? I was feeling a challenge that would remain with me and questions that would continue to prompt further exploration.

Figure 5.2 Pop’s Ride Home

The Ireland pilgrimage gave me the opportunity to be nourished by the treasure of Celtic Christianity, the spiritual friendships that grew in the connections with my co-illuminator, anamchara or soul friend, my roommate, my mentor, leaders,

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an Irish pen-pal I’d met on the Aran Islands, a music therapist, a hospice chaplain, and those I spent time with individually and in small and large group gatherings. Of special significance was my encounter with a red-haired pilgrim girl (Plate 6 in center section), whom I met by chance on St Patrick’s Mountain (Croagh Patrick, as the locals refer to it) in County Mayo. I was slowly trekking up the mountain alone, since many of the more athletic members of our group had long since moved ahead of me. Even though I was struggling, something inside was beckoning me, urging me on. I was growing weary and did not know how much further I could continue the climb when I saw her coming down the mountain. Red-haired, freckle-faced, and with life’s energy radiating from her green eyes, she asked if I were going to the top of the mountain. I responded by saying I did not know how much further it was and asked if she thought I could make it. She told me that she had climbed the mountain as an act of penance for her mother who was soon to have back surgery. I asked what her mother’s name was and told her I would pray for her. The young girl then offered me her walking stick as a gesture of encouragement and as we departed I gained new energy from this encounter and continued my journey up the slope. Before returning to my hotel, I remembered having placed the walking stick on the bus. When I realized that I didn’t have it with me in the hotel, I searched the bus. It wasn’t there. After giving up the search, I began to reflect again on the experience. I did not have a tangible walking stick for a souvenir rather, I had a memory that would remain with me forever. I was filled with joy after receiving this gift from a fellow pilgrim. I returned to my home in Tennessee with a full heart, an awakened interest in using the camera as a tool in meditation, and many experiences to draw upon. The arts had been ever present in all encounters and aspects of the journey. The task upon my return would be to seek God’s direction in guiding me and showing me how the blessings I received could be extended to others.

Exhibitions After developing the photographs from the pilgrimage and using them for my own personal meditation, I began to organize them to share with others in exhibitions. In the years that I have been home from Ireland, I have exhibited the 28 color photographs titled ‘Eye of the Soul: Spiritual Illuminations of Celtic Christianity in Ireland’ in numerous one-person and group shows. Some of the places include the Washington National Cathedral, Washington, DC; Celebrate


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Faith and Arts Atlanta during the Centennial Olympic Games, Atlanta, Georgia; and in Glendalough, County Wicklow, Ireland. The images have been exhibited at conferences, arts festivals, hospitals, churches, and fine art galleries. The purpose of these exhibitions was not to display ‘pretty pictures’ but rather to provide the viewer with an invitation into a pilgrim spirit. Often, as part of the exhibit, I have invited viewers to take a meditation walk (silent and reflective) through the collection and then to express their personal experience

Figure 5.3 The Cross of Muiredach

through art making. One image that comes to mind was drawn by a middle-aged woman who had recently returned to school in order to pursue art courses. After viewing ‘Heather, Rock, and Stream,’ a photograph that I took on the hillside of Croagh Patrick in County Mayo, she drew a mountain scene with a stream running beside it. She carefully chose watercolors in blues, greens, and orange tones.

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When sharing her completed picture, she stated that she felt she had begun to nurture her desire to draw and paint by going back to school. The mountains, she offered, had always been a place she associated with comfort. The stream was an image for her of ‘my connectedness with the flow of life.’ Viewers share that the Irish pictures inspire and touch them. I place a book at the exhibition site for people to offer their comments. From the reactions expressed by many, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary is a commonly shared quest and one that people are longing for in this time of our existence. The photographs seem to reflect that journey, and the mystery underlying it. According to some viewers, ‘The pictures made me slow down to really take them in and then I felt peaceful after spending time with them’… ‘I long to return to Ireland’… ‘I am inspired to create a weaving after viewing Resurrection: Flowers Growing Among The Stone’… ‘I used the images in the exhibit to get into character to play the role of priest in a stage production’… ‘The Red-Haired Pilgrim Girl is haunting.’ (Plates 5 and 6 in the centre section.) There were those who communicated a desire to meet with me to explore further their interest in Celtic Christianity. For years, I have gathered with two women who had seen my Irish photography in an exhibition at Grace Episcopal Church, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Although we are of different religious traditions, we are united in a faith in God and in the desire to deepen our spiritual lives through the arts, contemplative practices, and in service to others. Together we have planned a pilgrimage to the Abbey of Gethsemani in the hills of Kentucky, where Thomas Merton lived as a monk, writer, and contemplative photographer.

Private practice clients The pilgrim way of experiencing silence regularly and on a daily basis has influenced the manner in which I now engage with clients in my part-time, private practice in art therapy. In addition to using art materials, I encourage my clients to explore personal problems and potentials by using the camera as a vehicle during meditation. Clients use their photographs as avenues for reflection into their inner lives. The insights that come from them are shared in the therapeutic relationship. I connect with the client by asking them to spend time with the pictures, allowing the images to speak to them. They share what the images tell them about themselves, their relationships, and their spiritual lives. For example, a 24-year-old female client who was confronting separation


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issues with her mother noticed that she was taking pictures of a single flower in various growth stages. She related this to her own blossoming independence. It is not necessary for clients to be adept at the technical aspects of the camera, although I do encourage them if they are interested to take a photography course at a local university or community college or to participate in a workshop or seminar to gain some experience with the camera. In working with clients, photo therapist and art therapist Judy Weiser states: Professional training in the art of photography has often turned out to be more of a handicap than an advantage because aesthetic concerns about image composition, tonal qualities, zone system, formulas for deconstruction, and so forth get in the way of spontaneous therapeutically focused responses to photographs as communications and emotional stimuli. (Weiser 1993, p.15)

The camera can be used in therapy by children, adolescents, adults and geriatric populations. Sometimes I provide an instant Polaroid camera or the client uses their own. The objective in using the camera as a tool for inner work is to offer the client the possibility of creating images that allow for exploration, reflection, and healing. Clients have the option to shoot color or black and white film. I may give assignments or allow the client to do free choice photography. For the most part, I work in a non-directive manner allowing the client to lead as I serve as a witness and guide to their experience, process, and truth while helping them to explore what seems to arise for them in the therapy session (Rogers 1980, p.37). The age and ability of a client will determine how much direction is needed in each situation. I may provide direction by way of a theme-related photography assignment. For example, I assigned a 47-year-old female client who is working through grief to shoot a roll of film in nature and to capture what seemed to speak to her eye and heart. She was asked to bring the developed pictures to the next therapy session for processing and sharing. Her pictures contained images of water, which she said made her think about all the tears that flowed inside her. This awareness and admission allowed her to release tears that she had been holding back.

Mother and son I would like to share with you another example of how the use of photography can support a healing process. The mother of a young child whom I see for art therapy showed interest in the contemplative photographs

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displayed on my wall and asked me to explain the concept of using the camera as a therapeutic tool. Intrigued, she began taking her own pictures and placing them where she and her son could benefit from viewing them. Recently she presented me with a lush color photograph of my office window and surrounding shrubs, along with the following poem, which she wrote to express her thoughts and feelings about placing her child in my care for therapy.

late in the day, late in the week I give my son up to a lady she lives behind a window, darkened I cannot see in together the lady and my son will grow He will surely heal He will come out to me again later full of light while I am waiting, I think about my son and this lady My son bears a rude cross that brings him much pain I am his mother, but he needs more than I have He needs his own peace I have turned to this lady for help and she has answered us, ‘Yes’ Behind this darkened window, His peace surely will grow While I am waiting, I think about my life Planted, I make my own stand growing healing too the colorful flare of yesterday’s death the camouflaged delicacy of tomorrow’s growth


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the heavy hanging bounty of today reaching downward reaching upward late in my day, late in my week planted growing I wait in front of a darkened window The lady in her giving my son in his learning I in my waiting together with our Mother and her Son we are cultivating the Garden of Eucharist it is good. Adding photography as a tool in therapy has increased my clients’ options for self-understanding and personal and spiritual growth. Some clients reflect and express feelings after viewing photography created by others rather than taking pictures of their own.

Psychiatric patients The exhibition of my photographs in a psychiatric hospital’s spiritual awareness group provided possibilities for nourishment and healing to a group of patients. I was invited by the hospital’s pastoral counselor to exhibit the photographs as a contemplative experience with patients who had various psychiatric diagnoses. I set up twelve photographs on easels and played Celtic music in the background to set the tone for viewing the images. I read selected Irish blessings from Esther de Waal’s book, God Under My Roof (1985). I provided the patients with art materials consisting of drawing paper, markers, and crayons to express their feelings and reactions after taking a meditation walk through the photographs. The pastoral counselor and I decided to allow the group to be an open one, with patients coming and going as they chose. The group session was an hour long, beginning with an introduction to silence, a 30-minute meditation

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walk, and viewing of the pictures. For the last 30 minutes of the session the patients created art and shared their responses. In a group of twelve patients, eight remained to complete drawings following the exhibit. One patient, who did not stay, later began to share spontaneous poetry after viewing the images. Another patient made musical sounds and clapped his hands to the rhythm. In the group sharing, a 50-year-old female patient with a diagnosis of clinical depression stated that viewing the ancient stone walls (Figure 5.4) made her realize that really strong and firmly grounded structures don’t easily crumble. She drew her image of a stone wall and shared it with the group. Drawing the stones seemed to help her tap into a personal sense of power that she garnered by creating and building a symbol of strength – a stone fortress. She asked to take the drawing with her after the session to place in her room for inspiration. The opportunity to express through art allowed her to explore her soul by means of the creative process. A healing energy seemed to have entered her experience and, by sharing her reflections with others, she invited the patients to enter the sanctuary of their own souls as well. They enjoyed the

Figure 5.4 Stone Wall

experience and expressed this to the pastoral counselor who conducts a weekly spiritual awareness group.


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Collaborating with a counselor who was also involved in the facilitation of contemplative experiences provided for a unified approach in assisting the patients to express images. Conducting art therapy sessions grounded in a contemplative transpersonal perspective allowed me to be present to the group in a manner directed towards providing creative avenues for the expression of a Higher Self that honors a mutual connectedness with God. This approach embraces a holistic philosophy of engaging the mind, body, and spirit of the patient in the therapeutic relationship. In art therapy sessions, I support the patient’s use of creativity for strengthening a personal and collective grounding in a spiritual centeredness. My goal is to provide an atmosphere and setting for experiences that nourish the soul. I help the patients focus on the spiritual aspect of their lives and assist them in an increasing attentiveness to their soul life (Moore 1992, p.xi). Encouraging the patients to view the photography exhibit while experiencing silence was important in creating an environment and personal space for reflecting at a deeper level. The photographs depicted images of Irish people and landscapes of the ancient monastic ruins and countryside. I shared reflections of my own personal journey in Ireland through the Celtic images, and this seemed to provide a welcoming invitation for the patients’ reactions to the exhibit. Shaun McNiff, author and art therapist states: Contemplative photographs serve as images that collect and return soul to the world. The camera preserves the imagery of instants and reveals the vast expression taking place in the most ordinary environments. (McNiff 1995, p.156)

The patients responded positively to the photographs and expressed their reactions verbally and non-verbally. The patients were introduced to a different way of looking at pictures as they learned about taking pictures to deepen their spiritual lives. Taking photographs for the family album, and taking photographs to ‘see’ reflections of the soul and experience its depth, can involve a more challenging approach. Maybe it has something to do with the intent held and the purpose for taking the pictures. When the focus is directed towards deepening spirituality, the photographs hold a different meaning, a more lofty one, with the aim being a desire for the image to portray something of the transcendent and of the possibility that God can speak to us through images. It is hoped that this experience may

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prompt some of the patients to begin taking pictures during their hospitalization and afterwards.

Women’s contemplative prayer group I am a member of a women’s contemplative prayer group. For nine years, eight of us have been meeting for three hours every Friday. We come together from various walks of life and from different religious backgrounds to share our faith and to honor silence and prayer as a means of awakening to God’s presence in our lives. According to Sister Rose Mary Dougherty, Shalem’s Director for Spiritual Guidance: In spiritual community, there is a bonding that goes beyond human expectations – it is a bonding of prayer and spiritual caring that is not dependent on the externals of similar personalities, tastes or causes. (Dougherty 1995, p.13)

Upon my return from Ireland, I shared with the group my experiences of using the camera as a meditation tool. Members were willing to explore the possibilities of using this technique. We used the camera during walks together in nature and also during our solitary times throughout the week. The women brought their developed photographs to the prayer group for sharing and reflected how this method increased each person’s openness to God. Throughout the years, the group has incorporated drawing, painting, and clay into our time spent together. We read passages from scripture and other inspired texts. Song, chants, and poetry often are expressed.

Sally One member, Sally Wilbanks, wrote the following after participating in the shared silence:

Words unspoken – thoughts unbidden Come at my behest Tying you to Me to Me in friend – in Earth – in Tree In every creature – for we are all the same.


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Unity – diversity – life – death – Joy – despair All of them are of Me. (From ‘Echoes of the Soul’ by Sally Wilbanks) Sally is the senior member of our prayer group (Figure 5.5). For many of us she is a mentor, artist, wisdom figure, soul friend, poet, and spiritual director. It was Sally who first spoke with me about Shalem Institute’s Personal Spiritual Deepening Program. Her very presence in my life is a blessing and I am grateful that we share a desire to embrace the arts in our relationship with God. For as long as I have known Sally she has created art that reflects her spiritual journey. After witnessing my photographs and hearing my stories when I returned from Ireland, she began to use the camera as a tool in meditation. Sally explained: In my meditations of the past several months, I have been led into a space of timelessness. Sometimes this comes from contemplating a picture, a piece of sculpture, or just being in a natural setting. In being with a photograph such as a scene of woods – a path through woods, a place of antiquity, or of the imagination, I can, occasionally, walk through time itself into a space freed of material distractions or anchored in a certain era. From this meditation I try to bring the sense of timelessness into my sculpture, such as the sculpture I recently did of a ‘beehive’ hut built in the sixth century. As I was doing this sculpture, I was meditating on a picture of the ancient monastery I was trying to reproduce and, for a period of time, translated back into that era and became part of it. This process of contemplation has been very rewarding to me, enriching my everyday life in the ‘real’ world of time and space.

According to Sally, the active process of using clay to re-create this remote Christian hermitage right in her own studio deepened her relationship to the pilgrim journey – not just her own journey to Skellig Michael, but the journeys of all who honor the heart’s longing for a closer relationship with the divine. Art making allowed Sally to transcend boundaries of time and space. Likewise, Sally’s art invited all our group members to participate in her wider understanding of the pilgrim call. The weekly group gives me a place to nourish my soul in the communion of a contemplative experience. I leave refreshed and better able to give to others and to honor the fruits of silence, prayer, and creative expression. The willingness to express through creative means has allowed us to witness to a sense of a deeper invitation to God and to experience the support of being with others

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Figure 5.5 Sally Wilbanks

who are gathered with the intention of moving from a living and dying world to that of dying and rising in Christ.

The pilgrimage continues Every true act of contemplation is ultimately a call to action. According to Gerald May (1992), psychiatrist, author, and contemplative: Although spiritual journeys often begin in the context of experience, and although experiences constitute major vehicles of insight, growth, support, and service along the way, the goal of the journey can never legitimately be experience itself. (May 1992, p.46)

Going on a pilgrimage with a community directed towards increasing an awareness of a loving presence for God, using the camera as a tool in meditation and for contemplation, and an honoring of the spirituality of clients and


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patients in therapy has shaped my approach as a facilitator of art therapy sessions. I am less directive and more trusting and open to the presence of the Holy Spirit’s guidance. In addition to my own spiritual deepening, the exhibitions, and the creative work with clients, patients, and my prayer group, there have been opportunities for collaboration and spiritual friendships with other health care professionals, creative arts therapists, and pastoral counselors. A music therapist, a hospice chaplain from the pilgrimage, and I have presented a workshop on the use of the arts in spiritual formation at the National Association for Music Therapy Conference in Houston, Texas. The music therapist and I have co-presented at a regional conference on the spirituality of American women at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee. I hope to remain open to further

Figure 5.6 Peat Fire in Hearth

collaborations when they seem called for and as they present themselves. I have recently been invited to serve as a retreat leader for a women’s Celtic spirituality group. Using the camera as a spiritual exercise is still growing and developing within me as I continue to nourish the seeds that were sown during the Irish

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pilgrimage. For those I see in therapy, I provide the space, materials, and encouragement and then leave it with God’s careful tending of the individual’s soul and creative spirit. The images shared with me are manifestations and mirrors of the interior life finding a place of communion with the exterior. In this chapter’s ending there is a beginning, just as all endings and beginnings are intertwined. The challenge for me and for others is to arise each day attentive to God’s lead. The pilgrim journey continues with each new bend along the way; the ongoing journey illuminates the road ahead. As individuals on a spiritual journey, we struggle with issues related to meaning and purpose in life. As art therapists, mental health professionals, and creative human beings, many of us experience art and photography as special ways to deepen our vision of the Divine. As pilgrims in life, we set out into the unknown as explorers. As seekers, we return home with images to share from the depth of our being with those who await us. Through creativity we draw from the wellspring of the soul, which nourishes a return to heart, home, and hearth (Figure 5.6).

Further information You can find more information about pilgrimages from the following sources. Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation 5430 Grosvenor Lane Bethesda, Maryland 20814 USA Tel: 301-897-7334 Washington National Cathedral Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage Massachusetts and Wisconsin Avenue NW Washington, DC 20016–5098 USA Tel: 202-537-6200 Ceile De Centre Castlekevin, Annamoe Co. Wicklow Republic of Ireland Tel/Fax: Nat.(0404)/Int. (353-404)-45595


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Creative Explorations Here are some practical approaches to using the camera and art during times of solitude.

Natural settings Clear time regularly to walk or sit in your own backyard, neighborhood park, or a location that inspires reflection in a natural setting. Experience the sounds of God’s creation. Photograph the images there for use as a record and for later reflection. Place the pictures that have arisen from silent times in an album designated only for your meditation images. Look at them when you are feeling stressed and pulled off center by the demands of everyday life.

Silence Clear time for silence (alone or in a group). Start out with short periods of times, 5 or 10 minutes, then build gradually to 20 or 30 minutes. Notice what arises for you in the silent moments. Use your journal to record thoughts that emerge, or you may choose to allow the images to be explored through art and photography. Share the reflections if you are comfortable doing this. Listen to one another without interpreting each other’s pictures, artwork or writing.

Soul friend Invite a ‘soul friend’ to join you at times when you would like to have spiritual companionship. Visit a nearby place of solitude, or travel to a beach or mountain area if possible. Draw, photograph, and reflect together.

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References Allen, P. (1995) Art is a Way of Knowing. Boston, MA: Shambhala. de Waal, E. (1985) God Under My Roof. Orleans, MA: Paraclete Press. de Waal, E. (1992a) Every Earthly Blessing. Ann Arbor, MI: Servant. de Waal, E. (1992b) A Seven Day Journey with Thomas Merton. Ann Arbor, MI: Servant. Dougherty, R. (1995) Group Spiritual Direction. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Edwards, T. (1987) Living in the Presence. New York: HarperCollins. McNiff, S. (1995) Earth Angels. Boston, MA: Shambhala. May, G. (1992) Care of Mind, Care of Spirit. New York: HarperCollins. Merton, T. (1970) The Wisdom of the Desert. New York: New Directions. Molloy, D. (1996) ‘Refounding the Celtic Church.’ Aisling Quarterly 18, 5. Moore, T. (1992) Care of the Soul. New York: HarperCollins. New American Bible (1976) Psalms. Iowa Falls, IA: World Bible. Pennington, M. (1991) A Retreat with Thomas Merton. Rockport, MA: Elements. Rogers, C. (1980) A Way of Being. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Sellner, E. (1990) Mentoring. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press. Weiser, J. (1993) Photo Therapy Techniques. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

6

Nature

Art Therapy in Partnership with the Earth Mimi Farrelly-Hansen

The earth is all that lasts. The earth is what I speak to when I do not understand my life Nor why I am not heard. The earth answers me with the same song That it sang for my fathers when Their tears covered up the sun. The earth sings a song of gladness. The earth sings a song of praise. The earth rises up and laughs at me Each time that I forget How spring begins with winter And death begins with birth. (Wood 1974, p.16)

Introduction Committed to memory in 1979, this poem by Nancy Wood has become a loyal friend, reminding me about balance and cycles and the interconnectedness of all things. Its wisdom has prompted this chapter, forcing me to re-examine my personal relationship to earth, nature and cosmos, shedding light on how those threads are interwoven with my spirituality, my art making and my art therapy work with clients. The stories I share illustrate some of the ways that I see the 137

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practice of making art as vital to the health of our species and our planet at the start of the twenty-first century.

Art making and healing: a personal journey How did I come to write about nature? More, it seems, by instinct than logic. Logic would have dictated a straightforward essay about using art with sexually abused clients and the spiritual components of that path. That is a journey I know personally. Like those children and adults who have come to my private practice, I spent many years plumbing my soul’s depths to understand and heal deep wounds. Were it not for making art, I might still be hiding childhood pain under an active eating disorder and the low self-esteem and shame which kept me from committing myself to the stable (though not static) relationships with home, family, friends, community and world which enrich my life today. Expressing my feelings through line, color, texture, shape and form, and having the opportunity to share those non-verbal utterances with a trusted therapist-guide, literally saved my life. Beginning in my mid-twenties, art making became the essential truth-teller, the place where I couldn’t hide and where, if I was honest in my intention, I could be made increasingly whole…again and again. But even before I discovered the healing powers of art, I had discovered nature. And it seems that now at midlife I am increasingly familiar with the child who instinctively sought both entertainment and refuge in the fields and woods around her parents’ house, who trusted above all the mute devotion of a black Labrador retriever and the gentle strength of a horse whose stall she cleaned out daily before school that she might gallop bareback in most any weather and thrill at jumping fences. For all the tensions in our home, I was also blessed with much time out-of-doors…to garden, bale hay, make daisy chains, catch frogs, or flop on the ground and look for shapes in clouds. At an early age nature became for me a source of renewal and perspective, a place to be made whole. These days, nature is the subject matter pushing for expression through my painting, not just the particular details of the natural world but the mystery and power of its essence. ‘Coming Home’ (Plate 7 in section) is an example. On the canvas four chunky upside down bulbs with trailing ribbon-like stems orbit around an orange ball of light, which is also spinning. The bulbs were no strangers; I had drawn them frequently for several months and was particularly intrigued with how after bloom they continued to grow when removed from their pebble-filled, well-watered bowl. But the decision to reinstate them, at

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least metaphorically, on a large, hitherto abstract canvas came as a surprise. The painting’s setting is ambiguous. Do all those swirling layers of blue and brown signify ocean or outer space? I’m still not sure. What was sure was the pleasure of bringing that image to life. Often while working on it would come the haunting chant: ‘Come back to me, with all your heart. Don’t let fear keep us apart. Long have I waited for your coming home to me and living deeply our new life’ (Hosa, by Greg Norbet, Weston Priory). Hearing those tender words, learned in the churches of my youth, brought tears of appreciation for some nameless sense of communion I experienced almost always in my studio, only rarely in a structured religious service. Looking back, it seems that ‘Coming Home’ was calling me into a new relationship with a larger world. Since then I have found myself eager to draw the plants and animals around me, and to do so with increased skill. I sought out new teachers. With one woman I visited animals in pet stores, animal shelters, barns and pastures, amazed at her facility for relating dry anatomical illustrations to the real goat or lama butting at our sketchpads. With another artist I continue to learn about printmaking, finding a satisfying blend of control and surprise in combining stencils of my own drawings with abstract backgrounds which gain richness and depth as the monotype plate is refined and embellished by being passed repeatedly through the press. I have begun studying more about ecopsychology and deepened my understanding of Native American and shamanic nature-based healing through reading and classes. I spend more time gardening, tending flowers and vegetables at home and leading children in reclamation, planting and sketching projects at the Science Garden attached to my daughter’s elementary school. Beneath these activities lies a question: How can I use my creativity in a way that responds directly and compassionately to the pain of not just my human neighbors but of the mother who sustains us all, the earth? As is evident from almost a century of psychotherapy, helping people ‘get well’ emotionally, even spiritually, does not guarantee a healthier planet (Hillman and Ventura 1992). On the contrary, we continue to deforest the earth, lose topsoil, and destroy plant and animal species at alarming rates; we pump dangerous levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and add 90 million people to the world each year with the assumption that the ecosystem will continue to tolerate such abuse (Roszak, Gomes, and Kanner 1995). It may not.

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Earthiness as Godliness Natural versus supernatural is a distinction I learned well as a child. It went along with other absolutes like body and soul, mind and matter…always with the understanding that supernatural, soul and mind were separate from and superior to body and matter. Roman Catholic educators, including my parents, taught me that God gave humans dominion over nature. And Western psychology, in which I had been trained in the late 1970s and early 1980s, agreed with that patriarchal assumption. Fortunately, my connections with art, yoga, meditation, and the self-in-relation theory of feminist psychology taught me otherwise. Science began to change too. Thanks to systems theory and quantum physics, we now know that we men, women and children participate in a constantly changing, evolving, intricately interconnected web of living relationships: animal, vegetable and mineral linked in a system akin to the mystics’ irradiated network of light. As in Chinese scroll paintings, we are located within nature, needing not one-pointed Renaissance perspective but many vantage points to experience the multilayered truth about our lives. In 1987 as I was wrestling to reconcile these newer ideas with the Christian teachings of my youth, Matthew Fox, former Catholic, now Episcopal theologian, visited the Congregational Church to which our family belongs. His book, Original Blessing (Fox 1983), brought me into contact with Christian voices more congruent with my own experience. Fox described the Eastern Christian churches’ focus on ‘theosis,’ the divinization of all creatures and the cosmos rather than just personal salvation. And within the European Christian tradition he highlighted the contributions of mystics like the twelfth-century musician, artist, abbess and prophetess Hildegarde of Bingen, who stated, ‘Holy persons draw to themselves all that is earthly…The earth…is the mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all’ (quoted in Fox 1983, p.57); or Meister Eckhart (1260–1329), who preached a radically new version of humility, not the old self-denigration but a humility which honors its root ‘humus’ or ‘earth’ by celebrating earthiness, sensuality and passions (Fox 1983, p.59); or Julian of Norwich (1342–1415) who believed, ‘Our sensuality is grounded in Nature, in Compassion and in Grace. In our sensuality, God’ (Fox 1983, p.58). In what became for me a soul-saving text, Fox identified a creation-centered tradition that predates by many centuries (it began in the ninth century BC) the ‘fall/redemption’ ideologies of organized Western religions which originated with St Augustine in AD 354–430. The fall/redemption model of spirituality is both dualistic and patriarchal; it begins with sin, original sin, and generally ends


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with redemption. It neglects to ‘teach its believers about creativity, about justice making and social transformation, or about Eros, play, pleasure, and the God of delight. It fails to teach love of the earth or care for the cosmos, and is so frightened of passion that it fails to listen to the impassioned pleas of the anawim, the little ones, of human history. This same fear of passion prevents it from helping lovers to celebrate their experiences as spiritual or mystical. This tradition has not proven friendly to artists or prophets or Native American peoples or women’ (Fox 1983, p.11). On the other hand, as Fox points out, it is those same artists, poets, mystics, women and native peoples, approaching their faith from an ecstatic stance, who have kept alive the creation-centered tradition down through the ages. How then to integrate this holistic, earth-inclusive awareness into my work with clients and students? Of what relevance is the fact that each of us is a part of nature? That we are connected to air, water and land, connected to animals and plants? That we breathe the same air, drink the same water, eat the food which they provide? That without those things we would die?

Art making, earthiness, and soul psychology The questions listed above seem intimately related to a larger issue, namely our definition of health. What is the state toward which we in the helping professions or we as individuals aspire? Unfortunately, psychology, whose literal meaning is ‘the study of the soul,’ sheds little light on the question. Until recently, like Western medicine as a whole, it has generally chosen to focus its keen analytic mind on the management or elimination of disease, leaving the soul work to pastoral counselors and clergy. Specifically, concerning the relationship of people to nature, psychology remains largely silent. The only mention of nature in the American Psychiatric Association’s giant reference book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Fourth Edition (APA 1994), is the ‘seasonal pattern specifier’ describing the tendency toward increased episodes of major depression at certain times of year, usually in the fall and winter. Even transpersonal psychology, which focuses on experiences and ways of being beyond the personal, has tended to write more about family and society than the nonhuman habitat (Roszak et al. 1995). Other cultures offer more clues. For 40,000 years native people, including our own European ancestors, have believed that health is inextricably linked to living in harmony with one’s habitat: plants, animals, rocks, water and air as well

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as people. Leslie Gray, an Oneida/Seminole clinical psychologist and shamanic counselor, elaborates: This kind of relating empowers you as well as the ecosystem, so that both remain sustainable by generating aliveness in each other…you tend the natural world and it in turn empowers you and gives you energy and health. (Gray 1995, p.181).

Child psychologist Anita Barrows (1995) proposes a theory of child development which echoes another core belief of non-Western thinking, namely the twofold maturational task of learning to separate and maintain one’s boundaries and learning to merge or yield. Thus a healthy person moves in and out of intimacy with all living matter. I have come to believe that art making, especially when done with awareness of its inherent earthiness, offers a natural bridge to this more inclusive worldview. What follows are tools for rebalancing.

Tasting wild berries Nature, spirituality and art therapy. At first blush they seem the obvious companions. Originally, if not today, the very tools artists used were made from natural ingredients: clay from the earth, color pigments from the elements, brushes from the bristles of various animals. Yet many who use these in therapy tend to jump over this level of awareness, except perhaps when working with young children or with those who are developmentally delayed or physically impaired. In many cases, in our enthusiasm to help clients focus within and paint the sources of their distress, we neglect to remind them to touch, really touch, the art media at hand…we hope in hand. Introducing what I call a ‘nature basket’ before art making has served as a tool to awaken the senses while stimulating the imagination’s symbol-making capacity as well (Figure 6.1).

Alice Ninety-two-year-old Alice chose a slender piece of driftwood from a basket of shells, leaves, and pine cones in various states of health or decay. I am visiting Alice in a retirement home where she has just moved after 30 years of living alone in a beautiful stream-side trailer park. We sit close together near the corner windows of her small room. Having squeezed the most wanted of her possessions into this space, Alice feels crowded, caged. Although appreciative of the kindly attentiveness of the staff and friendliness of her dozen housemates, she misses her former independence. The food is


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excellent, but wasn’t it nice when she could lunch on peanut butter and crackers, grocery shop with her part-time housekeeper, manage her own checkbook? Never one for afternoon movies, bridge or bingo, she has been rereading her favorite books on spirituality and art, trying to be patient with the settling-in phase of this newly confining living arrangement. In the past I might have encouraged Alice to use watercolors or pastels to help her weather this depression. But her arthritic hands tremble just enough to create frustration, so I have been bringing her play dough and other three-dimensional media. These have proved generally unsatisfactory. Today’s nature basket gets a warmer response. ‘ Hold the wood gently,’ I say. Observe its every feature, and first with eyes open then with them closed… Touch it to your arm, your cheek. Does it have a particular feel? A scent? A sound? What does it tell you about its past? Often nature can answer the questions of our heart. In your silent contemplation, be open to what message this wood may bring you…when you feel you have really made contact with it, open your eyes and use this soft modeling clay to communicate some impression you received.

Figure 6.1 Alice with Driftwood by Dan Straight Alice sinks back in her chair, a faint smile on her lips. An accomplished artist and teacher, she is no stranger to nature. I watch her graceful fingers mold green clay into a facsimile of the wood she chose. Still, I am unprepared for

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her words, ‘This wood reminds me of the tree at my grave site.’ More alert now, she describes how she selected her particular plot, a small knoll with a single tree and a broad view to the mountains. Evidently the proprietor tried to talk her into a more sociable arrangement with more trees, more neighbors. But Alice prevailed, and asked her grown children to drive her out there so she could show them where she wished to be buried. Telling all this to me, Alice chuckles at their understandable discomfort. The familiar bright eyes and sparkle return as we continue to talk about death and life and what might be ahead for her in this new place. Driftwood in hand, she seems more at peace with the uncertainty of it all. I leave with a silent prayer of gratitude for both Alice’s place in my life and for the help of a humble gray branch in allowing her to express important feelings about her preparations for death.

In the mid-1990s I began bringing more natural objects into my office. Soon boxes, jars and ziplock bags of everything from rose petals to animal bones to snake skins found their way onto shelves already supplied with the more traditional supplies for drawing, painting, clay, and collage. Anderson’s (1995) investigations into the therapeutic possibilities of working with rocks and stones further expanded my range of media. Within my office personal creativity seemed enhanced by these additions, as did opportunities to dialogue with clients about their relationships to the out-of-doors, what ecotherapist Howard Clinebell (1996) calls their nature memories or ‘earth stories.’ Always a plant lover, I became more intentional about my office plant choices: slow and fast-growing plants, bloomers and non-bloomers, etc. Respecting the aliveness of all matter, I made a more conscious effort to communicate that reality to clients through the environment in which therapy occurred. Alice’s story illustrates one way that nature came to be an integral part of my outreach work with elderly people, helping them attune to their senses in ways not always encouraged by the retirement facilities that house them. Not only the institutionalized elderly suffer from lack of contact with the earth. For many teenagers, exploring my nature basket, choosing something from it to draw or sculpt, then adding five or six magazine pictures which relate to their current life challenges, have proved to be a useful first session assessment. One 15-year-old girl spent long minutes fingering the whitened skull of a young deer; another was drawn to the translucent beauty of a discarded garter snake skin. At a re-entry program for students who have dropped out of high school, I start each new group with a snake skin. While this serves as a useful focusing device, inviting discussion and art making about what personal qualities and habits students want to shed and which they will expand


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on in their new skins, it also provides an opener for conversations about the natural world and our relationship to it. Reflections about life, death, and the possibilities for change (both personal and environmental) naturally emerge, along with ideas for future creative investigations. The litanies of sexual dissatisfaction from couples seeking counseling suggest a widespread confusion about our sensuality. Yet how many of us respond to such complaints with the question, ‘How sensuous an animal are you?’ Psychotherapist Philip Chard (1994) would ask just that. He would also send couples into nature to reawaken their senses by touching rocks, sand, leaves, and moss, listening to running water and bird calls, smelling wildflowers and herbs, tasting wild berries, feasting their eyes on dewdrops and cloud patterns and the myriad shades of green in one small patch of grass. He would remind them of their animal selves, of their instinctual responsiveness to both pleasure and pain, of their wildness. I like Chard’s emphasis and often ask clients to depict themselves as a favorite animal. Can they claim for themselves the fierceness of a mother bear? The cunning of a fox? The raw energy of a wild stallion? Are they willing to spend time learning more about their particular animal? Homework assignments like tracking deer in the woods, visiting sea otters at the zoo, or closely observing the weaving of a spider web lead to fresh awareness about the animals’ habits and habitat. I encourage reflection on the relationship between personal feelings and environmental realities: how, for example, one’s sense of powerlessness may mirror the powerlessness of an endangered species and how taking action on behalf of that animal actually creates an enhanced sense of personal power. Sometimes the path to recovering a pleasurable relationship with one’s adult body is not so straightforward, for it requires making contact with the wounded animal self of one’s childhood. Such is the case when trauma has occurred; then the journey home is long and arduous. Here art making has the potential both to heal and to retraumatize, for clay and paint invite the kind of regression that needs containment, pacing and a skillful witness. I have worked with many sexually abused clients whom I directed to stop making spontaneous paintings at home. For them, messing around with color became over-stimulating, flooding them with feelings too intense and raw to be dealt with all at once and alone. In general, however, one of the healthiest aspects of art making is its permission to get dirty. I remember a favorite graduate school professor, both a clinical psychologist and an artist, who balanced our study of clinical appraisal

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methods with his ‘be a slob’ watercolor technique. Like Carl Jung, he connected the repression of our earthiness, our fear of mud, to the killing of creativity. Life itself flows from springs both clear and muddy, hence all excessive ‘purity’ lacks vitality. A constant striving for clarity and differentiation means a proportionate loss of intellectual intensity precisely because the muddy elements are excluded. (Jung 1977, quoted in Fox 1983, pp.61–2)

Personal experience has reinforced the wisdom of this advice. In much of my art therapy work, mud or earth, in the form of clay, plays a crucial role, as does giving people permission to make paintings that are chaotic, unformed and ugly. In many cultures sensory education begins early, as early as the first ray of sunlight that crosses an infant’s cheek, the first breeze that kisses her arm. Too often in Western industrial society we cover the baby tightly, rush her inside in ‘inclement’ weather, close the windows, turn on the air conditioner, the fan, the climate control, the fluorescent light, the TV, the VCR, and say ‘this is the world.’ Too early in her schooling she learns to abandon mud pies and finger paints. Everywhere she is bombarded with media images and the message to run faster, think bigger, buy more. No wonder that years later this same child comes for counseling because she feels lost and numb. Despite a college degree, a respectable, well-paying job, no history of abuse, addiction or mental illness, she feels barely alive. Sculptor Tony Angell labels this loss of aesthetic sensitivity a crisis equal in magnitude to our loss of biological diversity. We as a culture are gradually being numbed to death and most of us don’t even realize it…over time, separated from any experience in nature, it appears that children will lose the capacity to respond effectively to the natural world and eventually it will have little or no relevance to them. (quoted in Wilkinson 1997, p.61)

Making art reverses this trend. The sheer brilliance of a tray of tempera paints, open with a brush in every jar, calls people to engage, to explore, to play. Equally irresistible is a palette of vivid oil-based inks and the invitation to ‘make marks’ with an assortment of natural objects (feathers, twigs, leaves) in a succession of quick warm-up designs done on a piece of old counter top upon which paper can be laid and prints made. Unlike its stabilizing cousin, clay, color directly engages our emotions. Thus educational pioneer Rudolph Steiner directed his Waldorf teachers to let children live and work in the world of pure pigmented


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color as early as possible. He believed, as did the German philosopher Goethe, that colors activate both the eye of the senses and the eye of the soul. We can present the colors to children in such a way that they will spontaneously experience the shades of feeling engendered by the colors and will naturally feel the colors’ inner life (Steiner in Muller 1987, p.11).

According to Steiner, painting with this awareness calls forth life from what is dead.

Inner–outer balance Over the years I have learned the value in balance as a path to wholeness – not balance as a static condition but balance as a movement between opposite conditions. In particular, in relationship to the making of art, I am more sensitive about guiding others to balance inner and outer work. For me, it happened gradually. As I was struggling to integrate painful childhood memories and to change my no longer useful coping mechanisms, I began spending more time out-of-doors with my sketchbook. I drew simple things, small things…a seed pod, a single dandelion, a pine cone. Sitting at lunchtime under a favorite sycamore or oak, with pencil and sketchpad, I began to re-experience what Frederick Franck (1993) calls ‘the zen of seeing.’ Not only did these simple drawing exercises refresh me, but also they led me into profoundly intimate relationships with each object I had chosen. Looking back through my drawing pads evoked the same kind of warm feelings as paging through our family photo album. The more I drew from nature, the more I felt a loving, empathic connection to the natural world. I literally fell in love and found myself spontaneously thanking the rose or the twig which had posed for me that day. I also became curious to learn more about these new friends…their habits, life cycles, preferences. I noticed that after a drawing session I felt fuller and calmer, more appreciative of subtleties and small gifts in my daily routines. Evelyn Bassoff (1992), one of relatively few psychologists to write about nature, elaborates on this point. In order to heal, women who as children were un-mothered or under mothered must learn ways to soothe themselves and to fill up the ‘holes’ within that have resulted from early deprivations. A positive relationship with nature is both soothing and filling. (Bassoff 1992, p.121)

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‘Madonna of the Plains’ (Plate 8 in center section), painted at a time when my own mother was approaching death, illustrates the comforting role of nature and offers new information about the spiritual aspect of turning to our mother the earth. In the picture a large rosy-skinned woman seems to grow from the tall prairie grass on which she sits. She is seen in profile, head slightly tilted, smiling toward a pale, emaciated child whom she holds in outstretched arms. The child clasps a red life-saver candy, symbolic of the life-giving quality of this energetic exchange, and rests his feet on a bright blue sliver of a cloud. Reflecting on this painting, I puzzled over why I had painted the child, not the mother, with the life-saver. What came to mind is Jung’s belief that only the wounded healer heals, suggesting that while nature can support us in our vulnerability, she is not an escape route from pain. Knowing nature and drawing from nature are powerful tools for rebalancing. I teach people the value of deliberately switching channels, using silent attention and art to move from introspection and self-preoccupation into relationship with something growing, alive, and whole. James Hillman (1993), both a psychotherapist and an outspoken critic of current psychotherapy, reminds us that in the era of Freud and Jung it was pain that was repressed in the subconscious. Now, he contends, it is beauty. Can we actively engage our clients in the appreciation of beauty? I routinely bring seasonal offerings from nature into the studio and see who will notice the dish of acorns, the spray of apple blossoms, the gourd. With certain art therapy groups I actually teach basic drawing skills for the purpose of heightening sensory awareness and supporting contact with an external focus. Not everyone is thrilled, as was the case with some of the mental health center clients described below. But my approach, which combines Frederick Franck’s zen drawing and Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (1979), seemed to engage most of them once I help them get started. Some clients even confided that they enjoyed the exercise because it was one of the few times they could drop their habitual preoccupations and feel fully present. I am leading an art group for chronically mentally ill clients who come to a community art center downtown. The table around which we sit is littered with pinecones of all sizes, twigs, multicolored fall leaves, milkweed pods, and a vase of sunflowers. I begin with a few words about the pleasure of being able to quiet our busy minds and bring our focus onto a single leaf or twig. Then I demonstrate how to proceed: I tape the corners of my paper to the table, place a leaf on the upper left-hand corner of my paper (since I am right-handed), choose a place along the leaf ’s contour and begin to let my pencil record my imaginary journey


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along the bumps and ridges of its form. I continue to comment as I draw, stressing that this activity is about seeing, not inspecting or examining. It’s about inviting this particular leaf to come alive through my pencil. I draw slowly…like a very old ant encountering new terrain. I ask the clients not to look at their drawings until they’re finished. This will be hard, I caution; always we want to check things out with our eyes, to judge how we’re doing by how accurate a likeness we’re creating. But the success of this activity isn’t about achieving a perfect copy. It’s about coming to appreciate this leaf in all its uniqueness, in all its imperfection, without trying to make it look pretty or impressive. Simple as this sounds, it’s not easy. Most of us have years of training about the right way to draw, who can do it and who can’t, and how it ought to look. I encourage students with a few stories about my own struggles and those of others. ‘No gold stars for photographic likenesses,’ I tease. ‘If you’re catching on, your drawings might look pretty unusual, but you may actually have had fun creating them!’ I also quote the memorable advice of a certain fox to a young prince: ‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye’ (Saint-Exupéry 1971, p.18).

Cycles and circles Nature has been and continues to be my teacher. Her varying faces, weathers and seasons match my own, giving me permission for the ebb and flow of energy and emotion which color my days. She wails, she whispers, she shines, sobs, storms, freezes over…and so do I. As a woman, I am particularly aware of my own and nature’s cycles. But I was not raised to be as welcoming of my earthy feminine self as I am now, nor were many of my clients. Men too can benefit from viewing their current life stressors in the larger perspective of birth and death, or planting, growth, maturation, fruition, decline, and decay. Whether we reflect on the predictable phases of the moon or the journey of the seed, the message stays the same: all life forms change constantly. For most people rereading a written daily journal reveals wide ranges of mood as well as certain recurring themes…weather patterns, if you will. So too does the review of a visual journal.

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Mandalas A woman came to me for several hours of consultation. Motivated by her work with a music therapist, she had completed a three-month practice of creating daily mandalas (circular drawings) after a period of prescribed physical movement. She wanted to review them with me in order to better understand the mid-life transition she was experiencing. Aware of the prominent healing role played by mandalas over time and across cultures, I met with her eagerly. What she had produced was impressive, almost one hundred richly colored and patterned circles. Many themes had emerged; some were repeated and developed. Some were not. Mandalas could be lined up and compared month by month, or clustered by themes, or grouped as those that attracted and those that repelled. The possibilities for learning seemed endless! Knowing that this client and I could meet only three times, I bypassed my fascination with the content of her drawings and focused on what the practice had meant to her. For one, this fairly high-powered business woman had become skillful at handling markers in a variety of new ways: different marks, different pressure, different rhythms, different layering techniques, different types of marking pens. This she noted with pride; she had begun to feel competent as an artist. In addition she spoke of having gained a valuable tool for both personal awareness and for self-nurturing. She claimed to understand better the multilayered nature of her life and the impermanence of any one emotional state. Also, she had found drawing to be a quieting activity, one which fed her in ways more life-giving than the sweets and excess food to which she had previously turned for comfort. Lastly she had a new appreciation for the usefulness of structure and felt proud of having persevered through the boring times when her practice seemed irrelevant and markers and circles horribly confining.

I felt excited by those mandalas. Among other things they reconnected me with the visionary work of art therapist Joan Kellogg, author of Mandala: Path of Beauty (1978), who pioneered mandala research at psychiatric hospitals and drug abuse centers in the 1970s, collaborated with Stanislav Grof in his investigation of non-ordinary states of reality at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center and established the still-active Mandala Assessment Research Institute (MARI).1 Beginning in 1969 Kellogg regularly asked patients to outline and color with oil pastels a 10-inch circle made by tracing around a paper plate. Not only did these mandalas help channel creative energies, but also they gave clues that assisted treatment planning, and, as treatment progressed, provided maps of the illness and recovery journey. In Kellogg’s words:


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Each of us is a rainbow of colors, the expression of our emotional state. Whether we express them all at the same time is questionable. They ebb and flow in tune with our emotional thermostat. At peak times they flow freely. In certain sickness, we express those parts of ourselves repeatedly. If we are fortunate to grow through these times, we go on to express new contents. (Kellogg 1978, p.3)

Most relevant for me in recent years, and most pertinent to my appreciation of the client’s work described above, is Kellogg’s theory of the Great Round. After amassing thousands of mandala drawings, Kellogg had the inspiration to sort them into categories, searching for an underlying organizing principle among them. What she discovered were twelve stages of consciousness represented over and over again through characteristic colors and design elements. At the center of this wheel of creativity was Stage Zero, an exceptionally luminous space ‘that transcended the personal…a place from which you witness your own life’ (Thayer 1994, p.203). This was exactly my client’s experience! As with a sitting meditation practice, her daily mandala making had helped her achieve a certain detachment from the emotional dramas to which she admitted being addicted. In the midst of much external uncertainty about career and health, she too, from time to time, had tapped into and expressed graphically the exquisite purity of Kellogg’s Stage Zero or ‘Clear Light’ state of being.

Body awareness and rhythms Developing a deeper relationship with nature presumes some sort of relationship to one’s body; how else do we experience the world but through our senses? As a child, contact with animals and playing sports woke up my body. After college I began dancing, just for pleasure. My favorite classes were improvisational where the teacher gave open-ended directives that promoted exploration and risk taking. I never knew what would be asked of me and how I and others would respond. The deep breathing techniques and sustained postures of hatha yoga offered more subtle mind–body awareness, teaching me that the strength of my connection to the earth determined the range of my possibilities for expression above ground, in imaginal and mental spheres. Once again, as with Native American teachings, I experienced first hand that I am truly a conduit of energy stretched between earth and sky, a reality which has become fundamental to how I understand my place in the world.

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When I began practicing art therapy, I found many of my clients sadly out of touch with their bodies, whether from the shame that accompanies abuse, or from physical disabilities, or from a religious upbringing which denigrated the body in favor of the spirit. In response to this perception I gradually began to introduce the kind of breathing, stretching, sounding warm-ups that helped me prepare for creative expression. The exercises I now use I learned from Mary Robinson, daughter of Florence Cane (The Artist in Each of Us, 1951) who was a founding mother of art therapy in the United States. From time to time I add yoga postures, a sequence from improvisational dance or a movement mirroring exercise similar to those used in Authentic Movement (see Chapter 8 by Suzanne Lovell for more information about this method). I demonstrate each sequence, then do it alongside my client. Since most people feel self-conscious and silly moving around my studio, I find it useful to remind them that almost all performers and athletes use warm-up exercises before periods of sustained effort. In working with groups I have experimented with ways to help clients find greater aliveness through a combination of movement and art. One of my favorite workshops introduces people to the ‘five sacred rhythms,’ basic rhythms found in dance and art forms throughout the world and described in Gabrielle Roth’s Maps to Ecstasy (1989).

Art therapy workshop Seventeen women gather in a sunny carpeted conference room for a morning workshop about art therapy. We begin with a centering exercise in which all are asked to write down their intention for this time of creative inquiry. Then I ask everyone to stand and find a space where they won’t bump into a neighbor. I begin with the first rhythm, ‘flowing,’ and suggest that people follow my cues or find their own path with eyes closed or lowered so that they attend to their own internal experience. Start with one hand. Let a flowing movement move from your hand to your arm to your shoulder. Experiment with pacing; let the motion be faster, then slower. You may find a particular tune coming to mind. Go ahead and hum it. Now engage the other arm. Be the conductor of your own flowing symphony! Now get your torso involved…now your hips. Go gently. Now legs. Move the flow out into space. Open your eyes just enough so you don’t bump into others. If you do, let the flow carry you along. Now raise your eyes and really see another person. Notice what her flow looks like. Go ahead and


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imitate her movement. Try it on for size. It’s OK to copy… Now come back to your own flow. And so on for about 10 minutes. Then come to stillness. Review your experience, the sensations that accompanied it, any colors, sounds, images that came. When you are ready, go to your place and translate the energy of flowing, your flowing experience, onto paper (18 x 24 inch rough newsprint or gray bogus paper). Use either pastels or oil pastels or charcoal. Don’t try to make a picture. What you’re doing is translating energy into marks on paper. It’s fine to keep standing and moving or humming while you draw. After about 15 minutes of drawing, I give the next directive. Now move into writing. Either on your paper, front or back, or in the journal you brought, jot down notes about these five questions: 1. What was my personal response to the flowing rhythm? 2. What is my response to the drawing I made? 3. Where in my life do I experience this rhythm? 4. Is there somewhere in my life I would like more of it? 5. Where in nature do I experience this rhythm? And so goes the morning, until by 11: 30 (two hours) we have explored all five rhythms: flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness. Then we push the tables against the wall and arrange all the artwork in a giant radial so that all the ‘stillness’ drawings form an inner circle with the other four drawings radiating out from there in the order they were created. We look, just standing back and taking it all in. Some people stand on chairs to get a better perspective. ‘What do you see? What do you feel? How was it for you doing this sequence?’ Many speak. They liked it. They feel more alive now. They notice how their least comfortable rhythm, often ‘chaos’ or ‘stillness,’ holds the most energy and attraction. Several note their difficulty with ‘lyrical’ because it reminded them of stereotypically feminine characteristics: ‘too pretty,’ ‘ballet like,’ ‘sweet,’ ‘too pink.’ ‘I’m trying for something more direct and powerful.’ Yet others found lyrical the perfect remedy for too much chaos or too much formless flowing. One woman described the discomfort of her chaotic movements as jerky, surprising, random, unpredictable, hard on the body. Given that, she is surprised when her chaos on paper yields the image of a butterfly struggling from a cocoon. She realizes how chaos is a fundamental aspect of birthing, of any creative process, and feels comforted by the reminder that springtime is chaotic and giving birth is arduous.

Gabrielle Roth (1989) recommends ‘doing the rhythms’ every day. Her book, with its many stories about the energizing effect of her rhythmic exercises on people’s lives, inspires the kind of creativity which mimics the full range of

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nature’s cycles. For me, the only omission in Roth’s approach is the concept of destruction, although it may be assumed in her ‘chaos’ sequence. Destruction goes hand in hand with creation, as any gardener will tell you. Pruning, weeding, recycling waste into compost…these are health-giving activities that encourage the production of more abundant flowers, more desirable fruit. Art therapist Cathy Malchiodi (Malchiodi and Cattaneo 1988) describes how the destruction of a particular basket drawing was her first step toward liberation and separation. The images that resulted from the chaos of destruction represented steps to understanding and identifying my feelings about my situation and the role I played within it. (Malchiodi and Cattaneo 1988, pp. 56–57)

In the same vein I have invited clients to rip up a hated repetitive picture, select a small number of the colored pieces which seem interesting in and of themselves, rearrange those dozen pieces on a clean page, glue them down and use additional art media to embellish or create an environment for this new image. Here again, as in the natural cycle of death and rebirth, the breaking down of old forms is critical to the emergence of the new. Working with children from abusive homes prompted me to develop a variation of the destroying/rebuilding activity described above.

Clay smashing After two months of weekly art therapy with an 8-year-old girl who persisted in drawing rainbows and hearts despite a hellacious home life, I brought in a carton of old unfired clay pieces, what potters call ‘greenware,’ and a large hammer. I said that I needed to smash everything in the carton so that I could make new clay. Would she like to help? The smile she flashed told me I had touched a responsive chord. Cheerfully, she set about the task, gaining confidence as she whacked away at the full box of unwanted items. As she hammered, we talked…more freely than before. She told me that only her father could smash things at her house; everyone else lived in fear of his unpredictable outbursts of temper. While empathizing with her fear, I wondered aloud what other feelings she might be having. Not surprisingly, she felt angry too, and also sad. No one at home seemed able to hear her. The clay smashing and talk took most of two sessions; I let my young client tell me when she wanted to move on. Then I showed her how to put all the broken bits of clay into a rubber dish tub, soak them with warm water and cover them with plastic until they softened. The following week we removed


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the cover, poured soggy clay lumps onto cheesecloth to drain the excess water, wadded them into larger balls and began kneading them on pieces of canvas. Soon we had usable new clay, some of which she formed into a small but solid horse. The permission to destroy proved freeing and empowering for this formerly cowed child. She subsequently reported fewer headaches and stomach aches; her grades at school went up; I began to work with the mother on ways to improve the home environment, including time to really listen to her daughter.

Conclusion As I prepared to write this chapter, I considered purchasing a new computer. Armed with information about the pros and cons of various types of ‘notebooks,’ I made my way to a reputable computer store in Denver. Within ten minutes all motivation fled. Nothing in that showcase of technology called to me. Ten minutes later I pulled up to a garden center, where I proceeded to buy a three-tiered plastic composter for about $2000 less than my original shopping goal. I felt thrilled! I tell this story because it seems symbolic of the myth that yet another technological toy will make our lives and the life of the planet better. While this is sometimes true, I simply don’t believe that annually upgraded gameboys and word processors create happier people than growing tomatoes, building a model airplane, making a chocolate cake from scratch, or creating a piece of art. Composters, like making art, invite recycling. They promise that if we take the time to sort through our refuse, much of it can be cut up, mixed, moistened, allowed to shrink and settle and eventually transformed into valuable mulch for a whole new planting season. As in the case of the woman who drew daily mandalas, the workshop participants who made art about the five basic rhythms or the girl who smashed and reconstituted clay, composters invite full participation in the timeless cycle of growth, death and rebirth. We live in challenging times when extraordinary technological breakthroughs stand shoulder to shoulder with widespread homelessness and isolation, rampant violence and addictions to immediate gratification, intoxicants, narcotics, escapism. We are careless about waste, we bury our grief, we shun old age. Perhaps saddest of all, we seem ‘all too ready to strike back at a natural world that we daily perceive as having failed us’ (Shepard 1995, p. 35). The big picture can be overwhelming, which is perhaps why so many people today deny the earth’s pain.

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The tools for rebalancing described in this chapter only partially describe how art making can support a heightened appreciation of and respect for the natural world. To build a bridge between traditional notions of health, art and spirituality and the current needs of the earth will require a surrender of personal ambition and a commitment to service in forms I have yet to understand. The emerging field of ecopsychology offers many theoretical possibilities, which call out for grounding and practical application. Groups like Artists for Nature take paint brushes and clay to environmentally troubled communities world wide, using art as a catalyst to rekindle a love of natural beauty and a desire to protect the aesthetic component of one’s heritage. Art therapists bring additional skills for educating the senses, renegotiating trauma, restoring balance and creating community. It is hoped that the dialogue between these disciplines can grow. 2 In the midst of World War II Antoine de Saint-Exupéry imagined that a single rose, appreciated in her uniqueness and faithfully tended despite her vanity and her thorns, could teach a small boy about love and responsibility. Perhaps today we can use our artistic imaginations to help people fall in love with the earth, one prickly rose at a time, and with themselves as agents for its safekeeping.

Creative Explorations The nature basket Find an old basket, more wide than deep. Give yourself the pleasure of several collecting walks to different natural environments. Try for maximum variety in size, shape, texture, and type (animal, vegetable and mineral). Take time to appreciate each offering as a gift from the earth. Find a quiet corner, at least 30 minutes of time, a table or drawing board and some art supplies (paper, pencil, a set of pastels, some modeling clay, a tray of watercolors with a brush). Relax and center yourself with five or six deep letting-go breaths. Affirm your intention to be fully present to yourself and the world of nature in your basket. Let something in the basket jump into your hand; don’t think about it, just see what your hand wants to reach out and touch. Hold the object gently, first with eyes closed. Notice its features; be open to any impressions you receive. Now open your eyes; make friends with your object from many angles. Then


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position it on your table and record its features by drawing, painting or clay modeling, or a combination thereof. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back. If your internal ‘art critic’ gets going, invite him or her to take a break. From time to time, check in with your body. Use breathing, even sighing or making any sounds you feel like, to help you relax. You may want to do several versions of your object, changing media and perspective at will. When you feel finished, sit back and gaze at your image(s). What do you experience? Try writing whatever comes to mind (no erasing or scratching out!). Reflect on your initial intention.

A sequel Having practiced observing and drawing/painting/sculpting an isolated object from nature, take a sketchbook and pencil out of doors. Use the same relaxation and centering techniques as described above. Walk around your home or a nearby park or open space, seemingly without purpose. Just amble, stopping to appreciate whatever calls your attention. At some point make a choice about where to sit and what to draw. Notice how in this real life setting things become more complicated: the wind blows, shadows flicker and shift in response to wind and sun; the base of that orange lily you so loved is covered by bindweed. Stay with it. Draw what you see, ‘imperfect’ and chaotic though it may seem to you. Later, share your impressions with a friend or write about them in your journal. What does this exercise teach you about yourself ? About nature? How can this practice help you consider larger issues like the habitat, species survival, even global warming?

Notes 1.

For information about MARI trainings, contact Carol Cox, MA, ATR, 130 Spring Wood Drive, Fredericksburg, VA 22410, USA. Email: [email protected].

2.

Since the completion of this chapter in 1996, several other art therapists have begun to investigate the relationship between art therapy and the natural world. Among them are: Lee Ann Woolery, EcoArt Therapy, 1354 W Catalpa, 3rd Floor, Chicago, IL 60640; Ellen Speert, Art Therapy Center of North County, 1905 Crest Drive, Encinitas, CA 92024; Jane Shoenfeld, Art Adventures in the Southwest, PO Box 5912, Santa Fe, NM 87502; Martha Haeseler, 62 Hilltop Road, Guilford, CT 06437.

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References American Psychiatric Association (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Fourth Edition (DSM–4). Washington, DC: APA. Anderson, C. (1995) ‘The Use of Rock as a Symbol and a Vehicle for Transformation in the Art Therapy Process.’ Master’s thesis, Boulder, CO: Naropa University. Bassoff, E. (1992) Mothering Ourselves. New York: Penguin. Cane, F. (1951, 1983) The Artist in Each of Us. Craftsbury, VT: Art Therapy. Chard, P. (1994) The Healing Earth: Nature’s Medicine for the Troubled Soul. Minocqua, WI: North Word Press. Clinebell, H. (1996) Ecotherapy: Healing Ourselves, Healing the Earth. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg. Edwards, B. (1979) Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Los Angeles: Tarcher. Fox, M. (1983) Original Blessing. Santa Fe, NM: Bear. Franck, F. (1993) Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing. New York: Bantam. Hillman, J. (1993) Talk given at conference on Beauty. Pacifica Graduate Institute, 249 Lambert Road, Carpintenia, CA 93013. Hillman, J. and Ventura, M. (1992) We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Jung, C.G. (1977) Psychological Types. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kellogg, J. (1978) Mandala: Path of Beauty. Lightford, VA: ATMA, Inc. Malchiodi, C. and Cattaneo, M. (1988) ‘Creative Process/Therapeutic Process: Parallels and Interfaces’. Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association 5, 3, 52–58. Muller, B. (1994) Painting with Children. Edinburgh: Floris. Roszak, T., Gomes, M. and Kanner, A. (eds) (1995) Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club. Roth, G. (1989) Maps to Ecstasy. San Raphael, CA: New World Library. Saint-Exupéry, A. (1971) The Little Prince. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Thayer, J.A. (1994) ‘An Interview with Joan Kellogg.’ Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association 11, 3, 200–205. Wilkinson, T. (1997) ‘Arts and the Earth: Touchstones.’ Orion, 16, 1, 61–64. Wood, N. (1974) Many Winters. New York: Doubleday.

7

Art, Nature, and Aging A Shamanic Perspective Madeline M. Rugh

Health involves an intuitive perception of the universe and all its inhabitants as being of one fabric. Health is maintaining communication with the animals, plants, minerals and stars…seeking out all the experiences of Creation and turning them over and over, feeling their texture and multiple meanings. Health is expanding beyond one’s singular state of consciousness to experience the ripples and waves of the universe. (Achterberg 1985, p.19)

Introduction As an art therapist, how I interpret and define health is related to how I function in the realm of art and healing. It is also related to what I think a whole, or well, person is like. The quote cited above by Jeanne Achterberg is one that I subscribe to as a definition of health. It guides me in determining what I will do with people and how I will understand their artwork. Beyond that, this quote embodies a philosophy of life. It is an ancient one; it is shamanic. This chapter examines three aspects of shamanism in connection with my personal experiences and my work with older adults in art. The first aspect is concerned with the need for communication with animals, plants, stars, etc. This forms the structure for acquiring help through spirit allies. The second aspect involves what Achterberg termed ‘expanding beyond singular consciousness’ and includes the shamanic experience of shapeshifting (Jamal 1988). The third and broadest aspect of a shamanic approach to health embraces Achterberg’s

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‘intuitive perception of…being of one fabric,’ a paradigm that supports and directs not only my work but my life. From a spiritual perspective, our ‘singular state of consciousness’ is at the heart of healing or health. Since the decline of the Goddess cultures, our experience of self as being part of the world has slowly eroded. As ‘modern’ people our identity, our ego-personality, seems hopelessly wrapped up in a package of skin, isolated, vulnerable, and separate. The feeling that it’s ‘us against them’, that we are alone, that we are the only conscious and aware beings, that we must predict and control everything to feel safe and to live, is perhaps the most dangerous and damaging illusion of modern Western thought. I believe this illusion of being alone is the foundation of fear expressed in our growing violence through such things as war, poverty, spousal and child abuse, environmental destruction, and the rush and pressure of modern life. Since 1977 my professional focus has been on bridging this gap in awareness that leads to such sorrow. For me, because of an early calling into a deep recognition of the world as sacred, shamanism has been the lens through which I view my work in art and healing. Put succinctly, shamanism connects people with nature and spirit so as to gain understanding, problem-solving, and guidance. Conceptually, it also helps explain certain features of aging, as will become evident in my own story and the stories of two elder art makers whose creativity I encouraged in rural Oklahoma and Iowa. Shamanism works through imagery and the imaginal, and thus grounds art making in a profoundly ecological and spiritual healing tradition at least 20,000 years old. Unfortunately, much of current art therapy education has abandoned its grounding in art making. Because of this I choose to refer to what I am doing as ‘art and healing’ to avoid associations with categories of illness or diagnostic and interpretive processes that have little to do with the work described in this chapter.

Wind calling the Four Great Winds…are about the process of creation, about manifesting the dreams of our lives. (Medicine Eagle 1991, p.359)

My calling into shamanism began around the age of 3 or 4. I am lying on a mattress that is tucked into a small rectangular space and pressed against a window the width of my bed. It is on the second story of the house my father constructed with yellow brick and brown trim. I lay with my head beneath the window watching a sprinkling of stars wink within a

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velvet black sky. An invisible wind rhythmically fills the curtain, raising it ever so gently. I am familiar with Wind’s various melodies: the watery sound of the cottonwood leaf, the taffeta sound of reeds rubbing, the creaking of branches, the drone between wires. But this time she speaks to me in words: not child words, but big words, adult phrases, future meanings. Words are not exactly right either, it is sudden, fully comprehended knowing. She speaks to or through my fully realized ‘Soul Self ’ about my life, about nature, and about art. She fills me, like the curtain on the window, with a billowing sense of purpose, meaning, and wonder.

Following the whispering of the wind, I felt even more compelled to spend time outdoors in the company of ‘others’ not human. I was especially fond of trees and of being up high where I could see rooftops and children playing and the general comings and goings of a busy human hive. After hugging the tree, I would climb and search carefully for just the right curve between trunk and bough where I could nestle in and close my eyes while being gently rocked. The trees too, like the wind, speak, cradle, and advise. In elementary school, the principal sends a notice to the parents recommending that they not allow their children to play with me. I am isolated for my differences – both for my personality and for my social status. (My parents are working-class people in an upper-class school district) I am an untouchable of sorts. I have few friends except for the occasional ‘army brat’ who comes and goes with the movements of the military, and is therefore not privy to the ostracism underway. It’s painful. I don’t understand what’s wrong with me and I often cry myself to sleep.

It is only after I am an adult that I recognize the sacred opportunity and blessing. In my isolation, I continually turn to nature for comfort and friendship. I quietly wander alone about the landscape listening, watching, touching, and tasting bushes, trees, bugs, birds, dirt, clouds, and water. Whenever I feel hurt, confused, or upset, the wind comes and whispers to me, consoling, cleansing, and clarifying. My relationships with the wind and wind-based phenomena such as weather, clouds, rain, and storms deepen. I can identify many voices and purposes coming from each cardinal direction and the four cross-quarters (NW, NE, SE, SW). This communication and connection continued undetected by others well into my teens. I am 16. It is past midnight. I hear her, the North Wind, calling me. She shakes the leaves and sings through and around person-made and natural elements in a very particular way. The North Wind is my favorite; I believe

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she is the one who first spoke to me. Joyfully, I sneak outdoors and dance with her under my beloved cottonwood tree. The stars swirl and sparkle in that black blue dome. I know the starlight is alive and aware. The Wind tosses my hair in all directions and I laugh. I learn I am loved and that I am never alone. I learn to trust my inner hearing and my inner sight as gateways to the unseen and as voices of an animate and sacred landscape.

In my youth, I also learned never to speak of these things to anyone. As an adult I have carefully selected certain individuals to tell. The writing for this chapter represents the first time my experience has been shared in a public domain. It seemed that I frightened people or brought ridicule upon myself whenever I made mention of my experience. It wasn’t so much that I was seeking someone to tell this experience to as I was seeking some kind of confirmation that such experiences are genuine, ‘normal,’ and valuable. A four-year art college provided an opportunity to give visual form to my love for all things not human. But once again my sense of spirituality and connection was thwarted. Apparently the meaning of a work of art was far less important than how well you used the materials. Rudolf Arnheim, the father of the psychology of art, has lamented this all-to-common approach to art making and art training. ‘It seems hard to believe that there are still persons in the arts who assert that the message of an art object is irrelevant’ (Arnheim 1986, p.236). This perspective is formally referred to as modernism. It emphasizes an aesthetics of the ‘disembodied eye,’ a kind of cold look at the formal elements of an image without much concern for the work’s content or meaning. It also emphasizes the alienated artist separated from the world and from any obligation to meaningful engagement with others. Modernism, then, also operates from the assumption of the self as separate and life as meaningless. I experienced this directly as my artwork soon shifted from figurative animal/human forms and landscapes to completely abstract work. It was an attempt to fit in that left me less than enchanted with my art and further away from my true self. Something was missing; I decided to move on with my art training in tow. Teaching called to me as a way of relating to people through art, so I entered graduate school in art education. During student teaching, my professor noted how well I worked with the ‘slow’ students and suggested I look into something called art therapy. I did, and found a mentor who worked as an art educator/art therapist with an eye to the healing power and meaning of art making. Rudolf Arnheim indicated the role of art therapy is one of returning art to its original purpose. Art therapists ‘should show by their example that the arts, to sustain


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their vigor, must serve substantial human needs’ (Arnheim 1986, p.257). So it is through art therapy that I found the missing link to restoring meaning to my own and others’ creative work. About this time of change, while still in graduate school, I came across a book titled The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge (1968) by Carlos Castaneda. I was ecstatic. This was my first encounter with a culture with which I could identify. It was the validation I was searching for. In one of Castaneda’s many books, special attention is given to the Wind as advisor or ally, especially for Don Juan’s female apprentice. I devoured reams of written material on Native American and other indigenous peoples’ descriptions of spirituality and nature. I read about the practice of shamanism. I studied with Sandra Ingerman, who teaches the classic form of shamanism, and with Serge King, who teaches Hawaiian shamanism or Huna. When Wind spoke with me so long ago, she imparted a sense of profound love and connection with all things natural and a need to express that love. So it is that art making with a therapeutic awareness and my spiritual experiences in nature find a meeting ground in the shamanic perspective. Before I go on to describe how I use this awareness and training in my work with adults and in my own artwork, it seems important to clarify some of the basic notions of shamanism.

The shamanic spirit The word shaman comes from the language of the Tungus tribe in Siberia, but the practice of shamanism is a worldwide tradition. It has a very specific meaning that should not be confused with witch doctor, medicine men or women, medium or psychic. Michael Harner, the founder of the Center for Shamanic Studies in Connecticut and professor of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research in New York, states that: a shaman is a man or woman who journeys in an altered state of consciousness usually induced by rhythmic drumming…the shaman journeys to non-ordinary realities…for the purpose of diagnosing or treating illnesses; for divination or prophecy; for acquisition of power through interaction with spirits, power animals, guardians, or other spiritual entities; for establishing contact with guides or teachers in non-ordinary reality, from whom the shaman may solicit advice on community or individual problems; or for contact with the spirits of the

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dead. In all these activities, the shaman remains conscious and in control of his or her own faculties and will. (Harner 1988, pp.7–8)

In other words, traditional shamanic activity is carried out in altered states of consciousness produced by sonic drumming or rattling. ‘Journeying’ is a reference to soul flight to non-ordinary realms referred to as the lower world, the middle world, and the upper world. These are imaginal places but that is not to imply they are make-believe. They are real, although of another level or dimension of consciousness that is spiritual, where the connection between all things is sustained. Also common to shamanic belief is the concept of animal and spirit guides or guardians, whom I shall refer to as ‘allies’ in this chapter. The appearance and assistance of an ally in the imaginal realm brings to bear its particular qualities and strengths on behalf of the shaman for helping the community or an individual. Through a technique called ‘shapeshifting,’ shamans merge their consciousness with other beings, animals, plants, rocks, water, fire, wind, etc. This form of communication promotes understanding and sacred or spiritual communion; it’s good for the soul. Please note that these definitions are far from complete or comprehensive. Rather, they point to a mystery that defies written or verbal description, a mystery that relies on imagination, image, metaphor, and symbol to reveal its presence. Shamans also do other things besides making journeys to non-ordinary reality. Some of these things may be thought to be rather strange to most people in our culture, such as talking with plants, animals and all of nature. It sounds neurotic or deranged of course, from the perspective of much of Western psychology, nevertheless, our ancestors did it and managed to survive for three million years, whereas in the civilized countries of the world today, where people don’t talk with the planet and its inhabitants, we are also faced with the possibility of nuclear destruction and ecological catastrophe…the shamans say that we need to talk to plants and trees, animals and rocks because our lives and our spirits are connected with theirs. (Harner 1988, p.11)

This quote summarizes my sense of resonance with shamanic thought and practice. It also names a common fear that shamanism is the work of the ‘deranged.’ A shaman ‘sees’ and ‘hears’ spirits and someone experiencing a psychosis also ‘sees’ entities and ‘hears’ voices. Yet, the distinction between the two is critical. A shaman always maintains awareness of his or her environment


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and everyday self (ego) during journey work. A person suffering from mental illness is taken over by the voices, is lost to him or herself. A shaman knows how to distinguish between the imaginal realm and the everyday world. Shamanic journeying, simply put, is the practiced and skillful ability to travel safely 1 between these two dimensions of experience. In my personal life and private artwork, I utilize this traditional form of shamanic journey work. The following is a brief but dramatic example.

Journey story One afternoon I receive a tearful, out-of-state phone call notifying me that a mutual friend is hospitalized with necrotizing influenza, the notorious and deadly ‘flesh-eating’ virus. Antibiotic treatments are failing and she is close to death. I quickly call my drumming and journeywork partner who drops what she was doing to join me. We conduct a traditional shamanic journey for help and information. We begin by clearing the air with sage and with a rattle calling for assistance from the four cardinal directions, Father Sky, Mother Earth, and the Great Spirit. My drummer sets the rhythmic pace about the speed of a heartbeat while I enter the non-ordinary landscape of the lower world. My drummer observes me and intuitively knows when to sound the return drumbeat. She also receives imagery while drumming. We listen to one another’s journey story, taking careful notes and attending to any body-based sensations arising during the telling. We work individually on our respective images constructed of colors, shapes, and symbols we were told would have a healing benefit for my friend. We carry the ‘visual medicine’ to a sacred grove of blackthorn and cedar trees. We tie the images onto the branches near the center of the grove. The sacred grove is a circular patch of overgrown land in the middle of town with a discernible atmosphere of specialness, such as the occasional visit of a red-tail hawk or resident barn owl. Later that evening, my advisor and friend the North Wind comes crashing through our community at 50 miles an hour, driving sheets of rain horizontally against my window. Watching the tumultuous storm, I fear the artwork will be utterly demolished. I go to pick up the pieces the next morning only to discover the artwork intact. No colors bled from the rain, no paper is torn. The thin strings that suspend the work hold strong. We are awe-struck. Later that day, I receive a call that my friend has made a sudden recovery and is going to survive. Now, way beyond awe-struck, we feel profound wonder and gratitude. This is a remarkable validation, despite our own analytically based reservations. Clearly something sacred and

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synchronistic is operating that is beyond our comprehension and is immensely powerful.

Even now, as I recount the activities of those two days, I can hardly believe how our lives interconnect through nature and spirit. I feel privileged to have participated in such a healing event. At the same time, let me reiterate that this experience and method are related to my personal life and private artwork. My work with older adults involves a more general application of shamanic principles.

Art, aging, and meaning With adults in the public domain, the focus is on the spirit of shamanism, as described in the previously cited shamanic definition of health. This includes three basic elements: 1.

the seeking of assistance from nature allies;

2.

the experience of shapeshifting; and

3.

the expanding of our sense of self to encompass our greater ‘beingness,’ our ecological identity.

Before examining the relationship of these elements to the art experience of older adults, it will be helpful to look at aging in general and the method I use for encouraging art making from this perspective. Gerontological literature consistently stresses the fact that we as a society have no guiding vision or image of meaningfulness or purpose regarding growing old. Until very recently, the biomedical field has primarily defined the experience of aging. Biomedical research is focused on the elimination of aging through genetic advances. Thomas Cole (1986), from the University of Texas Department of Medical Humanities in Houston, has pointed out the paradox implicit in this thinking. How can we find value in the experience of aging while simultaneously seeking to eliminate it? Biomedical science tells us how we age, not why. The question of meaning or purpose remains unanswered; it is a spiritual problem unsolvable through our traditions of empiricism, rationalism, and objectivity. Having no vision of life as a whole has a profound negative effect; it fosters despair, depression, age-bias, and isolation. To devalue age is to express, once again, our belief in a separate self, a belief in that ‘singular state of consciousness.’ Aging seriously challenges the primary American values of autonomy and independence, that isolated ego we call


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‘rugged individualism.’ This belief often must give way to the much feared and despised experiences of dependency, disability, and, ultimately, of death. Aging forces us to acknowledge our interdependence. Sensory and bodily changes, chronic illness, and disability are forms of ‘shapeshifting’ that permit, perhaps even force, our awareness to enter deeper levels of being. It is precisely at this interface that aging begins to show signs of special purpose or meaning, signs of a transformative character, of shamanic spirit. Aging calls into question our very notion of self. Who am I when I no longer recognize my body? Who am I when my mind does not remember a familiar face? The lack of vision in the value of aging manifests itself in geriatric services and programs that are bereft of meaning. Programming has as its focus keeping people busy and arranging opportunities for socializing. Socializing is not bad in and of itself, but when it consists of playing childish games, watching television, and making prefabricated crafts, it is without depth or integrity. The arts can be of immense service in balancing this situation by attending to the question of meaning from a spiritual perspective. For me, this quest for meaning in aging and art making has found form in the principles and practices of shamanism. Shamanism is not a tool or technique, but literally and figuratively a way of being in the world. We cannot make transformative events happen. They arise in their own time and naturally, provided the ground has been prepared. However, we can encourage spiritual possibilities through the structure of the physical environment. We can create an environment that is both healer and teacher. The open studio is my preferred healing/learning structure. By open studio I refer to a space within a facility that is clearly and continuously available for art making. In the open studio, all materials are visible and accessible. For adults, this has the added benefit of self-direction, allowing them to choose when, how, where, and what will be involved in their artwork. This kind of space speaks to the user: you are trusted; there is that within you that knows what to create; anything is possible. There is beauty from nature all around in the form of books, photos, and natural objects such as stones, feathers, shells, sticks, leaves, flowers, smells, textures, sounds, colors, and patterns. It is a place of joy, beauty, calm, delight, play, work, love, and respect. It is a freshly plowed and fertile field. Art making from a shamanic point of view is not about fixing people, it is about creating environments where what is deep and true can find voice and form. The following vignettes demonstrate my vision of the relationship of shamanism to aging and art and the effect of the open studio healing structure.

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Nature as ally: moving beyond metaphor In more than two decades of work with older adults, I have witnessed a constant and persistent interest in images involving the elements of nature – flowers, trees, animals, landscapes, sky, water, etc. At first glance, the reasons for this interest may seem obvious; after all, isn’t art about beauty? Isn’t nature beautiful? Images of nature are acceptable and familiar subject matter for the older adults who came of age during the Great Depression. All of these statements are probably true, but truth is multi-layered. For many art educators working with older audiences, images of nature are considered stereotypical, superficial artistic efforts and thus are discounted. Focusing on the product only (the same emphasis I experienced in art school) is a detriment to the person and the image. For many art therapists, the imagery of the older person is examined for pathology, such as dementia or stroke damage. Focusing on the image for pathology is also detrimental to the fullness of possibility and the search for meaning latent in the image. Both perspectives result from ‘separate-self ’ thinking and are limited in their usefulness in responding to the search for meaning. In contrast to the ‘product only’ or the pathological focus described above, I wanted to ascertain what else may be enfolded in the work of elders. Thus I approached images with respect, whose root word means ‘to look again.’ In looking and listening with the inner hearing, the way one listens to the Wind, other meanings may whisper themselves. To ‘stick with the image,’ as psychologist James Hillman (1989) insists, is the only way to be true to the imagination and the imaginal realms from which the image arises. The following story of Florence Kleinsteiber exemplifies this perspective in operation. Florence Kleinsteiber, born in 1926, is a widow living alone in a modest, dilapidated wood frame house in a rural area of Oklahoma. I met her when she was 60 and was a participant in the first artist-in-residence program offered to seniors in rural areas of Oklahoma. I was the artist-in-residence who developed the program for the State Arts Council of Oklahoma. We met once a week for eight weeks at a nutrition site for older adults. We created our images on the dining tables until it was time for lunch to be served. It was not an ‘art therapy’ program but a program of gentle and sensitive visual art instruction. Art instruction was offered periodically throughout the year for three years. During this time, Florence produced artwork in classes and on her own. She created her own ‘open studio’ in her home. Florence, whose work and transformative process I had the privilege of documenting as part of my doctoral thesis,2 is unique in her depth of involvement in


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art making, but the nature of her experience is a familiar one for many elders. This is an excerpt from my ten-year acquaintance with her.

Florence Kleinsteiber Raised in what she refers to as ‘backwoods hill country,’ Florence is born out of wedlock, an ‘illegitimate’ child in a strictly fundamentalist religious setting. Growing up in this environment has devastating consequences for the young Florence. As a child, Florence lives in a small, three-room house where four people share one bed. She is poor and uneducated. Family life centers around chores and church, a rural way of life characteristic of the time and not unique to her family. Florence shows an early interest in art but is reprimanded for ‘drawing’ and ‘wasting paper.’ This lack of support left an unmet desire to create, which continues to survive many years of hardship – cooking, scrubbing on a washboard after hauling water up from a distant well, caring for younger siblings, picking cotton from dawn to dusk, and chopping wood. Florence begins this kind of work at the age of 8. The work continues well into the middle years of her life. At the age of 12, Florence discovers the circumstances of her birth and in shame quits school. Two years later, she is unexpectedly taken to the church to marry a man she has never met. The marriage is fraught with difficulty, violence, and abuse, with Florence solely responsible for maintaining the household and working for food and money. Divorce is a sin in her fundamentalist religion. Having nowhere to turn and no conceivable escape eventually leads Florence to a nervous breakdown. It is during her hospitilization at an asylum (as it was called at that time) that the presence of trees make themselves known, coming to her aid. On the day she enters the institution, she finds a sheet of notebook paper to draw a few trees which grow outside the window, somehow gaining comfort, even though she is deeply fearful of what would become of her. Soon after making the sketch of trees, she has a ‘vision,’ which occurs in full consciousnes. She remains aware of her setting and her self, marking the vision as shamanic in nature. She is witness to a great tree that has been horribly mangled as if by a tornado. Twisted and broken branches dangle, and the trunk is stripped of its bark. Her inner eye continues to travel down the trunk and enters the earth. She travels deep into the soil through layers of sand, rock, and mud, seeing the roots of the great tree winding all the way down. She arrives at an aquifer, an underground lake of enormous proportion. The trees roots lay gently in the water, drawing sustenance for the injured body. The vision left Florence feeling a sense of wonder, peace, and comfort; removing her fear, she knew all would be well. (Rugh 1990)

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Listening to Florence recount this event, I had many questions. Is this an example of metaphor only? Is the tree just her mangled self-esteem? The water, only thirst-quenching biology? Or is it conceivable that she was drawn (no pun intended) to the awareness of the trees by the trees themselves? Did the trees come to her aid at a time of complete surrender and utter unknown? The tree is an ancient and essential being throughout human history. In shamanism and other indigenous knowledge systems, the tree is the bridge between ordinary reality and transpersonal realms. Within the Western hermetic tradition, the tree of life reflects alchemical change, regeneration, self-healing, self-understanding, and self-transformation (Metzner 1987, p.249). The tree is also called the Axis Mundi, the world tree. Florence’s lower world journey has all the markings of a shamanic flight coming in contact with a spirit being, the tree, who guided and instructed her on her condition and what she could anticipate. It was a healing journey. From a shamanic perspective, the trees are not just her trees, not just the output of a panicked little ego. They are guides in the imaginal landscape and they use ‘metaphor and symbol as a way of quickening the connection between the individual and the imaginal, sharing values and wisdom, not of our own making, not of the ego but of the soul’ (Watkins 1984, p.99). So the tree is a symbol and a metaphor. It is also the physical tree outside the hospital and the spirit tree inside the vision landscape. The images have multiple points of origin within Florence – from the ego, and, deeper still, from the Soul Self, that self to which the Wind spoke in me so many years ago. Throughout the decade of my work with Florence and her art making, the tree featured prominently. Early in our time together, I asked Florence and other art group participants to visually respond to the question, ‘If you were a natural object or element, what would you be?’ Florence produced a small painting of a tree stump with a few trailing flowers (Figure 7.1). She stated, ‘At the time I made this I was feeling pretty low and came up with the idea that I was an old stump but could still support a beautiful flower.’ Four years and 150 works of art later, Florence created another painting of trees that she called ‘Oklahoma Paradise’ (Plate 9 in center section). It is a spring scene of fertility with flowering and budding trees and water flowing abundantly through the center. Florence pointed out, ‘The trees are whole and complete, no broken branches or stumps. It shows nature’s abundance, so full of life.’ Until this moment, when trees appeared in her artwork, they always had sawed off or broken limbs. Now, with the assistance of the creative process and


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her allies in nature, Florence had transformed the pain of her early life experiences. For Florence, nature, trees, water, and animals are not just ‘pretty pictures,’ they are emissaries that acknowledge and celebrate the healing changes in her life. Florence realizes that through nature she can have direct communion with God, with Spirit…a dramatic and courageous revelation for a woman raised and still living in an extremely conservative religious community. Put in shamanic terms, Florence uses art to enter into relationship with nature and the imaginal. She continues her creative efforts to this day despite significant losses in vision and hearing. Making art allows her to interact with images that teach and heal.

Figure 7.1 Stump as Self

Nature and identity: shapeshifting through disability The experience of disability late in life greatly amplifies lost value and meaning. As discussed earlier, our society’s dominant values hold little significant place for aged individuals and even less for aged persons with a physical or psychological challenge. Unlike a healthy older adult, persons with illness will most likely be subject to programs and therapeutic interventions that are largely biomedical in orientation. The biomedical framework views aging as a disease needing medical and professional intervention. It does not address the role of personal meaning in health and healing.

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The experience of disability in particular, but also aging in general, might be viewed as a form of ‘shapeshifting.’ In shamanic practice shapeshifting is transformation accomplished through merging with the consciousness of another life form or element of nature. It is used to gain understanding and information about the life form and also from the life form directed to whatever issue the participant is focused on. It is also a form of communion with all of life, with all that is sacred. The capacity for shapeshifting is related to surrendering our rigid sense of self, our ego. Art critic Suzi Gablik (1991) refers to the role of art in discovering our ecological identity as ‘sacred ego-deconstruction,’ which is an excellent phrase for the experience of disability in old age when our identity or sense of self is definitely ‘up for grabs.’ Mental health practitioners in the aging field give considerable attention to the need for maintaining a sense of personal continuity amidst the losses and radical changes associated with aging. While this may be important and necessary, what is the nature of the self that is to continue? This question is yet to be asked by gerontologists, which indicates the blind operation of the separatist paradigm. Is this an attempt to maintain continuity for that distinct and separate ego-self ? I think that it is. The artwork and stories of the elders have guided me to this conclusion. Asking who we are when our bodies change drastically and we can no longer participate in our lives in familiar ways or when our minds no longer remember familiar faces, we stand at the threshold of transformation. We have begun our ‘sacred ego-deconstruction,’ shapeshifting into our true larger and deeper self. When we see only the pain and suffering of the disability or illness, when we see only the bent and crippled body, we turn away from the threshold of shapeshifting and close the door to deeper, more meaningful possibilities. Ray Stauffer, an Iowa elder, will be our guide through that transformative doorway of disability and into a landscape where self and nature become one.

Eye of the eagle, eye of the storm: who am I? This story takes place at an adult day health center in Iowa, which services the needs of disabled older adults who might otherwise be placed in a nursing home. I am developing an art program as part of research grant from the National Institute of Aging. The artwork discussed and illustrated represents a time frame of one and one-half years. It is only a small portion of Ray Stauffer’s total work produced.


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Ray Stauffer Ray Stauffer is born and raised on a farm in rural Iowa. He drops out of school at the age of 16 to learn ‘tinsmithing.’ Later, he marries but has no children. Ray’s mother had Parkinson’s disease, which eventually took her life. His father had died earlier of a suspected brain tumor. Ray is a courier, a driver for a bank, until he is diagnosed with Parkinson’s. He has begun to notice some shaking and a slowing down of his reflexes. Eventually he has to quit his job. Ray says his personality changed with the disease. He is quick to become angry, probably due to the frustration at not being able to hold even a glass of water without shaking and splashing it everywhere. He also notices increased weakness and how quickly he tires. When I meet Ray, he is 74 years old and moving into the latter stages of Parkinson’s disease. He is usually in a wheelchair, though sometimes he can walk behind it. His skin is ashen and his face long and drawn. He drools some, has difficulty with speech, and is hunched over. He has tremors whenever he reaches for something. Despite his limited formal schooling, Ray is highly intelligent. He has a pleasant manner and is blessed with a terrific sense of humor. Ray begins experimenting with the art materials provided in an open studio setting. He works at his art every day, five days a week, for as long as his body can sustain the effort. His favorite subjects are animals, especially birds, and storms or ‘skyscapes.’ His artwork starts out fairly small, about the size of a greeting card. Toward the end of our one and one-half years together, he is working on large (18 x 24 inch) pastel drawings. About two months into our association, Ray creates a series of drawings of eagles. ‘Proud Eagle’ (Figure 7.2) is the first in a series of five. We see the bird’s head in profile, emphasizing the piercing and penetrating eye and the sharp well-formed beak. The eagle is very regal and proud, as per the title. When I inquire about the eagle, Ray says, ‘Birds represent spirituality and freedom.’ He tells a story about the Pope: The Pope asked God for a sign that a decision was correct and a wild bird landed on the Pope’s shoulder in answer. Birds are God’s creations, flying free, and they know when storms are coming.

Ray continues to create eagles, but each one becomes less distinct and crisp until finally he gives up on an unsuccessful, partial eagle with a smeared messy beak, his last eagle image. At the same time he is struggling with ‘beaks,’ he is struggling with medications and having more difficulty swallowing and speaking. He says, ‘My condition is the same as my mother’s just before she died. She was choking and unable to swallow or speak.’ Depression comes to visit. Eagles turn to vultures, color disappears, black and white prevails. The storms predicted by the presence of birds finally arrive

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(Figure 7.3), dust storms that leave the landscape bleak and parched. Ray does not retreat in the face of this destruction. He joins it, experiences it, honors it. He is it – shapeshifting. By trusting the image and the art process, he works through and with the depression; it teaches him. He resurfaces with the help of new medicines.

Figure 7.2 Proud Eagle

Are the birds merely nice artwork, pretty pictures that people will find acceptable and so respond to Ray and his illness more positively? Are the birds only a metaphor or symbol? Is the bird an embodiment of Ray’s inner spirit, inner eye, strength, and spiritual courage? Or is it the longed-for pride, boldness, or uprightness that is no longer his? Probably a little of all of these and more. Using a shamanic framework, it can also be said that Ray is ‘identifying,’ shapeshifting, or merging with the bird. Birds are emerging in his imagery as allies to inform him of his real self, Soul Self, his ecological self. They are harbingers of storms, embodiments of spirit and freedom. When Ray returns after this lower world journey into despair, darkness, and death, there is a fuller transformation. The shapeshifting is nearly complete. He is the same, yet different, full of quiet power, mystery, and calm smiles. Ray begins to create large atmospheric images of sunsets where the boundaries between land and air are fused and indistinct; the time is twilight,


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that between-time full of the same mystery, quiet, and power we sense in Ray.

Is he merging with nature? Is that what a brush with death is like? He can’t talk about it, he’s only ‘blending colors.’

Ray is blended. He creates the hurricane (Plate 10 in centersection), another storm. It goes with his earlier, much-loved tornadoes and it goes with the eagle. Ray says storms have a quiet, even peaceful, mood, ‘I love storms.’

Is Ray in denial of his spiraling anger? Or is Ray in contact with the subtle inner

Figure 7.3 Dust Days

forces of existence whose core aspect is love and peace despite a tumultuous appearance? The eye of the hurricane is calm, about the same position as the eagle’s eye. Who sees through those eyes? Who is Ray? The hurricane, like the tornado, spirals. Is it the spiraling forces of the cosmos? The birthing and dying of creation? Are the images metaphors for the creative destruction underway in

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his body, for the shapeshifting of disease? One thing we know for sure: like Florence, Ray is not just making pretty pictures and keeping busy. These are stories of nature calling and caring through Wind, Tree, and Eagle, modern shamanic stories gone unrecognized. Here is one last story, a cautionary tale, looking through the frame of my own artwork.

Nature and identity: a call to return I have not always been faithful to the inner direction given to me by the Wind. I have not maintained an active and consistent attention to nature, art, or the shamanic perspective. Like so many others in our frantic world, I have lost my way and been distracted by irrelevant worries, work, and numerous wrong turns. The painting I have chosen to share is a work of reparation for a wrong turn. This is an old painting, one I created during my first headstrong leap into the world of shamanism, an old painting newly reworked to reflect my current understanding of this path. I am completely consumed by the shamanic perspective in my hunger for meaningful spiritual expression. I jeopardize my personal relationships for the love of those ideas. I behave in ways for which I feel shame and guilt. Even as I write these words, I fight back hot tears and my throat clenches like a fist. It isn’t until significant damage is done to myself and those I love that I wake up to my obsession. To be hurt by others is easily forgivable, but to be the one who inflicts harm is most difficult for me to bear. A book written by Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism (1987), helps me to recognize my dangerous ‘fundamentalist’ and abstract ideas of spirituality. In fear and remorse, I run away from shamanism, though not completely. I realize that it isn’t shamanism that is the cause of my trouble, it is my application of the information. So I pace the boundaries, like a hungry Lion Woman, uncertain of what lies ahead in the dark, yet in need of sustenance. Events conspire to call me back. There are people and communities in need that I feel will be aided by the application of shamanic work. This time, with carefully considered and balanced acute awareness, I return. The painting is my guide and a repository for the story. The additions and changes I have recently made represent my hard won insights and my sense of spiritual renewal. ‘Kali on a Porch Swing’ (Plate 11 in center section) is a large, mixed media painting (3 x 5 feet). The original image evolved over a six-month time-span. During that time I worked on it two to three hours per week. It arrived during my first exposure to formal training in shamanism. The female figure is intimately connected – grows out of – an old pinion tree that catches my eye


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on a plateau in New Mexico above the Rio Grande River. The figure identifies herself as ‘Kali-Ma’ fittingly the Hindu goddess of creation and death. I didn’t recognize her at first; her identity is a gradual realization requiring time and contemplation. Kali arrives of her own accord, emerging from the lower world, unfolding at the roots and trunk of that gnarled old pinion tree. When first created, the painting was a prayer of devotion to nature and spirit. Now, after nearly eight years, the painting calls attention to itself in response to a prayer I make in my heart for restoration. During that eight-year incubation, the painting traveled with me to various contractual sites out of state. Interestingly, the painting always hung as a guardian to my apartment, as protectress. When I returned to Oklahoma she held that same position of threshold guardian in my studio. I feel restless and still afraid of fully immersing myself in the work and experiences I am so drawn to. In addition to my fears of losing myself in shamanism, I fear that my artwork is not skilled enough, not beautiful enough, not valuable enough to warrant my complete time and attention. I contemplate the painting. I thought it was finished but I feel compelled to work back into it. Suddenly, quickly, within a week’s time, I visit the painting every day for less than an hour. I apply bright color and diverse patterns to the mask, including wheat grass for hair. I trim the moon, tree, prayer stick, and a few other areas in metallic gold paint squeezed from a pastry tip. It feels better. I feel better. All the original meanings embedded in the work hold true with the addition of gold. Gold is the alchemical equivalent to spirit. Alchemical processes involve turning base material, lead, into gold. Metaphorically, my painful, shameful (base) experiences have been incorporated and transmuted. Kali now wears a celebratory mask, where before the mask had been dark and foreboding. She holds her blue legs in a birthing position. She is wrapped in a blood red blanket of menses strewn with egg-like stones. A spiraling universe of star stuff is evident. It is a creation story. But who or what is being birthed? Is this only a metaphor of my fear and longing? Does the universality of some of the imagery speak to a wider audience and purpose? The mask is my face, the prayer stick is my stick, yet the images are bigger than me, older than me, other than me. The painting is constructed of symbols and metaphors familiar to women: the full moon, the dark earth and sky, the blood, and the birthing. It paints itself at a time when I am re-emerging from a long dark sleep, as are so many other women I know. Kali is a guardian at a threshold I have been afraid to cross. As a guardian, she also warns and protects. She warns of the danger and destruction in not attending to the inner calling or of attending in an extreme way. Finally, a less obvious element is the abstracted ‘porch swing’ she rests in while being part of the tree. For me, the swing is humorous evidence that,

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enfolded in the ordinary, lies the extraordinary. Enfolded in the ordinary is enchantment. Mystery is everywhere, in everyone, in everything. Swinging, birthing, growing out of a tree during the full moon, all are rhythmical acts. I realize that taking wrong turns or getting lost in the dark are part of coming to fullness, that this process is cyclic and occasionally dark of necessity, like the phases of the moon. In that realization, I experience some release from my fears of inadequacy and guilt. The result of this insight, this transmutation, is in the painting and in the writing of this chapter. It is my willingness to give voice and form to my experiences of spirituality through shamanism and nature.

Conclusion Our bodies have formed themselves in delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth – our eyes have evolved in subtle interaction with other eyes, as our ears are attuned by their very structure to the howling of wolves and the honking of geese. To shut ourselves off from these other voices, to continue by our lifestyles to condemn these other sensibilities to the oblivion of extinction, is to rob our own senses of their integrity, and to rob our minds of their coherence. We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human. (Abram 1997, p.22)

Could Ray and Florence and countless other elders utilizing art as a tool of communication be trying to tell us of the inner life, the inner spirit, the expanded self that is not confined to the body or the mind? I believe so. I believe it because I also experience it. What difference does it make to view artwork in this way? That is a question I leave for you to decide. For me, it is a confirmation of my own earlier experiences and, beyond that, a part of the much needed transformation or shapeshifting we need to do as a society to comprehend and experience the real boundaries of the self. As ecopsychologist Joanna Macy so passionately states: the crisis that threatens our planet, whether in its military, ecological or social aspects, derives from a dysfunctional and pathogenic notion of the self. Awakening to our larger ecological self will give us new powers; undreamed of in our squirrel cage of the separate ego… because these new powers are interactive in nature, they manifest themselves only to the extent that we recognize and act upon our interexistence. (Macy, quoted in Gablik 1991, p.175)


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Perhaps growing old is one way the planet helps us recognize our ‘interexistence,’ slowing us down, drawing our attention inward and away from consuming materials, consuming schedules, and consuming thoughts. Perhaps both the experience of aging and of art making from a shamanic perspective are part of this process of waking up, part of learning to recognize that the ordinary is extraordinary, returning us to health through a reawakened sense of wonder and rapport. This is the power of shamanism and the power of art, ancient instruments of communion between the self and all that is important, all that is sacred (London 1989).

Creative Explorations The inner landscape One way to introduce art making to persons unfamiliar or afraid of the process is to utilize metaphor. In this exercise, participants are gently directed to use their sensory apparatus and to note the connections between their sense of self and nature. I learned this from a friend and storyteller, Lynn Moroney (who, incidentally, calls herself ‘wind woman’). I ask people to answer some guiding questions and to accept the first thing that comes to mind as their response. The response should be based on selecting an element that is most like you as a person with all your unique experiences, hopes, dreams, fears, etc. Depending on the needs of the participants, the answers may be recorded on a separate sheet of paper, or on small sheets of card-size drawing paper, using one response per card. If I am working with very ill individuals (such as those with dementia), I may ask only one question and listen to verbal responses, to the story, and proceed to image making if appropriate. The questions include the following: If you were a fabric, what would you be? If you were a time of day, what time would you be? (Be specific: ‘6 a.m.’ instead of just ‘morning’ etc.) If you were a natural object, what would you be? (i.e., anything in nature – wind, leaves, slugs, stars, and again, be specific, e.g. what kind of flower…) If you were a natural sound, what would you be? If you were a smell, what would you be?

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If you were a taste, what would you be? (e.g. spicy, salty, sour, sweet, pungent, bland, and also specific foods) If you were a holiday, which would you be? If you were a city, town, or village, which would you be? (This can be any city, town, or village anywhere in the world, not necessarily one you have visited.)

A variation on these questions can be: What natural sound, fabric, object, etc. are you most like as a person? Once responses have been collected, participants are invited to share their stories briefly before going on to the image-making element. Artwork can proceed in any number of directions. Participants may choose one element to respond to or they may combine two very unusual or different responses into one image, creating a collage, painting, or sculpture. They may enlarge some part of an element, like a Georgia O’Keefe painting. All participants in a group could decide to focus on one thing, like smell, and create smell-based images to be combined later as a quilt or mural.

Variations Other variations on this initial entry into art making include going outdoors and listing sounds, textures, colors, smells, and sights in specific detail to bring our awareness back into the sensory field. Such lists are the beginning of poetry and imagery. For those who cannot go outdoors, nature tapes and videos are almost as effective. For older adult groups, it is important to address the need to learn about art and metaphor. All these explorations are gateway tools into further realms, should people choose to travel there.

Notes 1.

More detail on shamanism and mental illness can be obtained through any thoughtful work on shamanism. A brief and well-written exploration of this interface can be found in an essay by Richard Noll (1987).

2.

For anyone interested in more detail on Florence Kleinsteiber, please refer to my unpublished dissertation (Rugh 1990).


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References Abram, D. (1997) The Spell of The Sensuous. New York: Vintage. Achterberg, J. (1985) Imagery in Healing. Boston, MA: New Science Library. Arnheim, R. (1986) New Essays on the Psychology of Art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Castaneda, C. (1968) The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Cole, T.R. (1986) ‘The Tattered Web of Cultural Meanings.’ In T.R. Cole and S.A. Gadow (eds) What Does it Mean to Grow Old? Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Gablik, S. (1991) The Re-enchantment of Art. New York: Thames & Hudson. Harner, M. (1988) ‘What is a Shaman?’ In G. Doore (ed) Shaman’s Path. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Hillman, J. (1989) A Blue Fire. New York: HarperCollins. Jamal, M. (1988) Shape Shifters: Shaman Women in Contemporary Society. London: Arkana. London, P. (1989) No More Second Hand Art. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Medicine Eagle, B. (1991) Buffalo Woman Comes Singing. New York: Ballantine. Metzner, R. (1987) ‘Transformation Process in Shamanism, Alchemy, and Yoga.’ In S. Nicholson (ed) Shamanism. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House. Noll, R. (1987) ‘The Presence of Spirits in Magic and Madness.’ In S. Nicholson (ed) Shamanism. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House. Rugh, M. (1990) ‘The Etiology of Visual Arts Expression with an Older Woman: Patterns of Meaning and Metaphor in Late Life Learning.’ Unpublished dissertation, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma. Trungpa, C. (1987) Cutting through Spiritual Materialism. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Watkins, M. (1984) Waking Dreams. Woodstock, CT: Spring.

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Loving Body is Embracing Spirit Coming Home Stories Suzanne Lovell

Our traditions live deep in the cellular level of our being. We consider the cellular level of our being our spirit. (Marilyn Youngbird 1994) Someone inside me knows more than I know: Who are you? Who are you? (Suzanne Lovell, private journal)

Introduction We humans enjoy stories. We are ‘living stories’ day and night! Hearing stories our breath is stirred, our hearts open. Enlivening our own world by telling stories ‘animates’ – brings breath and soul to – our listeners. This chapter tells 1 stories that emphasize our experiences as bodyspirits. While this term is discussed later, I’m introducing it here as a warning that this chapter is about no longer separating ourselves into parts or fragments; rather I believe that we are born whole and are meant to live a wholy healthy life, at one with all dimensions of ourselves. I hope that you, too, from hearing these stories, will remember, or open to, your own stories of wonder and at-onement and share them generously with each other. Do you remember the story called ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’? Two tailors promised a vain emperor a robe spun of magical cloth that only honest eyes could see. Everyone went along with those rascal tailors for fear of being judged dishonest…even the emperor himself fell into the faulty trance of

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LOVING BODY IS EMBRACING SPIRIT: COMING HOME STORIES

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consensus reality rather than speaking from knowing through his own direct experience! If you remember this story, then you also know that it was a child – not yet entrained by parents, teachers, peers, or the ‘isms’ of the times – who simply told the truth: The emperor was parading about in his underwear! The way we Westerners are unconsciously living and racing into the twenty-first century, our consensus trance is killing us and this diamond jewel earth we are given to rejoice in. Coming home to ourselves as human beings, awakening from this irrational cultural trance we’ve slipped into, means to experience and revalue the aboriginally unending wonder and mystery of being human. The use of art making in service to our imagination is our aboriginal birthright and our human way of coming home to live in a universe created from love and wholeness. My motivation in writing this chapter comes from the deepest concern about what our children and grandchildren are losing as the globalizing capitalist dream clouds our ability to remember what is essential to being human, as it erases our memory of our aboriginal needs and desires. I will introduce some new words, and new ways of understanding old words, to describe what it means to be bodyspirits, through story and reflection, and the primacy of imagery for health as evoked through imaginal opportunities in any art form, but here through art therapy and Authentic Movement.2 Knowing through direct experience (what art provides) is the one gift from our aboriginal heritage that we and our children can remember now in order to live in relationship with all earth’s kin. But first, before story, let us agree on some definitions.

Five wholy words If this body is my very presence in the world, if it is the body alone that enables me to enter into relations with other presences, if without these eyes, this voice, or these hands I would be unable to see, to taste, and to touch things, or to be touched by them – if without this body…there would be no possibility of experience – then body itself is the true subject of experience. (Abram 1996, p.45)

The first wholy word is bodyspirit. Bodyspirit reclaims the unity of our essential ab-original (from the beginning) nature by helping us remember that we were and are always indivisibly metaphysical (beyond the physical) beings. This word can remind us to put our minds back into service to our Being, to Being itself, to all our possibilities to feel, sense, know, play. Rather than serving a cultural

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reality that denies even the memory of authentic human nature, we reclaim our inherent bodyspirit unity as the guiding basis for making choices and decisions that enhance, further, and deepen all aspects of our life, whether at home, work, or play. In a discussion with Thomas Matus and Fritjof Capra, Brother David Steindl-Rast comments on spirituality as knowing we belong, as in I am home…I belong to other human beings…to all the animals, to the plants. And belonging means I am at home with them, I am responsible for them and to them. You see, I belong to them as much as they belong to me. We all belong together in this great cosmic unity. (Capra and Steindl-Rast 1992, p.15).

This belonging allows us to experience and to know that spirit is an inherent dimension of who we are: we are bodyspirits! The second wholy word is imagery. Imagery is the language of bodyspirit. Imagery is wholy because it contains and expresses both our physical world, our world of sensual body experiences, and our spiritual world. As our ancestral communities figured out, human health and well-being depend on direct experiences (ritual preparations and embodiments), which demonstrate and validate how these two dimensions are, in essence, one. For them, illness and health were directly linked to these invitations and participations in the dimension where the delusion of separate worlds melted. The return of imagery into our lives through art re-establishes imagery as a wise guide and healing agent in our contemporary lives. Art therapy grounded in the imaginal bodyspirit experience teaches this truth. McNiff (1992) expresses it this way: Images and the artistic process are the shamans and familiar spirits who come to help people regain a lost soul… Art Therapy can take us into the primary sources of sacred and psychological experience if we allow the shamans and spirits to emerge once again from images and imagination. (McNiff 1992, pp.17–19)

Images come as angels to heal the arguments between our inner soul and our ‘civilized’ lives. Without attending to this painful split within ourselves we cannot avoid contributing to the flattening of our own lives and the destruction of our only earth. Imagery is precise, immediate, and comes to heal, to make whole again. It teaches us that we are always and only in relationship, never alone.


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The third wholy term is direct experience. Direct experiences in knowing are wholy because they are how we know what is true for ourselves. Experience as I am defining it is both imaginal and somatic. Although fed by the specific events in our lives, our personal story is forever embedded in a larger, nested series of stories that are held imaginally in our bodies. Viewed somatically, in our contemporary society most, if not all, of our actual behaviors are fed by our belief in dogmas rather than trusting our own experience or respecting the direct experiences of others. Morris Berman is a former university professor turned passionate chronicler of the cost of the loss of body and spirit, i.e. direct knowing, in Western civilization. His books, The Re-enchantment of the World (1981) and Coming to our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West (1990), are profound documents about the price we pay by agreeing to our culture’s love affair with ‘abstracting’ intelligence and our hatred and deep fear of body and direct experience. As Berman (1990) says, We have surrendered our most basic trustworthy way of knowing the world, which is a somatic process…in favor of a phony charade of polite agreement. This is a colossal mutilation, and it accounts for much of the rage and pain that all of us carry and that erupts periodically in orgies of war and barbarism… It accounts for much of the history of the West and the whole cycle of orthodoxy and heretical rebellion that is the major key to the way reality itself is coded and organized in this civilization. (Berman 1990, pp.29–38)

The fourth wholy word is aboriginal. Today, this term evokes images of native peoples of Australia; this restricts our understanding and splits off all other races and peoples from our commonly shared roots as human beings. The source of the word ‘origin’ provides a surprising image. Webster’s Dictionary (Neilson et al. 1960) provides this definition: origin [F. origine, fr. L. origo, -iginis, fr. orior I rise, become visible…] 1. The fact or process of coming into being from a source (p.1720)…[and] run,…to run, to flow…[L. orior, I rise, Gr. ornymi, I stir up, rouse…] (p.2184)

Most cultures have evolved their own ‘true story’ about how they ‘rose’ into being; these stories are often antipathetic to each other. Rigid adherence to these stories historically and in our own day contributes to tragic wars, annihilation of families and environments, and the blocking of the flow of love. I believe that it is healing to remember that we are all aboriginals; we all come ‘into being from a source,’ one source, beyond cultural definition. The source of our

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art making is aboriginal; artistic expression is over and over a ‘rising,’ a ‘stirring,’ a ‘becoming visible.’ And the aboriginal function of art remains to reconnect us with the common source of our being. Art making, then, is the fifth wholy word. It is how we recover our memory and basic trust in knowing where we come from, who we are, and our relation with the world. Recovering our creativity and imagination through art making is how we express the deepest truths sensible to our bodyspirit being, and how we begin to liberate ourselves from the trance of Western reality.

Story One This personal story tells how a physical massage experience challenged the body/spirit dualism I had accepted as true. Several months following surgery for uterine cancer in 1987, I returned to my masseuse for a full-body, kahuna healing session. Toward the end of the session, she began to gently palm and knead the skin around the new scar on my pelvis. I began to see luminescent apricot-colored ‘cells’ lighting up and dancing: they were ‘pulsing.’ I watched them in amazement, but remained non-verbal. The following week, while working with a medically trained ‘imagery doctor,’ I casually mentioned to her my experience of these ‘pulsing apricot cells.’ The following dialogue unfolded: R: Take a moment, close your eyes, and see if you can recontact the cells that emit light. Just see if you can determine the source of that light…what is it? The source of the light? (Long pause) Don’t force, just let yourself go and recognize…yes… S: (Sighs, quiet weeping, long pause.) Well…(laughs softly, clears throat), what I experienced was, going in, in, in, in, and then…it was like…I could…the dimensions were so vast. I moved in toward this pearl of light inside a cell. But when I got there, when I touched it,…poophhh, it expanded really big, huge, and then I was bodily floating in this space…huge…the sky…There were forms like stars, and they were apricot. And then what happened was my body, and other things, kept changing: ppshhh, coming together, ppshhh, going apart. This houseboat [the office] ppshhh, coming together, ppshhh, going apart. Then I’m flying over the hills, and anything that’s there, ppshhh, comes together, ppshhh, goes apart. There is this wholeness, and now one thing appears out of it and dissolves, now other things appear out of it and dissolve back into it.


R: S: R: S: R: S: R:

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It’s like breathing – it comes together, it goes apart. Ahh…yes. Body knows this; my mind is learning it from my body. You breathe it in and you form it… Were you frightened during this experience? No, I was simply amazed… I felt joy! I feel enormous gratitude. Try to put into words what that gift is. I think of the Bible, ‘the peace that passes understanding.’ Yes, exactly… You belong to all that…you are a part of it. And there is no way to separate you from it… There’s no place to get lost… There is only the dance. You know, the apricot light has shown up in here before, in this room. Usually, it’s an experience that women have, usually women who have had cancer in the feminine organs, ovaries or uterus. And I have myself experienced the apricot light. It’s a very interesting experience. The way that I have come to think of it is that if one could see life energy, it would look like this! So whatever it is in you that gives you imagery, it has given you a very, very powerful image of cells shining with light, your cells shining with apricot light. And then it moves you through to the deepest connection, to where you are in the void, and have the experience of how Life breathes. Your image is perfectly accurate… You are in the process of rebirth… The cells are becoming not prince cells, but king cells, if you like!

What happened? This unitive experience was not about a physical body divorced from spirit, temporarily housing spirit. It was a spontaneous imaginal experience in which healing human touch gave me a specific key to a door of deep wisdom. What I experienced was that a miraculous universe (oneness!) is creating and dissolving all forms – breathing in and breathing out my personal self, San Francisco Bay, the surrounding mountains, and beyond! The universe is alive: you and I are inseparably part of this mysterious whole. Death is not a spiritual crisis: it is a return of our individual ab-original nature to our source. David Abram is an ecopsychologist who writes about our dependence on the animate natural world around us for our well-being, physically and psychospiritually. He offers that the perceiving body…gregariously participates in the activity of the world, lending its imagination to things in order to see them more

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fully…that which we call imagination is from the first an attribute of the senses themselves.

By entering one apricot cell evoked by physical touch, I made contact with the other side of things that we do not sense directly, with the hidden or invisible aspects of the sensible. (Abram 1996, p.58)

I witnessed my bodyspirit becoming visible and melting into our source – our home – in a time frame that makes our few years on earth insignificant, as Gandhi said. I also experienced that regardless of the nature of our personal stories, each life form is a unique expression of wholeness. Separateness is, perhaps, our primary modern delusion. Returning to the apricot cell experience, through creative imagination I entered into the invisible realm, the birthplace of image. My ego mind did not create or will it anymore than mystics or shamans or other sensitive humans ‘will’ extraordinary experiences in the imaginal. Rather, the underlying unity of bodyspirit was ‘surrendered to’ and the ensuing ‘gift’ received melted egoic/cultural notions of reality. This is why healing, and our life purposes, are usually a surprise: when we surrender our dogma, including our beliefs about who we could/should be, the miracle of at-onement, healing, can happen and we may lead lives completely different than the ones we were ‘(en)trained’ to follow. Finally, direct experience melts culturally determined reality; additional sensory capacities become accessible. To bring these words all together, then, an image is the language of the invisible world, made sensible and experienced directly as bodyspirit. Body is Spirit made visible: to love Body is to embrace Spirit. When I act from an egoic, culturally entrained self, I superficially tear spirit and body apart: I behave as if ego consciousness is separable from the breathing matrix of my own origins. When I act from the images of my compassionate heart, bodyspirit directs my words and deeds. Creative imagination is itself a spiritual principle that seeks to know itself through coming into all possible forms (Corbin 1969). Bodyspirit – its wisdom, language, and interdependent nature – is a fuller description of our human nature because it keeps us grounded in the real world of body, nature, place (Spretnak 1997); it preserves our human integrity as an inseparable part of all life.


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The language of aliveness We do not even have a language deep enough, strong enough to articulate what we truly desire… We do not know the secret of stars…We do not know ourselves. We have forgotten that this land and every life form is a piece of god, a divine community, with the same forces of creation in plants as in people. All the lives around us are lives of gods… To see whole is to see all the parts of the puzzle, some of which have not even been found. (Hogan 1995, p.96)

How do we human beings hold our aliveness in these days of a new millennium? Can aliveness be experienced in a vacuum, separated from others? So much of our cultural entrainment blinds us to deeply alive experience and obscures the languages we might use to express and share our discoveries. This being so, art making (in all its forms) remains the lifeline to our essential humanity. Ellen Dissanayake (1992) provides a useful, biologically oriented perspective on art making in her book Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why. Dissanayake demonstrates that art making meets a genetically encoded survival need; it is a biologically determined behavior, ‘a core behavioral tendency…called “making special” ’ (p.42). This value of the arts for survival and ‘thrival’ throughout human time should not be underestimated; associated with sacred ritual, art making (in all its forms) provides the sensory ‘glue’ to keep communities together in times of loss, change, and celebration. In contemporary Western culture, while ritual is often truncated or trivialized, art making – in all its expressions and forms, from folk to craft, from process oriented to specially gifted or trained – is the singular human activity aboriginally intended to perpetuate healthy individual expression and communication. Today, the metaverbal (‘beyond words’) nature of art making is the singular activity left to bring diverse individuals into larger community-wide communication and reconciliation; its metaverbal nature can reach beneath dogma, alienation and dominating cultural constructs. My work with others builds on what Dissanayake has identified as both art making’s necessary, biologically determined, communal nature as well as how it helps every human being to ‘make special.’ Art therapy and Authentic Movement teach the language of aliveness that is our aboriginal heritage and contemporary birthright. This language is what we knew as children and remember when we are happy adults. Consider the native ‘intelligences’ of a young child. In a relatively short time, a 2-year-old explores the world in a

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manner that exhausts a physically fit adult. With no strain, the young one’s body ‘speaks’ non-stop: sounds, gestures, sign language, feelings, sensual delights, directionality, continual participation with the surrounding environment. The extraordinary quality of our early gestural language is the direct expression of our exploring, learning self. We know this, but in our adult fear and cultural entrainment we pretend we don’t, until we actually forget what living in full aliveness really is. The young college students with whom I work have often already given up their precious human heritage; without knowing it, their lives have been ‘confiscated’ by the consensus trance around them. Some of these students are psychology majors, and they have had no learning about feelings or their bodyspirits, let alone that their feelings have survival value and their bodyspirit is the source and wise guide of their being in the world. This language of aliveness is our doorway home. It is more than ordinary speech. As Linda Hogan (1995) expresses it, What we are really searching for is a language that heals this relationship [with the rest of the natural order], one that takes the side of the amazing and fragile life on our life-giving earth. A language that knows the corn, and the one that corn knows, a language that takes hold of the mystery of what’s around us and offers it back to us, full of awe and wonder. It is a language of creation, of divine fire, a language that goes beyond the strict borders of scientific inquiry and right into the heart of mystery itself. (Hogan 1995, p.59) [italics mine]

For each of us, no matter how unartistic or unexpressive we might judge ourselves to be, our bodyspirit ‘speaks’ immediate imagery in the moment, moment by moment, before intellect reflects upon or labels that experience with meaning (Maitland 1995). Thus, in my work, art therapy and Authentic Movement provide colors and forms, space and time, a wonderfully alive language to express individual imaginal experiences. The trained witness, or therapist, ‘contains’ the space for these practices, ‘following’ and ‘holding’ her own imaginal responses in participation with the artist/mover. With trust, the reality of being ‘seen’ deepens as does the capacity to see more deeply into and through ones own life.

Art therapy I believe that art therapy remains largely misunderstood in our culture. Professionally, it suffers the symptoms of ‘clinification’ (Allen 1992, 1993), with the result that it is too reduced to diagnostic or other ancillary functions which our


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culture too often believes that anyone with a few books or workshops can do just as well as trained art therapists. On the other hand, sometimes it is reduced to an ‘art activity,’ a ‘frill,’ and treated the way the arts in public education are treated. Yet art therapy remains a primal, direct route to knowing. Just as our ancestors made art as a means to connect with the gods and spirits of the earth, in order to live in healthy harmony with all life, art therapy today can support our bodyspirit to reconnect with the healing capacities of our creative imagination. My approach, then, relies on this metapsychological definition of art therapy, and invites bodyspirit to express itself freely through creative art processes and materials, in the presence of a witness who practices seeing with compassion. It assumes that in the imagery of each person are the wounds and healings of personality as well as the invitation to at-onement with mystery, the source of our being.

Authentic Movement Authentic Movement is about the relationship between a mover, who closes her eyes and allows her bodyspirit to express itself freely through movement in space, and a trained witness. The mover (or movers) moves within a prescribed area for an agreed-upon amount of time. Following that, they follow further or silently record their process, choosing from a range of art materials and journaling. Finally, witness and mover(s) gather in a circle: stories are told, struggles unfold, insights deepen, wonder and connectivity grow. In both art therapy and Authentic Movement, it is understood that one is participating in an imaginal field wherein all emerging forms are respected. What appears is invited into being with appreciation, even when it is painful. Each image is a ‘being’ in its own right, an ‘angel’ as Hillman (1983) and McNiff (1992) call them. Analyzing, interpreting, judging, projecting (Western psychological interventions) are avoided. Relating, reconciling, honoring, naming, are encouraged (Lovell 1987, 1988, 1991, 1993a, 1993b). Authentic Movement and art therapy, while being Western therapeutic forms, simultaneously touch into deep aboriginal human truths (Lovell 1995). This particular approach is an alternative response to Western culture and psychology. It is a responsive, participatory, feminine discovery and approach to direct knowing and relationship. Yet it shares the masculine tradition of the ‘individual/hero’ so prevalent in our cultural myths. Here, an individual has nothing to rely upon except their own willingness to find out what is true. Encounters with imagery of personal trauma or celebration, of initiation or

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transcendence…the doorway opens to recovering awareness of our full aliveness. In the presence of a compassionate witness, our truth unfolds. As Janet Adler, a pioneer in bridging Authentic Movement and mystical practices, expressed it: there is no church, synagogue, dojo, or temple representing a holy place where participants meet. There is no priest, rabbi, or llama. There is no god whom individuals endeavor to find… Without a master, without a bible, often without any former direct experience of a god, the Mover projects her higher self onto the Witness, until she is ready to own it. As this ownership is refined, the individual moves toward wholeness…until at times, she becomes one with what Underhill calls her ‘indwelling Deity.’ (Adler 1991, p.32)

This encounter with ‘someone who lives inside us’ provides an ultimate proof of our bodyspirit unity, as well as guidance for full aliveness and an unending capacity for what Thich Nhat Hahn calls ‘Love, Joy, Compassion, and Equanimity’ (1991, p.1).

Story Two A student in a week-long summer art therapy and Authentic Movement class had the following spontaneous experience. The structure she uses to tell her story parallels the power of the sacred symbolic healing process as described by Donald Sandner (1991) during his research on Navaho healing rituals. That process includes five stages: Preparing, Evoking, Naming, Transforming, Releasing. Preparing: My first attempt at walking within the enclosed circle felt awkward. Internally it felt quite silly… I adjusted to the quiet… As I walked, I became amazed at the weakness of my left side and my inability to walk straight without tipping from one side or the other. Engulfed in time and space, I listened to my body language. In no uncertain terms, it was plainly telling me things were ‘out of balance’ in my life. I discovered that imbalance was a recurring theme. Evoking: During the beginning of session three’s movement, I was having a glorious time, praising and worshiping God, singing within my spirit, and enjoying a closeness so desperately needed, when to my utter astonishment and horror, various noises began to enter into my environment. First there was slapping on the floor…quickly joined by body slapping … The noise got louder and louder, shattering my quiet world. As I tried to protect myself, I covered my ears and internally cried out, ‘Stop it, stop it’ when my body


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remembered… [The student drew an image that reflected a traumatic experience in her childhood.] Naming: A time long ago, as a small child, I was laying in bed and hearing my parents argue…Mom was shouting at my Dad, but in addition…she was screaming, ‘I am going to kill you with this knife!’ I could hear the clank of the knife. My body remembered the paralyzed feeling within and the internal crying out. I remembered my hands over my ears…the position of my legs…the room…I was experiencing this direct knowing…it was not pleasant…I wanted to get away. Transforming: Through some deep breaths, a very faint remembrance came to me…that a person can imagine Jesus with them in a memory that needed healing…I raised my arms and cried out to my God. At that moment, Jesus was at my side. Arm in arm we walked together to that house, to that kitchen, to that room. I saw my Mom and Dad together there, they were telling me how sorry they were. Mom tenderly cried out; she didn’t mean it. She reached out to me with loving arms. Dad’s arm was around my Mom and all four of us embraced as the painful memory became surrounded and flooded with God’s supernatural love and forgiveness…[The second drawing reflected the transformative power existent in the imaginal realm. Without conscious or directed attention, the student encountered a healing image. This image allowed her to reconcile an image of pain with an image of extraordinary power and beauty.] Releasing: [Later, in group sharing] Although a little apprehensive, I showed both my pictures and shared exactly what happened. The encouragement and support I felt was overwhelming. I skipped dinner that night, grabbed my little cassette recorder and a tape with some praise music, and began a slow walk on the path next to the lake. I had never been so in touch with every movement of my body. I wanted to sing and dance. My movement was choreographed with the tape and I inwardly laughed at what two joggers must have thought as they passed me on the narrow path. I did not care. The experience was too enjoyable. It was a direct knowing of my own experience of healing. My legs were light and my heart was dancing.

From an imaginal perspective, a trauma can continue to plague a person because, when a trauma is experienced, it ‘literally’ becomes part of the victim’s bodyspirit. As described above, cells, muscles, bones, and organs make subtle responsive adjustments to what is experienced as intolerable. The reality of a wounding forms an inner imaginal pattern that our body can ‘hold’ indefinitely, presumably for purposes of survival. It calls out to us through a hunched shoulder, a face whose features grow contrary, a stiff knee, an aching back, not simply as the results of physical miscalculations of a mechanical body but as

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sensory responses of imagination to body’s contact and experience with an other. Arnie Mindell (1985) and Peter Levine (1997), among others, provide theory and forms for understanding and negotiating the healing of these traumas. Through trial and error, early Navaho scientist-doctors developed an imaginal methodology including the forming of images in the sand, and complex ritual based on cultural spiritual beliefs, to heal traumas. What this student imaginally experiences not only evokes an image of early childhood trauma but also transforms it into a healing image. In the presence of a witness, her authentic powerless feelings of the small child evoke the powerful presence of divinity. With it as her ally, she is able to deeply imagine, i.e. directly experience, a healing outcome to the trauma. The final step of bringing it back to the community, and being supported, changes the level of her experience hierarchically from one of her self-system (somatized trauma) to a larger social system: her trauma is healed not only inside her but through the collective human support she receives within the circle (Dow 1986). In this story, her art images stand as testament to the reality and truthfulness of her extraordinary experience.

Story Three A practicing expressive arts therapist, a participant in a nine-month ‘Imaginal Practices: Art Therapy and Authentic Movement’ group for two years, tells the following story. It reveals the rich aboriginal heritage contained in our bodyspirit. What is in our cells and bones ultimately transcends our particular culture and time. Repeatedly the message offered is one of healing and love. I find myself standing with my hands behind my back. They are bound behind me and I cannot move. I feel the noose around my neck and my feet dangling just off the ground. The sounds in the room are strangely removed from me, as if I am there and not there. There is movement and sound all around me but I am separate, as if in limbo between this world and another, as if I am between life and death. It is hard to think and to feel. I am suspended in a reality where there is neither thinking or feeling. Inside me I know that I am dead, that I have been hung. I am waiting. There is nothing to do… There is no wishing that this did not happen to me… I wait a long time, my only question, ‘What now?’ I feel fire all around me. The sounds come closer. A mover is very close and below me making unearthly sounds. The sounds begin to fill my vacant reality. I know that I am hearing the sound of a wounded animal. It is not of this world but of another. The soul of the


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creature is crying out to the wild emptiness, telling its tragic tale of abandonment and neglect. My heart opens and in a moment of deep compassion, a sob moves through my body. When it passes I begin to feel shaking starting in my feet. As I surrender to it, it moves up my body, its intensity increasing until my whole body is shaking and my hands fall free. Now the shaking is so intense that it begins to move my feet. I am conscious only of surrendering to the shaking. I begin to move about the floor. I hear my feet pounding on the floor as I move. It is not a movement that I am consciously making. I do not think I could make such a movement if I were to try. It is too erratic and too quick for my conscious mind to direct. I am only conscious of not trying to stop it. I move for quite some time before I stop from sheer exhaustion. I want only to fall to the ground and rest. A voice inside stops me. ‘Stay on your feet!’ I obey and catch my breath. ‘Walk in the world! Give it to others!’ I hear. I begin to walk in a large circular movement, something I often do. As I walk I feel energy moving up my body and out my arms. With a full heart I want to shower love over everyone in the room. I walk the circle until I feel finished. Then I lie down on the couch and rest deeply. I am moved to walk again. Again walking the circle. I come to rest on a chair sitting alone in bright sunlight. The bell rings ending the movement. I begin to draw (Plate 12 in center section). I know I must start on black paper. I must show me hanging in the dark green forest with fire all around. I must make some representation of the dancer who moves with such force and abandon, the ritual dancer. I see him dancing around a fire. When I try to draw him only his head emerges, his face framed by the scaffolding on which I hang. Soft watery compassionate eyes emerge. His face is surrounded by fiery hair. When I try to draw his mouth, I see that I have drawn wings on the woman, me, who was hung. I know now that he is there to receive my spirit and take me into my next reality. A warmth fills my body as I look at the drawing. Only now does my conscious mind take hold. I remember a warning from Jean Shinoda Bolen that the burning of the witches affects us today deep in our body memory when we begin to move more deeply into our body wisdom. Though I have grown tremendously, I struggle with fear in my life, with letting my power move freely in the world and with full force. I feel a deep healing from my movement and my drawing, an understanding that while crazy, horrible things happen in our world at the level of culture, there is a deeper reality, which is at its core benevolent. Peace envelops my body as I let this feeling of benevolence absorb my reality. What is so very precious is that this new understanding of benevolence is not a thought or a belief it is an actual bodyspirit experience. [Later] I am filled with new strength as I go about my work in my cultural reality, working in my own way to bring balance to the light and the darkness that surround me.

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As witness, I evoke my human capacity to ‘contain’ the space that this brave woman is working in, and to travel with her as an imaginal ally. My own bodyspirit journeys with her as her story unfolds: we share the imaginal space. The metaverbal language of her bodyspirit, both in movement and in art making, provides the whole circle of participants with a deeper initiation into our aboriginal human capacity to hold and be guided by bodyspirit wisdom.

Mystery is more important than analysis Bodyspirit continually invites and expresses itself as unitive energy whenever we pursue the patterns of our imagination over time. Whether as a single image, or a series of images, the healing call to wholeness is inherent to our human nature. Mystical experiences reach beyond personal story to reveal collective patterns that offer a culture or group an opportunity for revisioning essential myths. Equally, such transformative patterns reveal forgotten intuitions and retrieve lost relationships among all life forms, phenomena that Abram (1996) describes with great beauty and awe. Some months after the visit with the ‘imagery doctor’ who invited me into the ‘apricot cells’ experience, I bring her drawings from my illness. Back in school working on my doctorate I think she might serve on my doctoral committee. She is enthused about the images as I unfold their story to her, and then the conversation takes an unexpected turn. She begins to analyze the images, suggesting that this figure or that figure means one thing or another, e.g. in an image where I am crawling across the floor during Authentic Movement, she comments on how ‘masculine’ the image looks and asks if I have any thoughts about her observations. Soon it becomes clear that her interest is in my doing a careful Jungian analysis of the images for my dissertation. While Jung was the primary ‘spirit’ who guided me into the world of psychology in the 1970s, I feel myself distancing from her and her well-intentioned comments. Her suggestions don’t ‘feel’ correct. What neither of us know at the time is that there is a different ‘calling’ going on. I intuitively trust the inner impulse not to reduce my experience to a particular psychology, but rather to stay with the mystery. What does it mean to stay with mystery? On the personal level, why not analyze, explain my images? Viewed on a larger scale, in the face of the current greedy monoenculturation of the Earth, how can mystery be helpful? An answer doesn’t come easily. I stop, wait, look. An image begins to form; it comes as ‘skin,’ then, ‘semipermeable membrane.’ A possibility emerges. Images are


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like my skin: they are continually birthing and dying, forming, transforming, melting away. To fix any image to a glass slide and slip it under the eye of a psychological microscope, even with the best of intentions, alters it. My skin is to ‘hold’ me together as a recognizable form, but it is not to isolate me from others nor to prevent me from fully participating in the field that holds all of us. My semipermeable skin itself says ‘No separating!’ Neither myself nor the images are something to be isolated from the context of our original aliveness – even with the best of intentions. The value of this truth challenges me to stay with mystery, stay vitally connected with the ‘someone inside me’ who holds me on my journey. Mystery offers the balance needed to offset the delusions that we can know everything we need to know intellectually. Participating in mystery is an active healing balance to the addictive behaviors we Westerners seem to be swimming in. Mystery allows more space for ourselves to inhabit; we feel less need to numb the pain of living lives too fast-paced and fast-packed for our own well-being. For aboriginal cultures, illness means imbalance. Ceremony and the arts are directed toward mending the imbalances, making amends, and putting the individual and community world back into balance with the ‘something larger.’ This is, of course, also the value of the creative arts therapies. Mystery reminds us that our aboriginal bodyspirits participate in a universe that is cyclical; the cyclical nature of our lives are each micro-cycles of earth’s bodyspirit, even as the Earth is recycling itself within one universe (a gift of the apricot cell story). With mystery, we see beyond cultural dogma and beliefs; we wake up from our cultural entrainment and begin to live the rich human lives for which we were created.

Story Four This final story of a deer dancing with deer reflects how my bodyspirit continues to be guided by imaginal processes emerging from mystery. Authentic Movement and art therapy provide a broad threshold into the imaginal, offering direct experiences in knowing at-onement with others. I begin on all fours going into the circle sideways, making various patterns of hand–feet movements across the floor. I think, Ahh, Mother Spider, you are taking me into the circle. Before long. I am running around. I take off a pair of warm leggings and drape them on my shoulders. As I hold on to the leggings with both hands rising over my head, my arms become antlers.

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Improvised whistling begins. Slowly, it evolves and then I am calling out to other deer. (Throughout the whole movement my voice continues, now singing, now huffing deliberately with joy, enjoying my animal nature.) I run and run without stopping. A thought flashes: until now, my healing has been about connecting with other humans; a gift of my illness was about working on ‘belonging.’ Now, I am reclaiming my belonging to the animal kingdom, to nature. Now I ‘know’ I am an animal who can speak out in the world because all my wordless kin desperately need human voices to speak out for their survival. I whirl around and around, shedding many tears, feeling joy and sorrow; running, and stomping, my feet tap out spontaneous rhythms. At one point my feet are triple tapping. Then I become aware that there are other deer dancing with me. I feel joy and aliveness in what my bodyspirit knows and is made for. Throughout this, my arms flail with antler energy. Later, my arms do a series of dances, one arm upward, one arm downward; arms sweeping out and bringing in, arms embracing space, mystery. Fingers and hands dance, as I surrender to feeling blessed; a grace flows in and around me. Slowly the movement spirals downward. Slowly, in spider fashion, my bodyspirit works me back to my place in the circle. My eyes open to meet the large, moist eyes of a human deer, L., who is my Witness.

Conclusion The aboriginal nature of the arts reconciles, contains, and expresses our authentic bodyspirit experiences of participating in a ‘more than human world.’ The forms of art making and Authentic Movement are particular, exquisite opportunities to retrieve this wisdom ‘in our bones,’ i.e. what 37,000 generations of being human have taught us about surviving and thriving (Glendinning 1994). The metapersonal meaning of being human is forever woven into our role as participants in a world of mystery so brilliant and unfathomable that in its presence our only possible human response is one of humility, gratitude, and commitment to promote love and balance in all aspects of our unfolding lives. Art making deepens truth and revelation. It liberates us from our entranced habits of buying the shiny trinkets of our consuming culture or of mindlessly letting television or other seductive forms of entrainment eat up our brief, precious lives. Accessing the wisdom of our own cells as they speak to us through images and feelings (Pert 1997), we simultaneously recover our aboriginal wisdom. We who have been culturally inundated these past five generations by the notions of endless progress, of overcoming body and soul in favor of pleasure and entertainment, still we carry 37,000 generations of con-


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nectivity and participation with earth. Deep down we know what we really need and what she needs to sustain us (Glendinning 1994). We can recover a sense of what is of real value in contrast to the advertisements that seduce and drown our senses. Ultimately, bringing consciousness to our art making over time, we make wiser consumer choices, ones reflecting growing awareness of the food, water, air, and land upon which we each and all depend for health and survival; we live in healthier relations with all the real world of bodyspirit life forms still surviving. Creativity and imagination bring us home to our bodyspirit so that we can experience in an unfolding story the visionary and healing wisdom essential for our species to behave response-ably on earth. As I now see it, the real challenge we each face living in our culture is to risk truly compassionately loving our bodyspirits, despite the widespread, overwhelming political, social and religious dogma intent on teaching us to never be satisfied with ‘mere body,’ or to surrender our ‘spirits’ to authorities who own a franchise on ‘spiritual truth.’ Spontaneous experiences in the arts, i.e. opening to the imaginal and what wants to express itself through us, bring us home again and again, healing wounds, evoking wonder, teaching us the next step to take in our lives. Again and again it invites us back to experience and bear witness to the original ground of our being. It is mysterious; and mystery invites ‘surrender.’ It invites us to participate in the flow of life itself, to accept both mortality and immortality as the paradoxic blessing of being human. We who live in a world becoming more fearful might as well risk inviting creativity and imagination back into our lives, to rebalance the worlds. Living art-fully, our creativity and imagination intact, at any moment we are ready to offer care and love to ourselves and to the world around us. For the sake of our children and grandchildren, how can we do less?

Notes 1.

The ideas in this chapter have been influenced by a wide range of sources including Morris Berman (1990), Michael Murphy (1992), David Abram (1996), Paul Ray (1996), and Charlene Spretnak (1997). We need to understand that historically the West has practiced a peculiar ‘spiritual politics’ to keep its citizens ignorant or disdainful of embodying experience (Berman); that there are abundant data supporting the reality of metanormal body experiences and its implications for our human future as a species (Murphy); that our body is always the subject of our experience (not our ego), and we are always in relation with what is around us (despite theories praising autonomy and individuality) (Abram); and that a creative,

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community-based value system that retrieves body, nature, and place as central to our well-being integrates both rich human traditions as well as a new politics to help us counter the enormous global disaster the West is currently sponsoring (Spretnak, Ray). 2.

You can find more information about art therapy and Authentic Movement classes from the following sources. A Moving Journal publishes articles, poems, drawings, notices, and ads related to Authentic Movement. Write to A Moving Journal, 168 Fourth Street, Providence, RI 02906, USA. Michael Gardos Reid publishes a national directory for Authentic Movement practitioners. Write to him at 2219 Taft Street NE, Minneapolis, MN 55418. Tel: 612-788-1822. Email: [email protected] The Center for the Creative Arts Therapies (CCAT) offers training in Art Therapy and Authentic Movement (applicable to MA or post-masters training in psychology, which is based on the integration of these two art forms). CCAT, PO Box 9296 Santa Rosa, CA 95401-1296, or 951 Midde Rincon Road, Santa Rosa, CA 95409 USA. Email: [email protected] Authentic Movement Institute in Northern California is a resource for Authentic Movement training. Write to PO Box 11410, Oakland, CA 94611-0410, USA. Tel: 510-237-7297, ext. 2. Email: Authentic Movement-USA.com The Psychology Department at Sonoma State University in northern California offers MA programs in art therapy with an imaginal emphasis. Call Sally Tomlinson, graduate secretary, at 707-664-2682. Email: [email protected] The Institute of Imaginal Studies in Petaluma, California, offers MA and PhD programs. Call 707-765-1836. Email: [email protected]

Creative Explorations The following invitation is offered for two trusting friends to explore together. This is purposeful, in order to overcome culturally developed biases about art and movement. Allow 60 minutes for each person.

Sharing art making and Authentic Movement together One person, the witness, sits on the side of an open, warm space, at least 10 x 10 feet; the room must be safe from intrusions of any kind. The second person, in


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comfortable clothing, has the opportunity to place themselves anywhere in the space, to close their eyes, and to allow whatever impulses that arise to express themselves through body sound/movement. This continues for 20 minutes. The mover moves, and the witness holds the space and ‘witnesses,’ practicing not judging, analyzing, interpreting or projecting; the witness also keeps time, and sounds a bell or quietly calls when the specified time is up. Mover and witness then each do an art response to each one’s own experience (about 20 minutes). Mover then shares verbally about their experience, allowing their art to inform and deepen their understanding. With the permission of the mover, witness shares their experience and art image. However, witness must only speak from the position of their own self-experiences, from an ‘I’ position, rather than telling the mover what/how the mover moved. With awareness, each may begin to discover that ‘someone inside me knows more than I know.’ Undoing cultural entrainment can be an eye-opening discovery. A door opens to begin a practice into direct experiences in knowing that can continue for a lifetime.

Images Readers are invited to make any image that they feel curious about. Without worrying whether one can render an image ‘photographically’ or not, simply allow your eye to be attracted to a color, your hand to be free to release a ‘gesture’ on paper to ‘make visible’ the waiting image. Speak to this image in an open-hearted, accepting tone (or write it); perhaps this image has its own ‘talk’ which it wants/is willing to share with you. We tend to have an inner voice, often called a gatekeeper, who is our critic, who constantly corrects us, blames us, ‘protects’ us from change. Beneath that voice is another voice we might call the friend, who knows more than we know. It, too, lives in the imaginal where our whole story is part of a much larger story. Invite it in, too. (See McNiff 1992, for a rich elaboration on ‘dialoguing with the image.’)

Walking Take one hour, or one day, and go walking in public places and in nature, intentionally. Hold the following thought of the mime, Etienne Decroux (as quoted in Berman 1990, p.344) that people should walk down the street as if they belonged to

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each other. Imagine that you and whatever, whomever you see is part of you. Come home, and see what colors and forms want to rise out of the invisible to greet you. As a proper host, you will, of course, welcome them in.

References Abram, D. (1996) The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-human World. New York: Vintage Books/Random House. Adler, J. (1991) ‘Body and Soul.’ Speech delivered at national American Dance Therapy Association Conference. San Francisco, CA, November. Allen, P. (1992) ‘Artist in Residence: An Alternative to Clinification for Art Therapists.’ Art Therapy 9, 22–30. Allen, P. (1993) ‘Coyote Comes in from the Cold: The Evolution of the Open Studio Concept.’ Art Therapy 12, 161–167. Berman, M. (1981) The Re-enchantment of the World. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Berman, M. (1990) Coming to our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West. New York: Bantam. Capra, F. and Steindl-Rast, D. (1992) Belonging to the Universe: Explorations on the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality. San Francisco, CA: Harper. Corbin, H. (1969) Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, Bollingen Series XCI. Trans. from the French by Ralph Manheim. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Dissanayake, E. (1992) Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why. New York: Free Press. Dow, J. (1986) The Shaman’s Touch: Otomi Indian Symbolic Healing. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Glendinning, C. (1994) My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Hahn, Thich Nhat (1998) Teachings on Love. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press. Hillman, J. (1983) Healing Fiction. Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press. Hogan, L. (1995) Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World. New York: W.W. Norton. Levine, P.A. (1997) Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic. Lovell, (Palmer) S. (1987) ‘Creative Art Therapy and Symbolic Healing.’ In R.-I. Heinz (ed) Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing. Madison, WI: A-R Editions. Lovell, S. (1988) ‘When the Bough Breaks: Cancer and the Shamanic Path as Experienced by a Creative Art Therapist.’ In R.-I. Heinz (ed) Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing. Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia. Lovell, S. (1991) ‘From the Heart Of Darkness: A Personal and Transpersonal Experience in Symbolic Healing.’ Dissertation; UMI, 300 N Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106, USA. Lovell, S. (1993a) ‘Learning to Love: How Art Therapy and Authentic Movement Transform Being.’ In E. Virshup (ed) California Art Therapy Trends, Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing. Chicago: Magnolia Press. Lovell, S. (1993b) ‘Loving Body is Embracing Spirit: Art Making, Authentic Movement and the Shamanic Path.’ R.-I. Heinze (ed) Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternate Modes of Healing. Berkeley, CA: Independent Scholars of Asia. Lovell, S. (1995) ‘Coming Home: Remembering the Somatic Roots of the Creative Arts Therapies.’ Unpublished manuscript.


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Maitland, J. (1995) Spacious Body: Explorations in Somatic Ontology. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic. McNiff, S. (1992) Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination. Boston, MA: Shambhala. Mindell, A. (1985) Working with the Dreaming Body. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Murphy, M. (1992) The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature. Los Angeles: Tarcher. Neilson, W.A., Knott, T.A. and Carhart, P.W. (eds) (1960) Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd edn, unabridged. Springfield, MA: G&C Merriam. Ray, P.H. (1996) ‘The Rise of Integral Culture.’ Noetic Sciences Review 35, Spring, 4–15. Sandner, D. (1991) Navaho Symbols of Healing: A Jungian Exploration of Ritual, Image, and Medicine. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts Press. Spretnak, C. (1997) The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature and Place in a Hypermodern World. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley. Youngbird, M. (1994) ‘Native American Practice: It’s Not a Legend or a Myth, It’s Real. We Live It.’ Association for Transpersonal Psychology Newsletter, Fall, 5–9.

9

The Heart of the Lion

Joining Community through Art Making Janis Timm-Bottos

The world is a place of living images and our hearts are the organs that tell us so. (Hillman 1981, p.142)

Artwork The shopping cart was carefully packed with cooking utensils, dried legumes, and cans of tomatoes. Brightly colored clothes were neatly folded at one end of the cart. One chain held a water jug and another held a roll of toilet tissue. A hot pink stuffed elephant hung from the opposite side. ‘It was our home for many months. We were so appreciative of our cart that when we moved into our apartment we had it sitting in the living room.’ Now it was sitting at ArtStreet, preparing to be a part of a gallery show, ‘The Art of Being Homeless,’ which featured the strengths and ingenuity of those living homeless in our neighborhoods. Another piece of artwork sat on the table. It was a fold-up paper dollhouse made by an 8-year-old girl. She had designed it to carry as she and her mother moved from shelter to shelter. Near the open dollhouse, a man sat whittling a perfectly proportioned hand out of a piece of landscape bark. Another man was putting the final touches on a three-foot clipper ship, crafted completely from cardboard scraps. Nearby a woman with her latex-gloved fingers and hands worked at an easel painting with brightly colored acrylics on a canvas.

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THE HEART OF THE LION

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Introduction ArtStreet is a diverse group of artists, art therapists, children, families (homeless and housed), and other committed community members who participate in an innovative open arts studio as active collective owners of the project and its process. Homeless families and individuals arrive in Albuquerque from all regions of New Mexico and neighboring states in search of work and human services. ArtStreet is committed to providing a safe, non-threatening place for these families and individuals to explore unlimited options found in an art-making experience while they orient and connect to the limited social and medical services available in the city. In this chapter, I hope to share with the reader a view of this downtown Albuquerque community art studio space by describing practical aspects of running a community open studio, its grounding principles, as well as some of the metaphoric implications of the activities and images produced there. The stories describing different artists at ArtStreet are imaginally constructed with changes in names, identifying properties and are not meant to define a literal exchange but to illustrate the premise from which the studio methods may approach a variety of situations. ArtStreet has proved to be an inexpensive and effective way to support an extremely underserved group of important community members. But something beyond this economically feasible service is happening at ArtStreet. It is this less tangible picture that I would like to express to the reader. I was a participant in the collaboration that started ArtStreet in 1994. At that time, I had completed my master’s degree in art therapy and was interested in shifting out of a 13-year profession as a physical therapist. Personally, I was tired of being a clinical, medical professional ‘expert.’ I wanted to have a job where I could join with others, make things, and experiment imaginally with issues that were important in the world. My graduate studies in archetypal psychology, particularly the work of psychologist James Hillman and the experiential study of profound movement work of Israeli physicist, Moshe Feldenkrais, helped bridge my static, medical ‘expert’ identity with being an active participant of something that was alive and moving. As an art therapist I did not seek out a job to work with the ‘homeless.’ However, ‘homelessness’ as a social dilemma seemed like a serious issue worth investigating. It is a huge complex problem in our city, as well as nationally, and it is impossible to be an ‘expert.’ The only identified experts in this field are the persons who have survived homelessness, and many of these individuals have

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become very active in helping others survive more comfortably and safely on the streets or in shelters. ArtStreet employs a small staff of art therapists who facilitate the workings of the studio space (not the people!) with myself as project coordinator and art therapist. I wrestle between participating in the open studio as an artist, facilitating spontaneous interactions in the studio as an art therapist, writing grants, and doing bookkeeping and report writing as a manager within Health Care for the Homeless (HCH). HCH is the mother agency that houses us and is the non-profit fiscal agent for ArtStreet; more importantly, HCH believes in our vision. The mission of the project states: ArtStreet is a safe place to make art. We seek to join community members and increase awareness regarding issues of homelessness through making art together.

Our mission naturally fosters diversity in people who attend open art studio sessions. Young mothers with infants work beside professionally trained artists, skilled laborers, and business men and women. Adolescents from local residential treatment homes work on low tables to get closer to the toddlers. School age children often stand mesmerized at the easel of an elder who is painting something the child has begun to recognize. Representation of different cultures in the studio is another important avenue for creating an environment welcoming diversity, including the following: Hispanic, Native (especially Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi), Japanese, Vietnamese, African Americans and European Americans and visitors from Ireland, India, and Germany. There are also various art therapy professionals in the studio, some newly graduated, some visiting from other states and some fully employed, visiting on their day off or working on their own issues of transition. ArtStreet (Plate 13 in center section) is a spacious, 1800-square-foot studio addition attached to a two-story maize-yellow adobe building that also houses the substance abuse program and the administrative offices for HCH. Our space is divided in the middle with wooden floor-to-ceiling French glass folding doors and lined with windows along the length of two walls with a large mirror on the opposite wall. At the far end of our studio is a small stage waiting for the next poet or child to perform. Next to the stage is the piano and a small library of art-related books. Just outside are two shade trees, tables for working or eating, our beautiful city dweller vegetable/art garden, and a small dirt parking lot.


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Filled in every corner with sorted discarded raw materials, as well as traditional art materials, the studio provides the space for something new to happen. Organized areas within the studio inspire sewing, nature art creations, printmaking, throwing a pot on the potter’s wheel, painting, pouring a ceramic mold, and framing finished pictures. There is also a special place designed for children to retrieve materials independently, to sit and work at a low table, and to work standing at an easel or at the sand and water tables. There is an air of ease that fuels the imagination and permits mistakes to be greeted without judgment. Few limits mark what can become an art project: beeswax sculptures, delicate tissue-paper cuttings, large papier-mâché masks, broken-toy sculptures, shoe sculptures, clay tiles, bowls or baskets decorated with dried beets and green beans and tiny pink roses. The options, which are seemingly unlimited, crowd the space. This rich and inviting environment ignites the participant’s imagination while simultaneously silencing an inner art critic. The ease with which the artists begin at ArtStreet is enlivening, full of spirit, color, and inspiration and the skill and care with which the artists craft their handmade wares elicits appreciation from most visitors. Created images that embody not only the artist, but also the artists’ interactions with each other, inclusive of the environment, evokes a rare response, a reaction of the heart. It is this ‘thought of the heart’ that moves in this communal art space. The artwork, which is often intensely and quickly made with a sense of necessity, appears to serve a greater purpose in the community than an individual self-expression.

The heart The ancient Greeks believed the organ of perception was the heart, which gathers information from touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. It is the animal heart and not the rational human mind that perceives individual human connectedness to family, neighbors, and humanity. The heart, according to the story, holds a microcosm of the world or ‘locus for sensus communis: the place of natural law connecting all individuals with each other and with the order of the world’ (Hillman 1981, p.137). Within the walls of the ancient heart, the imagination resides. The word ‘himma’ was used to describe the power of the heart’s vital life force, which is the soul’s movement in the everyday world. At ArtStreet, artists are reviving this ancient ability of the animal heart. It is in these awakened hearts of the art makers that the senses of our being are perceiving with an imaginative vision. It is in these awakened hearts that infor-

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mation from the body’s senses reveals possibilities and unlimited creative options. Through this experience, members of a small art community are recovering a life-sustaining ability of attending to their own sense of well-being, as well as their salutary connection with each other.

Marianne Marianne shared with me that she had a lump in her breast and feared she was dying of cancer. She cried when she spoke about her 15-year-old daughter who would be left alone if she were to die. Cautiously relieved that they had recently escaped a very abusive situation by crossing several state borders, a new tension was present…homelessness. For now, they were alive and together and free from a habitual life of abuse. Marianne spontaneously began drawing a series of lions.

The lion The lion image is a strong, repeated image in our large, open art studio. Accompanying the artists, this animal enters through the pores of pain of the people in the studio. Void of thought, containing and holding opposites, this large, three-dimensional golden creature roams our busy studio, emanating the heat of the desert’s plunging afternoon sun. With the lion’s responsive roar to the landscape, the animal heart directly intends, senses, and responds as a unitary whole. The walls of his majestic body, the walls of our own bodies, hear the secrets distilled in each muscle.

Marianne Several months later, Marianne and her daughter both had found work at a local grocery store. They were working hard to secure housing and get out of shelter life. Weekly, on their only day off, they continued to attend open art studio. I was interested in how they were using art to help to maintain their health in a demanding work routine. One day, when Marianne seemed particularly engrossed in her art, I waited until she came to completion. ‘When I come to ArtStreet,’ she said, I stop all the thoughts about what if I lose my job, what if I can’t pay the rent. I focus on the paper in front of me and the lines I alone place there. I don’t allow myself a moment to judge my art; there is no time for that. I make art because it keeps me living.


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She continued, pointing to her picture: It is an oil furnace, billowing smoke into the atmosphere. I love the way smoke enters the world, demonstrating the world in between the real, awake life and the dream world. When I was child, my dad was a chain smoker, and I used to sit with him and marvel at the way the smoke looked in the air. When he died I was 11 and I ached for that smoke and the images I could see in it. I started smoking to help comfort myself. It took me years to quit. I stopped only four years ago. Today, I carefully drew the billows of smoke that I love. I know smoke pollutes the planet and made my dad sick, but seen another way it looks like a flower with flames shooting out.

The intelligence of the heart Observing and sharing Marianne’s spontaneous ability to contain and hold opposites was a powerful experience for me. Marianne’s sense wonder and imagination was strengthened by participating alongside others in the studio. Trusting the ‘intelligence of the heart,’ as expressed through images made in the studio, supports a basic premise of working in the community. It is the idea that images enter with messages from and to the world. Each image coordinates within itself qualities of consciousness and qualities of world, speaking in one and the same image of the interpenetration of consciousness and world, but always and only as image which is primary to what it coordinates. This imaginal intelligence resides in the heart: ‘intelligence of the heart’ connotes a simultaneous knowing and loving by means of imagining. (Hillman 1981, p.7)

When people enter the studio, there is a strong expectation that everyone enters as an artist, with the intention to make something. This quickly moves people into the materials and their imagination. An apparent trust in the hand’s ability to make something is woven into the fabric of the participants at ArtStreet. The divine is present through the handiwork of its makers. The notion that fingers possess generative power can be followed throughout many historical perspectives and myths. The ancient Greeks, already in possession of an imaginative heart, had hands (cheires) that expressed divine powers (dynameis) (Meier 1989). Numerous gifts emerge out of clutter in this communal environment when many hands and many hearts gather information somatically. Through the

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hands of its maker, the ability to reassemble chaos into creation contributes to the confidence of the maker. Another basic assumption that permeates the studio is that being creative is a bodily instinct, like being hungry. As noted by Ellen Dissanayake, there is an urgent life-sustaining, biological need for the art-making behavior (Dissanayake 1992, p.35). Artists in the studio have turned to their imaginations and making things to feed their souls, to survive. As in traditional cultures, when this courageous daily behavior of art making occurs, it is not only the individual that benefits but so does the rest of the community, as well as society at large.

Health care Issues of literal homelessness are as present in the studio as the 20 to 40 hearts pumping to supply lifeblood to each of its participants. We often have food, delivered by religious groups, to help settle the stomach’s aches and to allow artists to spend the entire day without needing to walk to a soup kitchen. We also hand out referral sheets for the limited shelter and other resources available. ArtStreet is fortunate to be a part of Health Care for the Homeless, so referrals are made directly to the medical clinic, dental clinic, mental health services, and substance abuse services as needed. In our city, there were an estimated 6000 people homeless in 1996 (Soussan 1996) and only one limited shelter in our region that permits a family to stay together for the night. Wholeheartedness, the lion’s share, is reduced to a visibly divided anatomical heart with limited resources. Walls, discovered in the medical heart in 1616, reflected the walls that divide, contributing to binary ways of thinking and interacting. Measurable quantitative clinical responses frequently dominate qualitative human interactions in many areas of medical and mental health care. Reducing health to numbers and facts often automatically separates the ‘healthy-wealthy’ from the ‘sick-poor.’ Social, medical, and mental health issues are very real in our small community of people. These issues require awareness, respect, and political voice and action. At ArtStreet the opposites merge forming a proactive social-aesthetic voice. This merger is best experienced in our seasonal public art shows.


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The parade On November 1st, we planned to conclude a month-long mask exhibit with a parade from the downtown gallery back to ArtStreet. It took several months of planning and the city’s approval to have the parade. There were numerous hurdles to cross. We had met as a parade committee for the entire summer and, as we neared the closing of the mask show, Larry, a mentoring artist, expressed fear about the potential failure of the final event. ‘What if no one shows up for the parade?’ he asked. Everyone groaned and there was sudden silence in the room. I think each one of us simultaneously envisioned his fear. I shuddered at the image. I pictured the eight of us on the committee, wearing the costumes we had made, walking alone, down the middle of Seventh Street with one police officer driving ahead and one behind us, as planned. A potentially excruciating walk, exposed, out of the boundaries of our safe, non-threatening studio. Then I looked up. Around the table sat people I had grown to love and admire. We had worked very hard, learning the ropes of doing an event like this together, step by step. At that moment, someone broke the silence and blurted out, ‘Wait a minute, we are the parade, ourselves the display! The work is done. This part should be fun and easy. We can’t lose here.’ The day of the parade came and it was a beautiful, sunny, fall day with a picture-perfect blue cloudless sky. We started early, attaching hundreds of masks that had been made in the studio (and at workshops given by the mentoring artists throughout the community) onto nets over our vehicles (Plate 14 in center section). There were several shopping cart floats: a huge bright green paper mache dinosaur, a giant, orange cardboard goldfish, and a clipper ship named ‘Sophia.’ The noon hour came and people kept arriving with more homemade masks and floats. By the time we turned into our parking lot at ArtStreet for our Day of the Dead picnic we were over 200 strong. It was a glorious day with a true sense of accomplishment of the joys of the living imagination.

Art exhibits ArtStreet art exhibits are welcomed in our city. During 1996 we worked collaboratively with two other non-profits and curated ‘Outside ¡Magnifico!: Albuquerque’s Visionary Artists.’ It was held at the Convention Center in conjunction with the popular, annual city art exhibit ¡Magnifico! We received many comments about this lobby exhibit (featuring the work of outsider artists), expressing the heartfelt power of the artwork. We sold more art than the large (insider) juried exhibit.

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Through a singular, powerful, proactive voice, ArtStreet artists have begun to experience (even if ever so briefly) a lion’s share. Public exhibits foster the studio’s ability to receive more public funding and we receive more and more invitations from local galleries to exhibit the work made at ArtStreet. One of our favorite galleries is the Kress Building, an unoccupied 1930s dime store, with four large rounded glass display windows on Route 66 across from the historic

Figure 9.1 The Doors of Albuquerque


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KiMo Theatre. It is Albuquerque’s only drive-by gallery and different exhibits are on display every three months, including: ‘The Doors of Albuquerque’ (Figure 9.1) ‘Hats and Shoes Community Sole Work,’ ‘Join the Circus,’ ‘Yard Art,’ and ‘Downtown Migration.’ Each exhibit includes an average of 20 artists.

The goat While it is the lion’s roaring image that reminds us of every person’s entitled portion of freedom and strength, it is the goat that evokes the image of a fenced or sacrificed animal. The lion roams ‘out there,’ while the goat’s instinctual nature rules ‘in here.’ Many individuals struggling with life on the ‘outside’ may have been given the scapegoat role in their own family of origin. Once homeless, however, some single men and women unknowingly hold that identity and expect to be treated poorly. These ‘scapegoats’ are frequently blamed for many things, including the limited success of businesses downtown. ‘Some Downtown merchants have complained that the high concentration of homeless people in their area mars Albuquerque’s image and drives away business’ (Soussan 1996). The mayor’s task force has successfully worked on ‘mitigating migration through downtown’ (Soussan 1996) by centralizing homeless services outside the downtown area. It is an easy ‘fix’ to a complex set of problems. Sylvia Brinton Perera’s book (1986) The Scapegoat Complex: Towards a Mythology of Shadow and Guilt, describes the transpersonal dimension of ancient scapegoat rituals. She states ‘we forget that originally the scapegoat was a human or animal victim chosen for sacrifice to the underworld god to propitiate that god’s anger and to heal the community. The scapegoat was a pharmakon or healing agent’ (Perera 1986, p.8). The scapegoating ritual was used to direct attention and increase awareness to the non-habitual, multiple levels of life. Traditionally, a sacrifice was an act of giving up that which was most cherished. Already identified as the sacrificed community members, what would our city be like if those surviving homelessness were also the most cherished? Today in urban America, our identified ‘escaped goats’ are wandering in the downtown desert, carrying in their backpacks modern culture’s shadow. These closeted aspects of ourselves that we fear, despise, and reject are often closely linked to our instinct or our body. As long as there is an individual on the corner with no home to hide his or her addictions or mental illnesses, we will have someone else to blame for our poor business or the overspending of the government on human services.

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Carrie Carrie, a homeless young woman, was in the studio in the midst of an active ‘psychospiritual crisis’ (Breggin 1991). Although she was intermittently focused on her hand sewing, she cried out frequently, frightening the children working near her. I asked her to please come outside and check in with me by the garden. Squatting by the edge of the garden, we sat silently for awhile. Clearly aware that I did not want to alienate this fragile, intelligent woman, I attempted to ground whatever I was going to say by pulling a beet from the garden. We talked about the qualities of the beet and she said she loved borscht (a soup made primarily of beets) and told me how she used to make it at home. I finally asked her if she noticed how the others in the room reacted when she cried or laughed out loud. She pulled out another beet and quietly stated, There is no place for me to cry. I need to cry to be well. I need to be able to talk to myself. I know how to help myself but there is no place for me to be me, to get well.

Where do we go from here? How do we cure not a young woman’s apparent ‘mental illness’ but society’s sickness of not being attentive to the needs of others? When will we begin to hear the language of the heart? Those who are scapegoated are the ‘escaped goats’ who call back the old horned deity, the he-goat Pan, ‘the old mind which has been repressed with the rise of modern life’ (Mindell 1982, p.110). The originator of pan-ic, the grand awakener Pan returns us to our origins, makes us aware of our own shadows while our bodies discover an interior temple of insight. The art studio becomes a safe place where ‘escaped goats’ invite the body to speak its own heart through relationships with each other and works of art. As in the ancient Greek dream incubation rites, a message in the form of a word, a cure, a poem or image was received and shared for the purpose of healing the community as well as the individual incubant (Meier 1989). This activity is metaphorically illustrated in the following story.

Robert One day, I was outside in a rare situation, trying to attend to an artist who was reeling on crack and threatening suicide, when Robert arrived in a state of determined panic, ‘You ought to hear what happened to me,’ he announced. He proceeded to tell us that his 16-year-old son had been stabbed in the heart two days ago. As the week passed, our small community organized to


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help Robert bear his loss. Different people connected with him in expressions of sympathy. Then the plot thickened. He also reported that he would be given a large sum of money and worried because he had to go into the hospital for open heart surgery. As our group began planning a memorial service, we were notified that Robert’s son had not been killed and was very much alive. Robert, a chronic alcoholic, had pulled us all into his drama.

That week, none of us were certain what to do with Robert, including the medical doctor who called to confirm the misinformation. If Robert’s son had died, we would have known what to do and would have proceeded with community support. Instead, a story was woven, using a language that we had almost forgotten. ‘One turns to the heart because here is where the essences of reality are presented by the imaginal to the imagination’ (Hillman 1981, p.28). Eros, ever present in our small community of art makers, swept through the room that week and connected the personal to something beyond and brought the beyond back into our studio. Robert’s heart could not be limited to that of a personal heart. ‘The heart’ was not his heart only, nor was it his son’s that we were asked to mourn. We gathered to encourage Robert to stick with his art making – large poster-sized, colorful marker paintings of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the burning bush, and angels attending the cross. Robert sat for hours, pushing the markers back and forth, colorfully filling in his images, his eyes rapidly moving with each stroke of his forearm. These visionary pictures and his relationship to them and to the other artists who valued his life stories seemed to anchor his grief. Recognizing the power of the imaginal story, the artists spontaneously encouraged other stories and together made an artful altar to hold the flames. Love is of the spirit, quickening the soul to its images in the heart. The heart is not so much the place of personal feeling as it is the place of true imagining. Feelings stir as images move. (Hillman 1981, p.28) Exactly one week later, Robert called me at ArtStreet from the hospital. ‘I had open heart surgery this morning,’ he told me. ‘It’s my heart, that’s all. I’m going to be all right. It’s my heart.’

As Robert’s story reveals, images make up our experience at ArtStreet. Images shape character and personality and affect the environment and its therapeutic climate. Historian Margaret Miles says: We select and develop a repertoire of images, chosen both because they attract and because we receive from them visual messages that help us

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to visualize – to envision – personal and social transformation. (quoted in Rodriguez 1994, p.48)

Miles acknowledges the power of ‘the visual objects of one’s habitual attention’ as we do at ArtStreet (p.48).

Our Lady of Guadalupe Recurring images appear to be guiding the therapeutic work presented here: the lion and the dark madonna, Our Lady of Guadalupe from Mexican culture (Plates 15 and 16 in center section). These repeated images, learned by heart through the handmade images, create one’s identity in the world. Robert continues to come regularly to ArtStreet, making poster after poster images of Our Lady. Danny, also repeating images of Our Lady, makes images week after week of one bird or one personally characterized lion or horse. The movement of the hand coloring may be as significant as the repeated images. Repeated hand and eye movements carry therapeutic value. ‘Repetition is also an attempt to make something take. If we say something often enough it becomes more essential and characteristic; we begin to believe what we repeat’ (Berry 1980, p.53). The image of ‘Guadalupe acts as a resource, a coping mechanism for those who have no other resources’ (Rodriguez 1994, p.129). Some say Guadalupe’s image is connected to the healing and restoration of the dignity of the poor. Our Lady of Guadalupe is said to listen and receive what has been said and responds. In the dark virgin’s eyes, every class and race is valued and welcomed. It is said that she came from the region of light on the wings of an eagle and stayed for the people. And it is as likely to see her image in a church as out in the community, carried by a subaltern labor protester, her image representing social justice. In his research, Ean Begg describes the power of this image, found also in Celtic traditions. Again and again in the stories of the Black Virgins, a statue is found in a forest or a bush, or discovered when ploughing animals refuse to pass a certain spot. The statue is then taken to the parish church, only to return miraculously by night to her own place, where a chapel is then built in her honor. Almost invariably her cult is associated with natural phenomena, especially healing waters or striking geographical features such as extinct volcanoes, confluences and subterranean lines of force. (Begg 1985, p.73)


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Crossing oceans and crossing cultures, the image of the Black Madonna returns to the place of the people, at the borders, at the crossroads, standing for human rights, freedom, and justice. She signifies the hope that we will cultivate an eye to see beyond the patriarchical mirage that blankets the earth and that cultures return to the inherent responsibilities associated with the messages and rhythms of the earth. The world of the Black Goddess is that of inner expansion, of change through deepening to previously untouched areas of potential; of inner births of children of the imagination; and cultivation of the eye that sees through the phenomena of the world, the eye that perceives interiority. She rules the as yet unseen and unexplained. (Bleakley 1989, p.26)

Residing in the in-between places, the Black Madonna fosters connections between people as described in the following story.

Don Don, a young man who initially called because his psychologist had recommended ArtStreet, described his pathology, eerily echoing psychiatric lingo from the DSM–4 (American Psychiatric Association 1994). His outraged behavior recently got him kicked out of college. He told me he painted quite a bit. He was very graphic in his description of his horrific representational imagery. I suggested to Don that other participants in the studio may influence his work, especially the young children and babies who may crawl near him while he painted. Don immediately expressed anger and said, ‘I don’t want my work to be influenced by anyone outside of me! That is what has happened all my life, by my dad always telling me what to do and when to do it.’ I kindly suggested that ArtStreet might not be the appropriate outlet for him, saying ‘It’s not for everyone.’ But if he wanted to come and see, he would be welcomed. I also hinted that he might be inspired to work in an unfamiliar medium. I was surprised when Don showed up the next day. He slowly walked the perimeter of the studio, looking at each project in progress. Apparently determined to stay, he began a large, scrap wood construction.

A year later Don has become an adored artist at ArtStreet because he demonstrated his own healing of past anger and humiliation and that has brought hope to others. Since his first elaborate scrap wood palace, Don has explored many different types of art media. His participation at ArtStreet has seemed to answer

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a longing, not to maintain his separateness but to form friendships by sharing his extensive technical abilities. Through connecting with others, Don has visibly strengthened his own remarkable individuality.

Making art Don’s story reminds me of an issue we are exploring at ArtStreet: making art is a human right. That right gets challenged by an odd, paternal, saintly notion that to be an artist one must be alone in one’s own private studio space in order to make great art. What is this academic notion that art can only be created alone, in seclusion? I like Hillman’s response: You are convinced that you’re more yourself when you are alone: because it’s more familiar. You are in a habitual, repetitious rut. ‘This is me, because I’m in the same pattern’: it’s recognizable. (Hillman and Ventura 1992, p.41)

Don is an example of a well-trained artist who thought the ‘outside’ would continue to harm him in his selection and creation of images. Instead the colorful community of others (unknowingly) provided Don with a reflective surface that helped him create both the person he wanted to be and a body of work beyond his wildest dreams. In one of our art exhibits, Don was extensively featured in five different medias and he has begun to claim his lion’s share by mentoring in the studio and selling art in the community. The studio becomes a place to restore and redesign a personal identity. As artists work side-by-side in the art space, the community acts through each of us, affecting the self-identified boundaries between us. We each have an unique opportunity to be more ourselves when actively making things with others. Naturally we learn more about ourselves when exploring the use of unfamiliar materials. The experience of choosing from diverse colors and textures complements the diversity of individuals who enter the space. When I reach across the table and ask someone to pass the scissors, we informally begin to share our successes; new possibilities begin to formulate. As the collective of community acts through me, each individual becomes a little more of a character. Isolating behaviors mysteriously neutralize, leaving glorious eccentricities and lived relationships with others that create a community art making space abundant with new options. Frequently professionals who visit the studio have difficulty diving into the art-making experience. Although art making is a powerful human behavior and


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an inexpensive way to move out of habitual ways of seeing, fear of performance immediately arises when these visitors are invited to participate. Many adults stopped learning art skills in grade school or (the luckier ones) high school, so there is an immediate connection to limitations discovered in childhood. These limits are far more rigid then they need to be. ‘I can’t draw a stick person!’ or ‘It’s too difficult’ or ‘You wouldn’t even want me to try’ are statements that have the capacity to restrict other areas of life. Playing, exploring, choosing, and combining sensory-rich art materials can be an inroad, leading to shifting self-definitions. It is because of this that all participants in the studio are expected to make something during open studio, including the staff. Because I am identified as an artist, art therapist, and program manager, there are expectations from the group that I know how to draw, how to make people feel better, and know where to find everything. Fortunately, ArtStreet has a mentoring artist program where artists who become familiar with the studio sign up to teach a workshop or a series of classes or informally help out when needed. Each week, in between grant writing, program report writing, volunteer and intern coordination, and problem-solving budget matters, each staff member is expected to sit down next to someone and explore their own art making. My own artwork has consisted of experimentation with different materials. I enjoy the sensory experience of preparing goop, sawdust mâché, red mud clay, or some other delight with the children who arrive at the studio. I also make aluminum foil sculpture dolls that Pat Allen, an art therapist and mentor, first shared with me as we worked together in her studio in Chicago. There is something satisfying in the ripping and wrapping of the masking tape over the aluminum foil shapes. After the figures are formed and painted, I especially love creating the environments in which they will live. In the ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’ exhibit held in a historic adobe restaurant in Old Town, I made a clothespin doll Lady and placed her in a decorated ham can. It pleases me that I can house all the dolls I make, since I can’t possibly (literally) house all the artists sitting with me at the table. My musings answer a deep longing inside of me, as it may for others. We share ideas with each other. Marcia, the studio assistant at ArtStreet, started covering her aluminum foil and tape dolls with ripped magazine pictures and then coating them with gel medium. She exhibited her pregnant lady series in our ‘Doll Tales’ exhibit. My doll for that exhibit was a brown fabric cloth doll with a clay face and hands and claw feet, which were blackened and shined using stove pipe polish. ‘Lilith’ (Plate 17 in center section) stands on her lion throne, held on a large, old, worked piece of wood I found on

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my family’s land in the Zuni mountains. The artwork I make in the studio always surprises me because I rarely know what I will be led to make. I find that I am very influenced by the people around me. At ArtStreet we rely on each other for creating a safe art space and have become students and teachers for each other. We have community meetings at least twice a month. Most of these meetings are very spontaneous and we talk about ideas for new exhibits or problems in the space, and when there is a death to work through or a special accomplishment to be shared. These meetings often involve 20 to 30 people. It takes skill to facilitate these meetings and usually the staff take turns. ArtStreet’s Advisory Council meets monthly and invites participation from the artists who work in the studio. This invitation encourages the users of the art space to be the decision-makers of the process by reviewing the goals and objectives that we set together each year. The artists, who are busy staying warm and safe at night, must be encouraged to stay for these business meetings. Ironically, however, it takes even more encouragement for the business people and professionals, the ‘nine-to-fivers,’ to take time to make art in the studio before the meetings. Sometimes the ArtStreet Advisory Council calls on outside ‘experts’ to advise or facilitate our meetings, especially when the staff feel confused or uncertain about which way to proceed in a particular situation. But usually, through vigilant communication, we are able to come up with a comfortable directions to proceed as a group. Three art therapists, a studio assistant, and a family art advocate, who all work together on open studio days, meet weekly to discuss issues that come up during the week. Frequently, our lively conversations are focused on the space in which we work and how people are moving – with ease or with great difficulty – and the continuum in between. This focus on movement within the studio space reduces the need for clinical psychological discussions, which inherently do not take into account political and social issues or relationships between people or relationships that involve a sense of place. Because being homeless is not an intrapsychic, diagnosed pathology, another system of thought was introduced to talk about how things were working or not working.

Four principles Four principles, based on the Feldenkrais® method of movement (Goldfarb 1993), guide the peer staff supervision at ArtStreet. These tenets, originally ® designed by Larry Goldfarb, a Feldenkrais Trainer, to teach student practi-


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tioners how to prioritize the emphasis in working with others, have proved just as applicable to the creative activities of a busy art studio.

Move with what is moving The first principle, ‘Move with what is moving,’ supports the primary role of self-direction in the open studio. The facilitators of the space (i.e. the staff ) are reminded by this adage to follow along without directing those individuals who are already moving, in their own direction, toward materials. This inherent self-direction hinges on the ability to be independent enough to locate and arrive at the studio door. If someone cannot negotiate their way to the studio, that is a good indicator that they may not safely move within the studio space due to active substance use or a severe mental illness. It is important that all participants feel that they are able to leave the studio independently, when necessary. This does not imply that persons with physical limitations are not transported to and from the studio. Often, individuals with physical limitations are assisted by mentoring artists throughout the day. The studio creates then an environment that supports ‘the soul’s first freedom – the freedom to imagine’ (Hillman 1975, p.39) and a place in which ‘cultivating images for their own sake’ is supremely valued (p.40). There is an inherent honoring of another human being when there is trust in the process that awaits its maker. An entanglement of inner and outer worlds occurs as one follows an instinctive leading to the image. When individuals enter the art-making space with the intention to create something, the space is safer for everyone else. If a person enters the space out of curiosity for the first time, someone gives him or her a tour of the studio. Showing the abundant supplies is usually enough to evoke the imagination and begin a movement into making. ‘Move with what is moving’ also implies the lion is roaming until he hears and then sees the moving prey, his intended target. This same animal instinct and inner body response draws participants directly toward manifestation of an aspect of their soul’s longing. Then, as fellow artists, we witness the participant’s gathering of materials, the settling into a sensory luncheon, and then the struggle, defeat, and, perhaps, a final project.

Hold or be still with that which is not moving The second principle, ‘Hold or be still with that which is not moving,’ acknowledges that sometimes people are stuck, lack direction, or don’t know what to choose. On some days, this may be some people’s experience in the studio. And

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it must be difficult for someone who is experiencing this principle, seeing the rest of the group scurrying around, collecting things, and intensely focusing on their projects. The alchemical ‘red heart whitens in its own failures’ (Hillman 1981, p.70). The imagination seems blocked. ® ® Awareness through Movement , a Feldenkrais method, instructs that doing less while being increasingly aware, is far more welcome to the body than trying to move forward what is stuck. In traditional Western medical models the frequent response to being stuck is to attack the problem and force movement. In clinical art therapy this is often done by giving a client a ‘directive.’ Instead, we honor the ‘stuckness’ by holding it as a precious part of the community of other moving parts. Often, this support will surprisingly invite a welcome release followed by greater focused freedom of movement the next time the person enters the art-making space. There is a conscious acknowledgment by the staff that something is stuck and no movement is occurring within the imagination of the participant, as demonstrated by a lack of direction in the studio. If the reason for the stuck place is due to the participant’s active use of drugs or alcohol, the staff firmly tells the person to leave the community space and invites them to return the next day, when they are sober. By maintaining a stance of non-judgment, the participant can and usually does return without shame the next time ArtStreet is open. Along with addictions, mental illness also affects many people who are chronically homeless. ‘Stuckness,’ or behaviors that sabotage connections with each other, has been held by the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Her still and quiet presence in the studio is a loving reminder that she accompanies the instinctual living movements (the lion) when there is no movement. There is a weightedness about her image that secures her in our hearts, providing an anchor to those who may be lost and disconnected. Miraculously, however, she also reduces the effects of gravity by holding all of the parts of the studio that are not working well, promising to teach each of us how to deal with the less familiar, shadow aspects of oneself.

Hold or be still with that which is moving The third basic principle, ‘Hold or be still with that which is moving,’ addresses the issue of safety at ArtStreet. Safety is the most important ingredient in the art space. If a participant appears overactive and/or exhibiting psychological zeal beyond the safe container of chosen art materials or the art environment, the staff may suggest another media or another activity, in hopes of slowing down


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the participant. If these attempts to intervene do not work, decisions are then made by the entire studio, because the individual’s activities affect the entire group. We may stop as a group and talk about what is not working safely in the space. Relationships offer containers for the craziness. The deeper they go, the more they can hold. They provide places for sacrifice and for protection against the destructive aspect of the creative. (Hillman 1972, p.38)

More often this third principle, ‘Hold or be still with that which is moving,’ applies to children in the studio who are caught in the effects of homelessness. The following example demonstrates this principle.

Della When Della started to attend the studio with her young daughter, she often became frustrated with her child’s lack of focused attention on her art projects. Other artists were also concerned that the 5-year-old would get hurt because of the way she moved quickly around the studio. One day, after Della yelled loudly at her daughter to stop running, the art therapist stopped the studio to talk about the situation. Each artist talked about the situation as the child sat still and listened to everyone’s concern and care for her. Together, we problem solved and the artists created a cardboard ‘house’ for Jamie to play in when she started to feel that she was unable to make art. Jamie, who had a hard time living out of a car, loved her ‘own’ house. She spent many hours decorating and playing in her space. Della, less stressed about her daughter’s behavior, could concentrate more on her own work in the studio.

Move that which is not moving The final guiding principle, ‘Move that which is not moving,’ is rarely used in the studio. Unlike treatment programs based on a medical model, we view any attempt to change another participant’s behavior or to ‘fix’ what is perceived as ‘dysfunctional’ as a power differential that we are not prepared for in a community-based arts studio. ‘Moving that which is not moving’ implies clinical intervention. In physical therapy, ‘no pain, no gain’ is an accepted adage and it is very common to work at actively unsticking parts of the body that are not moving well. In the Feldenkrais® method, as at ArtStreet, this principle rarely applies because each individual is respected for what he or she brings into

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the space. If someone isn’t moving, there is usually a good reason. Likewise, if your neck is in pain and you cannot move it freely, there is a good reason not to move. It is the responsibility of the effortlessly moving parts to move even more efficiently while inviting the unyielding parts to reconsider! Occasionally, someone’s uncompromising, stuck behavior forces immediate action on the part of the staff, which results in directing that person out the door. These four basic tenets provide a framework for our priorities at ArtStreet. But there are times when a situation arises that we are not prepared for, as shown in the following example.

Sue Sue was hired to travel to our city and teach a special class at ArtStreet. We had never done this before and the idea was that she could share a dying folk art, which, if it sparked an interest in the artists, could possibly become a way for a few artists to become self-sufficient. When she arrived at the airport from Philadelphia, her first comment off the airplane was: My, the people here must have a much wider vision of things than where I come from. Look at that expansive mesa! At home, we see only the brick row houses lining the concrete streets beside us.

In the car, on the way to pick up a quick lunch, she continued: My friends thought I was crazy when I told them what I was doing…teaching homeless bums to paint? Shouldn’t they be working? Entertaining the homeless with art projects? What has the world come to? Let’s just hope the government isn’t paying for this. And I hope you didn’t spend much on brushes. Can beggars be choosers?

My heart sank as she went on revealing her fears to me with stereotypical clichés. When we arrived outside the studio door, there was Juan with a big grin on his face, racing out of the studio to be the first to greet Sue, the ‘famous’ artist visiting from the East Coast. Instantly frozen by his appearance, Sue snapped her door locked. As I jumped out of the car to slow down Juan’s enthusiasm, and somehow protect his pride, I felt horrible. Had I invited someone with so much baggage that she might harm the safety, fragility and dignity of the people in our space? It was in that first half hour with Sue that I knew this visit would become something much closer to ‘world work’ than to learning a folk art. After I took Sue to her motel room, I spent the rest of the day calming the artists


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down and devising a way that Sue would be accountable for her actions the following day during her workshop at ArtStreet. When I picked Sue up the next morning, I handed her an evaluation form that each student would fill out after the workshop to evaluate how the students felt they were treated and respected as multiracial, homeless, and otherwise diverse learners. The plan worked because Sue was on her best behavior. Even Juan, whom I had to beg to attend, visibly began to relax. He rebelliously added his own touches to the traditional folk art image that each student copied as Sue demonstrated the technique. Juan added a small ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’ to the sky and smiled, apparently pleased with himself. I am not certain whether Sue knew it or not, but I was convinced Juan was our teacher that day. Driving Sue back to the airport, I could tell that her life (and mine) had been changed by her visit to the unlikely place, ArtStreet. She continued to keep in touch with several of the artists, sharing ideas and positive support.

Conclusion At ArtStreet, we are calling back the sacrificed parts, once abandoned and frequently forgotten, now made visible, made viable, through the courageous communal act of art making. There is a sense of a new social skeleton forming in which each individual partakes in the movement. Each contribution is necessary, regardless of its current social or economic worth. The open art studio environment fosters less psychology, less individual literalism, and more art making, the ‘world work’ in which we all participate. Does connectedness to others in the world answer a longing for home? The homelessness experienced literally by those who attend our open studio often mirrors the terror we each fight off, in a desert where body and soul are constantly silenced by the busi-ness, schedules, rationality, and technical defenses. In our daily lives, whether we are walking the soup lines of poverty, hopping the hoops of academia, climbing the corporate ladders, or lying stuck on the pavement, images stay attentive to our dilemma. Fortunately, the desert beast, the golden lion, accompanied by the shadowed image of the Black Madonna, are our guardians. Our studio is the meeting place of the animal and the divine. Reclaiming our human hands, and their ability to make something, is reclaiming our rightful inheritance. Reclaiming each other in a shared art environment makes this desert enheartened and habitable.

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Creative Explorations Cherish your participation once a month in the activities at a shelter or food site for individuals or families who are homeless. Notice how much you learn from people who are surviving the basic elements. Notice how your own well-being is nurtured, while many serious issues take you off balance, by participating in a project with community members who are homeless. Start a writer’s group or art group in a public setting so that diverse individuals can participate. Let the images that emerge in the process guide the group. Collect a box of expensive as well as found art materials and deliver it to a shelter or food site. Make art bags to distribute. Stick around and make art informally with others. Talk to the city council about starting a non-profit restaurant downtown that could also serve free art materials at lunchtime. Learn about the issues of homelessness in your community. Attend a neighborhood association meeting other than your own and pretend you are homeless and stuck living in their neighborhood. Make something everyday.

References American Psychiatric Association (1994) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Fourth Edition (DSM–4). Washington, DC: APA. Begg, E. (1985) The Cult of the Black Virgin. New York: Penguin. Berry, P. (1980) ‘Echo and Beauty.’ Spring: An Annual of Archetypal Psychology and Thought. Irving, TX: Spring Publications, 49–59. Bleakley, A. (1989) Earth’s Embrace. Bath: Gateway. Breggin, P. (1991) Toxic Psychiatry. New York: St Martin’s Press. Dissanayake, E. (1992) Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why. New York: Free Press. Feldenkrais, M. (1981) The Elusive Obvious or Basic Feldenkrais. Cupertino, CA: Meta. Goldfarb, L. (1993) Unpublished lecture notes from Feldenkrais Training Program. Hillman, J. (1972) The Myth of Analysis. New York: Harper Perennial. Hillman, J. (1975) Re-visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row. Hillman, J. (1981) The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World. Dallas, TX: Spring Publications. Hillman, J. and Ventura, M. (1992) We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse. New York: HarperCollins. Meier, C.A. (1989) Healing Dream and Ritual: Ancient Incubation and Modern Psychotherapy. Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag. Mindell, A. (1982) Dreambody. Boston, MA: Sigo Press. Perera, S.B. (1986) The Scapegoat Complex: Towards a Mythology of Shadow and Guilt. Toronto: Inner City Books. Rodriguez, J. (1994) Our Lady of Guadalupe. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Soussan, T. (1996) ‘Mayor’s Homeless Project Disputed.’ Albuquerque Journal, December, A-1.

10

Inner Necessity – Inner Balance Carol A. Sagar

Introduction Many years ago, my small children showed the way when I believed I was showing them what we could do with paint and water! Soon my engagement with this play took on the aspect of a journey into experience that turned out to be, literally, beyond the imagination. It became a discovery of expression of what I did not and could not know; it was a journey into the unconscious. Ways of collaborating with water, oil, pastel, and wax colors led to understanding that things can take shape and come into being without ‘I’ and ‘my’ decisions. Instead they arose from play involving a willingness to get lost in the experience and flow with what seemed to want to happen. This was a kind of magic. It was a sense of flowing with the ‘something’ in the handling of substances, which reliably led to new vision, new feeling, new experience. It brought the release of letting go, being with, and relaxation. This play became urgent, totally absorbing and serious – ‘serious’ meaning that it mattered to me and that I felt a difference within through doing it. It could be seen as a refuge from other demands of life, but, more importantly, it connected me with aspects of life and myself that I could not think about. I could be in a place where I did not know what I was doing or what was happening without this ‘lostness’ worrying me or anybody else. There were no criteria to meet and a multitude of ways of expression, all of which were ‘right!’ This kind of playful art making became a journey with its own momentum and its own logic. Rather than arising from my own choice, it arose from feelings of deep inner necessity, a term coined by the Blaue Reiter artists, Kandinsky and Marc, whose work I refer to later in this chapter. Inner necessity is the profound drive that can lead us where we need to go within in order to find understanding and transformation.

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In England at that time, in the mid-1960s, art therapy was not recognized as such nor had I heard of it as a possibility. I had entered into Jungian analytical therapy where my already accumulated artwork became an integral part of this process, leading me into fire at the depths of the earth, through jungles, the water world, space, and cataclysmic events. During that period, some part of me was also conducting ‘scientific’ experiments involving structure and transformation, rather like the workings of a modern alchemical laboratory. I refer here to some of the imagery through which this journey evolved. When I review the hundreds of paintings I created during what I feel I can honestly call an apocalyptic time of my life, when illness led to near-death experience, I see that unconsciously the material of my unlived life was bringing itself into form and color. Paintings emerged in groups, like dreams, taking me to the very depths, the very earliest moments of life. ‘The Creation’ was one theme; ‘Transcending the World’ was another. A painting I named ‘And the Skies were Rent Asunder’ (Plate 18 in center section) depicted a feeling of violent fragmentation and coming undone, which could later lead to new patterns of reintegration. My analyst saw danger in this process, something I did not understand at the time, but now, when I am aware of the forces of inner necessity behind the work, I see that it was surprising to have survived the maelstrom. Yet, paradoxically, the process of the artwork made it possible for me to survive. The creative process motivated by the drive of inner necessity seems inevitably to lead into the unknown, into the breaking down and fragmentation of what has been adopted or imposed. Often chaos results, like being in the path of the storm; but it is only possible to find new ways of coming together if we can trust the process of coming undone. Coming undone eventually gives birth to inner balance and brings the flowering of previously undiscovered potential – the hard won Holy Grail, the wisdom of a new inner order which makes possible the authenticity of true inner freedom. The rhythm of inner necessity – chaos – inner balance, already apparent in my own story, is the focus of this chapter. The sequence is explored through different aspects of my more than 15 years of experience as a therapist and companion to groups and individuals who travel this road. I begin with an introduction to the work of a remarkable Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoché, whose approach to working with the mind, including the practice of his relaxation and visualization methods, both preceded, accompanied, and expanded my formal art therapy education. It now forms a firm basis for the work I do. Later in the chapter I give particular attention to the

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theories of British pediatrician, psychoanalyst, and theoretician, D.W. Winnicott relating Winnicott’s ideas regarding play and transitional phenomena to the effectiveness of art therapy in general and to Dr Akong’s Tara Rokpa therapy in particular.

Tara Rokpa therapy As described above, the analytical therapy manifesting through my own art-making process felt at times like a test of survival, although it brought insights and realizations that were deeply transformational. Beyond the chaos and survival came emergence into a new understanding, a different sense of myself and new possibilities of relationship and identity. Thanks to the guidance of Akong Rinpoché at the Samye Ling Tibetan Centre in southern Scotland which opened in 1967, I regained my own health. Beyond this, Akong Rinpoché introduced me to ways of opening heart and mind. As a result of his help and training, together with his development of Tara Rokpa therapy, I can now help others through perilous transformational processes in a safer, gentler way. Tara Rokpa therapy expands, broadens, and deepens individual development within a group context over a period of seven or more years working through six distinct stages. The relaxation and visualization methods found in Dr Akong’s Taming the Tiger (1990) form the core of the therapy. The art therapy work that runs through the whole experience contains, records, transforms, and releases into form and color the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of the journey. In Tara Rokpa groups throughout Europe, and in parts of Africa, the emphasis is on gaining understanding through compassion, making friends at first with oneself and increasingly opening towards others. The basic certainty of Buddhist thought, that there is in every being a well of purity, unchanging and ready to manifest in wisdom, compassion, and awakeness when we become open to it, is the nucleus, the hub, with which our capacity for growth, creativity, transformation, and realization connects. Thus, individuals are encouraged to face everyday life situations with increasing maturity and a growing awareness that all phenomena, all experience, are less solid than we believe. Being a self-responsible method, Tara Rokpa does not encourage dependency on the therapists. For this reason it excludes those experiencing psychosis until they achieve enough stability and health to make use of the structure offered. Also the more emotionally fragile individual may require a period of one-to-one therapy to precede, or to continue parallel with, the first

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year or two of autobiographical writing and art making required in the Back to Beginnings phase of the therapy. Tara Rokpa therapists may offer this one-to-one work or it may be given by other therapists sympathetic to Tara Rokpa philosophy and practice.

Blaue Reiter The inevitability of the journey is what Tara Rokpa therapy invites us to face and explore: ‘Who am I?’ ‘How did I become who I am?’ ‘What prevents the experience of myself as connected, whole and free?’ ‘What does it mean “connected, whole, and free”?’ These questions have been basic to the history of the evolution of consciousness of humankind, an evolution that is describable in terms of images from the prehistoric cave paintings to wherever art expression has held and still holds a truth for human beings. These are spiritual questions, which two early-twentieth-century European painters, Vassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, explored in and through their work and through the writings of the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) movement in Munich from 1911 onwards (Zweite with Hoberg 1989). Their phrase ‘inner necessity’ summed up for them the underlying key to creativity, spiritual development and integration. For them, it seems that inner necessity may have implied that we do not have a choice other than to become more authentically expressive, more potently integrated. Marc’s motivation was ‘the striving for purity and inner truth’ (Tobien 1987, p.5). Tara Rokpa therapists would add to this a drive to become more compassionate, wiser and truer to who we are, to our own authentic nature. The writings of Kandinsky and Marc are relevant regarding the personal journey experienced through art making, art therapy, and Tara Rokpa therapy. Many of those practicing Tara Rokpa therapy would easily identify with Franz Marc’s search for an ‘alternative reality beyond the surface appearance of everyday life’ (Zweite with Hoberg 1989, p.39). Marc saw the ‘fundamental aim’ of art as being ‘to satisfy man’s hunger for “wholeness of being” and to free him from the delusions of the senses in our ephemeral world’ (Zweite with Hoberg 1989, p.40). Was he conscious of the less solid aspects of phenomena of which Tara Rokpa therapy invites us to become aware? I think so. The joy, devotion, and felt truth, which Marc distilled from his relationship with nature, are reflected in his paintings and sculpture. Marc saw in the representation of animals and in the expression of his relationship with them ‘a vehicle for piercing the veil of appearances, delving down to the core of reality’ (Zweite with Hoberg 1989, Plate 1). For him, ‘animals embodied the special qualities of


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purity and innocence which would enable the artist to uncover the spiritual principle underlying the material world of appearances’ (Plate 1). My experience of painting resonates with Marc’s search and with Kandinsky’s statement describing ‘works that, like works of nature, come into existence of their own accord’(Plate 33). He thought of each work of art as having its own expressive core, ‘its own inner sound.’ Adolf Behne, art critic, wrote of Marc’s ‘ability to move us and lead us to the innermost depths of nature.’ What concerned him was ‘the hidden presentiment, the inner life, the soul’ (Zweite with Hoberg1989, Plate 8). Feeling moved connects us to what is most deep and true within oneself, which Marc described as spiritual purity. Basic to the whole process of the creative endeavour is authenticity finding ways to be born. Expression emerges from the unconscious to reveal our relationships with world and self in images that can surprise and at times dismay us, challenging our beliefs, self-image, and identity. I painted ‘In the Swamps’ at a point when I was going downwards, facing feelings of depression with the weight of a dragon breathing down my neck. I did not see what I had expressed until much later, as it became more conscious. The making of the painting brought some space into this meeting with myself, some relief; I could get lost in the expression of the painting without needing to interpret it. Understanding came with distance from it. Now I am struck by the humor, which is part of the image with its head down, seeing only the muddiness. Yet there are the flipper feet, which mean that it is possible to wade through this place and not go under. The painting can find and define the hope in what was felt consciously as hopeless. Opening to the process, to the unknown, accepting uncertainty and going with the flow of creative energy may feel like the first or last moments of life, choiceless, a letting go. The depth to which painting can take us when we suspend our critical, judgmental faculties can yield up to us the image which contains at the same time many aspects of our being and resources. The paintings tell us there is more to us than we think. Kandinsky referred to painting as ‘the speaking of the hidden by means of the hidden’ (Zweite with Hoberg 1989, p.28) and described art as having ‘the power of transporting me beyond time and space’ (p.13). Here in the sacred space of unknowing, no goal, no ambition is where the healing in art therapy is most potent. Inner necessity demands access to the area of unconscious experience through a willingness to let go of everyday logic, to suspend the ego and enter into chaos. Making art then becomes a communicating bridge so that the conscious and unconscious can inform and inspire each other. In art, our being and experience,

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seen and felt, find color, movement, relationship, and form. Here, there is space for the ungrown self, for ignorance, for uncertainty, for conflict, ambiguity and paradox, for nakedness, masks, and disguises to be expressed and explored. As Marc stated: ‘There are no objects, no colors in art, only expression’ (Zweite with Hoberg 1989, Plate 2). He startles us into realizing that representations of objects and color are not what move us, but that we are moved by the expression of the energy of the artist’s feeling relationship to his or her world. Yet this can be frightening work. Stark, raw, exuberant, rich or subtle, rhythmic and timeless, inner necessity does not tend to bow before conformity nor to take the easy way out. It can be painful and inconvenient to listen to it within oneself or in the expressions of others. As will be discussed below, Tara Rokpa therapy offers us a space for incubation in which we can open to fear, exhilaration, and riding the emotional waves of inner necessity. Over time, we gain courage to trust in a process that has humor as well as release, self-discovery, and play. Woundedness can become the strength of creative expression, which itself can mirror back to us where and who we have been and lead to a sense of who we might become.

Back to beginnings Dr Akong Rinpoché, founder of Tara Rokpa, defines therapy as the intention of healing ‘something’ or preventing damage to ‘something.’ We might wonder if the ‘something’ is the wholeness of being to which Marc refers and suggest that Tara Rokpa offers a path for healing the wound or split in this wholeness. Its structure echoes the rhythm of inner necessity – chaos – inner order described earlier in my personal art making journey. That of the Blaue Reiter artists began with inner necessity and from there sought inner purity and truth. They did not write of chaos as a component of the art process as far as I am aware although they write of doubt and confusion. (For a summary of all six stages of Tara Rokpa therapy, see explanatory note at the end of this chapter.) Back to Beginnings follows Stage one, an initial phase of healing called Beginning to Relax wherein participants learn simple relaxation, self-massage, and movement awareness exercises. Exchanging massage with a partner (fully clothed) and experimenting with art materials are also introduced (Irwin 1999). At the end of that practice, group members can choose to embark on Stage two, Back to Beginnings (Irwin 1990a), which deepens the work with a specific structure of autobiographical writing. This writing, along with ongoing relaxation, massage, and artwork, creates more and more openness and depth


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within the group. Over time, participants access repressed, blocked, and split-off experiences and their accompanying feelings. Gradually they are able to express, understand, accept, and integrate these previously unresolved past feelings and events, thus discovering the potential buried within each one. As the process unfolds, understanding and compassion arise hand in hand. Although Back to Beginnings consists of four core components – relaxation, autobiographical writing, art making, and massage – it is not a linear process. Any of the components can be used at any time, though it is found useful to practice relaxation before artwork and before writing (Irwin 1990a).

Relaxation The practice of relaxation creates a space for participants to let go, to simply be. After a short breathing exercise or two (usually done sitting or lying down), participants generally lie down for a relaxation period lasting between one-half and three-quarters of an hour. Within this time, the mind can move in whatever way is needed for letting go, for recreation of a spacious and balanced state free from tension. The theme of the exercise forms an anchor to return to again and again as we discover how the mind wanders. In addition, the relaxation opens us to ourselves; whether through talking, writing, playing, or artwork, expression becomes more available. During Back to Beginnings, only eight exercises are used and each is practiced repeatedly before the introduction of the next, so that the exercises become internalized and familiar to practitioners.

Autobiographical writing There are three phases of the autobiographical writing, which starts by going back from the present to infancy. Next, the writing moves through the life as it has been lived, from infancy to the present, following specific exercises that involve reflection on the written material to aid integration and understanding. Finally, as the work deepens and unconscious feeling memories gradually become more accessible, the life is reviewed, mainly through the use of art materials, working back from the present to infancy again. This writing is entirely private and is not seen by therapists or others unless the writer so wishes.

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Art materials Work with art materials is a major aspect of Back to Beginnings. Large, medium, and small scale work, related and not consciously related to the writing, with given themes and without them, continues throughout the two-to-three-year process. Paint and colored drawing materials are mainly used as well as modeling clay; however the range of media can be as broad, in two and three dimensions, as the groups and individuals wish. As in traditional art therapy in Britain, participants are encouraged to play with art materials freely with no concern for technique. The art-making process is seen for the value in itself. As in other art therapy groups, nobody is expected to talk about the work at all if they do not wish to. Reflecting on the process and on the resulting artwork can occur but does not take precedence over the art making and may not always be necessary. It is perhaps the combination of playful creative time with relaxation and focused writing that brings a different feel to the Tara Rokpa experience. Group members often talk about their understanding of their art in relation (or not) to the whole of their Back to Beginnings work. Out of the artwork can arise recognitions that shed light on, for example, the writing or feelings arising from it. If a person feels blocked in writing, using art materials can be a way to free up the process. The expressive nature of art therapy and its spontaneous evolution are part of the flow of development.

Elements study Five months out of the two to three years spent with Back to Beginnings are given to working with the external elements. This is both a contemplative and practical playful exploration of the qualities and interactions of the elements: earth, water, fire, air and space. Their effects on and within us are noticed physically and emotionally, as are their effects on each other in the world around us. We become aware that our basic composition shares the same elements as all phenomena. This can remind us of how external elements can help to restore balance when the inner elements lose their harmony. Our sense of being part of a whole and echoing the patterns of the whole highlights the responsibility we carry for the health of the planet and ourselves. In the Elements exercise with earth and water (Figure 10.1), group members each build a clay container of some kind, then connect their containers in such a way that water can flow from the top through each of them. The containers change shape and dissolve under the influence of the running water. In watching this, our need for flexibility and adaptation in order to give and receive


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from each other is visibly demonstrated. Eventually the ongoing action of water on earth/clay reminds us too of impermanence and the way in which water can change the shapes of the earth, even the hardest rocks. The exploration of the external elements gives many opportunities for inventiveness, group interaction, and a re-experience of that love affair with the world which we may not have been lucky enough to live when we were small children. Reflecting on nature, its seasons, its rhythms of birth, life and impermanence, with particular attention to the elements and their interactive behavior, opens our awareness to similar patterns within ourselves. We reclaim our relationship with the phenomenal world.

Figure 10.1 Elements: Earth and Water

The Elements work forms an outgoing part of Back to Beginnings. It deepens friendships and connections within the group and allows for the broadest expansion of exploration through a wide range of art, play, and many activities. These are chosen by the group, who may spend days in the countryside in places selected for their dominant elemental features, where climbing, swimming, sailing, barbecues, gliding, kite-making and flying, and blowing of wind instruments could be a few of the many options. Recognizing the importance of this

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phase of Tara Rokpa therapy, some groups may decide to create a group book or video of their Elements experience (Irwin 1990b).

Genogram and family work Another part of the Back to Beginnings process focuses on understanding the various given influences of our lives: the circumstances of the world and native country at birth and during childhood; the influence of former generations of the family; expectations existing before we were born; the influence upon our development of our family of origin or the family in which we grew up; how our expectations of ourselves and of life were formed. These factors, which may have affected our development (physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual) positively or negatively, are examined through the drawing of a genogram and through various art and writing exercises connected with it. For example, group members use clay to create shapes that represent their family members at some chosen stage of their family of origin experience. These clay shapes are placed in relationship to one another and reflected upon, perhaps with another group member and/or with the therapist. The shapes can be moved around to ‘play’ with the expression of close, distant, anxiously attached, rejected, etc. relationships. Next, art materials may help participants envision more satisfactory, wished for, relationship situations. Exploring ‘How I remember it,’ ‘How I felt,’ and ‘How it could have been’ leads to some acceptance and repair within the participant. Because some very strong and painful feelings may be accessed in this family work, before the relief of repairing the wounding experiences is felt, this work is first done at workshops with the Tara Rokpa therapists and is not done alone during the self-led group meetings until some awareness of the feelings from the family situation has come into focus. It will be readily understood what a vital influence and impact the family of origin has upon our view and experience of ourselves and the world. Many factors that influence our development are outside our control. For example, to be born into a country at peace or one at war will convey very different messages regarding stability and values. When we look, by means of the genogram, into how we started, we can see that even before birth we are a part of many patterns. The recognition of the arbitrariness of our beginnings can help us to feel more compassion for ourselves and for those who looked after us; they too were affected by circumstances beyond their control. Thus genogram work offers


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opportunities for gaining understanding and for appreciating from another view how limited our parents’ and our own choices may have been.

Self-box An exploration of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘How do I relate within and without?’ takes place through an art therapy within the Back to Beginnings exercise called the self-box. A box, or boxes, form the basis of this playful research that can reveal oneself to oneself in many-faceted ways. Karin’s self-box (Figures 10.2a and 10.2b) reveals several themes.

Karin’s self-box The expanse of the painting could be folded into the box and therefore become hidden and internal, just as it could be unfolded, opened out, and responded to by the outer world, as in the illustration. Karin Heinemann described it thus in 1994: There is a box labeled ‘meat pot,’ my body I received from my parents. In this container are the symbols for the elements I got from father and mother. My potential is like the open space of the paper. I experience my energy only through the communication with others, the partners, here symbolized by eight mirrors reflecting each other forming a circle. Communication takes place physically, verbally, and mentally, symbolized by the white, red, and blue note. All appearances are clear, supported by the elements. The pure essence of these elements is the sphere in the center, the functions of the elements are the colored sections. My ‘self ’ is the awareness of all this.

The self-box may be developed in an infinite variety of ways and it may have interior and exterior levels. Access to what is inner may be through open or closeable openings of various shapes. The contents may be in hard–soft or dark–light relationships with each other and male–female as in the illustration. There may be play with solid and transparent surfaces, as well as access or blockage between the different areas of the internal space. The self-box is a reflection of oneself, and many transformations of shape, space, color and orientation may take place during the development of the work. Often, individuals are invited to talk or write in the first person about their self-box, thus inviting a profound level of mirroring (e.g. ‘I am a round/square/flattened/ irregular box

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Figure 10.2a Self-Box by Karin Heinemann

Figure 10.2b Self-Box by Karin Heinemann


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with views on the world from few/many/low/high levels and a large/small/stable/inadequate base giving me support…’ etc.).

Tara Rokpa group work When working with a group where relaxation has been practiced before the artwork begins, there is already a state of openness and some kind of confidence. Whether a theme is given or not the artwork arises out of the being and feeling of those involved, without planning and discussion. When such work as Plates 19, 20 and 21 (in section) arise out of the group inspiration and response to the situation, we can have no doubt that we have greater resources for relationship and coordination than we are normally aware of. Through working with art materials it looks as if we may potentially always go beyond who we are and what we know without asking ourselves individually or as a group whether it is possible to do this. In Tara Rokpa workshops, those who have never met before and who may be as many as 30 in number, are able to work in groups of between 10 and 14 people sharing a limited paper space. They respond with what they have perhaps been unaware of in themselves to create a vision that comes out of playing with art materials together. In the process of this work, feelings and old patterns of anxiety and relationship may arise, yet the art materials and relaxed state of mind consistently allow for something beyond the habitual as well. It looks as though the wish to defend oneself can give way often enough to a creative freedom, which tends to surprise those involved, many of whom may not have used art materials for many years. If this happened rarely it could seem unreliable, but this capacity to create a shared vision, to occupy space while respecting that of others, has been common in my experience of new groups everywhere. When a group has evolved over time, there can arise more complicated dynamics in the group process. Projections across the group give rise to defenses, identification, misunderstandings, and, at times, strong negative feelings. The relaxation has an important part to play here in repeatedly creating more spaciousness of mind and feeling within each group member and more space in the whole group situation. Insight may arise during group relaxation and artwork regarding the experience of the past, e.g. unresolved family group situations and resulting feelings that intrude and are transferred into the present group situation. Artwork may be followed by discussion, leading to an understanding of the

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projections in the group. Sometimes the negative feelings may dissolve through recognizing projections and old reaction patterns without the need for talking through. In Back to Beginnings, work with the Mirror exercise from Taming the Tiger (Rinpoché 1990) helps in working through what can feel like a dense jungle of projection and confusion. (It would not be appropriate to explain the Mirror here as it should be practiced in the context of starting at the beginning of the work and gradually working towards this stage over a year or more.)

Conclusion of the process Back to Beginnings ends with a five-to-eight-day retreat and symbolic birthing experience. Opening more and more to oneself, one’s feelings, one’s life, and the gradual integration of this material during the two-to-three year process naturally leads group members to discover creatively a new beginning, to realize a new relationship with self and others.

Figure 10.3 Very Early Life

Very Early Life (Figure 10.3) was created by two people sharing one piece of paper in a Back to Beginnings group. Even though the artists’ autobiographical writings were at different stages and no theme was given for this work, their


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painting concerns itself with conception and the early life in the womb. Time and again the artwork leads group members to investigate the very beginnings of existence. Although the thinking mind may be involved with remembering and writing the recent past, it looks as though the unconscious understands at once where the participant is going and is able to leap instantly to that place. Very Early Life (Figure 10.3) shows clearly the fetal form in the womb. Painting with a partner may echo in a symbolic way the bringing into existence of a third being. New beginnings, births, insights, and realizations occur all the way through the Back to Beginnings process and the conception and fetal images may refer, on many levels, to what is new coming into being, being held and nourished. During the retreat, the investigation of conception, time in the womb, and birth are the focus of conscious attention. The tools of relaxation – massage and art therapy – continue to help participants let go of their present, everyday concerns and deepen into their own process, memory, and experience. Here our capacity to make connections in this lifetime is explored. This is our capacity to relate, the very first relationship being that with the mother without which we cannot even begin our womb life. Things fall into place as we realize connections, which lead to appropriate unconditioned responses. Habits of relationship that were seen already in the writing, as well as those not yet seen, can emerge at this time in two and three dimensional imagery. During and following the retreat it looks as if in the artwork, and within the participant, there is a freeing of the personality and inner and outer connectedness in most open and lively ways. This shift in the balance of one’s being develops and stabilizes over the ensuing months and years.

Summary of Tara Rokpa therapy Tara Rokpa therapy is highly experiential with the emphasis on deeply felt insight rather than intellectual models. It focuses on all aspects of the experience of the practitioner. Through the practice of the components of the method, potential to grow and to realize one’s inner resources spontaneously emerges in everyday life. By becoming aware of ways in which patterns have developed and repeated throughout our lives and noticing the ‘limitations of mind which some of these patterns tend to impose upon us,’ (Sweeney 1996) we may be able to let go of them and to mature, with confidence that this life experience can grow in value and scope. To know and see the patterns is not enough; the combined components of Back to Beginnings allow them to be felt, to dissolve, and to transform. Back to Beginnings is an evolving process in which enjoying oneself

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increasingly is a feature and being able to stay in touch with and express feelings appropriately becomes possible. Artwork plays a large part in the process. Of course, I make no claims that the kind of imagery discussed here can only occur in the context of Tara Rokpa. These archetypal human themes emerge again and again in various contexts of art therapy work. Yet the Back to Beginnings structure, its many-stranded nature, and its conscious intention to return literally to our origins with a detailed review of the whole of life inevitably leads to such imagery; it is the leap to the earliest point immediately in the early artwork that may be surprising. I have seen that following a structured method like Back to Beginnings, working as part of a group allows a safe passage through the journey into which inner necessity impels us. I see the struggles and breakthroughs of individuals in Back to Beginnings and recognize their need for a holding structure and for guidance. Each of us finds the way we can use. It seems that to be in danger and at risk, but unconscious of it at the time, was to be a part of my path before Back to Beginnings had taken form.

Art therapy: process and contexts Art therapy can offer a journey similar to Tara Rokpa therapy. It too gives access to the rhythm of inner necessity – chaos – inner balance and can give a place for the safe experience of chaos. Most people seeking help, whether in Tara Rokpa therapy or art therapy, are driven by inner necessity. Behind feelings of inability to cope with the chaos of life in the present – or feelings of meaninglessness or emptiness – are the causes, the emotional and psychological imbalances, which seem mirrored in outer experience. Inner necessity may drive any of us to engage with that chaos in pursuit of a new inner balance. Like Tara Rokpa work, my art therapy work in child and family psychiatry has shown me images relating to the early themes of the self-yet-to-be-born, the disintegrated self, the struggle to survive, the underground voyage, and the birth into new ways of being. These are some of the dwelling places of art therapists in accompanying clients on their journeys to wholeness. Children particularly seem to bring into their art therapy an immediate understanding of what they need to do; to which places within themselves, or in the past, they need to return in order to repair, rediscover, or build for the first time the development that has been inadequate or missed. This is entirely trustworthy in my experience.


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Art therapy and relaxation Tara Rokpa therapy stresses the importance of relaxation and suggests its use as a precursor to creative involvement as well as these exercises being practiced for their own value (see Rinpoché 1990). For example, gradually using simple Tara Rokpa relaxation exercises in work with individual children creates more openness and freedom in expression, both in artwork and verbally. At the start of the session 15–20 minutes lying down on a mattress and covered by a blanket, with a focus of simply being in the art room space and noticing the breathing, allows the artwork to originate from a different place within the child than seems the case without relaxation. For a patient with asthma and others with physical expressions of tension, this slowing down and letting be brings relief, literally a breathing space, where nothing is expected of the child, nothing has to be produced or brought into being or form. Simply ‘to be’ is enough. The lack of defensiveness that clients and patients bring to work with art materials after a period of relaxation has led me to use it with all client groups – in child and family psychiatry, acute and chronic adult psychiatry, old age psychiatry, and in work with those who have learning and physical difficulties. The following discussion of session work in various contexts looks at the felt experience and significance of relaxation preceding art therapy.

Adolescent group work In working with adolescent art therapy groups, the tense, anxious resistance and tendency to regression that accompanied our group meetings was considerably relieved by starting with relaxation. During a two-hour group session with up to eight participants, half an hour at the start would be spent in relaxation, without saying more than a general ‘hello’ and acknowledging the presence of us all. Then, as described above, the group lay down in a quiet place. During the relaxation period, members of the group are asked to flow with the exercises and voice of the therapist however they can. The presence of the therapist and the sound of his or her voice provide a feeling of safety, of steady holding for the group members. The experience of the relaxation varies from person to person, but it is characterized by more or less awareness of the exercise from moment to moment and by a feeling of floating in and out of different levels of consciousness. On coming back to the everyday state of mind, the participants may be quite unable to think about what was happening or they may recall to some extent drifting between being aware of the exercises and losing

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awareness; some participants even go to sleep for periods of time. Nobody is asked to talk about their experience (although they sometimes like to), yet group members appear demonstrably more open and at ease in body, speech, and mind as a result of the relaxation period. When the group is familiar with the exercises, each person is given an audio tape to use at home should they want to do so. Occasionally a group member has asked for the book Taming the Tiger (Rinpoché 1990) for their parents, who have reported a noticeable difference in some of the group members in their home life and in ways of relating in the family. With adolescents, I notice that the relaxation gives an opportunity for regression in an acceptable way, as opposed to earlier regression through acting-out behavior. During relaxation, teenagers sometimes curl up in a fetal position; often they cover themselves totally with a blanket. Transitional behavior from early development, like hair pulling or stroking of the face in self-comforting repetition, may take place, and silent thumb sucking can be a feature of the relaxation at times. The emphasis is on settling into a comfortable position in which the body feels balanced. The difficulty some teenagers encounter initially, describes their discomfort with their growing bodies. By the third session, there is already more self-acceptance among individuals and more ease within the group, not only in the relaxation period but also throughout the whole session. Group members occasionally sit up after the relaxation and spontaneously open up a conversation regarding things that are really important to them. Later, similar conversations arise in relating to work with the art materials. Competitive and self-denigrating banter and provocation of each other rarely arise in the group after the relaxation. Likewise, there is a change in the value given to the work with the art materials. Without the relaxation practice, there can be a tendency to devalue and to rubbish their own artwork as well as that of others and, at times, even enviously to attack another person’s work. With the relaxation practice, this behavior occurs less frequently and is often replaced by genuine interest in what has been made and how. The problems of lack of self-esteem and relationship difficulties, which can bring adolescents and adults into therapy, seem to heal gradually with the frequent practice of relaxation followed by art therapy.

A family In working with a family suffering the sudden loss of the father, the whole family (mother and three children – 9, 5, and 2 years old) would do the relaxation together. Through this, spontaneous memories of life with the father


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when he was alive became available to share with me and each other. The 2-year-old, Tom, best remembered the tactile sensations of being held and carried. He spoke with longing of such experiences: ‘Daddy picked me up and I could stroke his hairy arms.’ ‘Daddy carried me upstairs to bed and it was lovely going up the stairs. We always stopped on the corner at the top to look at the picture on the wall.’ Because of this sharing, as well as art therapy, precious memories came fully into consciousness to become a personal, but also a collective, reality that helped the family to feel its loss, to experience the stages of grieving, and to be held through them in our work together.

Working with older clients With adult and elderly groups it is not always possible for the participants to lie down, but relaxation can still usefully be done sitting. Anxiety levels drop and group members talk with each other more easily. They become more able to say how they feel and share their fears and practical problems, which are often experienced and acknowledged by other group members. In this way, group members develop a feeling of mutual support. This can mean that it becomes easier to cry in the group. Because of the openness that results from the group relaxation exercises, the therapist’s task of psychological holding is very important, as is the task of preventing domination of the group by one or two members at the expense of others not being heard. Getting involved with the art materials tends to balance out this situation.

Gus In the day hospital (all patients return home from 4 p.m. until 9 a.m. and on weekends) for patients over 65, a 90-year-old man, Gus, participated in a group of up to 12 patients. Gus had poor vision, walked only with difficulty, and sometimes needed a wheelchair. His wife was able to take care of him at home, although he suffered terrible nightmares and day visions, which made him desperately afraid, depressed, and unable to sleep. He was given medication, as were most of the group with whom I worked. Once the group got to know me and to accept the use of the art materials, we would start the one-and-a-half-hour sessions with 20 minutes of relaxation, settling down, breathing, and noticing physical sensations. Sometimes we used visualizations of colored light in specific exercises from Taming the Tiger (Rinpoché 1990) to help deal with emotional feelings. Then they used the art materials.

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Gradually, Gus was able to trust the situation enough to put on paper his terrible memories of fighting in the trenches in France in World War I (Plate 22 in center section), and later of being an air raid warden in World War II in London (Plate 24 in center section). Despite his poor eyesight and struggles with arthritis in his hands, he managed to create detailed images of the bombs and grenades that were used (Plate 23 in center section) and, worst of all, of the experience of gas in the trenches in the 1914–1918 War. Gus had been given the job of setting off the gas. This tortured him more than anything. He talked of, and drew, his sorrow for the birds and animals killed by the gas. He mourned and grieved for these innocent victims as much as for soldiers. He expressed in drawing, paint, and pastel terrifying memories that haunted him night and day. He made a pastel image (Plate 22) of the experience of trench warfare which, in its felt truth, was a piece of work beyond therapy, a piece that stands on its own as a work of art. Gus, who at the start had protested at his inability to use art materials, gradually worked at the deepest levels, externalizing and expressing the tormenting memories and images. He became calmer, more able to sleep, and used the relaxation exercises at home as well as in the sessions. He looked forward to his weekly art therapy session. Eventually he was able to give attention to the present. Gus was one of a group who, over nine weeks, gave birth to a three-dimensional collaboration in which each participant constructed a house made of card and paper to stand on a shared board ground. The group developed this ground by painting and building into it the features of a community – a playground, a park and river, shops, a pub, a school, etc. ‘We must have children in it too,’ they said. The care and love and sense of fun with which they created this peaceful community for the present, their symbolic dwelling place, was recognized and respected by all the day hospital staff. This work of creative affirmation took pride of place on a table in the day room for several weeks.

A year later, after the end of my contract with the day hospital, I was told Gus was very ill. I went to see him at the general hospital and met his wife. She told me how much the relaxation and art therapy group had helped him, how he had been able to let go of so much of his painful, traumatic wartime past, including his self-blame for the killing of wartime. Gus died peacefully at the age of 92. It seemed to me he had had an inner necessity to lay his ghosts to rest, to forgive himself and others for the atrocities he had witnessed and unwillingly been a part of. In doing this creatively, he had also rediscovered his capacity for visual expression and meaningful relationship with others in the present. I remember Gus with the greatest affection and respect; he went into, and painted his way


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out of, his worst nightmares and shared with us his tragic experience of two world wars. This was an ongoing and courageous commitment to his humanity.

The art therapy space Art therapy, whether done in the context of Tara Rokpa or in the psychiatric settings discussed above, relies upon the creation of a safe environment for inner exploration. This ‘art therapy space’ encompasses both the actual room (with its available materials and equipment) in which art therapy takes place and the physical and emotional safety created by the therapist within that room. The art therapy space meets the need for the expression of chaos, confusion, and fragmentation that is part of providing the ground for the journey of re-creation toward wholeness, the discovery of coherence, differentiation, and a new inner balance. Put differently, art therapy encourages two-way oscillation between experiences of chaos and integration. In the early 1970s, the British pediatrician, analyst, and theoretician D.W. Winnicott coined the phrase ‘transitional space’ to describe the experiential space within which therapy takes place and which requires those concerned to have developed the capacity to play. In his book Playing and Reality (1980) he writes: Psychotherapy [in which I include art therapy] has to do with two people playing together. The corollary of this is that where playing is not possible then the work done by the therapist is directed towards bringing the patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able to play. (Winnicott 1980, p.44)

Winnicott understood the necessity for human beings to inhabit a play area which is neither identified with the inner world nor with the external measurable reality of the outer world. He saw in this third area its deep significance as the basis of art, culture and spiritual growth. In relaxation and art making, we thoughtlessly become absorbed into this transitional, or potential, space, this creative space between ‘me’ and what is external to ‘me.’ This third area has room for inspiration, belief, faith, and transformation. Here creativity and therapy occur. In art therapy, the transitional space is shared by the therapist, the person or group in therapy, and the creation of and actuality of the artwork itself.

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It is relevant that Winnicott outlines the sequence of activity within this transitional space as: (a) relaxation in conditions of trust based on experience; (b) creative physical and mental activity manifested in play; and (c) the summation of these experiences forming the basis for a sense of self. (Winnicott, 1980)

This sequence relates to the processes that I have been describing in the Tara Rokpa, relaxation and art therapy vignettes shared here. The reflecting back that is offered by a therapist or partner in a group is necessary, Winnicott states, for ‘the individual to come together and exist as a unit, not as a defense against anxiety, but as an expression of I am, I am alive, I am myself. From this position everything is creative’ (Winnicott 1980 (first published 1965)). There is need for a state that Winnicott calls ‘non-purposive’ that allows for a coming undone, permitting thoughts and feelings to come and go without attempting to find logic or connections in them, without analysis. Relaxation offers us just that, a place from which the relaxed body and mind can naturally play its way into re-integration through the art materials. Winnicott’s theories regarding transitional phenomena arose from his understanding of creative development starting in the early months of life when something seen from outside as ordinary, e.g. a blanket or toy, becomes transformed into what is subjectively felt as a highest value. In art therapy, the art activity and results of it tend to hold the investment and character of this first creation of babyhood, which Winnicott named the transitional object. It is easy to see why Back to Beginnings work can eventually put its practitioners into contact with their authentic selves as its processes echo the sequence which Winnicott summarizes. Space is available and held for experience to come undone and to fall into place in hitherto unthinkable ways. In both art therapy and Tara Rokpa therapy art is not simply included within the therapy space, it is the therapy space.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have explored the theme inner necessity – chaos – inner balance with examples from my own experience, from the ideas of Marc and Kandinsky, from Tara Rokpa’s Back to Beginnings, and from several contexts in which art therapy has helped those journeying into unknown places to find their inner resources. Whatever means facilitate this journey are of value, and relaxation


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seems to be the key to which we can return again and again to open up the sequence of development defined by Winnicott and confirmed by experience. Before the Blaue Reiter was formed, artists Kandinsky and Jawlensky wrote: Our point of departure is the belief that the artist, apart from those impressions which he receives from the world of external appearances, continually accumulates experiences within his own inner world. We seek artistic forms that express the reciprocal permeation of all these experiences… (Zweite with Hoberg 1989, p.25)

This statement seems to describe what happens in art therapeutic work with individuals and groups, although the arising of ‘artistic forms’ is more likely to be seen and experienced in art therapy as the spontaneous, playful coming into being of them without any ‘seeking’ out or conscious intention. The contexts in which the work is done as artist or in art therapy are different. In art therapy the motivation to express through use of art materials arises from the inner necessity to grow within the experience of the therapeutic relationship and situation rather than within the context of the identity of ‘artists’ developing their means of expression as a ‘movement’ in the development of art itself. However, the human motivation of inner necessity is a state of mind and being, whether in the field of art and artists or in the personal development of untrained people exploring their worlds through art therapy. Art therapy is a language of the heart and soul. When heart and soul fall silent, we forget our ‘beingness.’ Those of us who experience the art therapy process encounter imagery that becomes numinous for us, telling of spiritual truth somehow both in us and beyond us, one also beyond words. Perhaps, in essence, art therapy and all creativity belong to what poet Mervyn Peake (1972) calls ‘the vastest things we may not learn.’ The vastest things are those we may not learn. We are not taught to die, nor to be born, Nor how to burn With love How pitiful is our enforced return To those small things we are the masters of. (Mervyn Peake 1972, p.40)

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Explanatory note The six stages of Tara Rokpa therapy Each stage of the therapy can be seen as complete in itself. Stage one, Beginning to Relax, introduces the approach through relaxation, self-massage, and simple movement awareness exercises. This leads to an exchange of massage with a partner in which the emphasis is on open mind and giving and receiving for the benefit of the partner. Clothes are worn and communication through touch with mutual respect is developed. Some work with art materials begins. This stage may be complete in itself or seen as a preparation for Stage two, Back to Beginnings, which is described in detail in this chapter. Here the autobiographical work uses the same approaches as Beginning to Relax but deepens into a therapy commitment to work with one’s whole life experience. Back to Beginnings is described by Dr Akong Rinpoché as ‘the diagnosis’ and Taming the Tiger as ‘the treatment’! The autobiographical writing process is completed in the Back to Beginnings stage. In Stage three, Taming the Tiger, the emphasis is on extending the development of compassion as broadly as possible through practice of the exercises and study of the text. Massage and art therapy make space for expression and integration of the experience. Stage four, The Six Lights, and Stage five, The Six Realms, offer visualization and contemplation exercises that deeply explore the negative emotions, with remedies which bring understanding and transformation of them. Stage six, Mind Training and the Development of Compassion, emphasizes the basic purity and perfection within and the value of the exchange with others – taking suffering and giving positive feelings. Throughout this stage, there is a broadening of appreciation of the limitlessness of compassion and understanding.

Creative Explorations Here is a simple, 15-minute breathing exercise that helps body and mind to let go and relax. This can be done in front of a window at the office where you can see some space before you, in the park or garden, or sitting or lying down indoors.


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Breathing exercise Become aware of the space around you. Be aware of physical sensations in a general way for up to four minutes. As you become aware of the movements of your breathing, allow another minute to focus on these sensations, not forcing the mind but keeping a floating attention. Then breathe out fully through your mouth, and take a deep in-breath counting to four or five or six. Hold your breath counting to the same number, then breathe out a long exhalation fully and completely through your mouth. Feel with the outbreath that you can let go of all pain, tensions, and anxiety. Repeat this four more times. Then rest breathing normally for two or three minutes. If you wish, repeat the five counting breaths one more time, relaxing back to your normal breathing rhythm afterwards and fully stretching the whole body before resuming your activities.

Elements exercise Try the exercise described under ‘Elements study’ with a few of your friends. You need only modeling clay and water, and some rocks to build up your shared structure of individually made containers. These containers will need to be adapted to receive water from those positioned above and to allow water to flow on into those below. Your shared clay sculpture can be of any size and shape, as can the individual containers. If you wish, follow this exercise by creating a group painting on shared paper or perhaps a group poem. Most importantly, have a good time!

Acknowledgments Thanks are due to the following: Permissions Departments, Thames and Hudson, London, and Ariane Heuer, Permissions Department, Prestel-Verlag, Munich, for permission to quote from The Blue Rider in the Lenbachhaus (Munich 1989 Catalogue). See References for details. Thanks are also due to David Higham Associates for permission to print the poem by Mervyn Peake (1972) ‘The vastest things are those we may not learn,’ from Selected Poems, Faber and Faber, and to Permissions Department, Mark Paterson and Associates, Authors’ and Publishers’ Literary Agents, Wivenhoe, Essex, and Random House Archive and Library, London, for permission to quote from D.W. Winnicott’s Playing and Reality (1980) and Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (1965) quoted by Winnicott in Playing and Reality.

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I also want to thank Dr Akong Rinpoché for showing me the way to make all experience useful; Mimi Farrelly-Hansen for her constant encouragement and infinite patience; Edie Irwin and Brion Sweeney for reading the typescript, and Mary Nichols, David Warral, and Pam Breckenridge for mastering my writing and the computer world. Thanks and appreciation go to all those with whom I have worked in Tara Rokpa and art therapy and relaxation groups, especially all those who have generously allowed their art therapy work to appear in this chapter.

References Irwin, E. (1990a) Back to Beginnings. Edinburgh: Tara Rokpa. Irwin, E. (1990b) Working with the Elements. Edinburgh: Tara Rokpa. Irwin, E. (1999) Healing Relaxation. London: Rider. Peake, M. (1972) ‘The vastest things are those we may not learn.’ In Selected Poems. London: Faber & Faber. Rinpoché, A.T. (1990) Taming the Tiger. London: Rider. Sweeney, B. (1996) Parts from an Explanation regarding Tara Rokpa Therapy. Tobien, F. (1987) Franz Marc. Germany/UK: Berghaus Verlag: Artline Editions. Winnicott, D.W. (1965) Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Winnicott, D.W. (1980) Playing and Reality. London: Penguin. Zweite, A. (ed) with Hoberg, A. (1989) The Blue Rider in the Lenbachhaus. Trans. by J. Ormrod. Munich: Prestel-Verlag.

Afterword Mimi Farrelly-Hansen

I am a visual artist. When the canvas or print is complete, I think about framing. I am also an art therapist and a licensed professional counselor. I help others relate to their inner lives through simple media. In effect, all through our time together I offer them a series of frames, ways to contain their experience through paper of differing sizes and weights, various types of clay, drawing materials, paint, boxes of collage possibilities from magazines to dried weeds to reusable junk. In the case of my own paintings, the final frame is made of wood, metal, plastic, with perhaps one or two mats or liners…whatever the image requires. In the case of my clients, whose art making is often more spontaneous, less elaborated, than my own, framing completed work could mean anything from a traditional wooden rectangle to a decorated cardboard box or colored paper border. Words and dialogue also help frame my clients’ work. Choosing a title is another aspect of framing. The book you have just read has a particular frame as well: the spiritual in art therapy. This frame is a composite, made up of many layers – some ancient, some modern. Each contributor represents a particular spiritual tradition or blend of traditions; each works with different populations in different ways. Yet within this diversity, certain common elements emerge. Words like present centeredness, connection, mystery, meaning, Spirit (or some other name for divinity), practice, surrender, containing opposites, balance, gratitude, transformation, community, nature, and wholeness appear and reappear throughout the many stories and theoretical discussions put forth by each author. Many of us recognize these terms as guidelines for achieving happiness and fulfillment in our everyday lives. Interestingly enough, more than half of them also appear as dimensions of spiritual wellness in the professional counseling literature. In 1998 Naropa University convened a conference called ‘Through a Larger Lens: Transpersonal Approaches to Art Therapy.’ I hope that this book has provided just that, a larger lens for viewing the healing possibilities when art making and a spiritual perspective are combined. 253

Appendix: Factual information about the profession of art therapy Becky Olivera, Robin Toler, and Claudia Trevithick Louisiana Art Therapy Association

Definition of art therapy Art therapy is a human service profession that offers opportunities for individuals to explore personal problems and potentials through non-verbal expressions. Art therapy is a unique combination of the fields of art, psychology and therapy. Art therapists are employed in medical and psychiatric hospitals, educational facilities, correctional institutions, rehabilitation hospitals, mental health settings and in private practice.

Training and credentials requirements The American Art Therapy Association (AATA) recommends a master’s degree in art therapy to enter the field. The educational requirements for a master’s level training program in art therapy focus on the following: studio art, psychology, art therapy history, theory and applications, assessments of patients and diagnostic categories, client populations, cultural diversity, ethics and legal issues, therapeutic and clinical methods, psychopathology, research, counseling theory and practice, and the creative process. Students in a master’s program must undergo at least 600 hours of supervised art therapy practice. The following are required to apply for art therapy registration (ATR, Registered Art Therapist): master’s degree in art therapy; 1000 hours of paid work experience supervised by a professional member (ATR). The Art Therapy Credentials Board offers professional members a board certification examination. Once certified, the credentials are ATR-BC.

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ATR-BCs are required to maintain 100 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) every five years.

Benefits of art therapy 1.

It provides diagnostic and evaluative data as well as guidelines for appropriate therapeutic interventions.

2.

It provides access to the emotions and provides a safe emotional outlet.

3.

Both the symbols and their placement in an art form or spatial relationships reveal diagnostic data.

4.

It provides an ongoing record and can document the process of therapy.

5.

The art products are useful during termination, providing a concrete review of the course of treatment.

6.

Conflicts may be quickly exposed because the process of art making is not subject to conventional defenses often used by the client in verbal therapy.

7.

It can foster integration through giving form to personal imagery and experience, elevating these to the realm of cognition and insight. Art creates metaphorical access to inner experiences.

8.

Stages of psychosocial and cognitive development, and any advances and regressions can be followed through art products and processes.

9.

It is conducive to catharsis and to sublimation.

10. Engaging in the creative process promotes an active and responsible role in therapy. 11. It is adaptable to people of all ages and ranges of adjustment. 12. It can be used for supportive work, building on strengths or in-depth intrapsychic work. 13. It can be used as primary or adjunctive therapy with individuals, groups, families, or couples. 14. It provides access to internal creative resources for growth and healing.

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15. It can reinforce the sense of self, increase self-awareness, and promote feelings of accomplishment. 16. It can promote psychosocial developmental transitions.

Skills and resources of the art therapist The art therapist is able to integrate image, media, creative process and personal dynamics utilizing the following: 1.

Proficiency in a broad range of art media and processes.

2.

Knowledge of properties of art media and the range of responses these can elicit in treatment.

3.

In addition to a foundation in psychotherapeutic principals and methods, the art therapist knows art therapy theory, methods and philosophy.

4.

Performs art therapy assessments.

5.

Evaluates art process and product to determine functional abilities and needs, and to track the course of treatment.

6.

Designs and adapts interventions using art media and the creative process.

7.

Assists clients in understanding their own creative process and in applying this knowledge for continued growth and development.

8.

Incorporates and refers to community resources for the arts.

9.

Follows AATA’s Standards of Practice and Code of Ethics.

10. Has access to art therapy references, resources and consultation.

Recommendations for other disciplines using art 1.

Consider the possible hazards of all materials and equipment being used.

2.

Too much concern with keeping everything neat can inhibit the creative process. Use a work area that can get messy and is not difficult to clean.

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3.

Be familiar and comfortable with the media and processes you are using. Various art media produce wide ranges of emotional expression and controls. Since art can trigger intense emotional responses, it is important to assess for potential risk factors and be prepared for the possible outcomes.

4.

Consider yourself an ally in the client’s creative process. Encourage the individual to do what he or she can and lend support as needed. Encourage individual expression. Avoid imposing your aesthetic values. Treat the artwork with respect; handle it carefully and consider it an extension of the client. Remember to treat it as confidential information.

5.

Observe for any change in affect or behavior.

6.

Acknowledge self-critical or self-conscious reactions to the artwork. Many people have not used art since childhood. Emphasize the value of the process over the product.

7.

Use art as a visual aid, as a catalyst for other work, as a leisure skill or in a supportive manner, building on strengths.

8.

Ask open-ended questions. Ask the client for his or her impressions and avoid analyzing.

Consultation or referral to an art therapist 1.

If your client’s artwork is disturbing to you or if you have questions on how to respond to it.

2.

If your client is emotionally blocked.

3.

If your client overintellectualizes.

4.

If your client expresses himself or herself more easily through visual images.

5.

If your client experiences intense affect during or after an art process.

6.

If your client has pre-verbal trauma.

7.

If your client has unresolved trauma, or grief, or has difficulty making a developmental transition.

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8.

If you would like more information from a professional who has specialized in art therapy.

For More Information Contact: American Art Therapy Association 1202 Allanson Road Mundelein, IL 60060 Tel: 1-888-290-0878 (toll free) Fax: 847-566-4580 Email: [email protected] Web page: http://www.arttherapy.org Art Therapy Credentials Board PO Box 30428 Charlotte, NC 28230 Tel: 1-877-213-2822 (toll free)

The Contributors Cam Busch is an artist, photographer, art therapist, and advanced practice nurse in private practice in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Among other sites, Cam’s photography has been exhibited at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, DC, at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, Georgia, and in Voronezh, Russia. Currently she serves as board member for the American Art Therapy Association, the Association for Visual Artists and the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, and travels the US as a national arts in healthcare consultant. Mimi Farrelly-Hansen, artist, art therapist and licensed professional counselor, is founder and current adjunct faculty member of the Art Therapy and Transpersonal Counseling Psychology program at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Over the last twenty years she has provided art therapy services for sexually abused clients (children, adults and couples), transracially adopted children, and participants in spiritual growth retreats and workshops. Michael Franklin is coordinator of the graduate art therapy program at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. For the past 19 years he has both practiced and taught art therapy in various academic and clinical settings. He has lectured nationally and internationally on such topics as aesthetics, self-esteem, AIDS iconography, interpretive strategies and multiculturalism. Suzanne Lovell is director of the art therapy program, masters in psychology/special sessions at Sonoma State University in Northern California. She also serves as core faculty of the Institute for Imaginal Studies in Petaluma, California, and adjunct faculty at the California Institute of Integral studies in San Francisco. Her video, ‘Symbolic Healing: A Personal Story,’ demonstrates her use of art process and Authentic Movement when diagnosed with cancer. Bernie Marek has spent over twenty years working as an art therapist in various inpatient and outpatient medical and psychiatric settings. A respected educator, Bernie teaches course in art, contemplation and healing for several departments at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He is also an exhibiting artist and the director of Art For Life Studio, which conducts art groups for adults willing to embrace the spiritual and healing qualities of the creative process. Catherine Moon is an art therapist in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where she maintains a studio-based private practice and is Assistant Professor in the graduate art therapy program at Marywood University. From July 2001 she will be Assistant Professor in the graduate art therapy program at the School of the

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Art Institute of Chicago. Her ongoing exploration of the connections between fine arts, therapy and theology has spawned many conference presentations and articles. Her forthcoming book, Studio Art Therapy: Cultivating the Artist Identity in the Arts Therapist, is published by Jessica Kingsley in 2001. Madeline M. Rugh holds a doctorate in adult education, is a registered art therapist and received a specialist in ageing certificate from the University of Michigan, Institute of Gerontology. As an adjunct faculty member for Union Institute and St. Stephen’s College with the University of Alberta in Alberta, Canada, she continues to teach, conduct research and design programs for adults at the interface of visual art, ecology and spirituality. She is director of the Prairie Wind Studio, a center for art and renewal that focuses on the spiritual function of art in everyday life. Carol A. Sagar is an art psychotherapist in private practice in Norfolk, England. Her clinical experience includes 13 years in Child and Family Psychiatry with the Mental Health Care Trust of the National Health Service, for whom she now supervises arts therapists in the areas of child, family, adult, forensic psychiatry and learning disabilities. Carol’s treatment approach integrates Western psychology with the Buddhist-based therapy system, Tara Rokpa. She leads Tara Rokpa workshops throughout Europe and previously in the USA and is a member of Tara Rokpa faculty. Her written work includes a chapter in Working with Children with Art Therapy (Routledge, 1990). Janis Timm-Bottos is an art therapist, physical therapist and Feldenkrais® Practitioner. She is a founder and former director of ArtStreet, an innovative open art studio with Health Care for the Homeless in Albuquerque, NM which invites art making from people from all walks of life, especially individuals and families who are dealing with homelessness. Janis’s work with ArtStreet makes her a respected keynote speaker and workshop leader for art therapy gatherings and conferences regarding community art therapy and poverty around the United States and abroad. She is a doctoral student in American Studies at the University of New Mexico and current president of the New Mexico Art Therapy Association. Edit Zaphir-Chasman born and raised in Israel, has spent the last thirteen years practicing art therapy across the US, in Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Alabama, and California. Edit holds advanced degrees in Psychological/ Integral Studies, Clinical Art Therapy, Fine Art and Art Education, and is also a Mandala Assessment (MARI) practitioner. She has served in leadership roles for state and national art therapy associations and currently maintains a private practice in sandtray and art psychotherapy in northern California.

Subject Index aboriginal, humans as 183, 185–86, 194 abuse 46 ritual 83–84 sexual 87–89, 138, 145 addictions 222 adolescents 243–44 aggression 62–67 aging 166–67, 178–79 Aisling Quarterly 116 aliveness, language of 189–90 altruism 85–86 ambiguity 53, 54, 55 American Art Therapy Association 258 American Psychiatric Association 20, 141 Applied Judaism 89 art, and spirituality contemplative experience 128–29 estrangement 17–18 mainstream art 18–20 sacred world 53–55 spiritual practice 102–10 yoga 101–2, 111 Art and Soul 23 Art as Medicine: Creating a Therapy of the Imagination 23 Art is a Way of Knowing: A Guide to Self-Knowledge and Spiritual Fulfillment through Creativity 23 art making biological perspective 189 collective 218–20 community 204–7 human right 218 nature 138–39, 156 religious activity 29–31 transpersonal nature 17, 24 as ‘wholy word’ 186 art therapists see therapists, art art therapy benefits 255–56 defining 22, 254 information 200 nature 142–47 other disciplines 256–57 spirituality 8–9, 22–23, 24–25

Artists of the Spirit: New Prophets of Art and Mysticism 19 ArtStreet 204–25 Association for Spiritual, Ethical and Religious Values in Counseling (ASERVIC) 21 at-onement 39, 188 attention see awareness; mindfulness Authentic Movement 152, 183, 189, 191–94, 198, 200n2 autobiographical writing 232, 233 awareness 64, 69, 74 body 63, 67, 72, 151–55 contemplative 116, 118 pottery 67–68, 69–70 senses 53, 54, 61, 72 see also mindfulness balance inner necessity 227–29, 248–49 inner–outer 147–49, 197 Beginner’s Mind 69 belonging 184 biological perspective, art making 189 birds, as symbols 173–74 birth images 240–41 Black Madonna images 216–17 Blaue Reiter movement 18, 227, 230–32 body awareness 63, 67, 72, 151–55 body/spirit dualism 186–88 coming home to 61 creativity 210 emotions 71–72 image 106 relationship with 145 bodyspirit art therapy 190–91 Authentic Movement 191–94 earth’s 197 humans as 182, 183–84, 188, 190 imagination 198–99 mystery 196–98 trauma 193–94 wisdom 194–96 breath 54, 61 breathing exercise 251 camera see photography Celtic Christianity 116–17, 118, 121

261

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children special needs 104–10 spirituality 14 clay smashing 154–55 client stories Anna 64–65 Bobby 72–73 Brenda 42–45 Carrie 214 David 91–92 Della 223 Don 217–18 Emily 83–86 Gus 245–47 Janette 32–36 Jill 87–89 Jon 62–64 Karin’s self-box 237–39 Kleinsteiber, Florence 168–71 Marianne 208–9 Mary 90 Maureen 65–67 Miriam 79–81 mother and son 125–27 Robert 214–15 Ryan 40 Sally 130–32 Stauffer, Ray 172–76 Sue 224 cognitive therapy 99 color 146–47 Coming to our Senses; Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West 185 communication art 178–79 beings 159, 160–62, 163 images 58–59, 64, 72 community art 72–73, 189, 194, 204–26 sacrament 37, 38 concensus reality 183 conception images 240–41 conceptualizing 54, 55, 71, 73–74 Concerning the Spiritual in Art 18 confession 39 contemplative prayer 115, 116, 130–31 contour line drawing 33, 50 cooperation, with object of creation 47–48 creation-centered tradition 140–41 creative activity

nature of 30 preparing for 152 relaxation 233, 243–47, 248 creative explorations 14 art and grace 51 art and prayer 50 art and sacrament 50–51 art making and Authentic Movement 200–201 breathing exercise 251 candles and blessing 93–94 drawing out of doors 157 elements exercise 251 hamsa 94–95 images 50, 201 inner landscape 179–80 listening and learning from your images 75–76 mandala 95 mindfulness of body, and art 75 natural settings 135 nature basket 156–57 participating in community 226 practicing mindfulness 74–75 seeing the Divine in oneself and others 111 Self and ego 112–14 silence 135 soul friend 135 walking 201–2 Cross of Muiredach 121, 123f culture, modern 198 Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism 176 dependence 80 depression 64, 82–83, 128 destruction 154–55 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 141 direct experience 183, 185 dirty, permission to be 145–46 discipline, and art making 33, 47 divine–human relationship 31, 48 drawing contour line 33, 50 exercises 148–49 journal 92 from nature 147, 148 out of doors 157 Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain 148 dreamwork 12

SUBJECT INDEX

Jung 14 dualities 111 earth, planet earthiness as Godliness 140–141 health of 137–38, 139 mother earth 148 ecopsychology 156 elements study 234–36 empowerment, of the oppressed 37 enactment versus acting out 39 ethics 101 Eucharist 41–45 evil 85–86 exhibitions 19, 60 ArtStreet 211–12 photographic 122–24 Expressionists 18 faith art making 29–30, 42, 44–45 childhood 13 emuna 86, 92–93 family therapy 244–45 family work 236–37 fear, performance 218 Feldenkrais method 220, 223 fetal images 241 food, spiritual 38, 45 Eucharist 41 framing 253 free will 85 friendship, spiritual 118, 121 genogram work 236–37 Gestalt therapy 70 goat image 39, 213–14 God Under My Roof 127 gold 177 goodness, basic 54–55, 58 grace 45–49 grief 58, 120 groundlessness 55 group work 235–36, 239–40, 243–44 guided imagery 12 hands, for creative expression 209 healing art 55–58, 86–89, 138–39, 156

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nature 138–39, 156 rituals 192–93, 194 shamanism 8, 17, 23, 160 spirituality 14, 57–58 health defining 141, 159 images 183, 184 intrinsic 54, 58, 71 planet earth 137–38, 139 Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) 206, 210 heart intelligence of 209–10 locus of imagination 207–8, 215 Holocaust art making and healing 86–89 children of survivors 77–86 emuna (faith) 86, 92–93 Tikkun Olam 83–86 tikva (hope) 89–93 homelessness, and ArtStreet 204–25 Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes from and Why 189 hope (tikva) 89–93 humility 140 ‘hurry sickness’ 64–65 identity 176–77 images allowing 102 changeability 53 communicating with 58–59, 64, 72 cultivating 221 language of bodyspirit 184 messages of the Self 103 sticking with 168 unfolding mystery 39–40 imaginal realm 76, 164, 165, 170 imagination active 22 attribute of the senses 188 bodyspirit 198–99 creative 188 heart locus of 207–8, 215 and image 12 instrument of faith 30 Impressionists 18 individuation 100 inner life, relating to 64, 82 inner necessity 227–29, 230, 231–32, 242, 246

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interconnectedness 137, 140, 159, 160 intimacy 58–61 intrinsic health 54, 58, 71 Israel 78 Jewishness, connecting with 59–60 journal, keeping 50, 92 journeying, shamanic 164, 165–66 Jungian analysis 196, 228 Kaddish prayer 84 Kali, image of 176–78 language, of aliveness 189–90 liberation theology 36 lion image 208 listening 7, 69 mainstream art 18–20 ‘making do’ 32, 38 ‘making special’ 30, 189 Mandala: Path of Beauty 150 Mandala Assessment Research Institute (MARI) 23, 150 mandalas 95, 150–51 manic-depression 64–65 mantras 95 Maps to Ecstasy 152 medicine, and spirituality 17 meditation 54, 61, 66, 68, 70–71, 73–74, 97–98 art 97–98 photography 118–19, 122, 131 yoga 98–102 ‘memorial candles’ (children of Holocaust survivors) 78, 80 mental illness 18–19, 37 metaphor, using 179 mindfulness of body, and art 75 Judaism 92 practicing 74–75 Minyan: Ten Principles for Living a Life of Integrity 94, 95 modern art, and spiritual ideals 19 modernism 162 movement, and art 152 see also Authentic Movement mystery versus analysis 196–98

mystical art 18, 19 myth 37–38 narcissism 33 National Institute of Aging 172 nature 137–57 as ally 168–71 art making 138–39, 156 art therapy 142–47 balance, inner–outer 147–49 body awareness 151–55 cycles 149–51, 197 earthiness as Godliness 141–42 healing 138–39, 156 mother earth 148 relating to 141–42, 178 ‘nature basket’ 142, 143 Navaho healing rituals 192–93, 194 non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSCs) 25, 163–64 obsession 176 older clients 245–57 see also aging One Source – Sacred Journeys: A Celebration of Spirit and Art 19 Original Blessing 140–41 original sin versus ‘original blessing’ 71, 140–41 Our Lady of Guadalupe, image of 215, 216–17, 222 overprotectiveness, parental 80–82 Pan 214 Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art 19 parental overexpectations 80–82 perception, unobstructed 55 perspective 140 photography exhibitions 122–24 expressive outlet 120 meditation 118–19, 122, 131 in private practice 124–27 psychiatric patients 127–29 spiritual deepening 116, 133 pilgrimage 115–22, 124, 131, 132–34 play 227, 234, 247–48 Playing and Reality 247

SUBJECT INDEX

265

shamanism 159–60, 178–79 post-traumatic stress disorder 82–83 aging 166–67 prayer 31–37 basic notions 163–66 art 36, 50 callings 160–63, 176–78 contemplative 115, 116, 130–31 healing 11, 17, 23, 160 Judaism 89 nature as ally 168–71 ‘process painting’ 20, 65 shapeshifting 159–64, 171–78 projections 239–40 Psychodiagnostics and Personality Assessment: A soulmaking 23 space, art therapy 247–48 Handbook 92 Space, Time, and Medicine 64 Spiritual in Abstract Art: 1890–1985 19 Raw Vision 20 spiritual wellness, ten dimensions 21 Re-enchantment of the World, The 185 spirituality realism 18 art (see art, and spirituality) regression 244 in everday life 53 relaxation 233, 243–47, 248–49 healing 14, 57–58 repetition 216 meaning of word 8 rhythms 57 science 17 five sacred 152–54 stories ritual 37–38 coming home 182–86 abuse 83–84 one 186–88 Eucharist 41 two 192–94 healing 102–3, 192–93, 194 three 194–96 transference and disposal 39 four 197–98 contributors’ 10 writing and telling 75–76 sacraments 37–38 see also client stories Eucharist 41–45 stuckness 221–22 reconciliation 39–40 Surrealists 18 sacred world, and art 53–55 survival, and the arts 189 safety 222–23, 247–48 samadhi, and the creative process 102 Samye Ling Tibetan Centre 229 Taming the Tiger 229, 240, 244 sandplay 84 Tara Rokpa therapy 229–30 satanic abuse 83–84 adolescents 243–44 Scapegoat Complex: Towards a Mythology of art materials 234 Shadow and Guilt 213 autobiographical writing 232, 233 scapegoat function 39, 213–14 Blaue Reiter movement 230–32 Self elements study 234–36 absorption in 99, 100, 102 family therapy 244–45 reconciling with ego 112–14 genogram and family work 236–37 unfolding through art 101 group work 239–40 voice of 97 older clients 245–47 self-direction 221 relaxation 233, 243–47, 248–49 self-responsibility 229 self-box 237–39 senses, paying attention to 53, 54, 61, 72 six stages of 250 separateness, illusion of 160, 188 summary 241–42 separation anxiety 80 Teachings of Don Juan, The: A Yaqui Way of sexual abuse 87–89, 138, 145 Knowledge 163 sexual dissatisfaction 145 The Art of Return 60 Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation theology 30, 31, 36 115, 131, 134 therapists, art 64

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as artists 13 participating 36, 37, 42, 190, 205, 219 referrals 257–58 skills and resources 256 training 254–55 witnessing 191–92, 194, 196 Tikkun Olam 83–86 transformation 24, 228, 229 acceptance 64 art as prayer 36 Kali as image of 177–78 Transpersonal Psychologies 21 transpersonal psychology 11, 12, 21–22, 141 trauma, experiencing and healing 192–94 trees, as symbols 91–92, 170 ultimate reality, relating to 17, 29 unconscious, the 227, 231–32 victimization 83–84 visionary art 18, 19 vocalizing 7 Washingon National Cathedral 122, 134 wellness, ten dimensions of spiritual 21 Western psychology 25 wind, communicating with 160–62, 163 worship 38 writing 75–76 autobiographical 232, 233 yoga 151 meditation 97–102 Yoga Sutras 99–102 ‘zen of seeing’ 147

Author Index Abram, D. 187–8, 196, 199n1 Achterberg, J. 17, 159 Adler, J. 192 Allen, P. 23, 40, 102, 120, 219 Anderson, C. 144 Angell, T. 146 Apostolas-Cappadona, D. 32 Arnheim, R 162–3 Arriens, A. 14 Assagioli, R. 21 Augustine, St. 140 Barrows, A. 142 Bassof, E.147 Battista, J. 21 Beck, J. 24 Begg, E. 216 Benzamin-Mazuda, M. 61 Berman, M. 185, 199n1 Blake, W. 18 Bleakley, A. 217 Boorstein, S. 21 Borysenko, J. 17 Bosch, H. 18 Bowman, D. 7–9, 14 Brancusi, C. 18 Breggin, P. 213 Burke, M. 20 Burns, R. 88 Busch, C. 23, 259 Callanan, P. 101 Campbell, J. 101 Cane, F. 22, 152 Capacchione, L. 23, 82 Capra, F. 184 Carter, B. 22 Cassou, M. 20 Castaneda, C. 163 Castillo, R.J. 99, 100 Cattaneo, M. 154 Chapple, C. 100 Chard, P. 145 Chickerneo, N. 22

Chinen, A. 21 Chopra, D. 17 Clinebell, H. 144 Cole, T. 166 Coles, R. 10 Corbin, H. 188 Corey, G. 101 Corey, M. 101 Cornell, J. 20 Cortright, B. 21 Craighead, M. 20, 30 Crumley, C. 115 Cubley, S. 20 Danieli, Y. 89, 90 Dass, R. 69 de Waal, E. 117, 118, 127 DeBrular, D 41 Dissanayake, E. 30, 189 Dossey, L. 17, 64 Dow, J. 194 Dubuffet, J. 20 Dufrene, P. 22 Eckhart, M. 140 Edwards, B. 148 Edwards, T. 118 Eliel, C. 19 Epstein, H. 79, 83 Epstein, M. 71–2 Erikson, E. 86 Farrelly-Hansen, M. 7–8, 15, 25, 259 Feen-Calligan, 22, 27 Feuerstein, G. 99, 100, 105 Flam, J. 68 Fowler, J. 23 Fox, M. 71, 140, 146 Franck, F. 147, 148 Frankel, E. 95 Frankl V. 90 Franklin, M. 22, 23, 100, 101, 111, 259 Freeman, J. 19 Gablik, S. 20, 36, 172, 178 Ganim, B. 23 Garai, J. 22 Glendinning, C. 198, 199 Goethe 147

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Gold, A. 23 Goldfarb, L. 220 Goldfischer, M. 86 Gomes, M. 139, 141 Gorman, P. 69 Gray, L. 142 Grey, A. 19, 101, 114 Grof, S. 22, 150 Hahn, T. N. 192 Haight, R. 45 Hall, L. 20 Harner, M. 163–4 Hartley-Gorham, L. 18 Havel, V. 89 Hayward, J. 53, 54–5 Heckler, R. 61 Hewitt, J. 99, 100 Hildegard of Bingen 18, 140 Hillman, J. 23, 39, 139, 148, 168, 191, 205, 209, 215, 218, 221, 222, 223 Hitler, A. 26n2 Hoberg, A. 230, 231, 232, 249 Hoffman, E. 10 Hogan, L. 189, 190 Horovitz-Darby, E. 23, 45 Ingerman, S. 163 Ingersoll, E. 20–1 Irwin, E. 232, 233, 236 Jamal, M. 159 James, W. 21, 45 Jawlensky, A. von 249 Julian of Norwich 140 Jung, C. 14, 19, 21, 100, 146 Kalff, D. 84 Kandinsky, W. 18–19, 227, 230–1, 249 Kanner, A. 139, 141 Kellog, J. 22, 150–1 Kertzer, M. 84 Keyes, M. 22 Khanna, M. 101 King, S. 163 Klee, P. 18 Klee, P. 53 Kleinsteiber, F. 168–71 Koff-Chapin, D. 23

Kramer, E. 109 Krauss, P. 86 Leech, K. 41 Lefevre, P. 36, 38 Levine, P. 194 Lewis, P. 23 Lichtenstein, T. 85, 89 Lipsey, R. 17 London, P. 179 Losack, M. 115 Lovell, S. 24, 182, 191, 259 Macy, J. 178 Maitland, J. 190 Maizels, J. 20 Malchiodi, C. 23, 154 Malevich, K.S. 18 Malloy, Father Dara 116 Marc, F. 18, 227, 230–2 Marek, B. 14, 24, 25, 259 Markowitz, G. 19 Maslow, A. 21 Matisse, H. 68 May, G. 132 McClure, B. 22 McNiff, S. 23, 39, 102, 129, 184, 191 Medicine Eagle 160 Meier, C.A. 209, 214 Menuhin, Y. 69 Merton, T. 118, 119, 124 Metzner, R. 170 Miles, M. 215 Mindell, A. 194, 214 Miracle-Bova, B. 42 Miranti, J. 20 Moon, B. 23 Moon, C. 14, 22, 24, 25, 37, 46, 87, 259–60 Moore, T. 129 Morandi, G. 69 Moroney, L. (‘wind woman’) 179 Mueller-Ortega, P. 101 Muktananda, S. 98, 99 Murphy, M. 199n1 Nelson, M. C. 19 Nityananda, B. 103

AUTHOR INDEX

Ogdon, D. 92 Patanjali 99–102 Peake, M. 249 Pennington, M. 118 Perera, S. B. 213 Persons, J. 99 Prinzhorn, H. 19 Rhoads, A. 19 Rinpoché, A. T. 228, 229, 240 Robinson, M. 152 Rodriguez, J. 216 Rogers, C. 125 Roshi, S. 69 Roszak, T. 139, 141 Roth, G. 152, 153–4 Rugh, M. 24, 169, 260 Sagar, C. 23, 24, 25, 260 Saint-Exupéry, A. 149 Sandner, D. 192 Sayers, D. L. 30 Schaverien, J. 39 Schindler, O. 85 Schulweis, H. 86 Scotton, B. 21 Sellner, E. 118 Sexson, L. 30 Shainberg, D. 57–8 Shapiro, R. R. 94, 95 Shepherd, M.H. 38 Shoemaker-Beal, R. 22 Soussan, T. 213 Spretnak, R. 188, 200n1 Stauffer, R. 172–6 Steindl-Rast, D. 184 Steiner, R. 146–7 Sutich, A. 21 Sweeney, B. 241 Tart, C. 21, 99 Teutch, B. 95 Thayer, J.A. 22, 151 Timm-Bottos, J. 23, 24, 260 Trungpa Rinpoché, C. 54–5, 176 Tuchman, M. 19

Van Gogh, V. 53 Vaughan, F. 24 Ventura, M. 139, 218 Viraj, Y. A. 100 von Schaewen, D. 20 Wallace, E. 22 Walsch, D. 17 Wardi, D. 78 Watkins, M. 102, 170 Weiser, J. 125 Wilbanks, S. 130–2 Wilber, K. 18, 21 Wilkinson, T. 146 Williams, L. 76 Winnicott, D. W. 229, 247–8 Wodiczko, K. 20 Wood, N. 137 Wright, F. L. 53 Youngbird, M. 182 Zaphir-Chasman, E. 14, 80, 260 Zweite, A. 230, 231, 232, 249

269

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