Summer Solstice

A group painting from our Summer Solstice party. Happy summer.

Power

 A client's sandtray image of Power.


Power
Power made me a coat. For a long time I kept it in the back of my closet. I didn’t like to wear it much. But I always took good care of it. When I first started wearing it again, it smelled like mothballs. As I wore it more, it started fitting better, and stopped smelling like mothballs.
I was afraid if I wore the coat too much someone would want to take it or I would accidentally leave it in the dojo dressing room. But it has my name on the label now, and doesn’t really fit anyone else. When people ask me where I found such a becoming garment, I tell them about the tailor. Power, who knows how to make coats that you grow into. First, you must find the courage to approach him and ask him to make your coat. Then, you must find the patience inside yourself to wear the coat until it fits.

The Book of Qualities BY: J. Ruth Gendler

The Art of Listening

Listening in therapy is an art form. If done effectively, change can happen through helping

the client move further into their ongoing flow of experience. The wording comes in a variety of versions; however, the idea behind the term listening is similar as can be seen across the following samples:

A safe and steady human presence willing to be with whatever comes up is a most powerful factor. If we do not try to improve or change anything, if we add nothing, if however bad something is we only say what we understand exactly. Such a response adds our presence and helps clients to stay with and go further into whatever they sense and feel just then. This is perhaps the most important thing that any person helping others needs to know. (Gendlin, 1996, as cited in Cornell, 2005, p. 149)

In Art Therapy, I listen to what people make with their hands: 

The listening response is an attempt to make contact with and carry forward this experiential flow. It’s not enough for the therapist to just say back the client’s words. Words are not feelings. The listener is trying to point his words at the concrete experiential flow for which the listenee is making symbols (words). The listenee checks the listener’s words against this ongoing flow. When the listening response is just right, it has an experiential effect – the flow of experiencing is carried forward. (Friedman, p.73)

    This listening opens possibilities for children to grow and develop in a way that is inline with their innate potential and desire, not in ways imposed on them. As an art therapist I know that authentic listening empowers children to get in touch with their implicit knowing of what the next right step is for them to feel better, get out of conflict and be able to move ahead in their lives. It is helping the child listen to and ‘be with’ whatever is disturbing them at the moment and teaching them that they can tolerate those emotions and sensations and listen to what they are saying to them. The focus is on supporting the intelligence of the child’s inner creative process. The child is learning to trust and stay with themselves and their own evolving process, which enables them to feel that they have advocacy, knowledge in knowing what they need to feel whole and healthy. 

Who listens to you? Who do you listen to?

    

No Place Like Home

I work with a lot of children who live in foster homes. Some of my children have moved multiple times. In my art therapy studio, we make a lot of homes. Homes for animals, us, and dolls.  Is it necessary to feel ‘at home’ where you live in order to evolve? Can our roots grow anywhere? Can we feel ‘at home’ in any environment, with any people, in any conditions? Home often has cultural, societal, familial, political connections characterized by family, and memories that translate into feelings of safety and love. When moving to a new place, one often feels in a state of limbo; both excited about the new possibilities and alien in the new home. One  could feel like tourist, imposter, outsider, or exile. Salman Rushdie in Step Across This Line (2002) writes “the human dream of leaving. a dream at least as powerful as its countervailing dream of roots . . is the tension between these two dreams.” (p. 13) When we move to a new place we live in this tension. Will that tension turn into a trauma, or new possibilities for growth and healing? It could go in many directions: ‘How does living in a city that does or does not feel like one’s ‘home’ affect you?  Can people thrive in countries, cities, houses in which they do not feel at home? What does it mean to be without home? Is it necessary to feel ‘at home’ where one lives to be ‘at home’ in one’s life experience? What is a home? What is home to you?

Reflecting on Prayer Flags

I have used the process of making prayer flags with groups in many different ways over the years. A prayer flag is a rectangular cloth often found strung along mountain ridges and peaks high in the Himalayas to bless the surrounding countryside or for other purposes. These panels are wood-blocked printed with words and images. In our Archetype Group we made Prayer Flags as our art response to studying the Sun and Moon Archetypes.

The cloth pieces can then be hung in a covered outdoor place or inside. I have made prayer flags with clients in grief and loss groups, addiction groups and other process groups. It is a beautiful way to send a prayer out into the universe.

Rainer Maria Rilke: “Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows.”

"We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears."
~Francois de La Rouchefoucauld

Suggestions for doing a Moon Collage:
One way you can do a collage for this archetype is to think about your relationship with it and try to find images and words that reflect it. Do you include the Goddess in your Spiritual expression? Is she not yet discovered or feared in your psyche? How familiar or foreign is this realm? Another approach with this archetype is to do your collage centered around your relationship to nature. Show your feelings and thoughts about what you love, need to feel peaceful, and whole. How do you communicate with nature; is it by walking, staring at the ocean, swimming, or through your love of animals? You could fill your collage with images of Moons. Portray how this word affects you. Does it conjure up images of beautiful shimmering moons, mysterious half moons, waning, waxing, or new moons? Do you plant by the moon phases or do you bleed by the cycles of the moon? You could also approach this collage by showing a reflection of your psychic abilities. You could also center this collage around your mystical experiences and insights. Maybe you will want to do it in the light of the moonlight. Enjoy.

Focusing and Expressive Art Therapy

This weekend I taught a Level Four Focusing and Expressive Art Therapy workshop. One of the exercises we explored through art making and Focusing, started with an attunement to lightly, gently touch in with a part of us that may be holding traumatic memories, sensations and or feelings. The group experienced through Focusing, the regulatory capacity to be there for this part of them. Staying Present for themselves, staying with the experience as it unfolded moment by moment and developing the capability to give complete, unconditional regard to their wounded or traumatized part or parts helped regulate and allowed these parts to move into fresh experiencing. Our neurobiology and our interpersonal relations create a sense of our well-being. 

In Focused Centered Art Therapy we are working with attuning our relationship with ourselves and our parts and healing our attachment that may have been severed due to trauma.  The interpersonal attunement that is felt and experienced during Focusing then can be witnessed when it is expressed and carried further in art making. The attunement and resonance that happens in a Focusing Session between a therapist and client, as well as the attunement that the client feels with him/herself is carried one step further when the client expresses this attunement through paint, clay or other means. The attunement which is integral to healing is now also felt in the creative expression that the client has experienced. This consonant relationship between therapist/client, client/self, client/creative self provides stability and safety, such that the client can be with difficult, painful feelings in a way they have not experienced before.  They are able for the first time to feel a sense of “Self” and “Someone There”, as well as, but separate from, a sensation or feeling.  There is a “Me” and a “Something.”  Where once they were merged with the experience, there is now a refreshing sense of a whole person and an experience.  In the attuned therapeutic relationship, there is also the sense of alliance with another who can simply “be with” our experience in Presence, which allows life forward movement to occur.

 Art work done in workshop by students.                                                                                                

First Nations University

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Making Peace With Our Bodies

                           For years I have taught body image workshops. Growing up in our culture causes the majority of us to have a distorted view of our body image. We are bombarded by images in the media of beauty that do not reflect our own image in the mirror. Society has set impossible standards that have left most of feeling that we are not acceptable as we are. Air brushed images of women that are super thin face us everyday. We don’t see images of ourselves, we see a body type that is impossible to achieve or maintain.

   Seeing comes before words. A child looks and recognizes before it can speak. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world. Women are looked at. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. Throughout time women have been objectified and looked at in art. The first nudes in Europe portrayed women’s bodies in a way that appealed to male sexual preference. In the art form of the European nude, the painters and spectator-owners were usually male and the persons treated as objects, usually women. This unequal relationship is deeply embedded in our culture. Today this tradition is continued in advertising, journalism, and television. There is still an ‘ideal’  image which usually reflects one body type.

         As women, we are taught that there is a ‘supposed to be’ in bodies. Size and shape are more important than feeling, sensing and intuiting. For women to be powerful, healthy and strong we need to ‘reclaim’ our objectified image.  We need to love the body we live in. Enjoying and accepting our bodies is a fundamental aspect of accepting ourselves as women. We need to listen to our bodies to hear what shape and size they need to be. We need to reconnect with the wisdom of our bodies.

What is your relationship with your body?                 

Body image is     ~ a perception we have about ourselves

                       ~ how you feel about your body

                       ~ the way you move, experience and sense your body

                       ~ messages you received about your body

                       ~ how your body is seen and experienced by others

Your body is    ~ feelings, sensations, memories

The body uses its skin and deeper fascia and flesh to record all that goes on around it.  Like the Rosetta stone, for those who know how to read it, the body is a living record of life given, life taken, life hoped for, life healed.  It is valued for its articulate ability to register immediate reaction, to feel profoundly, to sense ahead... The body remembers, the bones remember, the joints remember, even the little finger remembers.  Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves.  Like a sponge filled with water, anywhere the flesh is pressed, wrung, even touched lightly, a memory may flow out in a stream... To be thought ugly or unacceptable because one’s beauty is outside the current fashion is deeply wounding to the natural joy that belongs to the wild nature.

         - Clarissa Pinkola Est’es

                                                              

         Your relationship with your body is the sum total of the visual, emotional, physical, and historical aspects.  Women become dissatisfied with their body image when they feel negatively towards their body or parts of their body.  Women with eating disorders may hate their body so much that they wish they were invisible.  Many  woman hide in baggy clothes, retreat from social interactions or choose not to participate in activities that involve wearing revealing attire such as bathing suits.

         Your relationship to your body affects your behavior and self-esteem.  Body image develops as a person develops.

What is your relationship to your body? 

Is it a: ~ reliable companion

          ~ mediator of your experiences of the world

          ~ vehicle for transformation

          ~ temple of God, Goddess

          ~ something you dislike

        

         Our body image may be congruent with or distorted from our actual body. Examples of distorted body image include feeling fat when one is thin, feeling ‘satisfied’ when one is hungry, feeling comfortable when one is in pain. Examples of healthy body image are feeling tired after exercise or staying up late, feeling hungry if one hasn’t eaten, feeling ‘in one’s body.’ 

How to regain a congruent body image:

1. Get to know yourself; your emotions, your social life, your body.

2. When you ‘feel fat’ ask yourself what is going on in your life.

3. Get to know your body from the inside out. Get to know yourself as a kinesthetic being, an emotional and tactile being. 

Death

My Mother died three weeks ago. I have been writing and creating art in my journey to process this pasting.

Here are some journaling and art making suggestions from my Archetypal Journey course that I teach that I found useful for myself to work with.

 Journal Writing with Death
1. When death comes at the end of a fruitful life, it is usually greeted with a minimum of fear. When it comes early and our soul work is not completed, we can react with fear, grief and frustration. What would be your biggest regret if your death came earlier than you wished?
2. Death returns us to the womb of the earth. In ancient matriarchal times there were communal burials in round tombs. If any kind of burial were possible, what would you choose? What burial ritual would you like to have for your body? Would you want music, poetry or silence?
3.  What is your image for regeneration? Create one and dialogue with it.

One day I was about to step on a dry leaf, I saw the leaf in the ultimate dimension. I saw that it was not really dead, but that it was merging with the moist soil in order to appear on the tree the following spring in another form.
      - Thich NHat Hanh

4. We are creatures of habit. We don’t like to lose anything in our lives even if the habit, object, person, or feeling is not beneficial. We become attached to the instinctual ways of our bodies. What habits would you like to discard and which ones are you attached to?
5.  There is a seductive part of death. Often people who have had near death experiences have experienced the warmth and attraction of ‘going into the light.’ Returning to the womb or source can have a strong appeal. When one partner dies, sometimes the other one longs to join him or her.
Connecting or going home to spirit can be a strong desire. What is your experience of witnessing this aspect of death?

Art Making:
1. Paint some of the deaths that have occurred in your life.  List the losses, pains and sorrows that you have endured.  Have these losses been turning points for you?
2. Sometimes we don’t move ahead in our lives and challenge ourselves because we are
too comfortable. John Steinbeck wrote in his journal about the danger of comfort; " In fact I have never had it so good and so comfortable . . .  the perfect pointed pencil, the paper persuasive, the fantastic chair and a good light and no writing.  Surely a man is a most treacherous animal full of his treasured contradictions.  He may not admit it but he loves his paradoxes."  Draw the comforts are you afraid to move past. What would the costs be?
3.  Piet Mondrian wrote that, “The purer the artist’s “mirror” is, the more true reality reflects in it.”  Letting die what is not your true reflection, is getting back a truer reflection of yourself in your mirror.  Draw a mirror and then write or draw what you think is cloudy in your reflection.
5. A collage for your Death Archetype could be a record of the deaths that you have experienced in your life. It could also be done as a shadow collage portraying what you carry around in your shadow side. Another way of doing this collage would be to show the patterns, feelings or thoughts that you would like to release from your self. The collage could talk of the big changes in your life. Use symbols to show how you feel about death. Have you experienced a death of a close friend or relative?  Have you thought about your own death? When you think about going into the unknown are you excited, afraid or both?  Michael Novak wrote that, “The more deeply I go, the less clear my self-knowledge becomes, the more ambiguities and perplexities and unresolved contradictions I discover.”

This is a journal  piece I wrote about my Mother's dying:


I am leaving tomorrow to say goodbye to my mother and attend her funeral. Just last week I was telling my partner that my relationship with my mother was something that I feared I would never make peace with or find resolution. However, by Focusing with what emerged from hearing the news from my sister-in-law that my mother was dying has brought me to a place of realizing that my body knows how to make peace. What came was so surprising and different from anything that I thought peace would look like, that once again I am struck by the power of Focusing. My childhood was something that I tried to escape. Born into a family of depressed and angry people, I spent my childhood being sick and feeling responsible for my mother’s, and everybody else’s problems. I had some joy, happiness and beauty inside me that I felt I had to hide until I could escape. I did eventually flee the family, but when I did, I took with me a deep sense of responsibility for other people’s pain and wounding.  During a Focusing session, I got in touch with the something in me that felt it “wanted to turn away”. This is a familiar feeling that I have when I am in the company of my family, dissociating from the pain, feeling that I can’t show my authentic self and a sense of survivor guilt. As I stayed with this feeling what it showed me was an image of an old hurt child. I was shocked at oldness of this little girl. She was so weary from carrying and feeling responsible for other people’s pain. Staying on the edge, letting this something in me be just the way it wanted to be, needed to be, eventually brought some fresh movement. It wanted to die. It was done. There was lightness, freshness and a sense of rightness with that knowing. This something in me that felt like a very old burdened child who believed somehow she was responsible for other people’s pain and never really knew what she was supposed to do with it, could now finally let it go. She was ready to die with my mother, or maybe she could help my mother die. When I was little my mother always tried to make me to lie down with her when she napped. She loved to nap, but I did not. I would lie there and count the minutes until I could escape. This part of me now wanted to lie down and sleep. It did not have to guard, watch or figure out anything. Its work was done. What purpose it served in my life, the problems it caused—none of that really mattered now. What mattered was the strong feeling that it was done, tired and was naturally dying.  My mother had this old porcelain doll that she gave me when I was very young. I had a wig for it and dressed it up, but it always looked sad, forlorn and even rather scary. Thinking about it now, I think it reflected how I saw myself as a child. Years later when I had my own children and my mother was visiting, she told me two things that she had never forgiven me for. One was that I threw that doll away. Today, I made a little doll to give to Mum, one that I hope will make up for the lost porcelain doll, but also a doll to reflect this part of me that is done, finished. I would like to place her in Mum’s grave. She could lie down with Mum (unlike me who never could) and be with her. Their work is done.

Zentangle

I teach a course at the University of Regina in which students learn how to use visual art, dance, drama, movement, voice and play with children in the classroom.  I introduced  Zentangle last week as part of a process exercise in which they explored movement of line. We started with string.
First in groups they wrapped string around themselves to become a human string art piece. Next they cut the string into smaller pieces and they each created a string line drawing on a sheet of paper.
Lastly, they did a Zentangle drawing on a 4" by 4" piece of paper. Zentangle drawings are small ink and or pencil doodles that are relaxing and fun to make. I use them in my Art Therapy practice for clients who want to have a creative way to relax and focus.

http://www.zentangle.com/index.php

Snow Play

The kids who come to see me for Art Therapy decided that they were tired of all the white snow. So we changed it.

Faith

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

-       Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 2010 may we all create the year we desire.

Snow Lovers

Remembering to be Mindful at this Busy Time of Year

Here is a list of some resources:
Wherever You Go, There you Are: Mindfulness in Everyday Life (Kabat-Zinn, J.)
A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life (Kornfield, J)
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness (Kabat-Zinn, J.)
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of the Buddha (Brach, T.)
The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation (Hanh, T.N.)

The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teaching of Buddhist Psychology (Kornfield, J.)
Emotional Alchemy: How the Mind can Heal the Heart (Bennett-Goleman, T.)
When Things Fall Apart:Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Chodron, P).
Turning the Mind into an Ally (Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche)
Mindflness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (Segal et al.)
Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness (Salzberg, S.)
Dancing With Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering (Moffitt, P.)
Thoughts Without a Thinker (Epstein, M.)
Insight Meditation (Goldstein)
Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond (Brahm, A.)
Calming Your Anxious Mind (Brantley, J.)
Start Where You Are (Chodron, P.)
Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart (Epstein, M.)
Losing a Parent (Kennedy, A.)
Peace is Every Step (Thich Nhat Hanh)
Starbright–Meditations for Children (Garth, M.)
Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life (Kashdan, T.)
The Relaxation Response (Benson, H.)
Everyday Zen and Nothing Special (Beck, J.)
Saying Yes to Life (Bayda, E.)
The Stress Reduction Workbook for Teens: Mindfulness Skills to Help You Deal With Stress (Biegel, G.)
Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection Between Depression, Anxiety and 21st Century Illness (O’Connor, R.)
The Mindful Brain: Reflection and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being (Siegel,D.)
Mindful Motherhood: Practical Tools for Staying Sane During Pregnancy and You’r Childs First Year (Vieten, C.)
Mindfulness Yoga: The Awakened Union of Breath, Body and Mind (Boccio, F.)
Beginning Mindfulness: Learning the Way of Awareness (Weiss, A.)
Breathe! You Are Alive: Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing (Hanh, T.N.)
The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace (Kornfield, J).
Still Here, Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying (Dass, R.)
Nonviolent Communication (Rosenberg, M.)
Mindful Exercise (Jones, C.)
New and Selected Poems (Oliver, M.)
The Essential Rumi (Barks, C.)
Coming to Our Senses (Kabat-Zinn, J.)
Soul Without Shame (Brown)
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (Rinpoche, S.)
Heal Thyself (Santorelli, S.)
The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire (Chopra, D.)
Overcoming Addictions (Chopra, D.)
Awakening of the Heart (Welwood, J.)
Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion (Bayda, E.)
The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion (Germer, C.)
Teachings on Love (Hanh, T.N.)
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life: The New Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Hayes, S. & Smith, S.)

The Christmas Tangle

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. (Maya Angelou)

My Therapy Dog

Cyrus, my Therapy Dog, checking out the supplies after a busy workshop.

Valley Ridge Story

Valley Ridge Story



Learning Focusing to Help Free the Artist in You
Instructor: Karen Wallace


Do you want to learn how to:

* Be a better listener to yourself?
* Make clear choices?
* Be calm and compassionate to yourself?
* Support yourself through change?
* Feel relaxed and less stressful?

Focusing helps you learn how to be Present and listen to yourself so that you can move ahead in your life in an empowered and safe way. Focusing brings you closer to wholeness and allows you to access your inner wisdom. This helps you move in the direction of your potential. It can help you move beyond blocks and get in touch with your goals. Focusing is a gentle and powerful way to develop a deep interpersonal healing relationship with yourself.

Awareness of sensations in the body can be blocked through habits of dissociation and repression. This is because the sensation maybe uncomfortable or painful, and we are not trained to focus on this inner knowing and awareness of the body. Transformation of energy involves the acknowledgment, and information of the inner movement of sensation. This energy and awareness is essential to reconnect what has been fragmented by life stress, injury or trauma.

In this workshop we will work with:

* artist’s blocks
* money issues that we may have around our art
* time issues that we may have for our art making
* why we can’t get into the studio

SPECIAL NOTE:
This program begins the evening of Friday, September 10 from 6:30 to 9:30 PM, , and continues on Saturday and Sunday between 9:30 AM and 4:30 PM

What is Focusing?
Focusing is “direct access to bodily knowing.” It is a practice that takes a person towards a state of conscious perception that goes far beyond knowing something on a mere conceptual level. As with Somatic Experiencing, Focusing refers to this bodily knowing as a felt sense. As the Focusing Institute’s website explains, “You can sense your living body directly under your thoughts and memories and under your familiar feelings." Focusing happens at a deeper level than your feelings. Under them you can discover a physically sensed murky zone which is concretely there. This is a source from which new steps emerge. This murky zone “opens” as you learn to stay with it longer. Being with it increases the ability to sense feelings behind words or images, even when those are not yet formed. Eventually, you can learn how to let a deeper bodily felt sense come in relation to any problem or situation. It is a subtle process, hard to define in words. Focusing was developed by the philosopher Eugene Gendlin in the late 1960s and early 70s, while he was working with the famed psychologist Carl Rogers.

You will learn the skills of and receive credit for Level One Focusing by taking this workshop. You can continue to take Level 2 to 4 with Karen or another Focusing Teacher after this workshop.




To Register: www.valleyridgeartstudio.com

Action

“All human actions have one or more of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire.”Aristotle

What is motivating you today? 

Fill in the blank: