Healing and Art
Recovery and Healing is part of each of our lives....
Take the time to consider what you have experienced, or continue to experience, which needs attention and healing.
* The process of Discovery, Recovery and Healing will likely be helpful to anyone affected by illness, including caregivers and family members.
* There are many paths to healing; finding ways to support yourself and renew your spirit are important elements to healing.
Healing Art, something as simple as a pen to paper, or a smudge of color on a fingertip heals the soul. We forget how to play and experience simple pleasure. When we are being challenged we sometimes forget how to feel our deep emotions and othertimes how to enjoy life, here are some ideas to explore...
- SoulCollage is a wonderful form of healing art. Many people, create a "healing" suit, in their SoulCollage deck, for their own discovery, recovery and healing. Some use images that make them laugh, some use images of spiritual and archetypal guides, some refer to their experience with imagery, such as plants or animals, and use the process to re-define the experience for themselves. Personal and sometimes very traumatic experience such as Cancer, Addiction, Depression, Natural Disaster, Eating Disorder, Violent Crime, and end of life Hospice are all areas that have been supported, with understanding, help and healing through the SoulCollage process. A SoulCollage journey can include using the collaged cards as a journaling tool, as an alter piece, to create personal story, myth and vision for the future, and for personal card reading (similar to Tarot, but the answers coming from ones own internal wisdom).
- Painting is another way that many people express and reflect their experiences. Using paint and a large canvas, some start by feeling themselves move, a great way to explore feelings and emotions, through their brush strokes. Try painting with one color and layering paint on top of paint - experiencing creating depth and texture with the color. Others enjoy water color or acrylics - painting images and landscapes of their internal world, their dreams, their future, or things that they enjoy. Paint is fun to explore with but also try colored pencils, felt pens, crayons and pastels for a color alternative, you can work with them together also.
- In Mixed Media, anything goes! Try using Japanese art paper, paint, glue, sand and beads on a piece of wood. Within mixed media we might find different media used in painting, found art, sculpture, mask making, clay work, textile art, costume design, altered books and paper art. Play with materials that you are both familiar and unfamiliar with, to experience how a new art expression feels. Take a journal book and some water colors, start painting the pages. Then take some images that you love and glue them in...do some journaling in colored pens and go back over a dried page with acrylic paint. Add some stamps in irridescent stamp ink, and add some poetry and quotes - a feather or a tiny shell. What is the feeling you get when you have a finished page, or ten or a whole book of reflective artwork?
Art that heals is a path to recovery of body, of self, of a future that holds hope and vision, love and joy. Simple pleasure that returns us to living fully through expression...
Cat Meehan 2008
Cat and Darcy Meehan speak about recovery within a family & guide a SoulCollage workshop at Eating Disorder Awareness and Recovery Week in Petaluma, CA. - Sponsored by Petaluma Health Care District and EDRS
Photo: Cat Meehan sharing the power and magic of SoulCollage
Article Link: http://www1.arguscourier.com/article/20080221/COMMUNITY/328700581
Eating Disorders Recovery Services link:http://www.edrs.net/
Petaluma HealthCare District link: (Resources, Information and Videos on all health and wellness topics) http://www.phcd.org/