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ArtsCare Roundtable heART FIT
Feel Creative Energy. Experience Being. Express Self.
Become heART FIT.
Everyone has the urge to create. "Its expression may flow through many channelsŠThe point is to honour the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits." - Vancouver MD Gabor Maté, When The Body Says No
heART FIT is the product of my life's experience as a visual arts teacher, a painter, a writer and a keen researcher. When I studied psychology at university, I was intrigued by the theories of Carl Jung. After retirement, I returned to explore his ideas further, and relate them to my own discoveries about creativity, my personal search for meaning and my commitment to age wisely and share my understandings. Jung's words have guided my life pursuits: "the best way of dealing with the unconscious is the creative way". In retirement, when I heard the theories of Gene D. Cohen MD, PhD. co-founder of the Creativity Discovery Corps, whose mission is to identify and preserve the creative accomplishments of under-recognized talented older adults, I found resonance. I have adopted Cohen's philosophy C=ME2, Creativity equals me to a greater power. "M" equals the mass of knowledge from all that I have experienced combined with "E", all the energy I bring to the act of creating. "Spontaneous Process Painting" is an act of faith. There are no instructions or rules. It encourages allowing and trusting that when one acts, paints, from the heart, rather than from a head filled with instruction, and judgment, the act of releasing and allowing, will open the participant to 'self' and the release of the healing energy that is within each of us.
I taught creative expression within our school systems for 27 years. I know the guidelines which have structured how creativity should be taught instead of nurtured. I understand the erroneous thinking which guided education and formed the values, perspectives and judgments which are the foundation of our cultural thinking. I lament the illnesses this misguided focus has caused, and our failure to understand and appreciate the gift of healing that is innate within each of us. In our obsessed pursuit and measurement of left brain cognitive knowledge of facts and scientifically provable results, we have sacrificed our innate right brain healing resources.
heART FIT aims to open you to a way of acting that is intuitive and sensate. Its intent is to encourage you to enter your right brain in the belief that therein lies innate healing energy. Once you become acquainted with the power within, you will be compelled to heal yourself and seek understanding for this gift of healing. You will become an ambassador for the healing power within the right brain and the healing power of creative expression. You will demand change from our healthcare system.
You will join me in believing the words of Daniel H. Pink in: A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.
It is Pink's assertion that the era of "left brain" dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which "right brain" qualities such as inventiveness, empathy and meaning will predominate. In this book he examines how discovery of "a whole new mind" will influence the future and our sense of personal wellbeing - our health.
In the recently released film, Dalai Lama Renaissance, the Dalai Lama urges this new way of being. His distinctive figure, wrapped in saffron coloured robes and bustling about, merrily laughing in a virtual sea of red, orange and yellow hues impacted my vision. I saw my sense of heART FIT.
His words which opened the film reinforced my perceptions. "It's a Heart connection. That's compassion."
His final words were an invitation. "We have to achieve a new way to go. We all have to work, act out our own development. What is within each needs out."
The film presents a forum attended by 40 respected thinkers from a variety of areas, brought together to advise the Dalai Lama. Gently, with joy and laughter he allows them to realise they do not have the answers. He suggests the peace we all seek will only come from each of us accessing our heart's wisdom. Similarly, neuroanatomist, Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, in her book My Stroke of Insight proclaims: Deep inner peace exists at the core of the right hemisphere of the brain. Right brain function uses feelings
heART FIT offers an experience which can open you to discern this place. The peace and healing within the right brain is yours to discover.
The Art of Peace
"Minds that are ill at ease are agitated by both hope and fear." - Roman poet Ovid more than two millennia ago. He died in A.D. 17.
"I can't understand why people are afraid of new ideas. I'm frightened by the old ones." - avant-guard American composer John Cage
"Embrace the creative tension of difference- not to survive but to thrive." - Heather Clarke, RN PHD from Vancouver
Accepting and channelling negative energies such as fear and anger, even if used only in a small portion of our active creative lives, is an art worth learning. Those who can channel negative energy through a creative act will find the release is soul healing for themselves and for their environment. Vancouver artist, Robert Genn has noted that, "Creative prowess comes from two main sources - love and anger. Surprisingly, anger works just about as well as love. Trouble is, it's not as much fun and it kills you sooner." It is well known that Mozart, Vivaldi and Van Gogh each stretched their genius on struggle, stress and survival.
The belief of heART FIT is that when one sits down to paint burdened, either consciously or unconsciously, by concerns or stresses, these thoughts impact your hand's natural gestures and thus the act of painting. By allowing one's inner state to guide the direction of the painting process into unconscious directions, negative energy is released, healing our spirits, and indeed our bodies. I suggest this results because 'spontaneous process painting' requires that one simultaneously embrace both the hope for a new expression that a creative act might produce, with the fear that this process may not work out. One allows creative chaos. Ease with hope and fear is the gift which allowing chaos offers the agitated mind. When one relinquishes the need to control, opens to acceptance, and allows happenstance, there is space for peace and joy.
Love the Process
It is the heart after years of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air. - David Whyte
When anything is initiated with Love in the present, the future of that reality will be purposeful, meaningful, loving and powerful.
An Artist's Way
Vision held in gratitude
Embracing quietude.
Breaths of Joy:
Enthusiasm, patience, grace.
Sighs of Faith,ŠAcceptance.
Light, DarkŠ. Duality.
Eternity waitingŠEvolution. Inspiration expands. Vision exhales.
I will
Seek, Create, Erode
Estimate
Alternate
Originate
Find what is Legitimate -
Infinite.
Karen Close
As you paint, consider: How willing are you to receive? "We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit." - e.e.cummings
As you paint: Feel your spirit. Feel yourself grow. Feel the healing.
Meditation for heART FIT: Hand/Heart Imagery
Before beginning to paint, I invite you to take a deep breath or two, releasing any tension or busyness of the early morning. Gently draw your focus to your breath and allow yourself to come to a quieter, calmer place inside. Gently start to stroke your thumbs along your fingertips and notice how your fingertips feel. Slowly open your fingers and gently place your hands palm upward on your lap. Become aware of the air at your fingertips, the air between your fingers and on the palm of your hand. Experience the fullness, strength, and maturity of your hands. Bring to mind some hands that you have known and cared aboutŠremember the oldest handsŠ..the hands of a newborn child, perhaps a niece, nephew or your own child. Once upon a time your hands were that smallŠ
Remember all that your hands have done since then...How much you have learned through your handsŠcrawling, tying your shoes, writing your name. Remember how much of your world you have explored through your handsŠthe feel of fine sand running though your fingersŠthe cool splash of raindrops on your open palm, the crunchiness of autumn leaves, the silkiness of a kitten's fur.
Remember how often your hands have reached out to help another...all the kinds of work your hands have done, the tiredness they have felt, the cuts and bruises they have experienced and the healing they have done.
Remember how often your hands have expressed your inner worldŠ..the warm welcome of a handshake, the high five of excitement, the clenched fist of anger, the applause of appreciation, the caress of love. From the simplicity of a wave farewell to the complexity of sign languageŠWe have the gift of expression through our hands.
Now slowly raise your right hand and gently place it over your heart. Press more firmly until your hand picks up the beat of your heart. This rhythm, the most mysterious of all human sounds, has passed through generationsŠ has been with you through all of life's experiences Šthe learning, the exploring, the expressing. Press more firmly for a moment and then release your hand and hold it just a fraction from your clothing. Experience the warmth between your hand and your heart. Now lower your hand to your lap very carefully as if it were carrying your heart, for it does. When you extend your hand to another, when you express, when you createŠ. consider your hand not just skin and bone, it's your heartŠ..and a way to bring even your quietest heart messages onto the world.
As you move into the day, be awake to your hands. Be awake to your heart.
I invite you to take a deep breath and when ready, just gently open your eyes. Be awake to the brush in your hand.
Note: The Hand/Heart Imagery was written by Cheryl Hann RN, HN-BC and is an adaptation of "A Hand Meditation" (author unknown nurse)
Observe The Process
The essence of heART FIT is "finding your passion" and expressing what it moves you to create. "Without passion there is no art." - Henri Matisse
"An artist cannot will a work, he must wait for it - not as a man who sleeps and distracts himself - but as one who waits for a person one loves. The artist must watch and wait. Then he must attend. He must, if he attends, believe in the existence of his images - and respect themŠIf there is a miracle - it is the recognition of existence - not the shaping of it to one's will. " - Vernon Artist/Writer, Jude Clarke: The Language of Water
Paint with your eyes.
Imagine what things might become.
Your hand's gestures offer authentic expression.
Let the brush talk. Let it dance.
Be in love with change.
Find the elegance in every line, shape and colour.
Each little stroke counts, but "See the big picture".
See your work as a pattern with flow and repetition.
Identify the extraordinary and nurture it.
Don't be cliche_ . Don't use hackneyed symbols.
Keep your work organic and fresh.
Take your time.
Let the work build layer upon layer (imitate nature's process)
These are a few ideas, but only you can make your checklist and begin the search for your own truth. Making art is a personal search for the truth within one's own consciousness. Getting there is half the fun. If there were a recipe, everyone's truth might be the same.
Value the Process
When we stop and pay attention to ourselves, we begin to see clearly the habits and patterns that have kept us asleep, confused and misled for so long. Often these are the habits and patterns that cause illness. With awareness, engaging the brain's right hemisphere and simply changing our perspective, we can choose to shift from the selfish and narrow outlook of our personality to the all-embracing generosity of our soul. Use your "whole" mind and you'll change your world. Creative thinking is not a gift you have to be born with. Most creative people learn how to be creative. They initially do it logically, but progress by engaging the feeling right hemisphere and beginning to look at one perspective and think of another. They appreciate metaphors. They make cross-connections easily. They intuitively relax into the value of process and trust their feelings and eyes to guide them. Engage intuition and sensation.
Trust your Creativity. Become heART FIT. Create your HEALTH
This material is the intellectual property of Karen Close and may not be reprinted without her permission. keclose@yahoo.com
ArtsCare events are presented in association with Okanagan College.
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