Your Springtime Creative Muse

“Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.”

Miriam Beard

This weekend I wandered throughout my neighborhood, slowing way, way down

 to see my familiar through a different lens ~

traveling in my own backyard.   

 As Spring begins to unfold, there is such magnificence right under our noses. 

Watch out for it!

Nature can take us to exotic places.

Pay attention to the light and the shadows and see where they lead you.  

Use the camera in your phone as a sketchbook.

Record, Ponder and Journal about your snapshots.

Look at your images as nudges from your Springtime Creative Muse.

Where is she taking you?

Consider sharing your snapshot reflections with us.

Spring Oncology Art and Healing Workshop

Please join us for our upcoming spring workshop at Lexington Oncology Associates.

2728 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 402

             West Columbia, SC 29169

Spring Workshop presented by www.healingicons.org

 

Finding the Quiet in the Roar: Creating Sanctuary

Thursdays - March 14, 21, 28, April 4, 11, 18, 25

from 11:30am - 1:30pm

Pre-registration is required 

visual meditation - mandala drawing

Springtime is the land awakening.

The March winds are the morning yawn. 

Our physical world can offer us much wisdom and much needed solace from the chaos of life's stress. We will explore our connections with nature and use her elements to create a mixed media sanctuary.

Through the silent language of art, you will learn to use creativity to decrease your stress while enjoying a nurturing community of fellow survivors!

Absolutely no art experience is necessary.

Please email  info@healingicons.org  with questions and to register. 

Limited to 10. This series is open to adult oncology patients (16 years and older) who may enroll with a family member or a caregiver.

 

 

 

 

 

This spring,stretch into your mind-body-soul connection and join us for this arts and healing workshop.

Wordless Wednesdays - In El Espinal, Oaxaca, Mexico... Nature Inspires Mandala. Title suggestions? If this were your mandala, what would you title it?

Wordless Wednesdays

 

Tuesday Tributes - The Pause Between

On this gray, dreary, misty, wintry morning, I sat on my mat at the end of yoga class and listened to my breath, especially to the pauses in-between.

I’m granted this opportunity every week I practice at my intimate neighborhood studio, Amsa - to surrender, become absorbed, immersed in my breath - but this morning I was especially able to savor the experience.

Throughout the day, I continued to reflect on this morning gift of gratefulness. I was struck by how little attention I afford to my breath - that automatic thing we all do in order to live. The constant current of our life force, that breath that breathes us into a continual state of being, holds such surprising gifts. 

The same lessons learned on the yoga mat are analogous to ones absorbed working at the studio table.  If we listen to the tide of our breath, to the rhythm of our inhales and exhales, we gradually begin to become more present, more attune with our essence, our essential selves.     These exquisite pauses hold vast potential where everything dissolves into nothing.  It is within this nothingness, this pause between, where we are bestowed glimpses of an intimate inner peace some refer to as brushes with the divine..

A larger force bestows these gifts of gratefulness, reflection, knowing, and wisdom, but we have to do our part by showing up. 

In this New Year, consider pausing from your life's routine to take advantage of Healing Icons creative offerings  and consider signing up for a week of artistic and cultural immersion in Italy this May – where we will have many opportunities to honor, reflect, create and awaken more fully into our lives.

"A lifetime is not what is between
the moments of birth and death.

A lifetime is one moment
Between my two little breaths.
The present, the here, the now,
That's all the life I get.
I live each moment in full,
In kindness, in peace, without regret."

Chade Meng, Taoist poet

Frankly, I wish he had said strive to live each moment...because I think it is impossible to live each and every moment as he describes ... but we are lucky if we get glimpses into this pause.

"Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep."

Mary Oliver

       from - Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday Travels

Travel

to move forward towards a given direction or path

to journey through or over a given distance

to follow a course or path, going from one place to another

to cross over boundaries and borders

The idea of movement from one known, comfortable place to another unknown, mysterious place can fill us with terror, trepidation, anxiety, fear.  Simultaneously, the idea of leaping wildly outside of ourselves is lusciously stimulating and excites us with curious life-affirming wonder.

Yet how often do we allow ourselves this gift?

Comfort zones are a wonderful place to come home to but certainly not a place to live! Traveling outside of our known, expected selves keeps the juiciness of our human journey vibrant and alive.

Whether we physically travel to unknown lands, delve deeply into our interior lives, or embark upon learning to paint, to sing, to dance...we are traveling forward, opening our vision and hearts towards learning that the most valuable things in life are not our possessions but our experiences.

Wordless Wednesday