Mandalas for Centering Strength

We gathered at Lexington Medical Center to explore the idea of art making as a form of healing.  A few were outside of cancer treatment for many years but still possessed a nagging fear of a recurrence.  Others had just finished treatment.  Another was heading to Duke on Friday for exploratory surgery as her counts were up but the location of her cancer mastitis unknown.  One had fought with cancer 5 times and spoke of not being a survivor but a cancer conqueror!  Awe inspiring, courageously resilient – every single one of them!

One of the most difficult “issues” that goes hand in hand with a cancer diagnosis is the loss of control.  Suddenly without warning life dramatically changes and with that comes mounting fears and deep anxiety.

At times this feeling is mirrored in our art and healing practices as participants face a blank page waiting to be marked upon.  Having no idea what our creations are going to look like is a lesson in trusting the process, seeing where the art-making leads us.

This summer we are exploring the art of the mandala – creating within a circle.  Our first workshop addressed how to let go of our anxieties through the process of “intuitive” mandala drawing and how to create an intentional mandala for Centering Strength. 

Using a black piece of paper which represents the void, the mystery, the unknown, we began by using a white pencil, a light wand shedding illumination into our drawings.  Symbolically we planted a seed in the center of the circle drawn on the black paper. 

Quietly, tentatively the process unfolded as we began to trust our hands as we moved our pencils up and down, sideways and upside down…. almost like doodling.  Paying attention to the shapes created by the pencil and the back shapes in-between, slowly symbols and feelings began to surface.  These associations were written down and linked together with other nouns, adjectives, verbs to form a “story”, a message from the mandala.

At the end of the day, everyone left with a lighter heart, a set of skills to practice until our next gathering and a new appreciation of the emotional and spiritual release the arts have to offer us!

 Thank you to Lexington Medical Foundation for sponsoring these series of classes.


  

 Allowing by Danna Faulds

There is no controlling life.
Try corralling a lightning bolt,
containing a tornado.  Dam a
stream, and it will create a new
channel.  Resist and the tide
will sweep you off your feet.
Allow and grace will carry
you to higher ground.  The only
safety lies in letting it all in -
the wild with the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the door of
the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.

 

 

In our next class,

Mandalas for Harvesting Gratitude,  we will learn another technique for creating mandalas.

 

Tuesday July 16th

from 1 - 5 at Lexington.

 To register for this free offering

Call Libby Daniels 791-2289 or

Jennifer Peagler 791-2617

Participants said:

"I learned that you can create art for yourself without concern about the appeal of it to others!"

 

"I thought I was not artistic or creative but now the creative healing  arts will be part of my new life."

 

" I was able to delve deeper into my emotions."

 

" Amazed that art is more than visual, that it can be therapeutic."

 

Opening my Gmail this morning, I landed on a message from my daughter who sent me a link to this - How Not to Be Alone by Jonathan Safran Foer  - saying it reminded her of me.  Deeply touched by this gesture, I was reminded of all the cancer survivors I have worked with. It reminded me of our small art & healing communities where we begin to unravel our complicated webs of life.  To hold an intimate conversation about what matters is "messy and painful and difficult" and joyously rewarding.  To lend an attentive ear and a welcoming heart, all within an art studio, is the stuff a good life is made of.

 

Addressing the emotional work it takes to be present and how we lazily impart more information than speak of our humanness, Mr. Foer reminds us

"We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult." This is where we begin to " wrestle with the questions of purpose and wrestle with our answers."

  

When we receive a cancer diagnosis, the emotions we experience are overwhelming -

so overwhelming it is difficult to even form the words to describe the feelings.  We can begin to feel very alone, locked up inside.  It takes time to reach into our inner lives and unlock all of  the implications of a cancer diagnosis.  An attentive ear is helpful as is a blank journal ready to receive our wild ramblings.  What is important is to be observant of ourselves and express the rumble within.  Whether through unedited journaling, free wheeled painting, or fierce cutting collage,  beginning to unabashedly express our inner lives is vital to our healing process and paramount towards living an authentic life. 

 

 

 

 

 

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