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My website has a lot to do with creativity and art as products and processes and their potential to support healing, increase awareness and facilitate other processes. However, as I was thinking about this recently I realised that I have also used creativity and art in other areas of my life and for other purposes. It has, for instance, facilitated language learning and increased the engagement of students.  When I first started teaching English I realised that the least popular subject for many students was writing; however, some capacity to write was necessary in order to pass official exams and gain certificates, which is a great part of what language teachers and schools are asked to do. Also, often the students that had failed the exams had failed the writing section. I also noticed that when I encouraged the younger children to illustrate their written work there was more enthusiasm to do the work. More exercise books arrived on my desk. I remembered how innate the desire to draw and make things is in young children and how little creativity is encouraged in elementary school and in many homes. So when I started teaching in my own school I decided to try and incorporate art making in our writing classes at least for the first four or five years when the children’s other school obligations were not so pressing. So from the first writing assignments, which involved making word cards or writing their name under their photo to much more ambitious projects I tried to incorporate some kind of art making. Then I made sure that all their work was displayed on the walls of the school irrespectively of the quality. At the end of term we would hand all the work back to the students and make space for new projects and displays. Even though it required more work on the teachers’ part it paid off in the long run contributing to increasing exam success rates beyond my own expectations and the expected general success rate. It didn’t only motivate more students to write more and more often, but inserting creativity made both the language and the learning process more attractive to them. As I mentioned above, both my website and this path that I have been walking on, these last several years, has been made possible and has been deeply intertwined with my inclination to be creative and do art. Along with meditation and mindfulness practices, art processes and practices have, in my case, probably been two important elements of the whole journey that also helped me stay connected and visible during the backlash and lack of support in my community.

You may like to listen to an interesting podcast about art and neuroplasticity from the University of Sydney

Art and neuroplasticity: are they linked? https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas/2018/art-and-neuroplasticity-are-they-linked.html

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Unexpected garden visitors

The weather has been lovely these last several days. I like to think they are the Halcyon days that failed to appear in January. The sun and the clear blue skies invite one to venture outdoors. The kitties are all are stretched out on the ledges soaking in the sun. The two neutered females are doing fine. Maybe because of the warm weather we have had unexpected visitors in the garden. Crows have been perching on the tops of trees alongside  the many smaller usual inhabitants. They have also been eating cat biscuits left on the ledges, which makes them potential prey, even though our cats are not very territorial when it comes to food or sharing their sleeping baskets, but I suppose their cat instincts may awaken. Also, an unkept wolf like dog has visited our garden twice. The first time it was late in the evening and I heard it howling, but then we saw it at the open gate. I was surprised because it is not at all common to see stray dogs in our village. The third time I encountered it I was walking in the neighbourhood and it started trailing behind me. As I tried to ‘shoo’ it off I noticed that it was wagging its tail and it almost seemed to be smiling. In the old ink drawings below I have used the image of a wolf to depict childhood fear; however, in different cultures the wolf symbol can represent many positive attributes and qualities like loyalty, strong family ties, guardianship, intelligence, communication and spirit. In the Lakota language, the word for wolf, ‘sunkmanitu’, means “divine dog.”  Wolves are also believed to have the ability to make strong emotional attachments. For the ancient Romans the wolf was a symbol of valor and courage and myth suggests that Romulus and Remus, the brothers credited with the founding of Rome, were fed by a wolf. There are now eco-therapy programmes where war veterans or disenfranchised and at-risk youths suffering from post traumatic symptoms are being paired with rescued wolves. They seem to be able to find solace in each other and establish trust and emotional attachment bonds, which support their healing of the past and hope for the future.

In her chapter on wolves Sarah Bamford Seidelmann, a fourth-generation, board-certified physician, healer, life coach and author writes ‘wolf……. trots steadily alongside you to demonstrate to you that your contribution to this world is critical. If you feel you’ve been vilified, marginalized, or somehow dismissed by the world around you, take heart. Wolf understands intimately what it can feel like to be misunderstood or not valued for who you are. You’ve been given a unique set of characteristics, talents, and desires that the world has never seen before. Your kind is needed—double meaning intended. When the wolf is removed from the landscape, the result is imbalance. The wolf’s presence exerts pressure on the hooved ones, which, in turn, lowers the pressure on the plant life, which, in turn, feeds the winged ones and the smaller animals. So, too, when you shrink or refuse to follow your instincts, everybody around you suffers. Wolf begs you to be who you are rather than trying to emulate or somehow fit into a role that feels unnatural to you’.

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‘As in the beginning, so in the middle, so in the end’

(The saying above holds so, so much truth, and it is also very, very relevant to the process of awakening or the soul and hero/heroine’s journeys we embark on. Initially, I thought it came from the bible, but it is a Buddhist saying)

Resistance

as stillness and surface calm; as avoidance and anxiety; as perfectionism and procrastination; as distractedness and disengagement; as numbness and fatigue; as sympathetic responses and despair; as physical sensations and symptoms; as inactivity and inertia; as dampened enthusiasm and confidence; as disconnect and broken continuity; as time running out and imminent death; as internal censorship and as not picking yourself; as giving up on you one more time; as not completing the circle one more time; as unfinished business; as a pause in the story; as wavering faith; as abandonment and disruption; as in the beginning so in the end

like unfinished paintings; like misplaced drawings; like spilled paint; like journals that have gone astray; like settling; like mist and heavy dark clouds; like a rubber band; like tripping over; like irrelevant conversations; like toxic communications; like ambulance vehicles; like noise pollution; like firing of guns and birds crashing to the ground; like a surreal scene from a movie – humanoid cell phones running around you; like a wall of people signaling you to STOP; like a horse being broken in the name of training; like some of your teachers’ old instructions; like a dripping tap; like a bucket full of shit and old boxes you’ve meant to discard; like fear of throwing up; like stuck in an elevator; like a closed pen gate; like a brick wall

Rubber bands break; misplaced drawings are found; settling becomes movement; constriction allows for expansion; mist evaporates; clouds shift and the sun comes out; if you trip you get up again or you catch your balance just in time and you feel gratitude for the grace of the so many  just in time instances; the elevator starts moving again; the horse breaks free; buckets and boxes can be discarded; you finally throw up and you simply clean up the mess, throw out the rug; brick walls crumble and the pen gate eventually opens and those old teachers are probably dead anyway