Trauma & Art

The poem of the hands by Christian McEwen

‘….And hands are stars / which shape the empty air / The woman stares at them / They sing her song’

Inspiring sessions on healing trauma from The Healing Trauma Summit hosted by Sounds True at: https://www.soundstrue.com/mycourse/oce/healing-trauma-summit/live/?utm_source

* ‘Cultivate alliance with wisdom of bodily sensations…… empowerment and agency come through being in our body’ Peter Levine

* ‘Holding patterns or constrictions are the frozen moments of trauma, which hold emotional charge and the mentality of our age at the time’ Judith Blackstone

 * ‘Trauma is what happens inside us as a result of what happened to us… it is a constriction, a narrowing…’  Compassionate inquiry and body based approaches – Gabor Mate                                                                       

* ‘How do we not reduce women in the healing process to only being the victim; & how do we actually see their strength, resilience and creativity and how they survived, rather than reduce them to that one image…’ Zainab Salbi                       

* ‘The threat of trauma runs through life like an underground river; none of us are invulnerable and no one is impervious to change and our emotions operate on neurofibres that are faster than thought. Trauma impacts us even if we do not want it to; we cannot think our way around it’ Mark Epstein                                                   

*‘Healing in and from our original, innate wholeness not towards wholeness….’   ‘Resilience is hard wired in us, but experiences block it…’ Richard C. Miller

* ‘Trauma centre trauma sensitive yoga (TCTSY): a) everything is an invitation (no one is coerced); b) shared, authentic experience (no one is abandoned / sharing power): c) choice making (agency); d) interoception (brain impacts)’ David Emerson                    

* The necessity of a public discussion of aspects of trauma for: ‘unresolved trauma lies all around us; traumatic residue in cellular body; trauma modifies expression of DNA; collective & familial cellular transference of trauma; consider versions of suffering that the offspring of Japanese nuclear bombing survivors; holocaust survivors; veterans of wars; racism; slavery; refugees; indigenous people; addictions; abuse and neglect; imprisonment; trafficking; natural disasters; hunger, etc, etc, carry at a cellular level; cultural amnesia is dangerous – it creates the possibility of repetition…’ Elizabeth Rosner

* Resource tapping: imagine what you want to activate, e.g. peaceful place; joy; resilience; ideal mother, etc. Exercise: ‘tap in imaginal womb, birth & nurturing / attachment through developmental stages using ideal mother one develops to tap in’ Laurel Parnell

* ‘These social traumas are caused by experiences of discrimination and prejudice on a personal level, as well as, cultural and structural inequities based on factors, such as, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion and disabilities. Our nervous system reacts to prejudice, discrimination and inequity, as a matter of survival because they are an assault on our fundamental sense of safety and right to exist in this world’ Thea Lee and T. O. Wound  quoted by Leslie Booker:

* ‘Reconceiving trauma not as pathology but as a tragic reality and universal transformational force that is a: portal to the luminal; rite of passage; initiation; call to the Real; call to community; rebirth and recreation of self and identity’ Ed Tick

* ‘We work with leftovers of past experience…we work with unmetabolized responses…we are released from past when the body does not have to carry past defenses…. We need to pay attention to the preparatory movements before trauma, like tension in legs, for instance, in order to reinstate capacity for the flight response, & also, consider the impact of trauma on our proximity seeking actions…’ Pat Ogden

* ‘Look at everyone you encounter as a child. When you can see the child in a person, you can be empathetic’ / ‘The importance of touching the innocence of childhood….. There’s nothing more dangerous than a broken boy in an adult man’ Shaka Senghor

* ‘Through such devastation there is a level of power, creativity, resilience, purity’ Jeffrey Rutstein

* ‘Traumas create a growth experience, not when you are in the midst of them, but when you walk through them’ Sandra Ingerman

On Artemis

Short extract from an interview in Jung Journal of Culture and Psyche (Routledge) retrieved on May 28^th, 2018 from http://jeanshinodabolen.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Into-the-Woods-Bolen-Interview.pdf

‘For decades, Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen has led us “into the woods.” She has given the world a lifetime of Artemis-inspired work, and through her example and writing, we can more fully understand and embrace the archetypal energy of Artemis within the psyche as well as its confuence with other archetypes, the analytic process, and humanitarian activism.

Helen Marlo: It is great to interview you, especially given the subject of your latest book, Artemis: The Indomitable Spirit in Everywoman. You have lived out and championed Artemis – an underrepresented or overlooked archetype that expresses, among many things, activism in women. Can you say a bit about the book and its central message?

Jean Shinoda Bolen: The key word in the title is “Indomitable,” which means untamed or not able to be subdued. Artemis is the archetype active in the girl who survives abuse and neglect, who can see herself as a survivor rather than a victim. Like the goddess of the hunt and moon, she aims for a target or goal of her own, and with her lunar aspect, develops the capacity for reflection and perception of mystery. Egalitarian relationships with men and sisterhood are natural. This is the archetype of the activist and feminist. This archetype was liberated by the women’s movement and is coming into its own now.

HM: What motivated you to write it now?

JSB: There was a reactivation of Artemis in my own psyche. I went to the United Nations (UN) in 2002 and have been going annually since then as an advocate for a UN World Conference on Women. I continue to be appalled at what I learn about: the trafficking of little girls, the use of rape as a weapon in conflicts, and, in many parts of the world, what a tragic and awful fate results from being born female. I was inspired by the indomitable spirit of girls and women who survive and work in the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that rescue and help. Artemis is their archetype. While I’m not on the frontlines, the intuitive feeling function that gives me empathy and serves me well in doing analysis, motivates my Artemis-activism. Writing the book began with telling the myth of Atalanta at the Jung Institute in Küsnacht (2012). In Jungian circles, the myth of Psyche, told by Erich Neumann in Amor and Psyche (1956), is described as the psychological development of the feminine. But it’s a pattern that doesn’t describe women whose leading archetypes are Artemis, Athena, and Hestia. I wanted this myth to become a counterpart to the Psyche myth in Jungian thought about women’s psychology…..’