“Pieces of Me”
Becoming Creative. Becoming Aligned With the Spirit.
My spirit gets easily out of alignment. I tend to push myself beyond my limits, take on too much, not surrender the things that would be good to let go of and because of that, my spirit, mind and body normally take a hit. Art 4 Healing and their technique has been a precious tool for me to express my emotions and allow my spirit to breathe. Creativity truly brings me back into spiritual alignment.
When I was younger, I was quite the creative one. I was a dancer, loved writing poems, created stationary, made friendship bracelets, did needle point and the list goes on. Painting was always a secret desire of my heart. I loved watching Bob Ross on PBS. Do you remember that guy? I was so captivated by that show!
Older + Responsibilities = No Creativity
Sadly, as I grew older, that creativity was replaced with adult responsibilities, climbing the corporate ladder and doing things I thought I should be doing. I let my creativity fall to the way side. Interestingly enough, my secret desire to paint never faded and I ended up finding Art 4 Healing in a round about kind of way.
When Living Social and Groupon showed up on the scene and offered like 50,000 painting classes, I knew I had to do one. I researched and looked at deals and that’s how I stumbled across Art 4 Healing. One of my closest friends had a birthday approaching and I thought this would be a great afternoon for us to do together in celebration of her. We signed up for a 3 hour class called Expressing Feelings With Color.
Diving Into The Process
Art 4 Healing’s mission is to support emotional healing through art & creative expression for those living in pain, grief, fear or stress. I don’t know about you, but I could surely use some of that! The class itself was limited to 10 participants and they asked those of us that came with friends not to sit next to one another. Their goal is to facilitate an atmosphere that makes self consciousness flee.
Laurie, the President and Founder of Art 4 Healing taught this class and lead us through what the class would be like. She told us we would be painting with ONLY makeup sponges and Q-tips! What the heezer? Her reason for this is that we have the tendency to get caught up with trying to make things perfect and just right, so much so that we can block the flow of the emotions that need to come out. This kind of painting is not meant to be perfect, it is meant to express.
Hushing The Internal Chatter
She also warned us about “the committee in our heads” that tends to say things like “that doesn’t look good”, “how embarrassing is that?”, “everyone will laugh when they see that you did that?”, “try harder and do better!” She said we need to leave the committee in the car and if they try to come back in, tell them to leave. Vulnerability is the most welcomed guest.
What followed was a beautiful 3 hour session of deep, soulful expression. It was a whole new door to my soul that I felt had all of a sudden swung wide open. It was allowing me to express myself in a whole new way, a way that I needed.
Art + Creative Expression = Wholeness
That class was years ago and I have continued to use their method to express my soul, align my spirit and truly become more whole. If you are looking for a way to release emotions, feel supported, want to cultivate the art of surrender or express prayer in a different format, give Art 4 Healing a try. It is powerful.
Although they are based out of Orange County, they have started offering online classes which you can do from anywhere you can get internet! That is so exciting to me! I go through seasons where I’m just too fatigued to leave the house, so this option is fabulous for those like me or outside of this general area.
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Stay tuned. Soon I will take you through how I do this at home, what supplies I use and more of my paintings.
What do you do to help your spirit come back into alignment?
