my blog artandhealingblog.com will now post to twitter and facebook, welcome friends to the exciting adventure of healing yourself, others,the community and the earth with art.

Art and healing brings in babies. Art and healing is a ceremony in sacred space, to change the physical world. Because it takes place across the membrane between worlds, it brings spirit to matter and changes reality. So….. if you want to bring in a baby, its a good way.  To do this, pray, bring in spirit, ask for the baby, look around and see herhim. Reachup and bring the baby down, put it inside you her safely, thank her him and you have done it. Its a guided imagery a ceremony a prayer. You can do it with friends, with a healer, medicine person, in guided imagery space, in the forest in nature, make a circle pray and bring in a baby. Yes she says, she is happy now.

SHE is the soul of art and healing.  Her body is its soil, her breath, its air, her passion its fire, her fluids, its water. She is the medicine wheel of art and healing. Her directions are the landscapes. When she breathes out it’s the art, when she breathes in it’s the healing. Her beauty is light, her sigh song her laughter energy her body grounding, close your eyes and fall in love with her, and the opposites merge and art and healing are one like lovers
You know its true
alex grey again and again

Medicine wheels
Are about prayer and balance, protection and manifestation. They are natural, the four directions are what the sun does, they are about energy for that is what it all is. There are as many medicine wheels and sweats and customs for moon as there are tribes and sweat leaders. For me, East and sunrise, new beginnings, children, air, spring sunrise, South and noon manifestation of the beginning,  youth, fire, fallilng in love with what you love, West and sunset, healing, water power middle age, North and night, wisdom and integration of the whole wheel, and then there is up the creator, down mother earth. 
Making medicine wheels is play prayer and protection. When you make a medicine wheel you pray for what you want to pray for. Medicine wheel is ceremony, medicine wheel is art.
Make a medicine wheel today. Use anything in the four directions, small toy animals, a drawing, sacred objects, slowly place them from within prayer and passion and your life will does change and  become beauty.
www.pathofthefeather.com

The bear is up, he woke up March 21 in the ancient circle dance to bring spirit to matter. I am very happy my bear is awake, my medicine is awake, I am awake and starting a new life. Gasp. So beautiful. I was a powerful dance, powerful healing and a conscious intentional bringing in of spirit  to heal. 

Who is the Bear Dancer?  He is a shamanic healer who is uses ancient spiritual and visionary tools.  Mircea Eliade, the history of religions scholar emeritus from The University of Chicago, defined shamanism as the technique of ecstasy.  Eliade defines shamanism as going into a trance to heal. Trance now would be called guided imagery , the bear dancer embodies bear, brings in bear spirit and is in a space of guided imagery trance dream and magic.

The healing of this kind takes place in sacred space. Sacred space is visionary space, it is non-ordinary reality, space that is full of meaning and pregnant with power.  The shaman uses basic tools of mindfulness, being fully present, intention, costume, dance, music and prayer trance and magic.

Art and creativity as shamanism is a basic concept of the medicine of the future. The first healer and the first artist were one person, the shaman. The first art was transformative, the cave painter made art to bring animals to them in the hunt. The bear dance teaches us the most basic spiritual tools to heal.

I invite you to wake up your medicine now, become the healing artist you are with mindfulness, presence , intention, art, prayer, trance and magic. Yes.

Tomorrow at dawn I go to wake up the bear. I dance with Native Americans several times a year in an ancient bear dance. The bear dance may have started 10,000-80-000 years old in Europe. Many tribes in California have bear danced to heal for thousands of years. The people in Southern California who I dance with hold the bear dance three times a year to heal the people of the local community. In their explanation, people come to the dance to heal illness, and release what needs to be released. The bear dancers dance in a bear skin in a complex ceremony,  They believe that the illness leaves the person and goes to the bear spirit. The illness then is swept up by eagle dancers and then goes away. The Dancer invites bear spirit to come for the dance. This healing is probably the most ancient form of spiritual healing technology. 

We put the bear to sleep in December, to rest the medicine. We wake it up in March for the rest of the year. Its good to rest your medicine. I am happy I did it. I am very ready to wake up now and excited to go.

A northern carving of a bear dancer

My journey in art and healing.
I tell you this so you can see and write your own journey

Answer the same questions, I ask
you can do it in comments here too if you want to.

question one:

When did I first know I was an artist healer ?

I did a ceremony with James Surls a sculptor who now has flowers on park ave nyc , we made wings from eucalyptus poles, dyed cloth as feathers and ran down a mountain, I took off and flew as an eagle or hawk, I saw art and healing are one like lovers. I saw them intertwined spinning in light. Then I saw who I was but I did not understand what to do, or what would happen. But I knew a truth. It was given to me as a gift in a ceremony/art piece. Thank HER.

Each act you have done in your life has prepared you to be an artist healer.

What is your story?
When did you first  know your were an artist healer ?

art and healing as one, two lover intertwined, my marble carving sculpture in Greece

Each day is a journey in art and healing. “Art is the way wisdom and
bliss are communicated to others.” Robert Thurman. Your life is
healing art. “Your Artistic Emanation Body is the most powerful art
form, the most powerful artistic emanation. “ Robert again, For your
life to be healing art, you must live with the intent to heal in every
breath. I have not posted because I just drove a car and took a ferry
from Tinos, Greece to Paris, and now I am back in Bolinas again for 2
weeks. I came back from Greece to wake up the bear, to do the wake up
bear dance that I do, I dance 3 times a year to heal. Bear is still
asleep, he wakes up March 20 oddly enough. So… sorry for the clear
space without posts. He sleeps and he dreams, he does.
 
when bear sleeps, hawk medicine speaks, its good to put your medicine
to sleep for winter so it can dream and wake up then then you have a
new life and your medicine is powerful

My architect and best friend Valentino gave me some advice when I started to
build a complicated house he designed for me myself by hand. I had never even
built a bookcase and had no building skills. He came the first day to
the site, he had bought me a hammer at a hardware store and we stood
looking at the bare land. I asked him if this was even possible.
He said " you can act out of love ...or out of fear." Out of love, I
picked up the hammer and started work. Out of fear, I would have
packed up and left.
 
I learned many lessons from building this house, that one was the most
important, there were two others. FIrst, a small visable touchable
material thing grew and changed each
day I worked. For a doctor who worked with guided imagery, inner
space, and previously medicines, that was new. I always finished a
patient session with nothing visabley different in the material world.
Second, if the house was to be finished, I needed to
compromise with my wife and let her do what she wanted to with love
and respect. I was
afraid of heights, and she was on the roof, one day hammering 30#
nails into big beams, I was impatient. She looked down after I made
some insensitive comment about a nail bending over and she said, " you
want to come up
here and hammer this nail? Or let me work and do it my way, so...
 
art and healing is like building a house.
act out of love not fear
a little material real world stuff happens each day,
and let HER do it with love and respect
 
the roof she built