this is like school, my class at sfsu

Art and healing is changing as we do it, we are the pioneers,
it is changing to multimedia art as a prayer as ceremony to heal.
ummm

so to understand this change we all need to look, LOOK at what we are doing,
this can be done with.....
A qualitative health research study using the method of hermeneutic phenomenology study (Van Manen’s Technique) of class projects to see what art and healing is. Mary Rockwood Lane did this in her PHD on how art heals, that we published as our second book
Spirit Body Healing,
the technique is not hard,
http://www.phenomenologyonline.com/max/projects/hswriting.html
you just write a narritive of what you did to heal with art and read it for themes
braket out all theory, only include lived experience so we all can feel it.

What can you learn when you look at the projects each day??
at what you do each day as art healing ceremony in your YOUR life?
Themes emerge

Assignment: use art (visual arts, music, dance, word, ceremony) to heal yourself, another, community or earth (physical, mental, spiritual personal growth issue, dreams)

What did they do? What did they heal, what process, what happened?

We will search for themes in common in all the projects that tell us what art and healing is,
each day I will pick out some themes.
You can too.
ummmm

quiet, feel it, in your body this...

Her goal, to try to use art to heal  with others
Questions: what to heal, what art?
Answers:
She chose her daughter who she loved, who was close to and had a relationship of mutual trust
Chose what to heal – a toxic relationship
chose media- box, poetry, visual art- collage and it turned into sacred ceremony
A process evolved- all became clear as it happened- naturally
It took weeks , took place in natural heartfelt steps
Ummm. So
What do we learn from this unbelievable beautiful way
to facilitate healing
with someone you love
with art and ceremony???

its about love and relationship
its natural
its sacred ceremony
its fun, deep, hard, tearfelt, heartfelt wonderful

thank you thank you thank you Margi!!!!

Some days, I will post a project in art and healing from my class at SFSU or JFK to help you understand how to use art and healing in your life.

The projects are unbelievably beautiful, I honor each student and each project.

First, Margi Rohde from my Art in Healing class at the John F Kennedy Transformative Arts Masters Program. 

http://www.jfku.edu/programs/programs/arts/tranform/

here is Margi's project:

"I chose two projects for the Art & Healing class, one I had already begun and was eager to finish and the other was a start to something which will be on-going.  I found myself to be wildly enthusiastic about the process. I have experienced the healing power of art in many forms within my own life and was interested in taking what I have learned and seeing how it would work with others.

The first project was with my daughter.  She has spent several years healing in regards to an extremely toxic relationship. She was feeling that she was nearing the end of that process and wanted to make her healing tangible.  She wanted to do something incorporating the idea of the natural elements. 

First she made a box containing some personal effects from a man with whom she had had a long relationship. She covered the box with poetry he had written to her and some of her own drawings. As she thought about this for a while she became convinced that she wanted to burn it. 

She asked me and my husband to participate with her in a ritual of burning the box and saying a few words to acknowledge the importance of this person in her life and the destruction he had brought, as well as breaking the power he has had in her life.  She had written a few pages of renunciation which she read as the box burned.  This brought her a tremendous sense of release, freedom and joy. She felt at this moment that her process of healing was finished.

She carefully took the ashes home with her and waited until we talked further and the next step became clear.  For her second event in the healing process she wanted to do a Chinese brush painting of the words ‘death’ and ‘joy’.  She mixed some of the ashes into the ink; the result was a gritty texture not un-reminiscent of bones from cremation.  This pleased her greatly as it gave a sense of finality to the aspects of the relationship she was healing from.

The following and final step took place several weeks later.  I had been making cairns at Pt. Isabel and she asked to join me and construct a funereal cairn in which to bury the ashes.  There was a lovely triangulated group of rusty wire which She used as a base and she built her cairn out of composite riprap.  It was important to her to use discarded building materials in the place of natural stones to further symbolize the ending of the control this person had held over her and the destruction he had brought into her life.  She poured the ashes into the cairn and finished the construction with stones on the top as adornments. 

The following day we went back, there had been two high tides since the cairn was built and the tide was still up though not high.  The cairn was partially submerged and the ashes were covered with water.  She was struck with the image of the tide rising and very gently carrying the ashes of this relationship out to sea. I was honored to companion her through this process and feel as she does that she has come to a place of rest. She feels released from the pain which had defined her for several years and is ready to move forward into new and healthy relationships.

This process was a natural one for me as we had talked extensively over the course of this class about what she might do to celebrate the end of this step in her process of healing. She was easy to work with, in great part because of our closeness and the love and trust we have for each other."

body castings to heal, from my class at sfsu

ummmm

I would like to put a project a day on this blog,

projects, work, you did,

YOU to heal yourself, others, the earth, with art.

soooo
send me by email,
msamuelca@gmail.com

a peice of work you did to heal yourself another community or earth,

its a blog folks, so make it short

maybe 2 paragraphs ,a description of what you were healing, what art process you used and what happened

include a photo and very short bio.

ummmmm

become an instant art and healing star.

you are ....already

 

thanks
Michael Samuels

Healing her daughter from a story of children being taken from the villiage generations ago. Multi-media ceremony, dance, costume, visual arts, story theatre.In my class Art and Healing at SFSU

(you always heal yourself too)

Ok, back to the first day of this blog. A small project to heal one of the above.
Do you want to start with yourself? Another, a family member, person in hospital , a community? The Earth? Pick one. And let’s begin a project
We will start on this blog with a family member, healing someone you love in you family is basic as a mother you have done it your whole life.
Ok, these are examples of projects done by my class to heal another:

A ceremony with visual art and dance to heal her daughter from a relationship that broke up
A large ceremony with a medicine wheel, poem, dance to heal a family from a death of a grandmother
A ceremony with a narrative and costume  to heal her daughter from family patterns of woman’s madness  when at menarche
A ceremony dance poem to heal her mother when the father left.
A guided imagery and visual arts piece to heal a brother with a brain tumor.
Sooo. You can choose a family member you love who needs healing, choose a media, visual arts, music, poem, story, dance, ceremony, and do something.
Ummmmm think about it……

You can ground yourself in art and healing by putting yourself inside of history, experiencing physiology, and knowing you are part of a huge growing exciting community of artist healers around the world, You are not alone...

Remember and understand....

When you are a healing artist, artist healer, working with yourself, patients in a hospital , people in a community or the earth, its good to know you have 10,000 years of history and the body’s physiology with you as you work.

The history is simple, indigenous shaman, Egyptian, Greek, Tibetan, Christian-Jewish-Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu, all used and have huge libraries of art and healing art, ceremony, processes, guided imageries.

The physiology is simple too, the images held and seen, in the cerebrum, then trigger nerve impulses that create the relaxation response and change the hormonal and nervous system arousal to the whole body, like meditation or prayer. You change brain waves, heartbeat, breathing, immune system function etc to every cell in the body.

Finally art and healing is now used in many hospitals with cancer patients and patients of all kinds. Most major medical centers have art and healing programs with artists in residence, dancers in residence, musicians in residence and poet/storytellers in residence working with staff and patients on many units.

As an artist healer today, you are part of the oldest healing, the newest healing, you change every cell in the body to healing physiology and you make yourself and the person you work with healed and fulfilled spiritually.

That who you are and what you do.
thank you thank you thank you for changing art, healthcare and people's lives.

Temple of Aphrodite Delos
In Delos there is a temple of Aphrodite
Where you would come to make love with the Goddess
She was there a sculpture in the center
You made offerings to her on an altar
Prayed sang and did ceremony
Then….
A priestess/priest would take you
Into a temple room,
And you would make love to the Goddess/God
In the lovemaking you would see HIM/HER
Know THEM and be THEM
The archelogist told me, maybe
You made love to ordinary  people
You met there in the sacred ceremony gathering
As THEM then, they turning into the GODDESS/GOD
For you, them THEM.
Art and healing , making love to THEM
To heal yourself, others, community and earth
ummmmm

The Temple of Aphrodite Delos, the main room, altar and room to make love as THEM