Simple meditation altar

I go through phases with my art. Sometimes, like recently, a particular painting will grab me and I work on it for weeks or months. Sometimes I get obsessed with sandtrays and do them all the time. In one phase of my life I had a simple wooden bar stool that I used as an altar, and I made a new altar everyday. I used simple things – rocks, flowers from my garden, food, trinkets. My medicine there was in arranging things, you could say. Maybe I am in a new “altar” phase. Last night I found myself quite spontaneously creating an altar space for my daily meditations. I usually plop down anywhere for that, but I have felt drawn to have a specific place. There I was, with bags of beans and orange lentils – completely absorbed. It’s simple. Very simple. Like the quick poems I write in my journal. Or the small songs I make up on the spot. Or the moments I take to sink into dancing in between the dishes and the laundry. Even very simple art has medicine. Magic. Presence-making. And the seeds for more alive living.  Hooray for the magic of beans!

Me and my sugar skull

So many cool happenings are available if you look around. Fabulous workshops and unique offerings abound!  My husband Eric and I just went to such a great sugar skull making class.  They gave some background about Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), and then taught us how to make sugar skulls.  Sugar skulls are traditionally used on altars for Day of the Dead.  In Mexico, people don’t make their own skulls. They buy them from sugar skull vendors who make skulls using molds that have been passed down through their family’s generations of skull makers!  Day of the Dead is a memorial day – a day to remember and celebrate those who have passed, as well as to celebrate death as a natural part of life. The necessary other-side-of-the-coin of life.  The day of the dead was originally thought of as the time when the veil was thinnest between worlds.  And it was a time when it was thought that the dead literally returned to celebrate with loved ones.  The tradition carries on, and feasts are still laid out on graves and in homes to make a big party for the returning deceased.  Marigold flowers are supposed to attract the spirits with their color and fragrance, and are often scattered on the ground as a trail between the deceased’s grave and the home to lead them home for their party.  But mostly people just set up shop and have a big festival in the grave yards. They decorate the graves and make big altars with food, drink, sweets, pictures of the deceased, and anything the deceased would like while visitng – cigarettes for example.  Families stay over night in the graveyards even, with dancing and music and lighted candles.  Originally Aztec and Mayan, it was absorbed by the Catholic church when it moved to MezoAmerica and became All Saints Day.  The Catholic church tried to stop it, but the people wouldn’t give up their holiday.  To this day, some families spend two months salary on the items that will go on the altars. 
Anyway we had a great time.  If you are interested in sugar skull classes, contact Anna Ibarra at 619-517-4080 or aibarra1@cox.net She has a company called Que Milagro, Creations Inpired by Mexican Tradition.

A little closer up

Cindi receiving her turn at Theta Healing from Karen

We had our Theta Healing and Expressive Arts Workshops this weekend. They were amazingly rich, and restorative for so many people! The following, divine writing is what one participant, Cindi, experienced and wrote after she received her Theta Healing. Cindi says: “I laid back down and felt my eyes fluttering (like Karen’s which I have never experienced before) and then felt prompted to put pen to paper…the writing came very fast….

You were not sent here to Earth as a penance, but rather as an act of divine unconditional love to be with your beloved. We are with you always, you are our precious family also, and we can never be separated. We are all part of the whole, who is God. We are the living breathing essence of our creator and therefore all one. What you feel, we feel as we can be no different. What happens to one, happens to all. So let your joy shine, your inner beauty radiate and we shall feel that too. Our energies are flowing together just like drops of water merge in the ocean, or a grain of sand upon the shore. The whole is the beach full of sand. Which grain then is more important or less than the whole? My dear, you have come so far to be in this human skin, it was by your choice, but we have never left you, you have never left us. Do you see? You are living inside of time, but there is no time. Do you see? We love you, your beloved family and your heavenly family we are all one~
Love,
Your Angels

Wow. Thank you so much, Cindi, for sharing this. And thank your angels for us too.

Creativity

4 women, their bodies, and the different, creative results

Oh yeah. I am a BIG fan of creativity now that I think about it.

Amazing Dance Improvisation Class!

Dancers in a Soul Motion workshop. The class I took is partly based off of Vin Martin's Soul Motion work, and partly based of Gabrielle Roth's work.

Okay, so I am not supposed to use the photo I did here. I got it from Vin Marti’s site, Soul Motion. But it would have been inappropriate for me to take a picture in the class I took on Sunday. Besides, I was too busy dancing.

Here is some background: About two years after I got my masters of fine arts in dance, I started developing a foot problem, which turned into a hip problem. Short story, I haven’t been able to dance as I used to, and it’s been a long period of personal and spiritual discovery to have to let go of my identity as a mover and embrace the moment.

I’ve been feeling better recently. Stronger and more resilient. I decided to go with a friend to take a dance improvisation class she has been raving about for years. I probably would have gone sooner, but the class is in Venice, LA – I live in San Diego. And of course, I didn’t take the class until now because it evidently wasn’t the right NOW until now.

I had some anxiety going on – mostly revolving around two fears. One, would I hurt myself and be in pain? Two, would I look stupid/ugly? That last one is not one I care to admit, since I think ANYONE can dance, that it’s not ABOUT how it looks AT ALL, and that self connection and soul expression cannot be other than beautiful. I know. I’m just ‘fessing up to the voices that were in operation.

The class is a kind of meld between Gabrielle Roth’s Five Rhythms, and Vin Marti’s Soul Motion work. The music set the structure, since it was based on the Five Rhythms, (I think they are Flowing, Stacatto, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness). I took it slow, which the class supported, as did the progression of rhythms. I felt my way in.

I breathed, I moved slowly so I could feel it. I followed myself. I stayed on the floor a long time. Invited by the rhythms and the music, I found my way to standing, to larger movements, to moving around the room, weaving in and out of the moving bodies. Sometimes I joined another dancer for a moment his or her movement. Mostly I moved. I played with people, with music, with my own impulses. I was in a trance. At one point, I came back to myself, aware, suddenly, that I was sweaty and moving in as free a way as I had for probably 8 years. My chest suddenly swelled and I was so overcome with feeling, with gratitude, with REMEMBERING the joy of dancing. My breath caught in my throat. I sobbed and a flood of tears added themselves to my already sweat soaked face. I kept dancing. I sobbed and moved, and felt ALIVE in an exquisitely VIVID sense.

I could give you an in-depth analysis of what the structure of the class was like, and maybe I will at some point, just so you understand the brilliance and beauty of this class. For now, know that I danced. The I remembered the joy and freedom of movement. Right here, in this exact body, as it is now. ”Limitations” and all.

Looking at the studio from the street. 3060 Adams Ave., San Diego

Me, at the studio.

Why Expressive Arts Therapy?

Someone recently asked me how I got into Expressive Arts Therapy. The truth is that it got into me. Maybe before birth. I’ve been scribbling on the bedroom walls with crayons, dancing around the living room, writing poetry, drawing, making sounds and beating on the furniture as drums, and generally expressing myself since I can remember. It never mattered too much through what medium I expressed myself. Whatever was at hand, I suppose. A pile of rocks. Some sand. Some pens. Maybe I started dancing since my body was the most readily available instrument of expression. I’m not sure. But throughout both my dance degrees, I was not only dancing but writing and sounding and drumming and painting. Most of my choreography was built on poetry I’d written, or poetry by people like Clarissa Pinkola Estes, for example. I had a composition class in grad school taught by David Capps. He was always asking us to create a dance piece in response to a painting, or an object he’d assign us (he gave me a toy fire truck). I loved that class. My graduate concert incorporated a lot of poetry, a lot of theatrical delivery, rather than dance.

Expresssive Arts Therapy is different from other creative arts therapies in that it uses ALL the arts – anything that stimulates your imagination. Anything that engages and sparks you, and gives you a means to follow an inner path. I could have trained to be an Art Therapist, or Dance Therapist, or Music Therapist, or Sand Tray Therapist, etc. In which case I would have trained to be an expert in one of those particular disciplines. What I love about being an Expressive Arts Therapist is that my expertise is in moving from one art discipline to another. I am trained in how to follow that spark, across different media. My training, and interest, is in how to use any creative means to help the soul say what it wants to say in that moment. To help amplify and make that spark more clear.

That’s what I’ve been doing, naturally, since I can remember. Frankly, I was delighted to find out there is a NAME for what I have been doing all this time! I didn’t find out about that until after finishing my MFA in dance. The interdiciplinary nature of that MFA program proved to be the perfect pre-training for my Expressive Arts career.

After I graduated, I kinda floundered. I knew that I had been studying dance for my soul, and I told myself I was getting a masters so that I could teach in a college/university. The whole reason I went through those dance degrees was because they were personally mandated spiritual practices. And becasue of that, when I graduated I found myself not particularly interested in all the things I was SUPPOSED to be interested in, were I to pursue teaching dance as a career. So I floundered, moved back to California, taught aerobics, worked at Jimbos in the human resources department, and was REALLY, REALLY depressed. Until I found out there is a thing called “Expressive Arts Therapy.” And found out there is such a thing as the “San Diego Expressive Arts Institute.” And found out that they were starting a new batch of graduate students in two months. Really. I found out there was such a thing, applied, interviewed, and less than two months after finding out the Expressive Arts Therapy exists, I was sitting in a graduate training program. Yowza. Five years later I opened “The Art of You Studio,” where I continued my private practice and started offering workshops.

That’s the short version, really.

A LEGION OF ANGELS – by Cindi

Another angel from Cindi's gallery

One of Cindi's amazing angels

There are people and places we encounter on this path of life who bear the sweetest of gifts. For me, Chris Brittian and Karen Hayes are two who unquestionably awakened my soul, unearthed a blissful joy and forever changed my life.
My daughter introduced me to Chris and her magical studio through an invitation to take an “expressive arts” class. I had never heard of “expressive arts” and from the moment I met Chris and the beautiful vibe that accompanies her classes I was hooked. As if orchestrated from above my daughter and I would not only need the wonder and sanctuary her classes had to offer but it would be vital to our survival for what was to come.
My grandson was vaccine injured at 15 months old, stopped speaking and suffered many physical difficulties.  Unfortunately, the doctor who injured him, told us it was Autism and there was nothing he could offer. No responsibility, no help. We became Mother Warriors on a mission to heal him and HEAL him we DID with the help of a Legion of Angels.
This Legion showed up some clothed in human skin and with saintly human kindness. Chris is one of those in the legion and her kindness I will never forget. With recovery came huge bills, labs and costs from every direction imaginable. Chris offered as her part in Jake’s recovery, her classes to us which came filled with her love and her healing studio. This gift was to nurture our own weary spirits during this two year odyssey. When we could my daughter and I found food for our souls, a reprieve, a joyous break from the hard work of recovery. 
I was the Prayer Warrior of our team.  My every waking thought was a prayer. At first I beseeched God to bring a Legion of Angels to heal Jake. I would recount in my prayers that I knew Jesus healed the lame man, and returned sight to the blind man and we were asking for no less. We needed the perfect power of His love to heal Jake. Each waking breath became a prayer, picturing him perfect whole and complete. And today SO IT IS true.
Chris sent an email regarding the Theta Healing/Expressive Arts class. We couldn’t wait to sign up. I didn’t know what to expect and neither did my daughter. Chris introduces us to Karen and I remember thinking how beautiful they both looked, like they were glowing from the inside out. The class was WONDER-FULL and WONDER-FILLED.  Karen’s message to me was, “Don’t forget your wings.” To be honest, I didn’t really know what it meant then. We left feeling happy as always after a class.
The next day, something inside me was different, I felt lighter, like the blood coursing through my veins was airy, my feet didn’t seem to be on the ground, I felt like I was floating. I spoke to my daughter later that evening and she agreed she felt different too, lighter somehow. Within a few days, I felt the need to purchase paints, I wanted to paint Angels. Now, if you were an artist this wouldn’t be strange or crazy, but I have never painted anything except walls in the house. My daughter and I were headed to the grocery store and I was telling her this desire that had suddenly blossomed in my heart.  She said OK, let’s stop at the art store.  The funny thing is she drove a different way to the art store and we turned on one street to see a garage sale, there prominently in the front of the sale was a beautiful easel. She immediately pulled over the car and said at least see how much it is Mom. I asked the gentleman and he said $5.00. It’s a professional easel, that must have cost $500.00 when new. It is now mine. Confirmation comes when you least expect it. I’ve wondered why am I painting faces, the hardest thing there is to paint? As I add the eyes to each Angel I know…each one of us is perfect, whole and complete. I do believe God must glory in putting the finishing touches on each of us. I have a Legion of Angels to paint, I have a Legion of Angels to thank. When I hear Jake singing now or chatting about any number of 4 year old things, tears fill my eyes for it wasn’t that long ago we didn’t know if we would ever hear him utter a word.
I am having the time of my life. My prayers were heard and answered. It’s crazy, blissful and I am in wonder of all those who walk aside us…whose hands are held open bearing a gift, their own unique special gift. We are so blessed.
With Love,
Cindi

Cindi's current gallery of angels