Whenever Tim and I take another group of students through our Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training process we inevitably hear from folks how they’ve never experienced anything quite like the sense of healing and love and liberation that happens for them in our circles and in our training.
And for a long time it has puzzled me because I just do what I do and Tim does what he does and we don’t think of it as particularly special. I know our work is good and powerful and effective and I know we’re good AT it, but apparently there is a secret sauce that I just take for granted and so I wanted to try and articulate what it is that we do that is so very special.
There are a few basic healing principles that we are very committed to and take very seriously and the first one is our devotion to the concept of wholeness. And what we mean by wholeness is the process of claiming all of who you are… and that means ABSOLUTELY everything.
It’s owning our power but also accepting ourselves when we feel weak and vulnerable. It’s recognizing not only when our hearts are open and loving but also how and when they are closed and cranky. It’s making space to be angry, jealous, frustrated, chaotic and scared as well as joyful, expansive, calm, energized and confident.
Being whole means we are sometimes dissolved into a puddle of grief and at other times radiant with an incandescent happiness. Wholeness welcomes the wisdom of our despair and hopelessness as well as our capacity to bask in delight and be inspired by awe. Wholeness includes the experience of tightness, contraction and rigidity and the sweet softness that comes from being in an environment where you are held and safe.
As you can see from this short list , wholeness is incredibly rich and complex. And what we learn from our families and culture and society at large is that only certain aspects of ourselves are deemed valuable and worthwhile. So we suppress, repress and OPPRESS things that we are told are not acceptable. And when we reject parts of ourselves we lose our connection to our full vitality and sparkly aliveness.
So Tim and I are VERY clear, when people enter our world, that ALL of who they are is not only totally welcome but also celebrated.
We don’t just simply tolerate your anger or your whiny resistance but jump up and down with joy when those parts of you show up. When you take a risk to be bold, we invite you with great enthusiasm to become even BOLDER. When your heart breaks into a million pieces we don’t shy away from the depths of your pain but sit by your side, helping you to hold those shattered pieces with the utmost tenderness and compassion.
There is nothing and no part of you that is ever, ever, ever, TOO much, TOO intense, TOO weird or TOO big.
And experiencing that level of radical, no-holds-barred acceptance is a revelation for many of our students. It can also be a bit disconcerting to feel that kind of acceptance without restrictions, because it’s often the first time that has ever happened.
So the first principle we talk about in our program is wholeness and the practice we use to facilitate that wholeness is Full Creative Self Expression.
Creativity, the expressive arts and the intuitive painting process are incredibly powerful modalities for opening the sacred portal into that experience of wholeness because they bypass the judging mind and make a direct connection to our soul and psyche, bodies and hearts, which is where wholeness truly lives.
When we invite people to paint and express themselves creatively without a plan or an agenda, expectation or judgment, all KINDS of feelings and qualities and energies start clamoring for attention and the desire to be seen and proclaimed.
And that process of reclamation leads not only to a greater experience of joyful aliveness but to also having access to parts of yourself that know what you want and who you really are and allow you to be connected to a deeper sense of purpose and meaning.
So if you want to live your life from a place being utterly and completely and unapologetically yourself and you want to help other people do the same thing… AND you want to do that through being more creative… our Wild Heart Expressive Arts Teacher Training Program might be just what you are looking for.
For more info on the upcoming teacher training program click on the image below.
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