Transformative, Healing + Expressive Arts

Art is a complementary approach to any process and experience of healing, depth work and transformation.

At JourneyPath Institute we offer programs that incorporate all kinds of creative forms and materials, which can be used to explore feelings, memories, intuitive knowing, emotions, embodied sensing, information and states of being.

Expressive Arts Resource List is offered below.

Art as process, expressive arts and transformative process are modalities that offer dynamic and varied experiences. You will find images and videos to support your process and explore possibility. This list provides a “through a window” view of the modalities and materials used by those of us who engage in depth work and art as process.

Art-making creates an energetic connection that can be embraced as a language of the soul, a reflection of the whole self. Expressive arts serves as a guide, the engagement itself is a process of discovery that includes noticing, trust, experimentation, exploration and honoring process over product.

Art is a tool for life, reflecting and mapping the journey of experience. Many creative forms and materials can be used to explore feelings, memories, intuitive knowing, emotions, embodied sensing, information and states of being.

Art-making creates an energetic connection that can be embraced as a language of the soul, a reflection of the whole self.

Expressive arts serves as a guide, the engagement itself is a process of discovery that includes noticing, trust, experimentation, exploration and honoring process over product.

Healing is the active, moving energy that slowly turns us toward a new awareness of expressed wholeness. It is the activation of transformative change that is initiated by circumstance or happening.

Art is active happening.

Healing is a journey that moves one through the threshold of initiatory challenge to seek, find and bridge a renewed or reconciled experience. It is a journey that offers integration. Art as process is a tool for life, reflecting and mapping the journey of experience.

“At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity.”
– Rachael Naomi Remen, M.D.

 

Art as a healing practice, expressive action and transformative process offer threshold experiences.

The engagement with self and materials becomes a passage way to the inner realm, where personal and collective wisdom, and information, is held.

Once known, seen, heard and recognized, this inner wisdom can be embraced, explored and expressed. Working with image, symbol and form long past the time of creating holds potency, deepens self knowledge and become ones own source material.

You are an Artist of Life.

 


Expressive/Healing Arts Resource List

Mixed Media

Mixed Media incorporates paint, collage, ephemera, photographic art and objects on paper, other surfaces and digital blending. It can be approached in various form and is useful to extend process by adding, layering and combining image, word and medium.


Process Painting and Intuitive Drawing

Process Painting and Intuitive Drawing includes accessing emotions and sensation through paint, pastels, chalk or pencils on paper, board and canvas. Using easy materials such as acrylic, tempera and watercolor, process painting explores the surface using hands, fingers and brushes as tools.


Storytelling & Visual Narrative

Storytelling & Visual Narrative is a form of exploring self through image, word, symbol, metaphor, object and landscape. This form can help to identify one’s experience to story, history and intuitive knowing, unfolding new experience and perspective as the creative process unfolds.


Book Arts and Art Journaling

Altered book, board book, accordion and tag books…the many options of working with book arts offer wonderful design to explore visual narrative and story while working with image, word art, collage, intuitive painting, art journaling and writing.


JourneyCircles™ + MoonCircles™

As the creator, I am excited to introduce you to this dynamic process, designed to offer a multi-use template for collage, depth process and visioning. Using six interactive card types/sizes that are offered in circular and linear form you will discover powerful invitational space to tell your stories through visual narrative. The potential of creative catalyst is amplified as you create on one side of each card and the other is embedded with potent symbols that become energetically relevant to the artist, and serve to expand the narrative. Designed as a creative coaching tool as well as delightful and fun experience, JourneyCircles™ + MoonCircles™ extend the use of expressive arts and multiple modalities, while creating new sources of transformation insight to the artist.

The six mandala card types offer a reflective surface for chosen images and words. Each round generates movement, a ripple experience to articulate memory or meaning. Within in each card one or more stories are held and personal narratives surface when cards are combined. Using image, symbol, words and transformation principles, these cards open space for new understanding and clarity. VIDEOS + PAGE LINKS >>>


SoulCollage®

A psycho-spiritual process of creating your own personal collaged wisdom cards that are reflections of light and shadow, parts of self, guides and influences, invites you to explore your many facets of self and archetypal energies. I have been teaching, using and offering this easy, powerful and intuitive form since 2007.


Sand Tray and Integrated Objects

Image, object placement and movement based modalities, such as Sand Tray, Staged Environs, Installation, Diorama and Art Altars use objects within a environmental scape to explore deeper layers of knowing; accessing ones own narratives for depth process and healing.


Guided Visualization and Dream Work

Image and information accessed in the dream state is powerful. Working with day, night, active, lucid dreaming, as well as guided visualization and meditative portals are valuable additions to the creative process and depth work. It is a creative act to engage dream material, bringing dream symbols into consciousness invites clarity, curiosity and perspective. Techniques that I offer include shamanic and contemplative journey process, dream exploration, dreaming the dream forward, unpacking the dream, dream journaling, symbolic linking and parts work; all which may be incorporated into your art.


Assemblage, Small Sculpture and Healing Doll

The hands on process of assemblage uses objects, clay and fiber arts to combine with a variety of materials to create dimensional objects such as totem animals, talismans and healing dolls. The building process often involves exploring details that are embedded beneath the surface, which open the artist to a deeper inner journey.


Mask | Face of the Soul

The mask is a mirror of the emerging self. The form of masking and the creative process that unfolds in the making of the mask, both face and body, holds potent energies which reflect internal and external truths. Through image, symbol, color, texture and form there is a discovery process that is both archeological in nature and like working with a topographical map. Rather than masking your true self the mask reveals and shows the details of the core self, this reflection shifts and changes in alignment with the layers of your life.


Mytho-Poetic Writing & Voicing

Creative and intuitive writing/voicing practices will deepen your insight and understanding. Engaging in writing, journaling and poetics in written, voiced and gestalt dialogue forms of expression will complement your creative process. Working with prompts, dialogue and storytelling offers perspective and integration.