Shelley Klammer

The Art of Healing Depression with the Expressive Arts

If you are struggling with depression, you are likely not connecting to your strength and confidence. You likely have lost connection to yourself, and to your own way of knowing. This lack of confidence suggests that you have lost your connection to your soul center.

In your depression healing process, you can begin each creative practice session by developing a felt-sense of your true soul center. Once you can strongly sense your soul center, you can also start to sense into your ego structure. You can watch how your socialized ego structure is rejecting, ignoring, or attempting to negate your true soul expression.

When emotional and psychological suffering occurs during a depression, we usually forget the rest of our life. We do not remember the joy. We do not remember our resources. 

So, your growth task as a reasonably resourced and regulated adult is to identify the strong and competent parts of yourself so that they can consistently love the younger, undeveloped aspects of yourself. 

Psychotherapist Stephen Gilligan offers an interesting way to understand the connection between the somatic self and the cognitive self. There are two German words for eating - Fressen and Essen. Fressen means to eat like an animal/to eat like a pig. Essen means to eat like a person. 

So, using these words in a more general way, you could look at Fressen energy as wild, untamed and natural and when you bring the human love to it, it transforms into a more elegant Essen expression. 

 

Fressen Energy on the Left: This drawing of my untamed fressen anxiety took about 30 minutes to complete, and I am sure that I would have carried anxiety in my body for much longer than 30 minutes had I not done this drawing. In this case, I felt the anxiety, I drew it out, I saw it, I named it, and I fully processed an adverse experience of unexpectedly losing my job.

Essen Energy on the Right: After I drew out my Fressen survival fears another drawing came through without much effort. On the right, you can see a calmer and more visionary drawing where my soul expressed through me, encouraging me to be very present for the positive changes that were coming next in my life.

Fressen energy can be seen in a child’s spontaneous play, in temper tantrums, in expressive art, in whining and in innocent kindness and innocent cruelty. Fressen energy is also in storms, wild celebrations, and intense sexuality.  

Essen energies are in traditions, practices, culture, groups and families that mould these wild energies. This moulding can be harmful or helpful.

Three relationships can be had with wild Fressen energies:

1 - Fressen energy can be stifled and oppressed

2 - Fressen energy can be ignored and let run wild.

3 - Or third, the middle way, Fressen energy can be maturely loved.

Fressen Energy + Loving Essen Attention = Artful Human Expression. 

If you have felt unmirrored or inaccurately reflected by others it is entirely possible to maturely witness and love yourself through spontaneous art and writing! I have been processing my processing painful emotions for over 25 years with expressive art and writing, and it is such a surprisingly elegant way to love the upset and unaccepted parts of myself!

 

The Art of Healing Depression - A Year of Expressive Art and Writing is now open!

Intuitive Painting Made Simple

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” 

~ Albert Einstein

Intuition, sometimes called the "sixth sense" is a right-brained knowing without going through a logical thought process. Logical thought is influenced by the outward focusing five senses. These five senses, which are sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell.

The sixth sense of intuition is not connected to your five senses. Compared to the other senses, intuition requires a deeper level of receptivity. Intuition cannot operate when your mind is full of thoughts. A distracted mind can never be an intuitive mind.

Intuition can help you access higher information about how to navigate your human life, and help you understand your true soul nature.

I love to access my intuition through a very simple form of intuitive painting. Intuition can be practiced in the painting process, simply by following one intuition after the next. When the logical left brain is set aside for a time, you can learn how to trust and follow your intuition one step at a time.  

Join My Free Intuitive Creativity Challenge!

I used to have only sporadic access to my intuition. What got in the way of me experiencing reliable intuition to guide my life was the unhealed wounding from my past.

Tapping into my intuition through spontaneous art and writing has provided me with a reliable way to see and heal my past wounding and to peacefully clarify my way forward toward my most inspiring life.

In this free three day intuitive creativity challenge, I look forward to sharing how you can creatively see the wounds that need to heal, so that you can clearly envision and take action towards your most inspiring life! I hope you will join me!

CLICK HERE to Join!

Inner Child Therapy Worksheets

“We nurture our creativity when we release our inner child. Let it run and roam free. It will take you on a brighter journey.”

~ Serina Hartwell

I loved creating my Inner Child Therapy Worksheets and I invite you to enjoy the art journal exploration excerpted from the worksheets below.

Because negative emotions become trapped in the body, you might only able to keep a life-affirming statement running in your mind for a few minutes before you revert back to your habitual negative self-talk. Commonly known as positive affirmations, statements such as, "I love myself," do not often take hold when you are holding onto trapped inner child emotions.

Finding the "antidote" statement that will change the structure of your emotional body is essential to emotional healing. Yet, you must take care not to simply wallpaper a new positive judgment over top of a negative judgment. It is important to release negative emotions first to make room for new positive truths to take hold.

After negative emotions are released, an antidotal healing statement will usually arise from your true self. Once you find a healing statement that has a strong positive energy charge of truth, you are likely going to need to practice saying this new truth all day, every day, for at least a month or more.

Sometimes it takes well over a month, and even a year or more to reverse a lifetime of conditioned inner child negativity. Saying, "I love who I am." Or, "I am worthy of love," over and over until it becomes a regular believed truth in your muscles, cells, body organs and tissues takes time, practice and effort.

Art Journal Exploration - Finding Your Inner Child's Power Statement

Paint a background in your art journal that expresses your inner child's sense of innocence, hope and power. Sense into where your body feels pain and ask it, "What do you need to hear in order to feel better?" You will have one or more inner child "power statements" that fill your body with energy, hope, strength. Once you hear your body's affirmative message, write it down on your painted background.

Embellish your inner child's power statement with details and images, and spend time repeating it, looking at it, and asking it to find a home within your body. Imagine this new power statement flowing in through the top of your head and filling your body with colour, light, and healing.

Excerpted from Inner Child Therapy Worksheets

Expressive Poetry

An Intuitive Poetry Journal is Experimental

I invite you to begin a very easy spontaneous creative practice and to take a journey deep into your body's spontaneous wisdom. In my one year expressive art and writing course, you will be invited to develop an experimental, intuitive journal, and fill it up with free form words and imagery. In this journal, I will encourage you to meditate upon the poetry of your mysterious inner life.

Set aside five minutes each day to quickly pull an image that feels strong for you, and to try your hand at an intuitive poem. This simple daily way of expressing is an amazingly powerful process. If you do not have the inclination to write a poem - try cutting out some random words from a book or a magazine that you feel drawn to. Arrange the words in a spontaneous way - and voilà - an intuitive poem! 

This simple daily entry in your expressive art journal will help you to see how simply and clearly your intuition guides you over time. The imagery that you choose will speak of your emotional life, even if you do not consciously know what it is trying to tell you just yet. Finding a few words for your imagery will help you begin to further develop a conscious language for your emotional landscape.

I developed this simple creative practice during a period of my life when I felt exhausted and depressed. We often do not want to do anything when we are depressed because frozen emotional pain is a stagnating state. Inviting something new each day shifts can shift your inner state.

Because I was working full time when I created this practice, and I know that the process works for busy people too. It is all too easy to allow our lives to fall into a dull, practical routine. We forget to see life freshly. We become creatures of comfort and habit and do not invite ever-creative newness to shake up our lives.

Whether you are struggling with deep emotional overwhelm or are simply bored with your practical life, this course is for you. To create a different emotional state, it is helpful to work in your journal consistently over the next ten days. If you do, your body will accustom itself to use that sacred time to go deeper and tune in to your emotional world.

 

How to Create a Visionary Glue Book

Over the years, my creative practices become simpler and simpler - sometimes to the point of sometimes just picking one image from a magazine a day, and meditating upon what it means to me. 

The Simplicity of Gluebooks

Have you heard of gluebooks? I have been making gluebooks for over 20 years -  before I knew that they were called gluebooks! Gluebooks are different from collage journals in that they are simply a book that you glue things that you like into.

If you would like to cut, collage and glue in a more elaborate way, I have written an article on How to Create an Intuitive Collage HERE.

I like to create "visionary gluebooks" in a very simple way. I choose just imagery that helps me lean into something that helps me to feel wonderful. 

Materials:

Anything can be turned into a gluebook. You can use a new blank sketchbook. You can also use an old book and glue on top of the pages. Your gluebook is a place to honour your fascinations and interests.

As I mentioned, you can simply choose an image or two that inspires you each day, and meditate upon it. If you want to document your life through personal photographs, fun stickers, concert tickets, random pretty papers, napkin, and anything else that inspires you in your daily life.

A glue book is not a collage journal, it is a diary of what inspires and intrigues you. It is a collection of visual items that bring you joy.

Here is a guide on what kinds of images to look for:

1. What intrigues you?
2. What is beautiful to you?
3. What do you long for?
4. What do you wish you could have, be or do?

How to Deepen Your Positive Feelings

Choose at least one "good-feeling" picture from a magazine per day, and glue it into your gluebook. Spend time with your image to anchor the goodness you feel deeper into your brain and nervous system. This practice is inspired by neuroscientist Rick Hanson. See my full article called: How to Deepen Positive Feelings >>>HERE.

Look For The Good: Find at least one image a day that helps you to feel wonderful, and glue it into your journal. Sense into the good feeling-tone of your image. Take in the good a little deeper than you normally might. Try to look at your good-feeling image at least ten times a day. Each time takes just a few seconds to do. You can do this throughout your day when washing dishes or driving in your car. Or look at it at specific times, such as just before falling asleep or upon waking up, when your brain is especially receptive.

Savour the Good. Most of the time, a good feeling or experience passes by in a blink. But this savouring practice invites you to sustain or stay with what is good for 30 seconds in a row instead of getting distracted by something else.

An easy way to do this is to find something to appreciate in your chosen image, and feel the appreciation intensify in your body, mind and emotions for 30 seconds. Encourage your appreciation to flood your body, making it a deep, rich and beautiful experience for 30 seconds.

Research has proven that the longer something is held in awareness and the more emotionally amplified and stimulating it is - the more the neurons fire and wire together.

Soak in the Good: Now, let your good experiences - real or imagined - register more deeply in your emotional body for ten minutes or more. You can do this in various ways. You might feel a good experience as a warm glow spreading through your chest. And with practice, you might choose to bring this warm glow into old places of hurt or old holes of loss and grief.

As you do this extended practice of bringing your good feelings of warmth, safety, happiness or joy into old wounds, your neurons are firing and gradually wiring together to create more happiness in your brain and body. Every time you practice taking in and extending the good, it will make a small cumulative difference. And, over time small differences in your brain add up, reshaping you into a happier person!

Video Demonstration

 

90 Day Affirmation Journal

For as long as I can remember, I have longed to feel joy. In my twenties, I created "joy journals" by cutting and pasting beautiful things that sparked joy for me. Eventually, my life started to shape around my consecration to joy. The old fell away, and the new arrived.

Imagine a new emotional reality that you would LOVE to create. Now, imagine NOT being able to create this reality. The negative thoughts and emotions that come up will reveal your limiting beliefs. If you have no negative reactions, you will have no blocks to creating your new reality.

Now, imagine your dream of a new reality has come true - BIG TIME. Then, see what conflicting thoughts and emotions come up. If you have no negative reactions, you will have no blocks to creating your new reality.

When you have negative reactions to your envisioned reality, write down all the thoughts, memories and associations that come up. Once you have brought your negative beliefs up to the light, view them with acceptance.

Your negative core beliefs are your limiting opinions about life, yourself and other people that were formed during adverse experiences. As you "root out" your negative beliefs and start to doubt their validity, you will create a vacuum. Then it is time to fill up the emptiness with your new affirmation practice!

How to Paint Intuitively

What is Intuitive Painting?

Do you know what intuitive painting is? Intuitive painting for the process instead of the end result. 

You can choose to suppress your emotions or accept and express them so that they can transform. Emotions hold tremendous energy, and when you paint your emotions out intuitively, you release them from your habitual control.

The intuitive painting of your emotions neither burdens other people with the unskillful expression of your emotions, nor does it force your emotions deep down into your body to create dis-ease. 

Emotions are never permanent. They are energy in motion and they constantly change. When you capture your emotions in paint, you will move and release right before your eyes, and you will grow to trust your intuition!

How To Paint Intuitively

In my year-long expressive arts course, I encourage you to set up a painting station in your home or studio with your watercolour paper, paints, brushes, and a jar of clean water close at hand. Every day, I invite you to create one small, spontaneous watercolour painting without thinking - just feeling.

1. Close your eyes, breathe deeply. To help you move out of your mind, place your non-painting hand on your heart.

2. Listen to yourself internally for a few moments, and then pick up your paintbrush and load it with the first colour that catches your eye.

3. Paint your first stroke, and then without thinking add more paint your brush, perhaps in another colour, and add to your first paint stroke.

4. Continue painting from feeling instead of thinking until you feel complete.

 

Creative Conversations

Over the years, it has been my honour and pleasure to share my expressive arts practices and principles with so many wonderful people all over the world.

And, I have created a webpage of all my interviews and art demos for you HERE!

 

A Creative Approach to Healing Illness

I recently sent this lesson from my e-course 100 Days of Art Journal Therapy to someone I care about, and I thought this lesson should be more widely shared. 

An Emotional Approach to Healing Illness

The emotional struggles that you cannot work out consciously will often work their way through your body in the form of an illness. The emotional component of an illness can be explored symbolically through spontaneous painting, followed by sensing into your body and meditating on direct questions in a journal writing process. 

The body uses illness to express emotional wounds that have not healed yet. Many of us have an "illness journey" as part of our life path, but in my experience, working with people at the end of life, illness and decline are not always as predictable as I once thought.

Aging and illness do not always imply a straight downhill decline. There is an emotional quality of life that can be uplifted at any age despite physical or cognitive limitations. You are not just your body that sometimes hurts and suffers. 

Emotional Healing

For ten years, working in a therapeutic art studio with hundreds of older adults in their eighties and nineties, I witnessed several emotional and physical "healings" with my own eyes. I observed older adults fall into a deep depression and have long bedridden illnesses and hospitalizations, with the end of life seeming very near.

On several occasions, I was surprised to see those same people back in the art studio, ready to create for another period of their lives. It amazed me to observe frail elderly people heading in a death direction, reverse quite spontaneously, and become robust, cheerful, and full of life again.

When these frail elders came back to life, I felt that they felt emotionally lighter. I saw them laugh and smile more. They started to paint, sculpt, and weave again. They connected with others and expressed more love. They often exclaimed gratitude and joy. And I always intuitively felt that something emotionally heavy had cleared away to make room for a fresh experience of life.

A Journal Meditation on Illness

1. Begin your meditation by resting in stillness and listening to the place where your physical pain resides. And, deeper than any physical pain that you are feeling, see if you can find a place in your body that holds an acute feeling of emotional pain.

2. As you rest in the particularity of the emotional pain in your body, it might have a story to tell you about how it feels apart from your love in some way. It might, for example, feel bitter, lonely, mistrustful, or angry.

3. When you have a feeling sense that a part of you feels separated away from love, intuitively paint this particular "feeling tone" in your art journal.

4. Allow the pain of your separateness to move into your hand, into the brush, and onto your paper. As an image emerges, welcome it. Your painting might be elaborate or be lines, colours or shapes that initially do not make rational sense.

5. When you finish your painting, say "hello" to it and sit with it for a while. Keep it company. Realize that this painting might express a part of you that you regularly ignore. Your painting may have a direct message for you. It might be saying something like, "Pay attention to me. I need love. I am angry. Stop hurting me. Stop ignoring me."

6. Perhaps the symbols in your painting have words. You can consciously dialogue with your symbology through free-writing. You can write about the symbols in your painting in a free-associative way, like this: "Red: I feel anger streaking through my body. Circle: I want to open up to a higher way of thinking about my life. No mouth: What are you trying to say?"

Love and Pain

In the illness healing process, the aim is to heal the aspects of your mind that are separated from love. Healing the roots of illness involves coming out of isolation and joining with other people, as well as rebonding with your younger, hurting selves. Healing illness also involves connecting to the spiritual love you experience as your Higher Power for extra support.

You might have to deal with the physical fallout of illness, old age, or disability, but it is also possible to feel deeply connected to love, whatever your health situation. Even in the midst of body pain, you can find great presence, peace, and appreciation for what is.

Journal Questions 

As you gaze upon your painting, notice what wants your recognition right now. Let your thoughts inform you of what parts of you feel separate from love. Ask yourself the following questions in your journal.

- What am I afraid of?

- Who in my life do I dislike or feel separate from?

- Is there an inner aspect of myself that I dislike or feel separate from?

- Is there someone I need to accept or forgive?

- Is there an inner aspect of myself that I need to accept or forgive?

- Is my illness helping me to avoid something? What would that be?

- Is there something that I feel that I need to complete, do, or become that my illness is keeping me from doing?

- Is there some higher quality of being that I am afraid of growing into by being ill?

- Is there something I need to be responsible for or someone I need to be accountable to in order to heal?

- Is there anyone or anything that I am trying to control through my illness?

- What "good things" do I "get" from my illness? What are the reasons that I might not want to heal?

- Is there an inner or outer problem that I do not know how to solve that is being expressed through this illness?

- Who would I be if I were healed and whole?

You may not yet deeply understand the buried aspect of your mind that expresses its alienation by being sick, but you can send this particular "vagueness" love, ask for its messages, and rest in the warm "healing-tone" that arises from listening to yourself on a deeper level.

Rest in unknowing before you close your journal, and write down anything that floats into your mind. Allow yourself to rest on the edge of what you do not know instead of what you think you know about your illness. Allow new healing information to come in.

Ask for a Healing Idea

Healing is a gentle, intuitive process. Healing ideas arrive into our conscious awareness one step at a time. ​Before closing your art journaling session, ask your higher mind, "What is the next step for my healing?" The answer might feel obvious or surprising. It might be a simple word, like "rest, stop, love, or relax." 

Once a healing idea comes into your mind, you may enjoy sending it to everyone in the world to amplify your experience. You can send your healing idea out into the world with words such as "may all be well" or "may all be loved."

Or, you might pick someone to whom you can send healing energy. "(Name)....may you be well." Magnanimous blessings open up a larger frame of compassion for yourself. You may even sense that specific individuals are being placed in your mind to send healing to, perhaps even total strangers who suffer similarly to you.

As you do your intuitive step-by-step healing work, you might want to focus on this healing idea from A Course in Miracles: "When I am healed, I have not healed alone. As I bless everyone, I am healed with them, as they are healed with me."

An In-Depth Art Journaling Course

The above lesson is an excerpt from my 100 Days of Art Journal Therapy e-course. I think that this is one of my deepest courses to date. I spent many years grappling with my deepest questions about severe anxiety, depression, core wounds,  trauma, illness and more. This expressive art and writing course is the result of my deep questioning. 

 

Collage Landscapes - Free Art Demo

As our world shifts, changes and recalibrates, I have been aiming to design expressive arts directives that can be done with whatever most of us have on hand at home. 

Here is a video art demo that I did with artist Amanda Mauk during the first worldwide "sheltering in place." Together, we are creating quirky, quick, fun and imperfect "collage landscapes" with minimal art supplies. 

In this interview, I also share how and why I design my various creative practices.

You can watch my art demo HERE. 

 

Healing Trauma With Intuitive Art

"Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way."

~ Edward de Bono

Are You Feeling Stuck in a Trauma Loop?

Are you feeling stuck in repeating trauma patterns from the past that you cannot seem to think or feel your way out of?

The good news is that your deeper creative unconscious mind wants to give you messages for healing. You just need to learn how to access it.

Pain Pattern Interruption

I love intuitive art as a "pattern interruption" process because trauma loops are so pervasively repetitive. So, a few years ago, I created a very simple expressive arts process for trauma healing for the emotionally overwhelmed. It is a collection of 30 different expressive arts directives that can easily be done in under 15 minutes a day. 

A trauma loop is a brain and body state that has created a pain repeating pathway in your nervous system. As you repeat similar ways of closing down your body, heart and mind  in fear - over time it gets stuck in a difficult to change trauma loop.

Instead of further embedding a trauma loop in your body, mind and heart, you can find ways to invite the truth of your intuition to interrupt repetitive patterns of pain.

The emotional healing process, in my experience, occurs through pain pattern interruption because all healing occurs in the present moment, and healing insights can be accessed through your intuition.

A Year-Long Course for the Emotionally Overwhelmed

My year-long expressive arts course is for you if you are struggling with stuck imprints of event trauma, developmental (attachment) trauma, and inherited trauma. If you are in the process of healing recent, acute or complex trauma, I encourage you to seek support from a trauma-informed therapist. 

Because trauma can become frozen in the body, in this course, you will be encouraged to get in the flow of your body's wisdom through daily spontaneous creative exercises that are simple to execute, and do not require artistic talent or skill.

As you meditate upon your intuitive drawings, paintings, collages and poetry, your higher wisdom can give you the messages that you uniquely need to release, resolve and heal stuck pain patterns from the past.

 

 

Draw Your Inner Symbols

Many of you who have been connecting with me for a while know that I love to do a form of depth journaling called "Focusing." I have written about this depth journaling process quite often. This, however, is the first time I have actually demonstrated it online.

I love this revelatory journaling process, and I have been practicing this method of going deep within my body for deeper insight for over ten years. It was so fun to share my method of depth journaling with Alexis Cohen and to demonstrate how I visually symbolize my inner experiences. And, I am looking forward to sharing my most personal method of diving deep inside - with you!

You can download your worksheet for this demo HERE.

You can watch my art demonstration with Alexis here:

 

Expressive Arts Exercise for Teens - Healing Perfectionism

As promised, here is the creative activity I contributed to Rayne Lacko's new book for Teens, Dream Up Now!

I share more about my personal life as a teen in the book.

"Teens feel a wide range of sometimes-overwhelming, often-fluctuating, intense emotions. To help teens understand, manage, and channel their emotions into passion for the life they want to live, this guided journal with a convenient lay-flat design includes 36 creative activities. Crafted by community leaders across North America, these activities encourage teens to create, draw, listen to music, and put pen to paper as they process emotions, discover more about themselves, and pursue what they want out of life."

I FEEL . . . PERFECTIONISM
insecurity / unreasonable demands on self / comparison with others

I Feel . . . Perfectionism
The purpose of this exercise is to create a piece of art that represents the “perfect” face that you show the outside world to try to fit in—your social mask. The face you choose will be decorated with words and images that show how you present yourself to others.

Choose a face from a magazine that represents perfection for you. Also look for another face that represents your authentic self. (You will need to have two faces to alter and expressively draw on for this activity and the next one. Set aside the face representing your authentic self for now.)

If you prefer to create your own face, draw an oval. Then draw eyes, a nose, and a mouth inside the oval.

Altered Magazine Photo I—Perfectionism

What you’ll need:

Magazines; scissors; a glue stick; permanent black, colored, and white markers for doodling and coloring (permanent markers work best for altering magazine photos)

What you’ll do:
1. Cut out the face you chose that represents perfection and glue it onto a piece of paper

2. This “outside face” is the perfect face you show to others. Consider all the ways you try to gain approval from others as you work on altering this face.

3. Expressively draw and color on your face in any way you like. Add patterns, words, and symbols to represent what your public self looks like to the outside world.

4. Suggestions: Glue on other magazine images and words to illustrate your theme. Outline and draw over and around
your magazine collage with a black permanent marker. Color your doodles. Embellish your altered drawing with a white paint marker or gel pens.

I FEEL . . . WORTHY
self-acceptance / positive self-image / courage / self-respect / honor

I Feel . . . Worthy
Create a collage/drawing that represents the authentic face you express when you feel safe or when you are alone. The face you choose will be decorated with words and images that show how you genuinely feel on the inside. Your “inside face” expresses
who you authentically are. This activity can help you increase self-awareness and self-acceptance.

Use the second clipped-out magazine face you set aside in the I Feel . . .Perfectionism activity.

Or, if you prefer to create your own face, simply draw an oval.
Then add eyes, a nose, and a mouth inside the oval.

Altered Magazine Photo II—Self-Worth

What you’ll need:

Magazines, scissors, a glue stick, permanent black, colored, and white markers for doodling and coloring (permanent markers work best for altering magazine photos)

What you’ll do:
1. Cut out the face you chose that represents your authentic self and glue in on a piece of paper.

2. This “inside face” will be about the private face you do not yet show to others. Consider these questions as you draw: Who am I? Where do I belong? When do I feel fulfilled?

3. Expressively draw and color your face in any way you like. Add patterns, words, and symbols to represent what your private self looks like to your inside world.

4. Suggestions: Glue your magazine face onto your backing paper. Glue on other magazine images and words to illustrate your theme. Outline and draw over and around your magazine collage with a black permanent marker. Color your doodles.
Embellish your altered drawing with a white paint marker or gel pens.

I'm featured in DREAM UP NOW: The Teen Journal for Creative Self-Discovery. This journal offers teens 12-18 36 fun, creative activities to process emotions, and transform darkness into light.

I had so much fun creating my creative activity for this book!

For 35 more expressive arts directives for teens, you can purchase the book on Amazon HERE!

 

Create a Messy Collage!

I have spent my summer editing my new book, and I have been longing to create some expressive art! I recently went to the thrift store and bought myself some old books to alter and expressively scribble in! 

Expressive Art Process - Messy Collage

These free and messy collages are by artist Jean Bergeron. What wonderful fun to combine imagery, paint, and expressive drawings in an expressive messy collage! 

For this expressive art process:

~ Create your own expressive collage papers by scribbling and painting on various backgrounds.

~ Also be sure to save all of your painting and drawing experiments.

~ Gather a pile of your expressive drawings, expressive paintings, printed tissue papers, labels and found imagery.

~ Tear and cut up your drawings, paintings and collage imagery.

~ Choose a collection of various created and found papers and freely glue them down.

 

How to Read Books on Kindle

My book Collage for Self-Discovery is only on Kindle, and so many of you have written me to say you prefer paper books! So, if you have been resistant to trying Kindle books, this article is for you. 

I became a "Kindle-Convert" because I love to read books here, there and everywhere. Before I became a Kindle reader, I used to carry at least two heavy books wherever I went in a giant purse.

Now, I have the best of both worlds, I carry my digital books in my pocket and read them on my phone while in coffee shops, in the park, and as I am waiting in line at the grocery store. I also always have a stack of paper books by my bedside to enjoy on the weekends.

The best way to get my Kindle book onto your computer is to download the free Kindle computer app.

Benefits of using Kindle

• All your books are synced to the page you are reading. No matter which device you open the book in, you will land exactly at the place where you have finished reading.
• All you have to do is download the Kindle app and sign in using the same Amazon credentials.
• You can access your Kindle books even if you don’t have access to your own device. Thanks to a web app, you can log in to your Kindle library using the web browser on your computer. Try read.amazon.com.
• You have easy access to all your notes and bookmarks from any computer by visiting read.amazon.com/notebook.

Kindle apps are available for Android, iOS, Mac, PC, and web. You can read your Kindle e-books on any device. 

FREE KINDLE APPS TO DOWNLOAD ON YOUR PHONE

1. Kindle for Android

Download the free Kindle app on your Android tablet or smartphone through the Google Play Store to get instant access to all your Kindle books.

Sign in with your Amazon credentials. You will find your Kindle books under the “All” tab.

The app seamlessly connects with the Kindle Store. You can download free samples or buy books right within the app.

The Kindle app provides features to help you study - you can highlight passages, add margin notes, search for keywords, etc.

⇢ KINDLE FOR ANDROID

2. Kindle for iPad and iPhone

Download the free Kindle app from the App Store and sign in with the credentials you use for your Kindle e-reader or Amazon Fire tablet.

The books are available in the Kindle app home view, under the “All” tab. Tap the book you want to read, and the download will start automatically.

However, compared to the Android app, Kindle for iOS lacks one major feature: you can’t buy books inside the app. Within the app, you will be only able to download free samples or access free books from Kindle Unlimited or Amazon Prime Reading.

If you want to buy a Kindle book, you can still do it on your iPad or iPhone, but you have to use the Safari browser. When you complete the order and switch back to the Kindle app, the book will be downloaded there.

⇢ KINDLE FOR IOS

Create An Abstract Collage

Over the years, as a collage artist, I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the quality and quantity of the imagery in magazines. For this reason, I prefer to purchase older magazines from thrift stores, as the quality of paper and imagery is so much better.

Magazines are also so much thinner than they used to be but I am still subscribing to various magazines for the time being. Even though the imagery is more sparse and limited, I start cutting them up for collage as soon as they are delivered to my door!

Adapting with the times, I have recently been experimenting with abstract collage, and I am really enjoying it! Not so reliant on imagery, I have been cutting up bits of patterns and colours in interesting shapes.

Since I no longer have the need to process such heavy emotions through my art, my collage process has become much more peaceful and contemplative. If you would like to follow my process, I am documenting my contemplative abstract collages on Instagram.

I find that abstract collage suits my meditative purpose very well, as I like to sit in quietude contemplating my different compositions. I usually work on 3-6 collages at a time - sometimes for a very long time.

Expressive Art Process:

~ Choose several colourful and patterned pages out of a magazine. You might also use patterned scrapbook papers.

~ Cut your papers and pages into geometric and organic shapes.

~ Spend some time meditatively rearranging your shapes on your backing paper.

~ When you feel satisfied with the arrangement of your abstract shapes, glue all of the pieces down with a glue stick.

Gay Pride Art Journaling Spread

Recently in my Intuitive Collage Facebook group, a member posted an art demo by a young artist named Berber van Gorp. 

This is how she introduces herself on her YouTube channel: "My name is Berber I'm a 19 year old girl from the Netherlands."

I started watching some of Berber's art process videos and I fell in love with her quiet and original style of filming-making. As I watched her videos, I found myself dropping into the same meditative space that envelops me when I create art.

I just love how Berber amplifies the sound of the brush on paper, paint splooshing into the palette, and scissors cutting as she is creating her art journal spreads.

Maybe you will love watching Berber's videos too! You can subscribe to her YouTube channel HERE.

 

I have curated 50 more art process videos for you viewing pleasure HERE.

From Self-Diminishment to Self-Confidence

Recently, I had such a lovely chat with harpist Patricia Daly from Ireland.

We talked about our journeys from self-diminishment to self-confidence through our creative practices. 

Our chat is now available on my YouTube channel HERE. Please join us.

 

How to Think Intuitively

It is possible to reach for new creative thoughts. Leaning into inspired thought requires the conscious intention to rest upon the edge of what you do not yet know. In your personal mind, there is likely a stream of thoughts that run horizontally from the past to the future in a way that rarely changes. In contrast, intuitive thinking reaches up vertically, inviting fresh understanding.

Spiritual teacher Guy Finley explains how to prepare yourself to hear your intuition:

"Practice breaking thought. Go mentally silent. Just become aware of yourself without thinking about it. Break into the swarm of thoughts and feelings, over and over again, with your awareness of their presence. This will silence them and show you where you have been. This important practice of conscious awareness allows you to know in each moment that there is You and your thinking, and You and your emotions. All are present at the same time. This knowledge brings choice."

You have a "Free Mind" and a "me mind." Once you understand the limits of your “me mind," you can discern between intuitive insight and habitual thinking. When you harmonize with Free Mind thinking, you will receive the answers to any questions that you may have.

Healing From the Loss of a Child

Supporting mothers travel through the loss of a baby is a heart-wrenchingly poignant, and the post-traumatic growth can be tremendous to witness too. I recently wrote an article on my Depth Therapy Blog that offers a five-step process for healing the loss of a baby. 

If you have lost an older child, this article might feel supportive for you as well. I have created a 5-step healing process that I call Dedicating, Naming, Soul Speaking, Loving and Redirecting. 

When a baby dies through a miscarriage, a post-natal death, or even if the death is expected as in the case of abortion, the first healing task is to face the reality that your baby is (in its specific incarnation) gone.

Many women try to avoid painful feelings of loss in various ways such as "being strong" and "keeping busy", etc. Yet, there is no way to avoid the inevitability of grief. You must allow yourself to fully experience and express your grief.

People often misunderstand the needs of the grieving. Ask for specific support from your loved ones during your grief process. Through a kind connection with others who care, be assured that the pain of your loss will lessen in time.

The emotions involved in letting go are painful but necessary to experience. By not doing so, you will remain stuck in the grief process and will be unable to resolve your loss. See the Six Stages of Grief. Anger, guilt, loneliness, anxiety, sadness and depression are among the feelings and experiences that are normal during the grieving process.

3 Rituals of Good-Bye

As you move into the acceptance stage in the Six Stages of Grief, you may want to create a ritual of good-bye for the baby you have lost through a miscarriage, abortion, or some other kind of death. This might include writing a letter or a poem, asking for ongoing connection and love between the spirit of your baby and yourself.

1. Create a Good-Bye Statement: After the loss of your baby, it is helpful to create a written or visual "good-bye statement." Create a statement that you can repeat often during your grieving process. If you have aborted, you might want to say, “I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank-you.” If you have miscarried or experienced an unexpected loss after birth, you might say, "Thank you dear one for being in my body or in my life."

2. Create a Tribute to your Loved One: It is helpful to create a tribute to the growth process that you and the baby went through together, however brief. You might, for example, feel inspired to commemorate a piece of artwork to the positive changes you have made since your loss.

3. Create an Intention: When you experience a loss, you can consecrate a healing intention that will enhance your life forever. Making a post-loss intention to be more present, kind, creative or loving, for example, will help you to heal and move on with your life in a much deeper way.

Five-Step Grief Healing Process

1. Dedicating: What would you like to dedicate the loss of your baby to? How might you live your life in a better way in honour of the memory of your baby? Would you be more grateful, more dignified, more courageous?

2. Naming: Do you want to give your baby's soul a name to honour his or her time in your body or in your life? If you chose a positive quality, for example, you could call your baby's soul, "Truth, Courage or Freedom." When you think about the soul "energy-tone" of your baby what does she or he symbolize for you? How do you wish you could have helped your baby to grow? Use your chosen name for your baby to connect with this positive quality in yourself.

3. Soul Speaking: Do you speak to your baby’s soul? Do you share your feelings with your baby now that she or he is gone? Consider keeping a journal where you communicate to your baby's soul on a regular basis. Thank your baby for the learning experiences you have shared.

4. Loving: Do you tell your baby that you love him or her and do you open your heart every time you think of your baby? Thank your lost baby for opening your heart every time he/she enters your mind.

The Final Grieving Task

The final task, after fully grieving the loss of your baby, is to affect an emotional withdrawal from the guilt of the abortion or the sadness of the miscarriage or the unfairness of the post-birth loss so that your emotional energy can be used in creating a productive life.

You must find your own ways of satisfying your social, emotional, spiritual and practical needs by developing new or changed activities and relationships. This is NOT dishonouring the lost or deceased and it doesn't mean that you love him or her any less. It simply recognizes that there are other people to be loved and cared for at this time.

5. Redirecting: What kind of mother did you want to be to your baby? What kind of person do you want to be post-loss? Did you want to be loyal, fierce, kind, or honest? Who or how will you love more deeply in this same way after your loss? How will you dedicate your life to loving this other person (or to a caring cause) in order to transform your loss into something deeply meaningful?

With love,

Shelley