Expressive Art Inspirations

Transforming Emotional Pain with Expressive Art

Softening to Emotional Pain

“If you can sit with your pain, listen to your pain and respect your pain—in time you will move through your pain.”

~ Bryant McGill

It is so challenging to "sit with" emotional pain until it reveals its story. Yet, to feel peace within, we must find ways to respect the painful parts of ourselves.

To feel complete peace with ourselves, all emotions must be accepted so that our limiting "pain stories" can be recognized. When we find the story that creates the pain, it can be "re-storied" towards health and happiness.

Respecting Emotional Pain

I have a dedicated sketchbook where I delve into my emotional discomfort through intuitive drawing. When needed, I create an intuitive "pain drawing" and spend a month (or more) "respecting" my drawing until it reveals its story to me. This way of processing emotional pain is patient, reverent and it brings about deep change.

Below I share a way to "soften" your emotional pain so it will reveal its limiting story to you. This process involves creating an "intuitive pain drawing" and offering regular acceptance to the visual representation of your emotional pain.

Once the resistance to my emotional pain releases, I gain insights into what is causing my discomfort, and then I know how to make a shift for the better.

Moving Toward Emotional Discomfort

This exercise is for those of us who repress emotional pain and need to learn how to listen to its messages. Instead of recoiling from your pain, set the courageous intention to get to know this part of yourself. Your emotions are trying to tell you something important about how you are seeing your life in a limiting way.

Use this art process when you are judging an emotion as negative or unpleasant. This process also works for physical pain because unexpressed emotional pain somatizes as discomfort in the body.

Relax as you begin this art process. Take several slow deep breaths. Allow yourself to feel all of your emotions. Look for areas of contraction, dislike or aversion to discomfort in your body. 

Creating an Intuitive Pain Drawing

(*This art process was inspired and informed by psychotherapist Karči Cole Kňazovický)

Step 1. Talk to your emotional pain. (Welcome you pain to be here. Notice any discomfort or easing that comes with your attention.)

Invite an emotion that you find unacceptable to come forward into your awareness. Say “hello” to your sadness, your anger, your fear, your shame, your loneliness. If you are unaware of an emotion, focus on a tight, numb or painful part of your body.

Once you have identified a feeling of pain (or an area in your body), imagine you are meeting a stranger, determined to get to know this part of yourself that you usually try to push out of your awareness.

Sometimes this greeting can be startling to aspects of self that have long been denied. Difficult emotions that have never received acknowledgement or acceptance can be surprised by your sudden friendliness. 

Art Process: As you say hello to your pain, begin to draw intuitively with a black pen. Allow your emotional pain to form a visual shape or structure. 

Step 2. Work up to accepting your emotional pain.

Ask yourself: Can I accept this painful emotion? Let the answer spontaneously come. Be honest. Saying "no" is often more honest than saying "yes.”

If the answer is "no", ask yourself again, “Is it okay that it is no?” Again wait for the reply. Allow your answer to emerge from your heart. Do not seek the answer from your mind.

If the reply is "no" again, continue asking: “Is "no" an okay answer?” Continue asking until you get a "yes". “Yes” is a form of acceptance. Patiently wait for your mind and heart to open. Acceptance is what your pain needs.

Art Process: In the spirit of self-acceptance, allow discomforting imagery, symbols or colours into your drawing if they want to be there. You might have parts that are "ugly" or distorted that want to be included in your drawing.

Step 3. Explain to your pain why you had to deny it.

Take time and ask yourself for reasons why you had to deny this emotion. When the answers come, speak directly to the emotion as if you were talking to a friend whom you could not talk to for a long time.

Simple, honest answers soothe the rejected parts of self.

Art Process: Be aware of the reasons for your denial as you draw. Speak to your drawing about your denial. 

Step 4. Apologize to your emotional pain

This step requires courage. Notice your resistance to speaking kindly to your pain. Notice the urge to want to get rid of your pain.

The mind likes to "parcel" pain away as a self-protection mechanism. Sense into your mind's desire to stay separate from your pain. Joining your mind and heart together, say, "I am so sorry I have ignored you."

Art Process: Write out or speak your apology out loud as you draw.

Step 5. Ask forgiveness from your emotional pain.

Ask the pained part of yourself to forgive you for denying it and excluding it from inclusive participation in your life. Your pain will forgive you for ignoring it - if you ask deeply and sincerely.

You might say the ho'oponopono prayer: "I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank-you. I love you." 

Art Process: On the opposite page of your drawing, write out your forgiveness prayer or say it out loud as you draw.

Step 6. Forgive yourself for denying your emotional pain.

Accept yourself and forgive yourself for ignoring your pain for so long. “I forgive myself for denying my  _________” can be repeated several times until you feel a sense of relief. Let your heart guide you.

If forgiveness feels impossible, try: “I accept myself for feeling _____ and I forgive myself for not accepting myself earlier.” Repeat this several times, slowly, until you feel a release.

Art Process: Intend self-forgiveness as you draw.

Step 7. Release judgments.

As we hold loving space for our feelings they change and become new. A painful emotion feels difficult to tolerate before it develops an unhindered flowing quality.

Say “I release the judgment that this emotion is wrong, bad or something to avoid.” Then allow your painful emotion (and intuitive drawing) to become a part of your daily life.

Art Process: Place your drawing in a place where you can look at it. Gaze upon your "emotional pain drawing" until you feel a complete acceptance of it. 

Step 8. Negotiate a new relationship with this painful part.

If your emotional pain is not fully transformed through this expressive arts process, "sit with" your drawing for a month or more. Put your drawing in a place where you can meditate upon it daily.

I felt aversion to my "pain drawing" below. I wanted to hide my drawing my closet and forget about it! When I feel aversion, I say, "I love you" to my pain.

I stayed with my drawing for about a month, saying, "I love you/I accept you" when it felt difficult. Gradually my resistance to my "pain drawing" dissipated, and a touching, yet limiting story from my younger years emerged. 

By staying with a pain that you have visually expressed, you are training yourself to accept what is really happening inside of you without judgment or resistance.

If you really delve into the exercise, you will recognize your denial and soften your blocks to love’s presence. With ongoing acceptance, you will free the energy flow in your body and in your life.

This process can be applied to physical aches, illnesses, emotional hurts, depressions or any place that you find in yourself that is not completely happy.

Sitting With an Emotional Pain Drawing

Intuitive drawing comes from our subconscious - from the edge of what we do not yet know about ourselves. For this reason, it is fruitful to intuitively draw your pain and trust that the meaning will be revealed later. 

I meditatively "sat with" a pervasive pain in my heart during and after creating this intuitive drawing. I companioned my intuitive drawing for over a month before I understood what it meant to me. 

Some days it felt difficult to stay with my drawing. However, by releasing judgments and repeatedly forgiving the pain for "plaguing me" with discomfort, my drawing gradually revealed its heroic but limited childhood narrative. 

Emotional pain is created from limiting decisions that were made from a less mature state of consciousness. Staying with an intuitive drawing with loving patience will reveal its messages. Once the (younger) limiting story is made conscious, we can make new choices for well-being. 

 

Healing Emotions Intuitively

The Mind Does Not Know How to Heal

In our ordinary mind, we do not always know what is best for our growth. Because our ego is split into parts, with various factions competing to get differing needs met, we cannot always perceive how to heal. When we follow our (ego) self-will, we will make many mistakes. But, this will also bring the lessons necessary to learn and grow, albeit through struggle, burnout, loss, pain, illness, and confusion.

The process of deep emotional healing sometimes feels stressful because our protective mind is built to guard against discomfort. When we follow our inner knowing about how to heal emotionally, we may take steps that feel unusual or even embarrassing to our conscious mind. Yet, each intuitive direction that we follow through on will be accompanied by an inner affirmation of relief.

Releasing Emotions Spontaneously Through The Body

Unresolved emotions can be worked through spontaneously by giving your body permission to do what it needs to do to release old emotional imprints. Breathing deeply, making sounds, instinctively shifting your body into different positions, contorting your face, or laying down with arms wide open is often all that is needed for an emotion to release.

Your body will always tell you what you need to do to release your pain but your mind will likely resist. However, you cannot think your way through an emotion.  Staying with whatever comes up, and moving, breathing and sounding without thinking, will shift the emotion out of submersion, and into the light of love.

 

Intuitive Collage - Step by Step

What is Intuitive Collage?

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

~ Carl Jung

Intuitive collage is a process of quieting your everyday mind and inviting imagery to express the story of your inner world.

Intuitive collage will always tell you something that you do not yet know about yourself. Intuitive collage will communicate the "growth edge" that is emerging from your unconscious mind.

I love intuitive collage because it does not require traditional artistic "talent." Over the past 15 years, intuitive collage has taken me on a journey to the depths of my unconscious, and it still continues to inform me today.

I have been passionately exploring digital collage this past year. Digital collage is such a fast way to process emotions and make the unconscious conscious. You can see my visual process and instructions HERE.

As much as I have grown to love digital collage. I still love the tactile process of getting my hands sticky with paper collage. Here are instructions on how to make a paper collage.

Intuitive Magazine Collage

Supplies

You will need a sketchbook or loose paper, a glue stick, scissors, and magazines to cut up. 

Magazine Collage Process

1. Quiet your mind. Take three deep breaths and quiet your mind. Sink your awareness deep into your body. Set your rational mind on "silent" and sense into what you do not yet know inside yourself.

2. Tear out 10-20 magazine pages. Quickly flip through a magazine and instinctively pull out 10-20 pages that move you emotionally - positive or negative. 

3. Cut out your imagery. Meditatively cut out 10-15 images and words that emotionally move you the most.

4. Arrange your collage. Intuitively arrange your imagery. Lay down your largest images as your background and spontaneously layer your smaller images and words on top.

5. Glue down your images and words. Gently move your image arrangement to the side of your paper and glue down your background first and then layer on the other images.

6. Contemplate your collage. Hold your heart gently and soften your eyes. Sense into your collage and contemplating what it means to you.

Meditate Into Your Visual Language

Initially, an intuitive collage offers up a "feeling-tone" that might not have words. So bask in the "feeling-tone of your inner world in visual form.

If any insights or words "pop into" your mind write them down on the back of your collage. If no insights come, just enjoy the feeling of your honest self-expression.

Try to contemplate your collage for an entire day and then put it away. Pull it out at a later time and see if more insights arise.

 

Seeing the Beauty

Seeing the Beauty Behind all Circumstances

Uplifting our emotional state can be either easy or difficult during this time of year. Part of my own emotional healing has involved looking deeper than the negative appearances of my life to see the growth lessons behind all that has troubled me.

During this magical time when the world collectively efforts to uplift out of its heavier emotional states into a place of celebration and connection, I offer you a beautiful quote about how to magically draw forth the beauty from your holiday season.

The Gentle Art of Blessing

by Pierre Pradervand 

"How to incorporate blessing into your life. On awakening, bless this day, for it is already full of unseen good which your blessings will call forth, for to bless is to acknowledge the unlimited good that is embedded in the texture of the universe and awaiting each and all.

On passing people in the street, on the bus, in places of work and play, bless them. The peace of your blessing will companion them on their way, and its aura will be a light on their path.

On meeting people and talking to them, bless them in their health, their work, their joy, their relationship to the universe, themselves and others. Bless them in their abundance and their finances, bless them in every conceivable way, for such blessings not only sow seeds of healing but one day will spring forth as flowers in the waste places of your own life.

To bless means to wish, unconditionally and from the deepest chamber of your heart, unrestricted good for others and events; it means to hallow, to hold in reverence, to behold with awe that which is always a gift from the Creator. To bless is to invoke divine care upon, to speak or think gratefully for, to confer happiness upon, although we ourselves are never the bestower, but simply the joyful witnesses of life’s abundance.

When something goes completely askew in your day, when some unexpected event upsets your plans—and you—burst into blessing. For life is teaching you a lesson, and the very event you believe to be unwanted, you yourself called forth, so as to learn the lesson you might balk against were you not to bless it. Trials are blessings in disguise, and hosts of angels follow in their path.

To bless is to acknowledge the omnipresent, universal beauty hidden from material eyes; it is to activate that law of attraction which, from the furthest reaches of the universe, will bring into your life exactly what you need to experience and enjoy."

PS
And of course, above all, do not forget to bless the utterly beautiful person YOU are.

 

Creative Healing Stories

Have you felt broken, and have put yourself back together through creative practices? If so, I would love to share your creative healing story with thousands of readers. 

This creative healing story series honours the human journey from hurt to creative self-empowerment, from limitation to inspired possibility, and from fear to compassionate contribution.

Telling your truth, and sharing how you have creatively healed through life's challenges inspires us all to move from pain to empowerment.

If you feel inspired to share your creative healing story please contact me at shelley@expressiveartworkshops.com and take a look at the 14 questions to guide your essay.

Each person who shares their creative healing journey holds a forever place in my heart. I welcome you to enjoy these healing stories and connect to the creative work of the story writers.

I welcome hearing your story and promoting your personal web page via Pinterest and my FB Page.

With much love,

Shelley

 

How to Forgive

If you are not seeing a luminous and loving world, you are looking at life on the level of fear, and forgiveness will feel nearly impossible. Forgiveness involves letting other people be as they are without judgment. When you condemn other people, believing that ego cruelty is their ultimate and only truth, you will become a part of their hatred, harm and selfishness.

It is possible to function with love in the world without becoming an active part of another's ego darkness. While on one level you need to say a firm, "no" to fear-driven mistreatment, unkindness, cruelty or destruction, on another level you can join with everyone you meet with the silent intention to spiritually heal within.

Spiritual teacher Miranda Holden offers a beautiful way to inwardly join with people when it feels difficult to communicate face-to-face. My adaptations are below:

1. Choose Someone to Forgive: See someone you are unable to relate with person-to-person in your imagination with whom you would like to make a deeper connection, experience some kind of healing, or break through into forgiveness.

2. Look for the Light: See this person's face and feel their presence. Brush past the difficult personality traits, behaviors and history together. Notice your fears of deeper contact and search for the light in his or her heart. Trust that although this light may be shrouded, it is there. Be willing to reach for the highest light within this person.

3. Build a Bridge of Grace: Once you can see this seed of light in the darkness of the person you find difficult, reach out from your heart to the light in his or her heart and walk towards it. Allow this light to draw you towards the highest within this person you want to forgive. Imagine that the light within both of your hearts is forming a bridge of love.

4. Find the Emotional Need: With your heart wide open, compassionately sense into this person's darkness. Ask, "What is your primary emotional need?" Allow your intuition to show you a hidden emotional need within this person.

5. Find the Antidote: Next, ask your intuition to communicate the antidote to his or her emotional pain. It might be respect, love, appreciation or acceptance, for example. Pour this antidotal feeling of fulfilment into the person you want to forgive. Pour this emotional remedy directly into his or her heart.

6. Give to the Emotional Need: Through your imagination, give this person what he or she emotionally needs. Know that what you give to another, you also give to yourself. As you both feel emotionally fulfilled on an inner imaginal level, speak out the contents of your heart.

7. Celebrate the Spiritual Relationship: Let all fears between you drop away. When you forgive someone who has harmed you, your authentic self emerges along with a feeling of emotional relief. Enjoy the truth of your spiritual relationship with this person, even if it is not a reality on a personality level.

Excerpted from A Course in Creating Miracles

 

Art Bundles for Good is Here!

I am so excited to be a part of Art Bundles for Good this year! I warmly invite you to treat yourself to a year's worth of creativity courses. You have five days to leap aboard!

Invest in your creativity! $4000 worth of courses, workbooks, ebooks and other resources on topics like painting, watercolour, brush lettering, drawing, mixed media arts, digital illustration, creativity, marketing your art. This is an amazing opportunity to get 100 art resources at an incredibly low price. 

25% of the Art Bundle profits are going to support Courageous Kitchen, a Bangkok based charity helping refugees. Get some top art learning resources from many of the biggest names in the industry and do some good at the same time.

A great selection of 100 online classes, ebooks and products from some of the top art and creativity instructors in the world.

Here is the link to the website:

GO TO THE ART BUNDLE FOR GOOD

See you there!

xo Shelley

P.S. The Art Bundle is backed by a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee.

Expressive Arts Courses - Therapeutic Benefits

Inspiring Your Expressive Practices

“The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness."

~ Madeleine L'Engle

I often get asked questions about how to choose expressive arts courses in my online school. I have detailed the therapeutic benefits of each course for you below. 

All expressive arts courses offer you regular email prompts to support you to express your truth and heal emotionally. My courses "keep you company" through your daily expressive practices offering fresh ideas, visual and verbal prompts, and deep insights into the emotional healing process.

* Five Stages of Self-Expression

We are all at different stages in our expressive journey:

*1. Some of us are discovering that there is more to ourselves than just our social presentation. We do not yet understand what is "pushing up" for emotional healing, and we need to find ways to express our inner world.

* 2. Some of us need daily ways express, release and reduce emotional pressure without worrying about what it all means just yet.

*3. Some of us need to make sense of what we are expressing so that we can understand how to change our thinking patterns.

*4. Some of us need to process and transform deep pockets of emotional pain such as childhood and teenage hurt, trauma, shame, low self-worth, fear, grief and anger.

*5. Some of us see that our emotional healing is connected to our spiritual healing. We know we need "higher help" to heal the most stubborn pockets of pain within. We also ache to understand the deeper meaning and purpose of our life.

How Expressive Art Workshops Support the Five Stages of Self-Expression

1. Photo Therapy - Take a photo every day for 30 days. Breathe, observe and emotionally respond to your environment through a photo a day. (See *1)

2. Narrative Therapy - Daily Story Writing for 30 Days. This e-course provides daily prompts to invite you to consider how you see your "problems" and discover what inspires you about your life right now. (See *1)

3. Expressive Poetry - Poetry with Imagery for 30 Days. This course will support you to select imagery that feels strong for you and to write about it spontaneously. In this course, you will begin to see what is burbling below your subconscious mind and learn how to identify what is coming into your conscious mind for emotional healing. (See *1)

4. Symbolic Journeys - Art, Poetry and Collage Prompts for 45 Days. These art and writing prompts will support you to play, draw, paint, collage, create poetry, experiment, free associate, and explore what imagery and visual symbols mean to you. (See *1) 

5. Intuitive Collage for Emotional Insight - Create a Ten Minute Intuitive Collage for 30 Days. Create a small torn paper collage and learn to "read into" what your personal symbolism is trying to communicate. (See *2, and *3)

6. Healing Difficult Emotions with Expressive Art - Intuitive Painting, Drawing, Collage and Writing Therapy for 15 Days. This course provides an excellent introduction to the expressive arts. Simple art exercises such as painting, drawing and collage will support you to examine emotional struggles such as worry, fear, frustration, fear, conflict, negativity, heartbreak and addiction. (See *2 and *3)

7. Collage for Self-Discovery -  A Spontaneous Collage Every Day for 90 Days. This e-course provides a daily cathartic emotional release through daily collage. Many visual examples and daily email prompts are included. This course is especially useful if you feel flooded with unprocessed emotions that you need to release.  (See *2 and *3)

Daily Journal E-Courses - Part 1, 2 and 3.

Once you have released the pressure of emotional repression through imagery, you will need to learn how your belief patterns create your reality. Each daily journal course invites you to consider three questions that will support you to understand your emotions. 

8. 30 Days of Inspired Creativity - 30 Days of Journal Writing - Part 1. This daily journal e-course will help you crack into the mystery of what is bothering you emotionally. Supporting you to move out of depression, repression, self-rejection, financial struggle and hurt, I share personal stories to inspire you on a daily writing journey through your emotions. (See *3)

9. 30 Days of Authentic Self-Expression - 30 Days of Journal Writing - Part 2. This journal writing course will support you move beyond feeling victimized by your emotional pain and will support you to better communicate your authentic feelings with others people. This course will inspire you to process painful emotional states with self-love. (See *3)

10. 30 Days of Passion and Purpose - 30 Days of Journal Writing Therapy - Part 3. When we move into our authentic magnitude, our relationships need to re-calibrate. This journal writing e-course will support you to gracefully handle the re-calibration that authentic growth brings. (See *3)

11. Creative Abundance - 40 Affirmative Journaling Prompts. This e-guide also includes daily affirmations to support your creative visions to manifest in the real world. (See *3)

12. * New Course: Healing Trauma with Intuitive Art - 30 days of intuitive creativity prompts to support gentle, well-paced trauma healing. Learn how to love and heal yourself through intuitive drawing, poetry, painting, collage. (See *4)

13. 100 Days of Art Journal Therapy - 100 Days of Expressive Art, Poetry and Narrative Therapy. This e-course comprehensively offers 100 days of art and writing directives to support you to move through deep pockets of emotional pain in safely paced, wise and innovative ways. (See *3, 4, 5)

14. New Course: Healing Grief with Art and Writing - 70 expressive art and writing prompts and 50 self-care ideas to help you heal through loss, grief, and difficult life transitions. (*See #4, 5)

15. A Course in Creating Miracles - 365 Days of Spiritual Practices for Emotional Healing. This course will support you to understand the spiritual reasons for your emotional pain in a simple to understand format. It includes daily contemplations to calm your nervous system and quiet your mind. Note: There are no art-making exercises in this course. (See #5)

Video Courses 

All video lessons are released right after you pay so that you can dive into them all at once if you like!

16. Bloom Into Collage - 3 Video Classes. A fun video course on the art of spontaneous collage! Start with a surprise collage challenge. Next, create an affirmative pattern collage and an intuitive poem. And, finally, learn how to create an intuitive collage for emotional release.

 17. Intuitive Mandala Meditations - 5 Video Classes. In this Five Part Video Mandala Course you will learn how to: EXPRESS spontaneously. EXPLORE art materials. PLAY with shapes. CALM your mind, and ASPIRE to happiness.

Course Bundles

Did you know that you can significantly save money by purchasing your expressive arts courses in bundles? View descriptions of the Course Bundles HERE

 

All courses from Expressive Art Workshops are designed to reconnect you to your intuition through spontaneous art and expressive writing so that you can see, process and heal your emotions, and access the happiness of complete self-love. 

View all Courses HERE

Expressive Writing for Emotional Healing

My Inner Writer Speaks

In preparing for my chat for writer Dawn Montefusco's interview show called "Write Your True Story," I had a surprising encounter with my inner writer that brought tears to my eyes. The night before our interview, just as I was about to fall asleep, the writer part of myself spoke up and said, "I want to share how passionate I am about writing!" This utterly surprised me.

My inner writer kept me awake writing down her story for most of the night. When my notes in the night were finished, I realized that my writer-self has her own unique history of evolvement and her own path of giving. I was in awe of how much my writer-self wants to serve "the art of emotional healing" in the world.

My writer-self is insistently intuitive, joyful, endlessly passionate, and incredibly determined. It was quite gorgeous for me to recognize how purely selfless my writer-self is in her desire to serve. I was sincerely moved by her goodness and beauty.

During my midnight encounter, my human-self met the passionate essence of my writing soul much more intimately than ever before. And now, I feel so much more at peace about my intense need to write!

Please join Dawn and me in our passionate conversation about writing HERE.

Writing for Emotional Catharsis

 

This course bundle will support you to "get it all out" through imagery and words, so you can better see what you are emotionally struggling with inside. Release your repressed emotions through daily spontaneous collage and daily guided journal writing.

View Course...

 

Intuitive Art Exercise - How Am I Today?

Intuitive Art and Focusing

I love to combine Focusing Psychotherapy with intuitive art-making. Focusing is a process developed by psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin. It involves holding open, non-judging attention to internal knowing... a knowing that is directly experienced in the body but is not yet in words.

Gendlin gave the name "felt sense" to the unclear, pre-verbal sense of "something" in the body - the inner knowledge or awareness that has not been consciously verbalized yet.

A "felt-sense" is not the same as an emotion. It is more like an intuition of your growth edge. This bodily-felt "something" that is not yet known. This "something" may be an awareness of a current situation or an old hurt that is coming up to heal. 

Crucial to the concept, as defined by Gendlin, a "felt-sense" is unclear at first. Gendlin also described our felt-senses as "sensing an implicit complexity, a holistic sense of what one is working on." 

This is an emotional Focusing "check-in" art exercise that I did last year that inspired a deep and permanent change in myself. It was inspired by psychologist Dr. Kathy McGuire. I used markers for my drawing, and I often closed my eyes to more deeply sense what I was feeling in my body.

How am I Today?

1. How am I today? Sense inside of yourself, and ask yourself, "How am I today?" Close your eyes, and just wait and see what comes.

I am sensing.....a light shining from within.

2. Felt-sense. Now, ask yourself, "And, what's the feel of this whole thing?" Again, wait for the "intuitive feel," the more-than-words...of the whole thing to form. Find some words to fit with your inner feeling.

I am sensing.....a light pushing out from my inner core, yet something is blocking it.

3. Draw a symbol that represents your felt-sense. Sense into an image that feels just right for the felt-sense and open your eyes. Create an intuitive drawing that resonates with this "feel of the whole thing."

4. Refine your felt-sense drawing. Keep working on your drawing to capture it just right, going back-and-forth between your inner felt-sense and your visual symbol until there is a sense of fit.

"Yes, that's it."

5. Feeling of all okay. Now, ask yourself, "What would this be like if it were all okay?" See if you can get some words for the feeling of "all okay."

All okay is... sensing a strengthening of internal self-respect.

6. What is in the way of "all okay?" Now, ask yourself gently, "What's in the way of that being okay?" Wait for what comes as a bodily sense, an "intuitive feel" of the whole thing.

What is in the way of okay? The need for outer validation.

8. A small step forward. See if you can find any small step that would bring you closer to how you'd like it to be.

I am envisioning a strong core of inner dignity emanating out into the outer world.

9. Enjoy your insights. Now, spend another minute enjoying what has come.

I am enjoying the feeling of solid self-respect inside.

10. Come back to the outer world. When you're ready, end your session for today and slowly come back into the room.

I am back!