Collage Unleashed: ATC Swap

This time I made the deadline for the second Artist Trading Card Swap hosted by the Art Therapy Alliance’s Materials and Media community. Melanie Glassey generously offered to organize this swap. This time the theme is “collage unleashed.”

Before I began creating these cards, I was feeling a desire to create something simplistic. In my life in general, I’ve been feeling a pull towards more simplicity. I’ve been discovering, once again, how powerful “simple” can be or maybe it is the essence or energy of simple which feels like “flowing with ease.”

The cards were created from papers I had already painted; I just repurposed them. Creating clean lines felt soothing to me. The dragonfly felt like just the right symbol to capture the feeling of flying around with ease. Even my names for the ATC’s are well, very simple.

Dragonfly 1

Dragonfly 2

Dragonfly 3

Dragonfly 4

This was my first time to create an ATC or to participate in an ATC swap. I liked the small size (2.5″ X 3.5″) of the cards plus it is such a fun way to get the creative juices flowing!

My Breath Breathed Me

photo of Michael and Anneli by Lewis Sheriff

A few weeks ago I received a notice for a workshop called Beyond Skin: A Spiritweaves retreat with Michael and Anneli that would take place just down the road in Dallas. When I read the description of the workshop, my soul knowingly said to me, “GO!”

A movement meditation that encourages you to move your body beyond the surface: to a place within where you can be content with your strengths and your struggles. A dance exploration that inspires you to move beyond the patterning to a place of source. You will be called to move beyond the separation to bring what is outside of you to play within and what is within to pray out int he world. We will use the potent practices of the 5rhythms and Soulmotion.

These words, in particular, deeply resonated with me : a dance exploration that inspires you to move beyond the patterning to a place of source. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this!

photo of Anneli by Lewis Sheriff

I’m so happy I followed my intuitive impulse because last weekend with Michael and Anneli has now become one of my all time most breathtakingly transformative dance experiences EVER. And this old modern dance major has taken lots and lots of classes and workshops in the 5rhythms, dance therapy, authentic movement, trance dance, life/art process with Anna Halprin, etc… The masterful, and I mean MASTERFUL, guidance of Michael and Anneli was beyond magnificent to experience.

On Saturday, Anneli and Michael purposefully guided us through three hours of moving before we officially took a break. It took me nearly three hours of moving before I realized that my thoughts aren’t thinking me. Anneli encouraged us to find that place where the breath breathes you.

I am out of my head.
I am in my body.
I have surrendered to my spirit.
I am beyond my skin.
My breath breathed me.

photo of Michael by Lewis Sheriff

And boy oh boy did I need that release AND realization. Like many of you, I’ve got so many projects and it is easy to slip into that default place of busyness. This shift that transpired within me in that moment is still reverberating through me. And now, the clarity and creative energy I’m bringing to those projects is ever so much better.

What shape waits in the seed of you to grow and spread its branches against a future sky? −David Whyte

Another HUGE experiential takeaway for me was the dynamic with which I want to bring my dreams into the world. Michael and Anneli encouraged us to play with the dynamics of different shapes, especially playing with moving a shape with less effort. I LOVED this! I can manifest my visions with a sense of ease and play rather a forced energy that doesn’t feel authentic for me. Simplicity is powerful!

If you ever have an opportunity to take a workshop with Anneli and Michael (Spiritweaves), listen to your knowing soul and go for it.

Allow yourself to reach the place where your breath breathes you, to move beyond your patterning to a place of source.

Two Summer Recipes

Last weekend while strolling my local Farmer’s Market, I adored feeling savoring the fresh, fragrant produce. There was one table devoted solely to fresh peaches!

Corn and peaches are in season right now. Just so happens I have two great recipes for these delicious items.

This fresh corn salad is so flavorful. The vinegar adds just the right amount of zing. I’ve seen several variations of this recipe, but this one from the Barefoot Contessa is excellent. I’ve made it several times to take over for cook-outs or summertime potluck dinners.

FRESH CORN SALAD

* 5 ears of corn, shucked
* 1/2 cup small-diced red onion (1 small onion)
* 3 tablespoons cider vinegar
* 3 tablespoons good olive oil
* 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 1/2 cup julienned fresh basil leaves

Directions

In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook the corn for 3 minutes until the starchiness is just gone. Drain and immerse it in ice water to stop the cooking and to set the color. When the corn is cool, cut the kernels off the cob, cutting close to the cob.

Toss the kernels in a large bowl with the red onions, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Just before serving, toss in the fresh basil. Taste for seasonings and serve cold or at room temperature.

This next recipe for Fresh Peach Pie is one of my all time favorites and is a family tradition. This recipe is from my grandmother, Irene Hart. The secret is to select peaches that are ripe and flavorful. It is very simple but oh so scrumptious!

Baked pie crust

3 cups fresh sliced peaches
Place 1/2 of the peaches into the pie crust.
To the other half, add:
3/4 cup sugar
6 heaping Tablespoons flour
pinch of salt,
2 Tablespoons water
and a lump of butter the size of a walnut

Place over very low heat. Keep tossing until cooked enough to take care of the flour.

Cool. Put over uncooked peaches in pie crust and let it cool further in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
Then, top with whipped cream.

Enjoy!

New Landscapes New Me

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. —T. S. Eliot

Recently, I wrote about the gifts of my summer vacation to Seattle, the San Juan Islands and Alaska.

Now that I’ve been home for a couple of weeks, I was inspired to create a collage that captures the new energies and appreciations I am feeling from my travels. This idea is one of many wonderful ideas from my good friend, Joseph Dispenza. His book is, The Way of the Traveler.

From seeing the luscious flowers of the Butchart Gardens in Victoria
to deepening my bond with dear friends on an Alaskan cruise
to creating a special memory with my brother while cruising around the San Juan Islands
to seeing magnificent beauty
to fully relishing in each day
to having a treasured time with my husband…

This collage serves as a visual touchstone for me of viscerally re-connecting with the ever expanding vibrancy that was heightened while traveling. I feel transformed from my adventure, and I fully intend to integrate this delicious quickening into my life. I will especially need this energy during a very busy month of August that is ahead of me!

Upon returning from your adventure, Joseph recommends:

A drawing or collage suggestion: Using crayons, colored pens, pencils, magazine clippings, scissors, and paste, create a new landscape for your transformed self. This is a fun exercise, but it is also a serious way of actually visualizing how you can wrap a completely new world around yourself—a world that conforms to and supports the new person you have become during your travels. Picture yourself in your new world, and then depict the people, the places, and the things that bring meaning to you,

I’d love to hear how you feel transformed from your summer travels!

Creative Arts Therapies Teleconference

I’m excited to announce that I’ll be one of the speakers at a brand new event: The 1st Annual International Creative Arts Therapies Teleconference which takes place August 23-27, 2010.

Come join me and nine other expert speakers for five days of art therapies and expressive arts to learn new techniques and tools to revitalize your practice, as well as bring new knowledge and energy to your work.

Take a look at this stellar line-up of speakers and topics:

Laura Dessauer, Business Success for Therapists: I’m right and you’re wrong”: How to integrate choice theory and art therapy in your practice to improve client relationships AND Want to Know the Top 5 Mistakes Therapists Make in Building Their Practice?

Nicole Brickell, Art Psychotherapy Counselling ServicesTM: Directives in Art Therapy

Gretchen Miller, MA, ATR-BC and Cathy Malchiodi, PhD, LPCC, LPAT: Leveraging the International Art Therapy Community through Social Media

Kimberly Sena Moore, MM, NMT, MT-BC: How Music Engages and Changes Us: A Brain-Based Approach

Juliet Bruce: From Biography to Metaphor: A Dance and Writing Workshop to Support Resilience

Dr. Louise Montello, LP, LCAT, MT-BC: From Stage Fright to Stage Presence

Shannon Bush: Myth, Story and Creative Expression – Building Women’s Self Esteem

Deborah Koff-Chapin: Drawing Out Your Soul; The Experience of Touch Drawing

And, yours truly will be presenting on Expressive Arts for People Living with Cancer. Although my topic is directed towards folks who have cancer, your main take away will be a better understanding of how to incorporate the expressive arts into your work.

The ease of a teleconference makes this event not only convenient, but very affordable.

For more information and to register:

Feel free to spread the word to anyone in your networks who would be interested in attending this global event!

Necessary Fire Is Ignited

I’m delighted to announce that my first digital course, Necessary Fire, is now official and will launch on September 8 over at the Wish Studio!

My journey with Necessary Fire began when I went to hear Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, talk about their new book at the time –Traveling with Pomegranates.

I was already riveted by their exquisite descriptions of their journeys both inside their souls and while traveling through Greece and France. When they mentioned this idea of ncessary fire; a genuine fire was lit inside of me.

Ann’s take on necessary fire:

The novelist John Gardener suggested that the true search in life is for one’s necessary fire. He was referring to a genuine, inborn desire in one’s heart, a passionate pull from within, towards something that feels required, as if it is part of your purpose for being here. It is this fire that holds the possibility to bring you alive, but it is also something with which you have a deep compatibility, and true affinity.

Sue’s description of necessary fire:

Find a purpose grand enough for your life. And whatever your necessary fire is, your genius turns out to be, remember, in some way, it is necessary for the world too.

I knew my deep resonance with this idea was going to become the fodder for coalescing a focus for my expressive arts work — my necessary fire! So, I set a clear intention to let this idea percolate and then flourish with wild abandon.

My burning desire was fueled by some artwork I created last fall:

This dream board expresses my desire for exploring the visual arts and includes some artwork I created — part of the mix of my necessary fire.

The imagery of Vesta (ancient goddess of home and hearth who tended the sacred fires) showed up in an art piece I created while taking an online class.

The next part of my journey was to follow my intuition and send a proposal to the Wish Studio. Once I was accepted, I scoured my notebooks from years of leading creative expression workshops and selected the best projects and processes that would be a perfect match for Necessary Fire. At the same time, this course goes beyond where I’ve been before with fresh new content.

Now, I’m so excited that Necessary Fire will actually launch in about six weeks!

CLICK HERE for all the scoop on Necessary Fire including registration.

Listen deeply to yourself. Isn’t it time to discover or rediscover YOUR necessary fire?

The 7 Link Challenge

This is truly a ripple effect! I found The 7 Link Challenge through Carolyn Rubenstein who found it via Susannah Conway who found it via Darren at Problogger. Susannah writes, “The idea is to link to six of your old posts (and one by another blogger) to help your readers dig deeper into your archives.”

Here are the seven categories:

• Your first post
• A post you enjoyed writing the most
• A post which had a great discussion
• A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written
• Your most helpful post
• A post with a title that you are proud of
• A post that you wish more people had read

1. My first post was on July 16, 2009. I just realized that my blog just had its first anniversary!

2. I enjoyed writing Traveling with Sue and Ann. There are so many posts that just flowed and felt good to write so I’m going with the one that has the most zing in this moment.

3. Necessary Fire ignited some passionate comments. Look for an announcement about the e-course coming soon.

4. I adore my dear friend, Betsy Gutting’s Comfort for the Soul Messages!

5. My post on how to make dream boxes was an inspiring way to begin the year or begin anything!

6. I’m a bit partial to the title: Come On, Get Happy.

7. I wish more folks had read my guest post by Dr. Bill DeFoore: Wave Bye Bye to Stress.

Wanna play? Just leave a link to your post in the comments section and continue this inspiring ripple effect!

Gifts of Traveling

He who returns from a journey is not the same as he who left. –Chinese Proverb

Juneau, Alaska

Having just returned from a spectacular summer vacation to Seattle, the San Juan Islands and Alaska, I’m relishing in the tremendous gifts that traveling offers.

What I’m noticing the most is that I viscerally feel a like I’ve consciously established a brand new set point within my being. Taking a respite from my “everyday life” has given me a renewed sense of appreciation and eagerness with which to engage in life now that I’m back home.

Every cell in my body rejoiced as I took in the the stunning beauty of our magnificent planet.

view from our float plane ride

Butchart Gardens in Victoria

gorgeous flowers at the Butchart Gardens in Victoria

Menenhall Glacier and the Mendenhall River in Juneau

going through the Inside Passage

Traveling offers opportunities to experience thrilling adventures such as rafting down the Mendenhall River and flying in a float plane.

My husband and I getting ready to raft down the Mendenhall River

aboard the float plane

This trip included time with my darling brother in Seattle which made my heart sing. My brother chartered a yacht to cruise around the San Juan Islands which provided an extra special time together.

with my brother on Sucia Island

After saying goodbye to my brother, his girlfriend and friends, we boarded the Oosterdam for a seven day Alaskan cruise. My husband and I rendezvoused with four of our dearest friends which made this journey so rich and fun. We daily partook in high levels of spirited fun!

with my friends on top of Mt. Roberts in Ketchikan

One of the gifts I’ve always noticed about traveling is how alive I am in the present moment.

My good friend, Joseph Dispenza, offers some tips for adding more soul to your travels:

10 Tips for Spiritual Travel

1. Create a travel shrine. A simple home altar dedicated to a trip will establish its spiritual character. Include photos of your destination, reminders of home and anything that contributes to emphasizing the trip’s underlying spiritual nature.

2. Pack virtues. Spiritual provisions are as important as material ones. Pack in with your clothes 3×5 cards on which you’ve written “Courage,” or “Patience,” or “Forgiveness” — and you will have these virtues all along your way.

3. Keep a “Fear Box.” In preparing for a trip, we often encounter apprehensions (Columbus did!). If a fear crops up, write it down and deposit it in a “Fear Box.” Before departing home, seal the box and leave it on your travel shrine. Now you will be out in the world without fears.

4. Take along gifts. Gifting raises a mere trip into a journey of adventure and gratitude. Small, inexpensive items from home, will suffice. Giving these to people we encounter along the way acknowledges our one-ness with “the stranger” and enhances the spiritual character of the trip.

5. Keep a “Journal of Feelings.” A journal into which we record our emotions on a trip is tremendously useful. It is one thing to see the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben — and quite another to “feel” them. This kind of journal keeps the trip grounded as an interior journey.

6. Close the door. Upon leaving home, walk across the threshold with awareness: “I am leaving the past behind me. I am sealing the past away with the closing of this door. Before me, now, lies the future — and I willingly and lovingly step into it.”

7. Make a triumphal entrance. Arriving back home from a trip, do as the Romans did: Make an imaginary triumphal entrance. This is the opposite of No. 6 — a way of symbolically ending the trip and realizing that we have been transformed by it.

8. Tell the story of the journey. After a trip, call your friends together and tell the story of your journey, showing objects that you brought back. This releases the lessons of the journey to the world.

9. Name the trip. You’ve left the first page of your Journal of Feelings blank. Now return to it and name the trip: “My Journey of Compassion,” “My Journey of Realizing My Tremendous Importance to Other People,” “My Journey of Understanding the Value of Family.”

10. Be the hero of your adventure. All travel is inner travel, because wherever we are, we are processing our experiences internally. Remind yourself that you are the hero of all your journeys, and that all your travel in the outside world is really travel inward, toward ever higher spiritual consciousness.

I highly recommend Joseph’s book, The Way of the Traveler, for more illuminating ideas on making every trip a journey of self-discovery.

More posts are coming on the theme of travel and adventure!

Gone Fishin’

Soon, I’ll be rafting down the Mendenhall River in Alaska.

I’m taking a break from my blog while I’m on vacation.

See you in a couple of weeks!

Summertime Reading

I live in Texas and the temperature is in the triple digits more days than it is not during July and August. Consequently, staying indoors reading a good book or going to a stadium style movie theater is just the ticket for the lazy days of summer. Since I discovered the world of blogging around a year ago, I’ve noticed that the amount of book reading I do has diminished.

For most of my life, I’ve been a voracious reader. It is not uncommon for me to read two or three books at a time. Lately, I’ve been craving the delights of getting lost in a wonderful book more often. This may cut into my blog reading time, but that is okay for at least this summer.

Here is my summertime reading list:

FICTION
1. Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland. One of my dear friends said she was so sad when this book ended. This is a must read for me because I adore the idea of one of my favorite paintings coming to live through the exquisite writing of Susan Vreeland who also wrote Girl in Hyacinth Blue.

2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I’ve already selected this suspenseful thriller as my airplane reading for Wednesday. This is the first of a trilogy that has become quite the sensation. There is already a Swedish movie of this book.

3. The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee. One day while strolling through Borders, this book was prominently displayed. My mom has already read my copy and said it was very good.

4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This has been a #1 New York Times Bestseller and my mom has already read this one, too. Apparently, reading runs in the family. She loved this Southern Story.

NON FICTION
1. The 4-Hour Work-Week by Timothy Ferris. I’ve heard from several friends how much they LOVED this book. I’m all ears for a 4-hour work week!

2. Linchpin by Seth Godin. Many bloggers rave about Seth, so I’m curious to see what all the buzz is about.

3. Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen. Looks like a very intriguing memoir. Elizabeth Gilbert has a quote on the cover, so that sealed the deal for me.

4. Style Statement by Carrie McCarthy & Danielle LaPorte. Since I’ve been loving Danielle La Porte’s Fire Starter Sessions, I thought I’d check out her book.

I have a book in mind that I think would be perfect for an online circle. Perhaps in the Fall. Stay tuned for more details.

I’d love to hear what is on your summertime reading list.

Happy reading!