Research shows that when you balance the brain, and express emotions, deep biochemical changes take place that strengthen the immune system, increase the brain’s functioning and bring altered states of creative reverie. The following techniques are designed to integrate the analytical with the intuitive thinking processes.
Creative Journaling Expressive Arts (CJEA):
CLIA offers skills of Creative Journaling and how to use these with children, for personal development, with the elderly and in any other integrated arts context. It was Dr Lucia Capacchione who first introduced me to the art of talking to other parts of my inner life through journaling, using collage, clay, paint, sketching, drawing, graphics, scribbling, doodling and other improvisations. It is like a meditation or self counselling – you are the one deciding how much and what to share: perhaps nothing, it is entirely up to your intuition. Lucia uses Hal and Sidra Stone’s Voice Dialogue techniques, which is a way of creating scripts between your inner child, parents and any other sub personae you may have bumped into. I have been inspired to use this in rescuring my inner child, using Dr Capacchione’s book: ‘The Recovery of Your Inner Child’. Not only is this fun, it is profoundly liberating.
‘The Creative Journal Method fosters creativity through emotional awareness, centering, and intuition
- Learn Creative Journaling as a practice of creative expression
- Acquire techniques for managing stress, life transitions and crisis
- Practice safe ways to deal with emotions, chronic pain or illness
- Create the life you wish for through creative spiritual guidance’
Lucia Capacchione, 2009.
With felt tip pens, crayons, collage, and other arts materials, we explore questions you want to raise in your life, and take learning journeys through the emotions in a light and relaxing way, listening to music, or meditating on insights that emerge.
The only rules are that it is confidential, private and personal. With children, it is advisable to warn other adults not to try and find out what they have entered in their journal, and you encourage them to trust that nothing they have expressed is shown to anyone else unless they specifically wish it to be.
Go to: www.luciac.com for more information.
Visioning With Creative Journal
You will learn to draft a picture of what you want to happen in your life. Through journaling, you will learn to use both right and left hands to express the feelings and intuitions that come through using symbols and brainstorming. You will have coaching that supports the development of your insights and dreams into practical plans, and this will make you feel deeply empowered to take charge of the positive things in your life in freedom and confidence.
Child Directed Play Skills
CLIA offers basic CREATIVE LITERACY skills training in active listening through play and expressive arts, which involves: reflecting context and feelings; paraphrasing; summarising; and enquiring whether you have understood what the speaker has intended you to know. In order to be able to listen to others, you need to be able to listen to yourself, through expressive arts and journaling. In play contexts, reflective listening may result in the adult being invited into the fantasy world of the child. However, no rules of safety and confidentiality should ever be broken.
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation”
Plato
Go to: www.ukplayteam.org for more information.
ENERGY AWARENESS
With gratitude to my Lorian colleagues for their inspirational work, I offer the following quotes from Lorian Association Class information: www.lorian.org.
INCARNATION SPIRITUALITY offers us an integrative approach to building our future evolutionary stage of becoming an ENLIGHTENED HUMANITY.
‘Standing Whole’ is the title of an online class in which our skills of mindfulness and somatic awareness can be developed and brought into our daily life creatively and collaboratively, with Gaia as our soul companion. These two fundamental skills are grounded in CLIACOACHING workshops and support material. They are connected to the concept of ‘standing whole’.
‘Standing Whole’ is about discovering the subtle, energetic side of your nature: your subtle body. Understanding this aspect of yourself and learning to integrate its capacities into your physical life is a key to being whole. It is also the key to engaging the subtle dimension of life safely and effectively.’
This class is designed to ‘offer an understanding of wholeness that embraces both the material and spiritual dimensions. It will give you an understanding and vision of yourself as one who is able to engage the world both physically and non-physically.’
You begin to understand:
- The two-ecology nature of the world and how to engage with it.
- The nature of your subtle body, its strengths and vulnerabilities, and its role in the wholeness of your life.
- Habits and practices that integrate your subtle and physical selves.