Sentient Being
We often hear about the “body’s wisdom.” But what does that mean? From an obvious sense, pain tells us that something is wrong. We twisted our ankle and so it now hurts. But pain can also come from emotions, for example when someone has let us down, offends us, or we think we’re overweight. These experiences also hurt, and we internalize them in our minds, bodies, and emotions. We often ruminate on hurt feelings in our minds, trying to work out how to survive. But when we reason with the thinking mind, we think through our experiences or relationships, and often end up feeling unworthy or responsible in some way. Beyond the reasoning mind, these deeper feelings often seek our attention in other ways, such as anger, resignation, or withdrawal; or perhaps through things like substance abuse, overeating, or physical illness. We get stuck.
Beyond what we think, the mind is also based on what we sense and feel about the environment and ourselves. We sometimes need to surrender to these feelings in order to let inner intelligence disentangle us from deeper hurt. Sometimes we only need to meet and acknowledge what’s there, at other times give voice to it. Art aids this task by providing an opportunity to express deep-felt emotions that may have been dormant for years.
Becoming aware of internalized body states allows us to know from a deeper place how stress affects our outer world, whereas art can give voice to it. These somatic markers are accessible through mindfulness and enable us to sense a connection between mind and body and their impact on thoughts, feelings, and behavior (Levine, 2010).
In mindful art therapy, as we connect with sensory experience, we come to realize that we’re not the story. We allow awareness to happen through contemplation and the intentional use of form, shape, or color. We don’t deny pain, but identify less with fear, guilt or anger, or the story that led us there. Dimensions of bodily consciousness, though always coursing within us, are not necessarily obvious unless we choose to bring our attention to them. But they often provide clues to connections in the mind and body and the emotional resonance of our life experience, and how or why we got there.
Emotions are the universal language of consciousness that influences how we think, feel, perceive, and behave in the world. When we distance ourselves through art and mindfulness, we can gain perspective over the things that rob us of vitality or thwart our capacity to thrive. In a therapeutic sense, it might be said that mindfulness deepens intentional awareness, whereas art gives voice to it.
Maryjane
Maryjane told me about how she got nervous whenever she had to present something at her university. Being a graduate student, there were numerous occasions when she had to do so, including meetings with her supervisor who Maryjane found intimidating. But just talking about it brought on an all too familiar nervous tic (spasm) in her neck. As her head wrenched over toward her shoulder, she winced with pain as she attempted to finish telling me about her concerns. Maryjane was overidentifying and re-experiencing what it meant to be anxious even though her meeting wasn’t scheduled for another week, and we were sitting in the safety of the therapy session.
Following guided meditation, Maryjane sketched an image of her mother to connect with the deeper hurt she felt at the time. Although feeling guilty at having portrayed her mother in a bad light (brown and dull green “sickly” hues, “looking old, hurt and vulnerable”), Maryjane recognized that she was facing her deep-seated anger. In effect, noticing how her anxiety manifested in her body was an entry point for Maryjane’s insights into exploring a difficult relationship where she felt unsupported. The effable expressions in her images gave voice to them.
Through an Acceptance and Commitment (ACT) mindfulness protocol in conjunction with her art, we continued to explore how Maryjane felt intimidated and how she internalized and expressed her anger. Being mindful brought her more closely in touch with feelings she had previously denied, which were borne out and explored through a series of images related to this key and important relationship. Several sessions later, having incorporated ACT into her daily mindset, Maryjane said that she “looks at things differently now” and that her core relationships were beginning to improve. Nor had the nervous tic reappeared, despite a recent meeting with her supervisor. Maryjane was beginning to let go of the emotional pain that fuelled her anxiety and resulted in a physical manifestation of it. As a therapeutic method, mindful art therapy thus provided an important means for Maryjane to direct her attention toward the link between her emotions and physical symptoms.