Working with Clay

I'm sitting out on my balcony (which is actually just the outdoor hallway) in Santa Barbara. The sun's just set, the moon perched above, this day giving way to night, this geeky gal with her laptop and head phones taking in the moment! Life is good. I feel so grateful.

Today in the training we explored with clay. Here is the activity we did. The quote is taken from Violet Oaklander's first book "Windows to our Children" and is pretty close to how our session was guided.

"Close your eyes and go into your space. Feel your clay with both hands for a few seconds. Take a couple of deep breaths. Now I would like you to make something with your clay, keeping your eyes closed. Just let your fingers move. See if the clay seems to want to go its own way. Or perhaps you want it to go your way. Make a form, a shape. If you have something in mind you want to make, do it with your eyes closed and see what happens. Or just move the clay around, let yourself be surprised. You will have only a few minutes to do this. When you're finished, open your eyes and look at what you've made you can add finishing touches, but don't change it. Look at it. Turn it and see it from different sides and angles" (Oaklander).

Many participants told stories of how they had no idea what they were going to make, just found themselves moved to make something known or unknown to them. This was true for me as well. After we made our creations, we got into pairs with one person sharing their work and the other playing the role of therapist. The processing work involves being what you made. I made a shell. So I began to talk as a shell. "I am a shell. I have grooves along the back of me and am smooth on the inside. I used to be a home to someone else and I have had many different homes of my own. I've lived in the ocean. I've lived on the shore. I've been in water and in the hot sun. I am solid and yet I am also fragile. I am able to be broken into many small pieces. etc." After relating to my object in the first person, the therapist then asks if there is anything about being a shell that fits for my own life... and we explore along that thread.

It's a powerful activity because the clay stimulates and is a direct link to many sense -- kinesthetic, temperature, tactile, smell, sight, hearing. It is grounding and comforting while also direct in bringing someone into the body. Clay can be a bridge between sensory experiences (kinesthetic, tactile, etc.) and the deeper sensing and experiencing of feelings, unconsciousness, etc. To me the power of this modality is in how it can bring to the surface unconscious material and circumvent the analytical mind, providing an opportunity for other parts of the self to express themselves.

Tomorrow's topic is aggression. What fun!

I've taken some pictures and will keep adding to this album as I take more.

A Gestalt

I've been on quite a fascinating journey lately... and on Sunday I sense that I am opening into a whole new world, an expressive whirl of life emerging through and blossoming as this being who is me, this human instrument I am blessed to be.

I will be participating in a 2-week Gestalt Play Therapy training with Violet Oaklander, a well-known and creative pioneer in the field of child and adolescent psychotherapy, specifically gestalt play therapy. After that I get to travel with family and then spend a few days connecting and co-creating with some GiGis (girl geeks) and Open Space friends. Wooo huuu!

I'm currently rereading Violet's book, Windows to Our Children, and buzzing with the excitement and passion I generally experience when I really sink into gestalt theory and feel how aligned it is with my own ways of seeing and experiencing life, development, relating, relationships,and how we change. I'm guessing that this training will be incredibly significant for my work with children and school communities, all my other work with humans, and my own personal ways of being and relating in the world. Here are some clips from the book that have me sparking.

"As we grow older we often "give our eyes away." We begin to see ourselves and our worlds through other people's eyes, like the populace in the story, "The Emperor's New Clothes." We adults encourage children to give their eyes away. We say, "Don't stare!" or "What will they think of us!" (referring to what others see us doing). We worry about how our children dress and appear to others.

Part of reowning one's eyes involves the awareness and strengthening of self, the ability to find comfort and familiarity with the self, trust one's self." (Oaklander)

Ahhhh.... seeing through our own eyes and our own experiencing. Letting go of being controlled by perceptions of others, perceived perceptions of others, projections, assumptions and expectations. Opening into comfort and familiarity with self, trusting self, listening deeply, being authentically.

Violet continues,

"Many things get in the way of seeing besides imagining what people think and feel. One of these is jumping into the future rather than staying in the present. (Ashley blinks and grins. Guilty.) Often we spoil pleasurable sights and experiences by our worry about what might come next. We may look at a beautiful sunset, straining to catch every glimpse before it sinks into the horizon. That very straining, a sort of holding on, detracts from the pleasure of seeing the beauty of the moment. This kind of hanging on is universal."

Grasping... another proud smile... I know that one!

In my work with groups, I am particularly interested in exploring and utilizing various modalities of expression to harvest and communicate some of the elements that emerge in our time together. Amy and I have been talking about this and dreaming a bit into our visit. Amy writes:

We've been talking about doing some deep work together to access and express some conversational creativity during the time she's here. We've been talking about exploring "ritual art" - putting ourselves into different environments (the mountain, the beach or the bay, on the porch, :-) etc.) listening deeply into the field for what is calling to us, and then responding with our full selves, playing in conversations without words - exploring movement, sound, technology, stones, leaves, whatever is there, as the medium for our conversation with life and our own nature.

I'm sure you can see a plethora of places where this passage inspires me and connects into what is on my mind and in my heart these days. More from Violet:

"Throughout this book I write about giving the child experiences that will bring her back to herself, experiences that will renew and strengthen her awareness of those basic senses that an infant discovers and flourishes in: sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. It is through these modalities that we experience ourselves and make contact with the world. Yet somewhere along the line many of us lose full awareness of our senses; they become hazy and blurred and seem to operate automatically and apart from ourselves. We come to operate in life almost as if our senses, bodies, and emotions don't exist -- as if we are nothing but giant heads, thinking, analyzing, judging, figuring things out, admonishing, remembering, fantasizing, mind-reading, fortune-telling, censoring. Certainly the intellect is an important part of who we are. It is through our intellect that we talk to people, make our needs known, voice our opinions and attitudes, state our choices. But our minds are only one part of our total organism that we own and need to take care of, cultivate and use. Fritz Perls often said, "Lose your mind and come to your senses." We need to respect those other parts of ourselves that have so much power and wisdom for us."

Just like the poem from Henri Nouwen that Mike shared:

"Listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in [your] own center."