I am so excited that I am going to be conducting little mini "art therapy" sessions for a group of young ladies. This all came about because of my art workshops I am already doing for the general public. It is very hard to communicate how I feel about this. To sum it up.....I just feel that suddenly, everything I have been doing and going through with this art thing makes sense.
So, I decided, the best thing to do would be to start with a creative journaling class. I want to help these young ladies learn how to use creative journaling to express themselves, learn more about themselves and explore creativity as therapy. So, in preparation for that, I have been thinking alot about why creative journaling would be therapeutic. I need to do some research on that and would appreciate any feedback on this topic. I know it is therapeutic to me, but I can't seem to explain why.
I picked up a book today that really inspired me and I feel it will be quite useful and helpful in prep for this workshop. It is the second book by Linda Woods and Karen Dinino, two sisters who wrote/developed first "Visual Chronicles" then...the one I picked up today and left at a doctor's office and have to go and pick up tomorrow "Journal Revolution". Journal revolution revealed to me why it is therapeutic to journal and it gave me lots of great ideas. This is a great book and you need to get it if you love to journal in a creative way.
Anyway, this book made me want t0 dig through my old memoribilia. As soon as I got off from work, I went to my storage room where I keep all my old memory boxes full of all kinds of stuff from my past. That is when I found this....my Senior Memory book. You know, that little book you bought with your senior picture package. I found these entries and had to share them. It helps me to see that it is therapeutic to look back on journal entries from the past. I see things from 1983 that reflect the girl that I still am today. Do you see anything that reminds you of the me I am to you? I thought the reference to "colors" in the first photo/journal entry were interesting...." black and white", purple" Do you have something like this? I would love to see your highschool memoribillia. Do Share!
Comments
Angelina
too much!
they need their own house, LOL
I love that picture with the hair all fixed 80's
hugs!
I have both of the books and find them amazingly helpful...they never cease to bring up new ideas just by flipping through them!
There is a book out there that I know about dealing with journaling as a healing source but I haven't really read through it, I have just seen it at the book stores. It is called
Visual Journaling: Going Deeper Than Words by Barbara Ganim
and there is also
Journalution: Journaling to Awaken Your Inner Voice, Heal Your Life and Manifest Your Dreams by Sandy Grason. Like I said, I haven't really looked extremely close and them but they might help?
Sandra Evertson
Inspirations for me have come from lots of different places. The Artist's Way definitely. But also John Fox's Poetic Medicine. Though that is "poetry therapy", I find the exercises and prompts very visual and adaptable to art making. Also Chris over at Arts In Therapy Network has some good "definitions" and links to other teachers and associations and the like:
http://www.artsintherapy.com
Also the ideas behind The Hero's Journey have been very inspiring. There are tons of resources for this topic, but some of my favs are:
Campbell's "The Hero with a Thousand Faces"
Murdock's "The Heroine's Journey"
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/smc/journey/
http://www.yourheroicjourney.com/Workshop.shtml
http://www.herosjourneyprograms.com/
http://www.exoticindiaart.com/article/buddha
Anyway, that's all I can think of off the top of my head... If I think of more, I'll come back and post again...
miracles,
k-