Juncture of Psychosynthesis and Art

​I wrote this article for the Psychosynthesis Northeast Community Newsletter and I thought I would share it here.

Mucking Around in the Darkness      

​by Valerie Gilman

​I am a potter and sculptor and I have loved teaching those those things for many years. A number of years ago I started hearing the words “art as a healing process” in my head, and as I left academia I have been on a quest for what I am meant to do with that.

A few years ago, when looking for a coaching program, I discovered Psychosynthesis and I could not imagine a better fit! With two years of study and developing my coaching practice, I have been thrilled by the similarities of the work to my own creative process. It is the sense of discovery and allowing or trusting that everything we need is all there inside us already- we just need to make space to see/hear/feel it.

​When I make sculpture, I begin with a sense of not knowing and let myself follow what is intriguing in my hands. I try to stay in the not knowing as long as possible so that my thinking function does not take over and show me something that it is already comfortable with. 

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I am looking for that which is at once familiar (true- honest- authentic) and also has the energy of new (disquieting, compelling). I think of it as mucking around in the darkness-  a place inside of me, my pre-personal, and I would argue also the collective unconscious. As when we do a visualization inviting an image, it is a matter of creating a safe space and trusting what comes. In terms of the psychological functions it is impulse- and then investigating and drawing it out first with the imagination, sensory feeling, emotional feeling, and then allowing the thinking function to engage. It all builds together as intuition.

I find that when I give myself time for this exploration, I not only feel incredibly more grounded, but I also bring a deep learning that is going on in me to the surface. It is in the process of falling in love with the forms that the healing happens, a transformation of the issue at hand. It is very much like giving the sub-personalities their voice and having compassion and love for them and then seeing that they are actually expressions of trans-personal qualities that we are needing to bring more fully to our lives.

For more information about Val's coaching check out http://taprootartsinsight.com/index.html

To read more about Val's process check out the article in the Gazette

Images
Persephone's Dream: A prayer for Peace, ceramic 36 x 42 x 20
Jadu Jadu, ceramic on steel, 16 x 16 x 4

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