I had a vague concept of it all relating to energy, but I had no particulars to help clarify that thought. Then, in a matter of a few weeks, a series of serendipitous events showed me the way. One could almost say this was a case of synchronicity.
The first event was an interview I set up with an energy healer in Portland, Kathleen Chambers, as a hopeful adjunct to this paper. I had no idea what to expect, or what energy healing was. As it turned out, the evening became an actual demonstration of the idea upon my person, rather than a dull interview. The complete transcribed interview can be read in Appendix C to this work.
At any rate, after demonstrating some truly amazing things to me, it became clear that her conception of healing was that it was simply energy fields interacting with other energy fields. The main source of her ideas and techniques came from her mentor, author Donna Eden, and her book, Energy Medicine. There are meridian lines in the body, conduits of energy; there are chakras (seven of them in traditional Buddhist and Hindu medicine), there are layers of auras, streaming energy, and so forth. We are all energy, including the healer. Kathleen summed it up as being all about light. I wasn’t sure what kind of light she was talking about.
Shortly after my meeting with her, we moved to Yakima, WA. I was beset by a terrible toothache on my lower left jaw, where a cavity had received a temporary filling a few months before. The pain was excruciating (I couldn’t sleep), and nothing seemed to affect it, not Tylenol, Ibuprofen, nor topical anesthetics like Anbesol. In desperation, I turned to Donna Eden’s Energy Medicine and soon found instructions on which pressure points on my feet and hands to press, to alleviate pain. After doing so, there was immediate relief. I did the procedure a couple of times a day for a few days, then once a day for a while, until there was no longer a need to continue.
Fig. 70 Healthy “Isles of Langerhans”, pen & ink, 24” X18”, John Halliday. Fig 71. Diseased “Isles of Langerhans”, pen & ink, 24” X 18”, John Halliday
A similar problem arose with the neuropathy in my feet. Sometimes it burned so badly, with concurrent stabbing pains, I was unable to sleep again. Again, analgesics and nortryptiline, an antidepressant used in treatment of neuropathy, did no good. After locating pain meridians, I determined which places on my feet to tap with my finger, and after having done that, I found some measure of relief. Thus, my limited experience with energy healing had been a revelation and a success.
A second event included a visit to our church in Portland by the Rabbi Sheinman (sp?), who was invited as part of a series of talks to get to understand other religions. He gave a very interesting talk to our congregation, and very briefly mentioned the role of the Qabbalah in Jewish mysticism. At a meet and greet after the talk, I stood in line impatiently to ask him a question about the Qabbalah. I told him I understood the basic structure of the Qabbalistic Tree of Life, and understand the concept of emanations spreading from the Ein Soph down through the various sephiroth, but I could not see how all this was supposed to relate to personal enlightenment.
He said that the emanations consisted of light (not necessarily “physical” light). He said that reality, as conceived by Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism, was an illusion, the veil of Maya. But the rabbi felt that although there is illusion in this world, there had to be a basic core of reality from which illusion built itself upon and spread, a basic matrix. And that core was light. Enlightenment was exactly what the word said, surrounding oneself with and in turn becoming light. “The paths between the various sepiroth are light pathways, energy conduits.”
I asked if Malkuth, the bottom sephireh, was our world, the culmination and end of the process of the emanations, whereby light, and therefore matter attains maximum density. He grinned and said, “Maybe. Or perhaps, it is really the beginning.”
The last brick in the wall came from a book by Deepak Chopra, The Third Jesus.
He quoted two passages by Jesus in the New Testament: “I am the light” (John 9:5),
and “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:12). He then said, “The light exists
inside everyone. When we go inside to find out who we are, we encounter the light and God at the same time…” and also… “If you reflect upon it [an object outside yourself],you will discover that everything is made of light…”, and finally, “When you stop believing in the illusion of the material world and see everything for what it really is -light – you have faith…Once you realize you are the light, nothing stands between you and God” (Chopra 14).
So it seems that energy, especially light, is involved in the process of art healing people.
Fig. 72 Spectrum of visible color wavelengths.
Light is energy, color is light, so color is energy. The colors we perceive exist on a narrow continuum of electromagnetic radiation, or wavelengths. This visible light region consists of a spectrum of wavelengths which range from approximately 700 nanometers to approximately 400 nanometers. This narrow band of visible light consists of the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Below red are longer wave-lengths, called infrared (heat), above violet is ultraviolet, a shorter wavelength.
An alternative medicine called chromography studies how the application of certain colored lights affect various parts of the body. Contemporary color therapy is grounded in scientific research on light and psychological findings on the beneficial effects of color. Such research has, for example, been widely utilized in the design of public institutions, possibly the most famous instance being the banishing of black boards in schools in favor of green boards. It is also widely known that sunlight, in moderate doses, stimulates the production of vitamin D by the body, that colored rooms can assist the healing of some psychological disorders, and the right colors in offices can stimulate employees.
A famous example of the affect of colors on mood was the finding that painting prison or jail cells pink actually helped reduce the incidence of violence among inmates.
The literature is fairly sparse concerning the research into how art can heal a person, and the mechanism by which this feat happens. Nevertheless, a diligent search will turn up a few studies that provide tantalizing clues and glimpses into the powerful effect visual art may have on pain and illness, mood and disposition. There is “a study that made test subjects to sit under lamps with different shades of light – the patients exhibited different behavior patterns under each light. People who sat under reddish lights were more aggressive as compared to those who sat beneath the blue lights. Meanwhile, those who sat under orange and yellow hues seemed to become more violent. Brown lights elicited murky feelings from the subjects.” (Boardman). The most common explanation of the healing power of color relates to stimulating the glandular system in some way.
It is conceivable that light that bounces off of or reflects from artworks such as paintings also has an effect on a person’s mood, energy level, and even health. “How does art heal? Scientific studies tell us that art heals by changing a person’s physiology and attitude. The body’s physiology changes from one of stress to one of deep relaxation, from one of fear to one of creativity and inspiration. Art and music put a person in a different brain wave pattern; art and music affect a person’s autonomic nervous system, their hormonal balance and their brain neurotransmitters… Art and music affect every cell in the body instantly to create a healing physiology that changes the immune system and blood flow to all the organs. Art and music also immediately change a person’s perceptions of their world. They change attitude, emotional state, and pain perception” (Samuels).
Although the focus of this paper is on the healing effects of the visual arts on people, music is widely seen as performing the same task. The old saying “music hath power to soothe the savage breast” seems appropriate here. Music combined with art can have a particularly powerful effect on a person’s health and mood. “One London study demonstrated that labor could be shortened by two hours and requests for anesthesia substantially reduced for first-time mothers who listened to music and looked at art in the hospital. Audrey Shafer, an anesthesiologist and poet who works at Stanford’s Veterans Administration Hospital, has examined the implications of metaphor in anesthesia and pain management. ‘I think the arts can help mitigate suffering,’ she says” (Winn).
Others have studied in a fairly detailed and objective manner, using scientific method, to show that art does indeed cause positive changes in a patient, and in a remark- ably short span of time. “Initial double blind studies using Biofeedback, state of the art Gas Discharge Visualization Cameras, and the HeartMath system (used by many Fortune 500 companies and by various departments of the federal government), document that it takes less than 5 seconds of exposure to the energy of an individual painting for positive changes to occur in a subject’s heart waves (HRV), respiration rates, body temperature and brain waves (EEG). Changes also occur in their bioenergetic or subtle energy fields. We also have video testimonials to accompany the documentation. As a diagnostic tool, findings indicate people respond to a specific painting which represents a disorder or issue that is either presently or potentially in their physical body or energy field” (Atwater).
Can contemplation of a beautiful painting reduce physical pain? To find out, Marina de Tommaso and a team from the University of Bari in Italy asked 12 men and women to pick the 20 paintings they considered most ugly and most beautiful from a selection of 300 works by artists such as da Vinci and Botticelli.
Fig. 73 Assumption of the Virgin Mary, oil by Giuseppe Ghedine.
“They were then asked to contemplate either the beautiful paintings, or the ugly painting, or a blank panel while the team zapped a short laser pulse at their hand, creating a pricking sensation. The subjects rated the pain as being a third less intense while they were viewing the beautiful paintings, compared with contemplating the ugly paintings or the blank panel. Electrodes measuring the brain's electrical activity suggested a reduced response to the pain when the subject looked at beautiful paintings” (New Scientist).
In another recent experiment, “Brain scans of volunteers who were subjected to electrical shocks revealed that Roman Catholics felt less pain than atheists and agnostics when they were shown a painting of the Virgin Mary (Fig. 73). Images of the volunteers' brains showed that in devout believers, an area of the brain that suppresses reactions to threatening situations lit up when they were shown the picture” (Sample).
Katja Wiech at Oxford University recruited 12 nonbelievers and 12 practicing Roman Catholic students in tests where participants were shown either an image of the Virgin Mary by the 17th-century Italian painter Sassoferrato or Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century Lady with an Ermine. “After looking at the picture for 30 seconds, the volunteers were zapped with electrical pulses for 12 seconds. Each time, they were asked to rank how painful the shocks were on a scale of zero to 100. The researchers describe how Roman Catholics and nonbelievers reported similar levels of pain after viewing the Leonardo painting. But the two groups responded very differently to the Virgin Mary painting, with Catholics experiencing 12% less pain. When Wiech's team looked at the brain scans of the two groups, they found marked differences between them. After seeing the Virgin Mary, an area in the brain called the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex lit up in the religious volunteers” (Sample).
Are there works of art that actually seem to posses a power to heal? In Eastern Europe and Russia, icons are revered in the Eastern Orthodox Church. Icons are sacred pictures of saints, Christ, and prophets. Some of them have been purported to heal by mere contact with the icon, such as kissing it. This places art in a mystical category, as a miraculous object, similar to when lepers touched Christ’s garment and were healed. Is it the element of faith that is really doing the healing, or is there some latent power in the picture, from the transmitted spiritual energy of millions of pilgrims, stored up over hundreds of years like trickle feeding a battery?
Fig.74 Black Madonna icon from Guadalupe, Spain.
The Black Madonna icon of the pilgrimage church in Guadalupe Spain is purported to have healing powers. In New Mexico, there is an old tradition of painting retablos, or pictures of the saints. They are painted by itinerate folk artists, and they reached their peak in the late nineteenth century, when so many thousands were painted on cheap tin roof plates. This practice ended in the early 20th century when the introduction of cheap color lithographs from Europe flooded the market.
At any rate, some of these, which in truth are New Mexican icons, have exhibited healing powers, also. Some santos, or figures of saints carved from cottonwood root, are believed to exhibit healing powers. In northern New Mexico, there is a small adobe church called Sanctuario de Chimayo. Inside, there is a hole in the dirt floor where pilgrims scoop up a little dirt and eat it or rub it on their affliction, and they are healed. Many discarded crutches and canes on the wall attest to its miraculous power, which is why it has been called the Lourdes of the New World.
Fig. 75 Body Complaints, hand colored etching, 7.5”x 9.5", John Halliday
Fig. 76 Healing Vine, hand colored etching , 7.5” X 9.5” John Halliday
“Art objects may also catalyze consciousness transformation and even stimulate healing responses in sensitive persons. There are statues of Madonna and church icons that weep healing oils. The ex-votos found in Spanish and Mexican churches are testimonials to the healing power of some art. The ex-voto is a small painting offered to a statue or other work of art, and hung in close proximity to it, that shows how the art acted as a transmitter of healing power…Certain statues in Tibet are regarded as being capable of accelerating the process of enlightenment…” (Grey 68).
In the Middle Ages in Europe, healings could be accomplished in the same way. “In Byzantium, the viewing of icons could bring healing. According to one testimonial, a woman suffering from a hemorrhage believed that if only she could see an icon of Saint Symeon the Younger, her bleeding would cease…So too, Gerhoh of Reichsberg maintained that looking on “a citizen of Jerusalem” could refresh and heal; Hugh of Saint Victor recommended that his diagram of Noah’s ark be inscribed on the heart…Belief in the corporeal impact of seeing and mental imaging lay behind somatic miracles on the one hand and monstrous births on the other. Just as a saint whose soul bore the imprint of the crucified Christ would receive stigmata on the body (a phenomenon that began with Francis, a contemporary of the work under discussion), so conversely a pregnant woman who imbibed inappropriate images (whether in the form of pictorial representations or of living beings) would harm her fetus. From this perspective, the crypt paintings, themselves brimming with curative properties, were no less than relics and the Eucharist, an extension of the sacramental powers vested in the collegiate church and its clergy” (Kupfer 62).
Fig. 77 View of Delft. Oil by Jan Vermeer, 1659-60
So we see in this passage that art not only heals, it can curse, as “inappropriate” images can harm a fetus. Recall the story told previously about the young man in northern New Mexico who put on a forbidden devil mask, which caused him to murder and branded its visage upon his face. An interesting story of Art’s power over a mere human is the story of Stendhal.
Stendhal's syndrome is a psychosomatic illness that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, confusion and even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art, usually when the art is particularly 'beautiful' or a large amount of art is in a single place. The term can also be used to describe a similar reaction to a surfeit of choice in other circumstances, e.g. when confronted with immense beauty in the natural world. It is named after the famous 19th century French author Stendhal(pseudonym of Henri-Marie Beyle), who described his experience with the phenomenon during his 1817 visit to Florence, Italy in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio. (Wikipedia) Similarly, Proust fainted in front of the yellow wall on Jan Vermeer’s View of Delft (Fig. 77).
Fig. 78 “Horned Sorcerer”, drawing from cave painting, Trois Freres, France, circa 19,000 years ago.
It appears that the knowledge of the power of art on perception and health has been around for as long as man has had the ability to think using symbols. In the prehistoric caves of France and Spain are seen breathtaking examples of naturalistic art, as well as puzzling symbols, painted in the dark, dank depths of these large limestone cave formations. Stunning representations of Ice Age mammals abound, including those of horses, wooly mammoths, aurochs, bison, and deer. There are also strange depictions of humans that many have labeled “shamans” (Fig. 78).
For a long while, the prevailing opinion about the Cro-Magnon masterpieces was that they formed some kind of sympathetic magic, that by painting the animal on the cave walls, in a dark, sacred place, the tribe could be assured of a good hunt, possibly by shooting darts at the animal painting, a kind of prehistoric voodoo, if you will. And that may have been the case in some instances, but the majority of anthropologists and archeologists now discredit that theory.
Fig. 79 Spotted horses on cave wall.
Fig. 80 The Green Man. Hand colored etching by John Halliday, 2008
One important point worries these scientists: by 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens had achieved its present physical status – those beings had the same posture, brain size, body size, and facial appearance, as we do. If you could have dressed them in a suit or gown, and cleaned them up and given them a good shave, they would probably be indistinguishable from any modern American or European on a busy city street. Yet, the use of imagery and symbology does not generally occur until about 40,000 years ago, and most abundantly, from 20,000 to 15,000 years ago. Yes, they used stone tools from the beginning, there was social structure, perhaps even language – but for an amazing period of 160,000 years, nothing happened, despite their physical similarity to us. What was it that caused the painting of symbols, of silhouetted hands on walls, of naturalistic animals – in other words, Art – to suddenly occur and blossom?
Fig. 81 Transformation, oils, 24” X 30”, John HallidayFig. 82 Green Man, oils, 24” X 30”,
John Halliday
Graham Hancock and Terrence McKenna believe they have an answer – hallucinogenic plants. There are many entheogens available to humans throughout both the Old World and the New World, especially in the tropics. In the case of the area of the caves in Europe, Pscilocype semilanceolata, a “magic mushroom”, grows profusely in cool, damp areas, of which there were many in the late Ice Age (Fig. 83).
Fig. 83 Psilocybe semilanceolata
When modern day researchers have taken hallucinogens, they have met up with the exact same strange, half human, half animal “shamans” and humanoid beings as depicted on the cave walls, along with seeing most of the same vivid zigzags, spirals, triangles, and so on, also inhabiting the subterranean walls.
Why would these tribesmen be taking magic mushrooms? McKenna says that they sharpen visual acuity and color sense, thus giving an evolutionary advantage to those hunters who imbibe them. “If hallucinogens are operating as exopheromones, then the dynamic symbiotic relationship between primate and hallucinogenic plant is actually a transfer of information from one species to another. The primate gains increased visual acuity and access to the transcendent Other…All of the mental functions that we associate with humanness, including recall, projective imagination, language, naming, magical speech, dance, and a sense of religio may have emerged out of interaction with hallucinogenic plants”(McKenna 145).
Hancock believes that the beings and places seen in a hallucinatory state may actually exist in another dimension, and not just be a delusion of our minds. “My intuition was that I had been afforded glimpses, however brief and however distorted by my own cultural preconditioning, of beings that are absolutely real in some modality not understood by science, that exist around us and with us, that even seem to be aware of us and to take an active interest in us…” (Hancock 102).
Even William James had intimations of otherness: “…our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness very different…We may go through life without suspecting their existence, but apply the requisite stimulus and, at a touch, they are there in all their completeness” (James 388). Aldous Huxley, author of The Doors of Perception, and Albert Hoff- man, discoverer of LSD, also had similar sentiments. For a more sinister and novelistic approach to this idea, see Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan.
Fig. 84 Muyuyhuaira-Yachay, gouache painting by ayahuasca shaman Pablo Amaringo.
Hancock says it was an attempt by shamans to integrate the tribe into the same visions they had, albeit naturally. It appears, from many studies, that about 2% of the human population at any one time is able to hallucinate spontaneously. It seems that the shamanic experience is a result of this natural ability, thus explaining why so few people are shamans in any one population. What could cause this hallucinogenic ability?
There is a very powerful hallucinogen, DMT, (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) that occurs naturally in very small amounts in the human brain, bloodstream, and various plants. When synthesized and smoked (because it cannot be effective when swallowed, as an MOA inhibitor destroys it in the stomach), it causes an immediate and frightening rush into another dimension, populated by weird mechanistic elf-like beings, along with fantastic mutating shapes and colors. It is possible that the hallucinating people known as shamans, at least some percentage of them, have a natural ability to produce excess DMT.
Of course, there have always been other ways to induce hallucinations and visions. Long activities like steady drumming and dancing, starvation, intense pain, lack of sleep, etc. can all cause this. But the ingestion of entheogens is the surest, quickest way. It is the preferred way in the jungles of Central and South America – especially concerning the use of ayahuasca (Fig. 84), a very potent hallucinogen made from the vines and lianas of two different species, and containing significant amounts of DMT.
And so these cave paintings and sculptures may indeed have had usage as healing instruments by the shamans (Shaman is a Siberian word, now used to describe “medicine men” from cultures all over the world.). The primary purpose of a shaman in any society is not to procure hunting success, but rather provide healing, hence the term, “medicine man”. What the mechanism was for causing art to heal is not known at this time.
The role of the shaman in healing has a very long history, and there seems to be support that art has been connected with shamans and healing, too. At the school where I first taught, Navajo Methodist Mission School, our resident shaman, or medicine man, was an artist, as well as a healer who did sand paintings for “sings”. Even in modern art, there is a shamanic element, especially in performance art, that has a linkage to healing. This is especially predominant in the work of Joseph Beuys .
Fig. 85 Still from Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me Joseph Beuys , 1974.
Fig. 86 Still from Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me. Joseph Beuys, 1974.
Beuys, born in Krefield, Germany in 1921, was stationed in the Crimea in WWII as a bomber when, in March, 1944, his plane crashed on the Crimean front. This turned out to be the turning point of his whole life. He was rescued by Tartar tribesmen who “wrapped his broken body in animal fat and felt and nursed him back to health” (Wikipedia).
In 1974, Beuys did his performance piece Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me. He arrived in New York at “Kennedy Airport completely wrapped in felt and lying on a stretcher, and from there he was transported to the gallery in an ambulance with siren blaring. After spending three days there with a coyote, he returned, once again as a patient, to the airport” (Davila 25).
Beuys believed that healing involves comprehension of pain, and it is through sickness and trauma that points the way to survival. There was also a certain audacity in his work, being kept locked up in a room, nearly naked, with a wild coyote for three days is an example of that. “For Beuys, the idea of a ‘remedy in the affliction’ becomes the very principle of therapy itself” (Davila 30). His art invoked “the laws of alchemy and homeopathy” by way “of correspondences, similarities, and analogies among signatures …It respects the ancient law of healing through similarity” (Davila 32).
Fig. 88 Structuring the Self, LygiaClark
Lygia Clark, born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil just one year before Beuys, was also an artist consumed with the idea of art and healing. She developed “a radical proposition by which artist, object, and spectator are simultaneously incorporated into one” (Morgan 12). She felt that “Art is nothing but a way of pursuing an action for a certain period of time by inventing it… It is concentrated in an act that no artifact can crystallize” (Davila 38). This desubstantialization of the object eventually led her to be hostile to the museum environment.
Unlike Beuys, she worked in a psychoanalytic context with patients, “The final development in Clarke’s work resulted in the artist’s fusion of the roles of doctor…and artist.” Clark’s work from “her explicitly therapeutic practice of the 1980s involved many of the early objects and masks…these…nigh-talismanic objects were manipulated by Clarke in private “Sessions” that enabled the patient/participant to reintegrate what had become an urbanized and desensitized ‘body of parts’” (Morgan 86).
This leads to the present day focus of art therapy itself, a practice that is group
oriented, rather than an individualistic endeavor, like the average painter. In the early history of art therapy, paintings and drawings were examined for certain symbology or stages of artistic development that told the psychiatrist from what sort of condition the patient was suffering. In other words, art therapy was more of a diagnostic tool than a healing one. There were exhibitions of mental patients work that, while often mundane, titillated the public’s interest. Therefore, it was also a form of entertainment for the masses.
Fig. 88 “Abdomen”, pen & ink, 18” X 24”, John Halliday
Fig. 89 “Upper Body”, pen & ink, 18” X 24", John Halliday
As time went on, art began to be used as a therapeutic tool, both physically and mentally. Physically, it meant that art helped patients injured by disease or accident to regain some degree of control over their fingers and hands by using drawing to restore fine motor control. It could also retrain patients to use different strategies, like painting with the mouth if both hands were paralyzed, or learning to switch hands.
Mentally, it meant that making art helped calm troubled minds, opened up new vistas of communication with the uncommunicative and those trapped within themselves, releasing pent up and repressed emotions, and helped the patient to understand his problems by working them out on paper in series. Again, this was mostly group oriented, and no one was concerned if any masterpieces were produced, or a gallery showing of their “weird art” was arranged.
A fairly succinct way of introducing the main elements of modern science’s findings on art as therapy is as follows: “Some findings of neuroscience offer indications of the contributions that visual art in particular can make to our well-being. One of these is that visual art expression can facilitate language development. Another is that it can promote creativity and problem solving. A third is that it can stimulate feelings of pleasure and increased self-esteem that arise from our biological natures. A fourth is that it can represent an island of successful functioning in a sea of mental deficits” (Kaplan 62).
A further elucidation on the subject of art therapy as envisioned by science is:
“Sylwester approaches the neurobiological evidence from yet another vantage point and finds a connection between art and self-esteem. Although it might seem obvious that artistic accomplishment bolsters self-esteem, Sylwester (1997, 1998) provides us with a biological understanding of why this should be so. He explains that fluctuations in the amounts of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain impact both the quality of movement and the level of self-esteem. High serotonin levels are associated with self-assurance and controlled movements while reduced levels result in irritability and impulsive behavior” (Kaplan 65).
A contemporary method of art therapy, in a less rigidly scientific or clinical context, is to help the patient find his “angel” or “daimon”, i.e., a tutelary spirit, which “accepts the autonomy of figures in dreams, paintings, stories and performances, and it does not always share the ego’s perspective on these multifarious and free-wheeling characters…Artists need gnawing and goading demons to stir emotions and provoke primal expression” (McNiff 90).
Patients tell stories about the images they make. There is a dialogue between the patient, the painting, the therapist, and the group. “Outside the realm of psychosis, image dialogues deepen the creative process. The dialogues help us to see more in our paintings” (McNiff 109). The image dialogue is part of the creative process which follows picture making, part of the process of creative imagination first formulated by Carl Jung.
Performance art gives “the artist the opportunity to move with the image, to enact the impact that it has on the psyche, and to explore how the image affects the body” (McNiff 119). In this respect, it would be good to reference Joseph Beuys’ therapeutic performance work.
The use of dreams in art therapy can help patients connect better with their work, and give them insights which their troubled conscious mind may be unable or unwilling to give. “Dreams are vital participants in our art therapy studios. Their emanation closely parallels the making of artistic images, and we respond to dreams in much the same way we engage paintings” (McNiff 131).
One art therapist who works with Cree Indians incorporates a ritual space commensurate with the mythpoeic tribal elements and traditions of the Cree people. “I believe that the ritualizing aspects of the art therapy session act as a liminal phase, interrupting normal thinking and encouraging (if not obliging or simply allowing) individuals to rethink and reformulate old patterns. The artificial nature and limited number of elements in the art therapy ritual space metonymically set in motion a deconstruction of old patterns as superfluous elements of the self are shed, while remaining elements are re-semioticized and then reshuffled. I ritualize the space by providing the patients with constant elements and they ritualize it by engaging in deconstructing elements of the self and then re-incorporating them. Essentially, what heals is that they are healing themselves in a ritualized space” (Ferrara 103).
In an interesting semi-reversal of the meme that art heals, is the idea that illness and disabilities profoundly influence and positively affect art-making. Now, illnesses are commonly thought to be Chaos, a form of increasing entropy in the body, and are in no way a cause for celebration in any way, shape or form. “Ilya Prigogine, who won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on chaos theory, describes chaos as a state of turbulence in which things may appear disordered, but actually have an inherent structure that can produce new order” (Zausner 10).
Fig. 90 Henry Ford Hospital, 1932, Oil by Frida Kahlo
In her book When Walls Become Doorways, Tobi Zausner discusses how illnesses affected various famous artists for the good – Frida Kahlo (severely injured in a street car accident in her youth, suffering from intense pain all her life), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, (dwarfed from an accident as a child), Matisse (bedridden when he did the painted paper cutouts at the end of his life), Chuck Close (became a paraplegic in his later career), Dale Chihuly (blinded in one eye), Leonardo da Vinci (learning disorders), etc. She discusses creativity as being a coping mechanism that helps the ill person find new ways of relating to the environment, accessing new areas of the brain and body to create artwork, improving the individual’s outlook on life and art, etc. – “Through drawing and painting, a person may regain motor skills that had been lost or learn new ones to take their places” (Zausner 20).
She introduces the principle of hardiness, which “helps us thrive despite obstacles …has three components: commitment, control, and challenge” (Zausner 12).
Another author, who herself has suffered a crippling disability (blindness) describes her feelings about the effect of illness or Chaos on the earnest artist’s endeavors: “I’ve come to believe that people succeed because of crisis, not in spite of it” (Fittipaldi).
Healing with Gardens and Landscapes
Another area of art and healing is the garden. The history of the garden is a long
and fascinating subject. From the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, to the Moorish gardens in Spain, to Medieval and Renaissance gardens in Europe, to Chinese and Japanese Zen gardens, to French, Italian, English styles, to contemporary designs, gardens have long enchanted men, and have long been utilized in healing. Now, are gardens to be properly considered as art, in the context of what has already been presented?
Fig. 91 Royanaji Meditation Garden. Photo – Meryl Meisler, 2001.
I believe so, although I may have a personal bias in this matter. My first major was Botany; I worked and learned under a Japanese master gardener, Taro Akutagawa; I had my own landscape design and installation company, worked as chief gardener and landscaper for a mall, and spent many years on my wife’s (now ex-wife) garden, my piece de resistance. (Unfortunately, it no longer exists, as new owners of the property bulldozed it down – the philistines!). So yes, gardens qualify as art!
Fig. 92 Cloister Garden of Lincoln Cathedral. Photo- Mary’s Gardens.
There are many kinds of gardens for specific groups. For example, there are psychiatric hospital gardens, children’s gardens, nursing home gardens, Alzheimer’s treatment gardens, hospice gardens, gardens for the visually impaired, meditation gardens, enabling gardens, sensory gardens, and gardens for horticultural healing.
“Research has been done showing the therapeutic benefits of gardens. Roger Ulrich, a professor and director of the Center for Health Systems and Design at Texas A & M University, found that viewing natural scenes or elements fosters stress recovery by evoking positive feelings, reducing negative emotions, effectively holding attention/ interest, and blocking or reducing stressful thoughts. When viewing vegetation as opposed to urban scenes, test subjects exhibited lower alpha rates which are associated with being wakefully relaxed. Further research by Ulrich showed surgical patients with views of nature had shorter post-operative stays, fewer negative comments from nurses, took less pain medication and experienced fewer minor post-operative complications than those with a view of a brick wall. Although more research is necessary, results based on research thus far indicate the healing effects of natural elements such as gardens” (SULIS).
When designing a healing garden, many factors have to be considered. Some of these factors are: 1. Functionality (to accommodate physical limitations of users), 2. Maintainable for physical safety, 3. Environmentally sound, so as not to be detrimental to those physically ill, 4. Cost effective, 5. Visually appealing, 6. Simplicity (so as not to add any additional stress), 7. Variety (of form, texture, size, etc)., 8. Balance (so the whole appears to be stable), 9. Focal points, 10. Sequence (smooth segues of one space into another) and 11. Appropriate scale (see SULIS).
Plant selection should include plants which have sacred or evocative meanings, but must be considered with what different groups of people perceive. For instance, gardenias are often used in Western weddings, both for their white purity, and the intoxicating sweet odor. However, in the Philippines, gardenias are associated with funerals and death – they are “the Flowers of Death.” Plants should have some med-icinal value. Plants should engage all the senses – there should be plentiful colors, odors, textures, etc. Thorny or toxic plants should be avoided. Plants should attract wildlife (berries attracting deer, flowers attracting butterflies, etc.). Insect and disease resistant varieties should be used, to avoid toxic pesticides. Vegetables and annuals should be grown in raised beds for easy accessibility to handicapped patients.
All of these disparate elements taken as one present a splendid environment for healing, an idea that only recently has started to spread to many areas of the world, especially in milder climates that foster lush growth and great varieties of plants (such as California). But even in the harshest conditions (the Moorish gardens in arid Spain, the Persian pleasure gardens in the deserts of Iran) gardens can be a soothing balm to even an average, overstressed modern individual, let alone the sick and disabled.
Conclusion
It appears that art has many efficacious effects upon the wounded artist: he or she who suffers physical illness, disability, mental illness, or any other generalized complaint. Art therapists believe that it helps with language development, physical control, problem solving, self-esteem, pleasure, depression, etc. It also helps the artist to connect more with the outside world, delve deeper in search of artistic “daemons”, and reconnect to a mythopoeic tradition.
Others see in art a way of influencing subtle energies of the body, wherein certain frequencies of color link to and influence certain auric fields, chakras, and meridians, in either a positive or negative fashion. Certain paintings or genres of painting can strengthen or weaken auric fields, meridians, and so forth.
Some feel there is something mystical in the nature of art itself which heals, as evidenced by certain icons and retablos, which have caused miraculous healing or, conversely, images which have caused harm or illness in some by either dwelling on an image, or wearing it (as a mask, for example). Some are overwhelmed by an art piece (as in Stendhal’s syndrome). Anthropologists believe Cro-Magnon cave art was part of a shamanistic practice of healing, thus supernatural in its own right. The creation of mandalas can assist in healing, as Jung discovered, and was already well known to Tibetan and Navajo shamans. Masks themselves can cause healing, as shown by Native American shamans in the Pacific Northwest.
Even the design of certain kinds of gardens, a visual art in its own right, can influence the health of a person suffering from illness, by the layout of the garden, colors used, plants incorporated into it, even odors. There are even gardens with specific designs for specific problem areas of a patient’s health.
While it has been generally recognized for millennia that music has a direct and powerful affect upon a person’s energies and psyche (“Music hath power to soothe the savage beast”), it should be obvious to the reader by now that the visual arts have an equally powerful somatic effect upon both the psyche and the physical, corporeal entity of the body itself. While there may be a few who maintain this to be an incredible supposition, many of the different elements of art as a healing process have been scientifically proven, which should convince any remaining skeptics of art’s efficacy in healing. I know it certainly has convinced me.
On this page are presented my last two oil paintings, life size, illustrative of the energy systems of my body as perceived by myself.
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APPENDIX A
THE SEVEN STEPS OF ALCHEMY
1. Trituration - the process of reducing particle size by grinding. Decomposition. Ruled by Aries .
2. Sublimation - when a substance is heated to vapor and then immediately collects as a sediment on the upper portion and neck of the heating medium ( flask or alembic). Separation. Ruled by Libra .
3. Fixation - when a previously volatile substance is transformed into a form not affected by fire (usually a solid). Modification. Ruled by Gemini .
4. Calcination – when a substance is roasted in an open dish over fire to ash (usually). Product is called calx or calcinate. Decomposition. Ruled by Aries
5. Solution – when a substance is dissolved in solvent (water, alcohol, etc.) Union. Ruled by Cancer .
6. Distillation – separation. Ruled by Virgo .
7. Coagulation - when a substance congeals or thickens. Increase in viscosity is brought about by either reduced temperature or a chemical reaction. Sometimes the substance will crystallize. Modification. Ruled by Taurus .
(Definitions by Wikipedia)
APPENDIX B
SPAGYRICS
The following is a brief description of the preparation of a spagyric medicine. The word “Spagyric” refers to the separation, purification and recombination process during which an essence is produced. This is a condensed version of the process.
First, the alchemist selects a plant or herb for healing a certain disorder. Let us say there is a stomach problem. He (the alchemist) might select lemon balm, Melissa officinalis. Lemon balm is ruled by Jupiter, thus the process should commence on Thursday (Thor’s Day), Thor being an equivalent of Zeus or Jupiter. The operation should preferably begin at night, under the more benign influence of the moon, according to Fulcanelli.
He fasts and meditates before the operation, as the process not only affects the plant material, but the alchemist himself. A quantity of lemon balm is used. Its leaves are crushed and macerated, and placed in a jar that has a tight resealable lid. Everclear ethyl alcohol is poured over the leaves, filling the jar. The jar is shaken and placed in a cool, dark place for 40 days (a “philosophical month”). Every day the jar is taken out and shaken.
At the end of the period, the alcohol has obtained a dark color. The solution is strained, and the resulting plant mass (“feces”) is squeezed and pressed and allowed to dry out. When dry, it is roasted (calcined) on a pan over an open flame (but the temperature must not be too high). This produces a quantity of smoke. When finished,
the ash has a blackish color. It is removed and taken to a mortar and pestle, where it is finely ground. It is again calcined over an open flame – the ash now is brownish... The process is repeated until the ash is pure white and very finely ground. It is returned to the alcohol solution and mixed. This constitutes a “resurrection” of the plant body with its essence or soul. It is administered to the patient in homeopathic doses, i.e., one or two drops in a glass of pure distilled water.
APPENDIX C
INTERVIEW WITH ENERGY HEALER KATHY CHAMBERS
This interview with energy healer Kathy Chambers was conducted on March 10, 2008, just days before I moved to Yakima, WA. It was held in her spacious “Healing room” on the second story of her house in Portland. Kathy is a student of renowned energy healer Donna Eden, author of Energy Medicine.
The participants in this interview are K (Kathy), J (Myself) and G (Gloria, my wife)
K: I don’t see energy, and so I test, I do energy testing. Have you heard of that, where you test a muscle? Stand right there and I’ll demonstrate – I mean, you asked for it! Hold your arms like that –
J: (I hold arms out to my side, and up at an angle)
K: Now I want you to think of something fabulous, and just hold that arm strong. Are you there? (She pushes down lightly on my arm, which doesn’t move). Now think of something that really, really gets you down. And hold. (She pushes on my arm, which gives way) OK, your energy drops when you think of something negative, right? Just say “My name is John”. Say it.
J: My name is John. (She pushes on my arm, which remains steady)
K: Now say “My name is Alvin”
J: My name is Alvin. (After pushing on my arm, it gives way).
K: So this is the way to communicate with the body; it speaks the truth. So if I am testing a certain thing, I touch a certain point, and then I test the arm, to see if there is balance., and it’ll let me know, and that’s how I test everything. The first thing I’m gonna test – I usually make people take their shoes off, and any watches or cell phones- I’m just gonna run through some testing, so you can see what the heck I’m talking about.
J: OK. (I take off shoes and wristwatch).
K: I figure that’ the best way to teach this.
J: I’ll need the name of that book and author (Energy Medicine)
K: (She shows the book) I’d wait for the revised edition.
J: As long as it comes out before fall.
K: I have no idea. Why? What’s happening then?
J: That’s when my thesis is finishing up.
K: OK. Stand right there. So what I’m gonna do first is just see if your energy is running forward or backward, because your energy can run forward or backward in a meridian, it can become congested; it can get strangled, it can get stuck, it can get homolateral, where your energy doesn’t cross over but goes straight up and down. All those things make it impossible to heal. So those basic neurological patterns have to be in place, in order for healing to take place, because you can only muster 50% or less of your capacity if your energies are scrambled backward or homolateral or flipped.
J. Hmmm. I’ve always had very low energy. My Dad was always a fireball…
K. Well let’s see! Let’s see if your energy is running forward, so walk toward me.
J. OK.
K. So I’ll just test. And this is the test – you just walk forward. (She raises my right arm so it’s straight in front of me). Now hold. Now walk backwards (She has hold of my right arm, her right arm rests on my left shoulder, and she walks backwards with me.) And hold. You’re on the cusp. I’m gonna have you take a sip of water, because if you’re dehydrated the tests are not accurate. The fact that you’re strong both going forward and backward makes me think you might be dehydrated.
J. (I drink the water)
K. Now let’s try it again. Walk towards me. Now hold. Now walk backwards (She also walks backwards, same position as before. She tests my extended right arm, can’t push it down). Good. Your energy is running forward, it’s strong running forward. Now I’m gonna check – look at this X, I want you to hold this X in your mind (She crosses hands in an X shape, and then tests my extended right arm for strength). Now look at these lines (holds up her arms parallel to each other) and hold that in your mind. (tests my arm again). Ok. So far that’s good. Your energies are crossing over and they’re running
forward. That’s all very good. I’m gonna see if your energies are polarized... (She places a hand on my forehead, and then tests my arm). Let’s see if you are connected... I’m gonna touch your nose like that (touches my nose, tests my arm). So far so good. Now I’m gonna see if your energies are scrambled. I’m gonna have you read something out loud... This has big writing (chuckles). Read this out loud please.
J. Roget’s Super Thesaurus, Second Edition (she tests my arm while I read.)
K. I want you to read it backwards now (Still testing my arm)
J. noitide dnoces suruaseht…
K. (Laughing) What are you reading?
J. You said to read it backwards…
K. No, I meant read the words like Edition Second Thesaurus. You’re being very literal! Read it again.
J. (I read it). OK.
K. Now read it forward.
J. A Revolution in reference books, a thesaurus…
K. Now read it backward.
J. Thesaurus a books reference… (She tests my arm)
K. OK. You were actually stronger reading it backwards, because your arm was getting stronger when you were reading backwards. Did you notice that? Try it again, I’ll show you (tests my arm)
J A revolution in reference books, a thesaurus (While pushing on my arm, my arm collapses).
K. Now read it backwards. (I do. My arm stays strong) so you see – you energy is scrambled. We did find one basic neurological pattern is screwed up. So here’s how we’re gonna fix it, you’ll see how amazing this is. I’m gonna teach you the simplest way, which is to cross your feet, cross your hands like this – you may want to lean back against the table for support – then put your hands back to back, then flip them over like that, then clasp them. Then bring them up, and breathe deeply. (We both breathe deeply, through the nose and out the mouth, about 6 times). Now when your energy is scrambled – I mean, a lot of people I test, every one of those things are off, you just have that one
thing that doesn’t work right. Still, if your energies are scrambled, you’re not as on top of the world as you would be. You can’t read backwards and get much out of the book... It’s weakening your energy to read something forwards in a book, so in other words, when you read the newspaper or an article or a book, it’s weakening your energy, it’s throwing you off.
J. Yeah, I sometimes find it hard to read…
K. Reach forward. And hold (I read the passage over again. While she tests my arm) really strong! Now read backwards (I do, tests my arm, which collapses). That’s what we want. Good... So see how simple that was to fix it? The techniques for fixing these things are just very easy; you’ve just got to know what they are. . So those are just the basic, basic things
J. So I just cross my feet and hands…
K. Well, the other way to do it is to sit in a chair, it’s called the Wayne posture, and it’s so powerful it’s great for kids with dyslexia, learning disabilities, or even stuttering. Grab afoot like this (she crosses legs, grabs right foot, and starts breathing deeply). You do that several times, then you switch to the other side (she does), you do that 6 or 7 times. Put your hands like this between your eyebrows (hands in a prayer gesture, thumbs together) which are the first points on the bladder meridian, which has to do with the nervous system, and deep breathe a few times. Now this way is a simpler way, I didn’t want to confuse you, but this way works, too. Yes, you should do it several times, because just doing it once isn’t going to change anything, but you want to retrain your body’s neurological pathways, so you do this 2 or 3 times a day. I’m gonna check some other things. I’m checking the energy flow on your crown (she has one hand on the crown of my head, one on my right arm.) Ooh, not good. I’m checking the energy flow in your head. It’s strong here, but notice, but right here, it goes weak.
Gloria (my wife). Do you know what’s interesting? That’s where he had his tumor removed…
J. There’s a big crater there.
K. Where? Oh!
J. It came back. John gave me a blessing and it disappeared (John is Kathy’s husband, a friend of ours.)
G. Yeah, John made it go away! They were gonna do surgery on it again because it was really bad again, and John came in and administered to him, and when it was time to go in for surgery, it was gone, and they didn’t have to do the surgery!
K. OK, we’ll see if this helps, I don’t know, because this is an anatomical thing going on and not energy, but let’s see. This is called a crown pull, you pull your head apart (she stretches forehead apart with her hands). So what we’re doing here is creating a space for energy to move in, and then you go here and here (progressing over the top of the head) with great firmness, and it usually feels really good, and you do it on top of that area, and you actually go all the way back
J. I must be doing something wrong; it doesn’t feel all that great (lol).
K. I do this all day long; I do it all the time to get my energy moving in my head, I do it everywhere. Ok, now let me test (I show a lot more strength in my arms).
G Wow, huge difference!
K. So that’s the crown pull, a basic neurological thing... I’m gonna check your auric field, oh, I’m gonna show you something really interesting. I’m just gonna go like this (she takes a few steps towards me and halt, then tests my arm) Hmmm. Well, let me try this. Hmmm. Ok, hold on. (My arm finally collapses) There, that’s it; I was touching the wrong spot. Now what I did was (unintelligible) your central meridian, the one that runs right up the trunk of your body, and what I did was, you can frequently weaken it just by looking down at somebody.
J. Really?
K. Yes, but I want you to… I’m going to show you something interesting. (To Gloria) I want you to think of something that annoys or upsets you (K turns me around to look at Gloria) Send it to him.
G. I – I have to quit laughing, because everything irritates me! No…OK.
K. (Tests arm) And hold (It collapses) You thinking a negative thought affects him... This is a true fact.
G. I believe it! Without a doubt.
K. Now I want you to zip yourself up like this (She starts at groin and makes zipping motion up to her mouth) Start right there, pretend you’re a zipper, and lock it right here (upper lip) (To Gloria) Now I want you to think that thought, double, triple, however many times you want to do it.
G. OK
K. And send it to him. Whenever you’re ready.
G. OK
K. (Tests my arm) and you can’t get him down... This is what is so amazing about…we take on other people’s energy all the time, we’re affected by negativity all around us. We go into a Toys ‘R Us, an electronics store, an airport, a bus, and our energy gets depleted, but if you can always zip up and lock before going someplace, that energy can not get in and throw you.
G. Oh, I should have known this my whole life, the job I have is, such a stressful job. Now I know this, I’m gonna remember this for life.
K. I’m gonna check a specific meridian on your spleen, and I’m gonna have you hold down here while I bring your arm out like this. Take a deep breath and let it out now - you hold – there’s some weakness there. So that means – that’s what I was checking, there was your stress response, triple warmer – fight or flight reflex, so that’s out of balance, so when that’s out of balance and you’re over-stressed, it sets some (unintelligible) , so watch this, smooth behind your ears a few times, so all you’re doing is tracing the triple warmer meridian which runs around the ears, so all your doing is chasing it backwards a few times - so now I’m gonna check the spleen again, and see how strong it is, because we just relaxed the stress response., and gave energy back to the spleen.
G. Ok, I want you to know that’s really interesting, because sometimes when I get really nervous, when I’m taking a really yucky phone call at work, I do this all the time with my hair, and I never realized it, but it makes me feel better, but I never realized that’s why it did that.
K. So many things we do automatically - but that’s a protective thing, what we call a penetrating flow, and this can actually save you from extreme reaction and torment, just by putting your hands there. Also, sometimes when we’re in distress, we go like this, putting our fingers on neurovascular points up here, that bring blood back from the brain and soothe your emotions, and crossing your feet, that’s a way to keep your energy crossed over, and it’s nonsense when people tell you not to do that, because it looks like you’re being foreboding, it’s really good. Now I want to show you the auric field. Put your arms out like this. (She waves hands in front of me, walks back and forth some paces, feeling air with her hands, checking my arms for strength. She feels something almost 20 feet away from me) … So you have a big auric field. Now I want to make sure your aura is attached to your body because it sometimes happens that our aura – it’s a wonderful and big, but it’s not fully attached to the whole. (To Gloria) Can I check yours too? I don’t know why I want to…
G. Sure
K. So, let’s have you stand like this. (She holds her arms out, Gloria copies her). Say “My name is Gloria” (She tests outstretched arm for strength, can’t push it down)
G. “My name is Gloria”
K. Say “My name is Suzy”
G. “My name is Suzy” (Kathy tries to push Gloria’s arm down, but it doesn’t move).
“I’m a very strong person.”
K. No, you just have a locked muscle (She has Gloria hold hands against side of thighs, tests for strength, and then she has Gloria tap her ribs below her breasts. So, put your arms out like this … (K starts measuring for aura, same way she did me.) So your energy field goes out about here (about 3 feet). I want to see if it’s attached. It appears to be detached…
G. You know what? I haven’t had any water since…
K. Here, have a drink of this (hands cup of water to Gloria) Well, maybe your aura is attached, and that would be great (more testing) It looks like it’s detached one or two inches from (points to sternum). Actually, it’s common for it to be detached, but other people’s stuff gets in this space there, and negative energy flows in. Now rub your hands together and shake them – we’re going to get it attached. Put your hands here (Show them behind her head), and take a few deep breaths, like this (breathes in nose, out mouth) Now take a deep breathe (They then swoop crossed hands down, arms sweeping back, then swoop up, then repeat, bending much lower) Now we’re gonna sweep up the energy up above our heads, and then down all around us (moving her hands appropriately) Now we test (moves her hand back and forth from Gloria’s sternum. She tries to move Gloria’s arm). So we just attached your energy field... Hmmm. You know what I want you to do? Just make figure 8’s in the air with both your hands (G. does)
Now read this passage forward … now read it backward… read this one forward… See, you’re stronger reading it backwards, too...
G. I’m probably brain dead.
K. (Makes G. cross arms, legs and hands, breathing deeply).Anyways, there’s a whole ton of stuff I check, I go through every chakra, every meridian, the auric field, I check for wholes in the auric field. That’s just a little teensy-weensy bit – of what I do - I check the grid – when we have trauma in your life, it’s like an earthquake in your body. There are 8 major grid points and 5 6 minor ones, so when we have a major trauma, the grid separates, so I can tell by doing a certain test if your grid is out, and I can repair it
The rest of the interview was spent discussing pages from Donna Eden’s book and going over some of the things Kathy showed us.
