The Health Museum in Houston has a Healing Arts program spearheaded by Rose Tylinski, a local artist with additional education in Arts and Health. Through this program, Creative Studio hands-on workshops are offered once a month that “bridge the gap between art and health, fostering mental, emotional, and physical well-being through creative exploration” (from the website https://thehealthmuseum.org/programs/healingarts/). This past Sunday, I attended one of these workshops around the theme of “Resilience”. It was a therapeutic experience that went deeper into my psyche than I imagined that it would, and I walked away feeling lighter and richer for the experience.
Upon entering the Creative Studio, our eyes were greeted by a scene that invited the imagination to play. Colorful fabrics of many types organized in folds laid up against each other. There were a handful of books that invited exploration to find images or words that might be included in a creative project. Embellishments such as bright wooden butterflies or flowers greeted the eye, as well as a variety of yarn and a poster illustrating types of stitching. There were stamps of letters or natural elements such as vines, leaves, butterflies or insects.
Our eyes were also drawn to a table on the right that held a variety of snacks. Bright green and purple grapes glistened on a fruit tray next to fresh berries. Cookies tempted from another tray, and a handful of chips were arranged below. Buckets of sodas, ice and bottled water graced the end of the table. The attendees were greeted, checked in, and invited to pick snacks and drinks as they settled in at a crafting table in front of a TV.
The workshops feature artists that come to share their perspectives on the topic and assist in the creative process. Rose introduced the artists and the topic, and began the presentation. The first exercise we did was breathwork, breathing into our bodies following a gif onscreen that guided how long our inhales and exhales should be. Rose explained what was going on physically, mentally, and neurologically through this process. Breathwork such as this activates our parasympathetic nervous system, allowing our body to rest. She explained that our stress and trauma in our lives, even our ancestral and generational trauma, lives inside our bodies. Through our breath, we can move our bodies from the state of stress into one of relaxation. She drew connections between the vagus nerve and the neural pathways, connecting the physical to the psychological realms, and all of this to the topic of resilience.
Next, we were asked to focus on a time where we experienced Resilience. Pads of paper and pens were passed out to invite participants to journal their thoughts or draw pictures of this memory. We were asked to dig deep into that memory, bringing in the feelings, colors, smells, sensations of the moment. When I think about resilience, I think about how I bounced back from the challenges of my first marriage. I focused on one moment in time, and my memory came out in the form of this poem:
Resilience
Resilience looks like
Green grass and gold brass
The realization I needed
To leave my first husband
After a physical assault
These memories live
In my old backyard
Where I ran after
I got away
Where he followed me
And grabbed my phone
Silver in his hands
Because he knew I would
Call the police
And he threw my phone
Across the brown fence
I had nowhere to run
And he had pulled out a gun
Threatened my dog if I told
But later, he was away
And I would sit out there
In my yard in the green grass
Smoking cigarettes and
Feeling that sense of
Being torn apart
“What God has put together
Let no man tear asunder”
A quote I remembered
I believed our souls and hearts
Were merged when we were
But now I feel the pain
Of being cleaved apart
Like a lightning bolt
Giving me the ability
To stand alone, apart
And I became strong
Golden, like a star
Blazing across the sky
Under the lights of the moon
At the beginning of the workshop, I had been flipping through the books and found this picture in one of a full moon framed within the small branches of a tree that reminded me of a view one would have from a backyard. I had pulled that out, and when it was time to create our art, I cut it out to symbolize the upper trunk or head of a woman. I chose fabrics that included colors present in my poem, with a background of green to represent the yard. When I put it all together, I created a fabric square with colors, shapes and embellishments that represented a woman being split by a lightning bolt. On the left side, the feelings and dreams of a bride were symbolized by fabric in the shape of a wedding dress with roses at the end, and on the right, I chose blue fabric and butterflies to represent the beauty of transformation. I added some words from the books that to me represented the depth of the journey and how it changed me. I used the stamps to create a title for the piece, “Split”, with the stamped letters offset to further illustration the cleaving of a separation of souls during a divorce.
One of the concepts introduced in the workshop was that by combining the memory of a past trauma with a new pleasurable experience, like working on a craft, we are restructuring the pathways in our brain. Our brain creates this new network that links this positive experience with the stored memory, and this promotes healing. I did feel that the weight of the memory of this negative event in my life was much lighter and less powerful after this experience. I walked away feeling that it would hurt less to think about now, and that my trauma was transmuted by this crafting experience.
In the end, we were invited to join our squares together in a community quilt. The community aspect is a part of the workshop, and we reflected on how much we shared, although our life experiences were all different. I chose not to join my square to the group project, because I wanted to take it home and keep it as a reminder of my transformational journey.
The workshop price also includes admission to the museum, and I took the opportunity to wander through the museum after, including the Body Worlds exhibit. During our workshop, we could hear the sounds of a heartbeat coming from the giant heart display on the other side of the wall. As I visited this giant heart, walked through a giant brain, and contemplated a neuron display, I thought about the connections we had made today in the pathway between those elements. We had taken a memory from the brain, worked it through some heart spaces, and created a new neural pathway that connected the two through our art expression.
Lately, I have been on coinciding journeys of healing, spiritualism and creative expression, but I hadn’t before considered how they were tied together in my body like this. It opened my mind up to consider other ways I could incorporate all the elements together. I am excited about the idea of trying this on my own but also signing up for future workshops like this at the Health Museum. I feel fed spiritually, emotionally, intellectually and creatively from this experience, and would encourage others who are on similar journeys to try it for themselves.
