Over a ten-year period in the nineteen-eighties I studied with Jungian analyst Phyllis Krystal. She taught me much about guided imagery and how to apply it in a therapeutic context. One of Krystal’s core questions as a therapist was, how to resource clients in a way, they no longer needed to go over the troubled relationship with their parents hundreds and hundreds of times? How could she introduce exercises that opened up a new perspective and provided them with a different parenting experience? One that allowed clients to access healing and repair, and on this basis, they could go back to the past, but better resourced.
Read MoreOne of the core tools in my practice is a visualisation exercise I learnt in the nineteen seventies from Jungian analyst Phyllis Krystal (Krystal 1995). It is a visual prayer that can communicate a profound sense of safety flowing from a spiritual core that remains undefined or as you like to imagine it. I apply the exercise consistently as a visual aide to picture the client-therapist relationship and how both relate to what she called the ‘Higher Consciousness’. I introduce it to almost all groups I facilitate, and frequently meditate like this on my own.
Read MoreLemniscate is the term for a horizontal figure eight. Of all the primary shapes this is the least threatening. It is without exception experienced as positive rhythmic flow without any threat of overwhelm.
Read MoreThe spiral pattern of growth is found throughout nature as rolled-in fern, in shells on the beach, in the shape of an ear, in a fingerprint, the umbilical cord and how an embryo is curled up in the womb.
“Both the winding forms of the intestines and the brain have been depicted in religious and symbolic art as the labyrinth of spiral path, which creates, protects, and lays the foundation of the new town or centre”. (Purce 1992)
Read MoreThe largest bowl we experience in our body is the pelvis, and while there are other places in the body that can be drawn as a bowl such as the diaphragm or the back of the head, the most common association with this shape is the pelvic floor. The pelvic bowl is the space in which we settle down to relax or which we dissociate, when we are ‘upset’. It is where our spine is anchored
Read MoreOver the next few months, I will share insights about a couple of the main shapes that characterize this approach but for now we shall take a more in-depth insights of the Arch. The structure of Guided Drawing is based on a number of primary shapes, which all have a universal, archetypal quality.
Read MoreOnce we have made contact and sufficient trust in the setting has been gained, I explain that it might be easier to imagine having a bodywork session rather than the idea of making art. If need be, I will take some time to explain that all emotions have a physiological expression. Fear might make your heart race, your palms sweaty and your stomach churn. Excitement wells up. Joy flows usually with ease.
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