Creativity, therapy & courage

This coat, a collaboration between artist Vicky Hawkins & designer/maker Ali Wall, was the inspiration for a wall hanging I commissioned for my London clinic.

Image: Fabric by Vicky Hawkins, coat tailored by Ali Wall

I love the choices Vicky made for the even larger canvas for the wall hanging for FLORA CRANIOSACRAL.

Image: The wall hanging laid out on the floor of Vicky’s Bethnal Green studio.

Deep blues, layered dyes and mark making, patterns laid down, retraced and refined. I like how this canvas and I have history, and that I had a hand in its creation.

How does it relate to my craniosacral therapy practice? Well, like art-making that involves dying and painting choices and practices, craniosacral therapy is an emergent process. While we might be able to image where the journey will take us, it is unpredictable and we will be surprised. We are continously in dialogue with what is at hand or in hand. When it comes to craniosacral therapy, the ‘materials’ we have to work with are, for starters: body sensations (this can include numbness or ‘feeling nothing’), thoughts, emotions and beliefs. Are we able to recognise (with some help) what we carry, what we feel, what we dread, and what we hope for? Can we work skillfully with our past experiences, our body’s intelligence, the health that is always seeking to express itself? If we are willing to orient to our resources, our inner ‘art materials’, it is possible to make something altogether new from something old.

Another thing that making art and going for therapy have in common? Courage.

The brilliantly titled and very well written book Every Body Tells a Story by craniosacral therapists Liz Kalinowska & Daška Hatton springs to mind. If you want insight into what a craniosacral therapy process can be like, this book takes the reader through ten (fictitious) sessions of therapy from the point of view of 1) the client, 2) the therapist and 3) the supervisor. That’s a source for the deep researchers amongst you!

I’ll end with a photo of me in my original canvas coat on the steps St Margaret’s House where my Bethnal Green practice is based.