Embodied Art Activities: A Friendly Path to Relational Growth

A picture is like a map of the world.

A picture is like a snapshot of what 'world' is like at a given moment.

A picture being 'world' contains divergent forms that I can identify with (forms standing for: ME HERE) and forms I cannot identify with (forms standing for: YOU THERE, THE OTHER).

• ME HERE: What speaks to me through the picture (and is part of my 'world' or the world of my peer, my tribe, my nation).

• NOT ME/YOU THERE: What does not speak to me through the picture (and is part of your 'world' or the world of people similar to you).

What is NOT ME ... can be:
• all that I do no longer want to be part of
• all that I never wanted to be part of
• all that I want to overcome
• all that I want to leave behind
• all that is too frightening to become part of
• all that is a threat to what I want to become
• all that is in the way to be a person of becoming

A picture holds both the representatives of ME HERE and YOU THERE/THE OTHER as visual parts of the whole. Approaching the picture with friendly curiosity (care and curiosity for differences), a new kind of world view is coming to life.

This is what the new world view looks  like:
• It is possible to be with all that is ME HERE (with parts of the whole of the picture that represent my 'world') and to be with YOU THERE (with parts of the whole that are not me but representing 'THE OTHER')

Taking the arts as floor I can experience how it feels like to be ME HERE and to be open to a MORE OF what is me right now. The 'More of' can be: The wider space of being a person holding empathy for diversive forms of existence, balancing the feel of the whole and taking care of all of it.

Using the arts as floor I am agent. I am viewer and creator of the snaphot of 'world' the picture is representing. On the artistic level I am empowered to rearrange the picture in all its fascets representing the world. I might have split off the parts of the picture that do not respond to me  (because they do not match my artistic taste). During the process I come to put those parts at new places and connect to them freshly.

The new places I put those art pieces down are grounds of the implicit. I can watch the grounds widen up as I put down the pieces. The process of placing is linked to a force forwarding the process without me having to be responsible for the ongoing movement.

All this happens when the body comes into play. The environmental body does not want to split in parts but is interconnecting non stop. The living body wants to hold divergent responses to the world and process them further as a whole. The body that is me unseparated from environment is ongoing life force.

Trusting my body I come to process further my artwork and my sense of co-creation and co-existing. I come to see the world as a loving ground that holds space for both the worlds of YOU and ME.

This is what the term relational empowerment stands for: To feel empowered to be with one's own world view and to be with the world view of others, and to be able to shift between both views while responding to what the world situation is calling for.

© Freda Blob https://www.artsfocusing.com/creative-compassion/blog

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