An Eye on Intentional Creativity:: Muse Medicine

Donna Papenhausen: Sarasota, Florida

What is Muse Medicine?  First of all it is story. Our own personal story that need to shift or heal, making space for new possibilities  How do we do we do that?  We alchemize the old story, transform it into the energy of potential.  Then we bring it into form via the emergence of the inner Muse. 

In my recent Muse Medicine class, we examined our limiting stories, alchemizing them into potentiality through writing and painting! The class was filmed by a student at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida and will be part of her senior thesis on art and healing.

We all introduced ourselves within the Red Thread Circle and each person received a piece of red thread as a symbol of connection. The Filmmaker decided to join the class, while her partner filmed. I led inquiry prompts for the painting process, which were to name the story they needed to heal in one word, and their favorite fairy tale.  We tied off our red thread around our wrists and moved to the painting room.

  We used the idea of alchemy to change the ‘lead’ of their old story into the ‘gold’ of a new one. Creating an ‘alchemical soup’ we sprayed our paper with water and painted 3 colors.  Then we activated it by shooting a golden arrow into it using gold paint.  Next I talked about Bezoars, an idea I borrowed from Jenafer Joy. Bezoars are a sort of knot of old energy we want to dissolve, creating space for something new. Un-writing our old story into our bubbling alchemical soup did the trick, and as we stirred these in with our magic wand paint brushes, they disappeared making way for transformation!

As our paper dried, I invited them to write, imagining a fairy tale, a possible new story in which they were the heroine potentially filled with witches and ogres, princes and villains. 

When we gathered, I asked them to choose one scene from the story to illustrate.  It could be done in the Muse and her symbols style or using a simple figure or figures and necessary environment.  I demonstrated a 20 line face and a simple full figure.  Then were off and painting!  I guided them in several loose painting steps and color application.  Finally I gave them the option of glazing or not, since time was short.  They chose to put their paintings under the veil of glaze after I demonstrated.  After the glaze, we added final color and highlights and biophoton highlights and other embellishment.  We paused and received the Muse Message (Medicine) in our journals. 

We took our paintings and writings to a closing circle and shared portions of our stories (optional, but everyone did), the titles of our painting, and the name of our Muse.  This was so powerful.  We needed to go for the Kleenex!  Even those who had dealt with the same stories before found new levels of healing.  Even I, who didn’t dare to go deeply into the process, found surprise insight during the writing which brought chuckles and profound depth and insight into my story and my identity.

Afterward the participants were slow to leave as they continued to share.  The Filmmaker told me how complete she felt the process was and how deeply she was affected.  She will take what was filmed and other material  and create a full length feature for her dissertation. She hopes to share it on our local public access TV station and in the Sarasota International Film Festival.

————————————————————————————————————

My love of making and teaching art burned deeply inside, from the time I decorated the stairwell in our home with grease pencil at age 3, to majoring in Art Education at Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA. In 2015 my path led me to Shiloh Sophia and Intentional  Creativity. 

Now I continue to explore the landscape of inner space in both its individual  and its transpersonal nature as well as continue in the ministry of teaching others to awaken to their own creativity through sharing the Intentional Creativity Philosophy in classes held at Expressive Arts Florida in Sarasota, FL and other venues.