The Confluence of Self-Awareness and the Expressive Arts

(Photo by Bernard Hermant, found on Unsplash)

I was 19 and going through a tumultuous phase when the thought of therapy first came to me. Never the person who trusts too easily, I didn't know what to call my "need" to see someone who could help me through this delirious phase. In hindsight, what else could I call it considering it had me convinced I was going crazy? So walking to the office of a counsellor my mother had traced through sources, was both filled with anticipation and dread. Would there be questions? Would there be an expectation piled on me to touch upon every bit of my life that was straining me to the last thread? Or would there be uncomfortable silence between two strangers? I remember the tree-lined street and I also remember my all-too-clammy hands. I also vaguely remember what happened next.

My mother said a quick bye soon after she had made sure I would be okay in the counsellor's room. I sat across a broad table looking into the eyes of someone I had never met. And I felt a shuffle in my feet as we began to speak. She mentioned some contract we would need to arrive at for the number of sessions, that it would be a safe space for me to open up and that she would listen to me the best she can. I dreaded the eventuality of talking and explaining what I was going through at the time. I already felt too small for the grief I was willingly taking myself through (yes, the self-hate was that high!) and here I had to open it all up before someone I had no clue of. 

It is anyone's guess that I never went back into that square of a room, unremarkably stashed with squat furniture and someone who kept asking questions. I can't even begin to explain how I felt talking that day, my mouth was so full of words. I was bursting at the seams with emotions and irritation. This phenomenon couldn't be entirely considered the fault of the woman in her 40s who sat across me - I never liked talking beyond what I felt was necessary. 

So you can imagine when, many years later, I sat reading about talk therapy and how some people find it difficult to gain a foothold with it, it all made a lot of sense. Rewind back to two years before when I was in a theatre workshop, moving from body to voice and then back to the body, I had experienced a heavy feeling starting somewhere chakra healing practitioners call the 'anahata' and ending at the base of my lower abdomen. It was a feeling I could not quite name but I knew it was not a pleasant one. And yet, there I was experiencing it in my body without having to explain in so many words and losing touch to the sensation itself!

Fast forward to five years from then to now, when I sit writing how self-awareness and the expressive arts meet, I have a clearer view. For one, I have experienced what many call "the healing power of the arts" and know more than one person who has experienced it too. For another, I finally know why words aren't enough to give expression to a process that's often much more complex than the intellect can comprehend. That's certainly not to say talk therapy does not work. Millions around the world benefit from it and I eventually met talk therapists who transformed my early opinion to a great extent. 

Now coming to the arts and why they can be so significant in the process of coming to know oneself and being able to make changes. The arts in question typically feature various forms of theatre, movement, visual art, writing, music, working with clay, storytelling and poetry, among various others. People I have met since I began to trust the healing power of arts almost blindly, have asked me, "What about the arts? What are their strengths? Don't you make art so that people can validate your abilities?" That's the drift questions of this nature typically take. I'll answer them in essence as best as I can. 

(Photo by Alex Jones, found on Unsplash)

- A sense of safety - 

I am putting this right at the top of the list not just because I have experienced it but because people I know have reported a strong sense of safety working with the arts. Why? you ask. It's because the arts start at a non-verbal level before being articulated into something to be understood. In an expressive arts process, the pressure of performance is also removed, which then leaves people with a sense of relief. Imagine being free to feel exactly what you're feeling while you dabble with colour or create a spontaneous shape with the body!


- A reconnection with the body
I don't have to tell you how the technology-driven era has left us more intellectually focused than ever. Agrarian, indigenous ways of working are gone and in their place, the mind exists decoding and attempting to oversimplify everything. In truth though, our minds reside within our bodies, which we forget, given the nature of work and ambitions most of us hold. The body though is a storehouse of feelings, sensations and other data, which give us energy, make us vital and when not addressed, also make us depressed and ill. The arts bring us back into our bodies and often into the pain and pleasure we have only touched the surface of.

- An easing of and into expression - 
In a world where words are overused and expected to precisely capture the depth of every experience, the arts allow us to go deeper. So even if you're writing a poem after you've moved, you're writing it from a place of feeling and easing into that feeling. Even if there is discomfort, your writing then allows you to touch it instead of shaping the contents to sound palatable. Without the pressure of performance, you find the space to be you, exactly as you are in that moment. 

- A meeting with our childlike self -
What was before we learnt to always be on our feet and show that side of us which is acceptable? A sense of childlike being, isn't it? To want food when hungry. To want sleep when tired. To cry when sad. And yet, the process of "growing up" is such that most of us get distanced from this "being" state, launching into "doing" and "action". It's all intended to make us cope with the challenges and experiences the world throws at us, yes. What can't be denied is that it nevertheless leaves us feeling disconnected. The arts, in the way they use imagination, colour and creativity, literally bring us back to ourselves. 

- A bridge between past and current experience - 

The only way we can make sense of our lives is to have a sense of who we were, who we are and who we are in the process of becoming. In the process of living life, we end up telling ourselves stories that are true and also not true. As we learn new things, we also forget. Forget to see the connections between aspects within us that truly exist. The arts, when explored to reconnect with the self, can actually work like a "bridge". In the meditative process of art-making, one can lose oneself and yet, find oneself like never before. When the art-making process is trusted, connections reveals themselves.

(Photo by Javier Allegue Barros, found on Unsplash)

In writing this piece, it is my hope that you will explore the arts, based on what calls out to you. There's theatre, there's dance, there's bodywork, there's visual art. The climate is ideal for self-exploration and self-expression. It only needs your presence and participation.

I am facilitating an expressive arts based workshop process end of June 2019. I welcome you to it and welcome anyone else who you feel might benefit from it. Please help me spread the word.

Here are the details :

"The Interior Room",
June 29th 2019,
Fee - Rs. 2200, inclusive of tea and snacks, and art materials
Tickets available on FB event page.
Link - https://www.facebook.com/events/436225923834827/