What would happen if you regarded your body as your beloved? What if you imagined that your own body was a beloved pet, or a precious loved one, or a sacred temple. Take a moment with that question, then ask yourself, “How do I feel moved, now, to treat my body?” Let answers come to mind – and to heart.

If the answers to this question are different from how you normally treat your body, perhaps follow the guidance in those answers for a single day – or even a single meal – and see how that feels.

Try this:
Create paper puppet people of yourself at different life stages. You can use photographs for the face of your puppets. Create these puppets with care, as if they were images of your beloved, and assign them a place of honor in your space. Pay attention to the internal dialogue and feelings of tenderness which will arise.

For inspiration do a google image search of paper dolls or paper puppets and see what comes up. Also see March/April 2009 Somerset Studio. In this issue, paper dolls are the theme, with beauties by Lisa Guerin, Alwen Rambo, Danita, Share Linda Trenholmn, and Jennifer Rogers-Daniels. And of course their Beyond Paper Dolls would be another place to look for inspiration.
Traci Bunkers' spread from Beyond Paper Dolls.

I stumbled on WiseBrain.org, a wonderful website, which is full of information about Happiness, Love, Effectiveness, Wisdom and the Brain. There are talks and research papers that you can download. It's all fascinating! Here are 8 exercises from them used to stimulate the Parasympathetic Nervous System to help us feel relaxed, calm, soothed and contented.

Breathing: Exercise #1
Take a moment to activate the parasympathetic wing of the autonomic nervous system by exploring this first method – deep, full breaths:
• When you inhale, fill your lungs fully, hold for a second or so, and then exhale in a relaxed way.
• Try breathing in this way for 60 seconds.
It’s striking that such a simple and brief method is so powerful for most people. It works because deep, long inhalations expand your bronchioles: the passageways in your lungs to the tiny alveoli where oxygen enters the blood and carbon dioxide leaves it. The parasympathetic nervous system is in charge of constricting the bronchioles, so by making them swell up with a big breath, you trigger the parasympathetic nervous system to bring them back to their “resting” size.

Relaxation: Exercise #2
Relaxation is at the heart of most stress management trainings. Since you use the parasympathetic nervous system in order to relax, relaxing engages its circuitry and thus activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Relaxing also has a significant indirect activation of the parasympathetic nervous system: relaxed muscles send messages to the alarm centers in the brain that nothing is alerting the body to a threat. Many people have their own key methods, and here are a few of the most common “quickies” for relaxing without going to yoga camp:
• Relax your tongue
• Relax your eyes
• Relax the diaphragm area
• Imagine being in a very comfortable setting
• Feel everything draining out of you and sinking deep into the earth
You might like to try one or more of these right now, maybe one you’re not so familiar with, and see how it feels.

Increasing and Balancing “Heart Rate Variability”: Exercise #3
The HeartMath Institute has pioneered a number of research-based techniques for
influencing the heart rate in ways that improve physical and mental health. Most if not all of their methods engage the parasympathetic nervous system. (www.HeartMath.com) In brief, here’s a simple, three-part method:
• Breathe in such a way that your inhalation and exhalation are the same duration;
for example, count 1-2-3-4 in your mind while inhaling and 1-2-3-4 while exhaling.
• At the same time, imagine or sense that you’re breathing in and out through the
area of your heart.
• Meanwhile, bring to mind a heartfelt emotion like gratitude or love.
Try this for a minute or two, and you will probably be struck by the results. Technically, you are both increasing and harmonizing the natural, tiny changes in the interval between heart beats: what’s called “heartrate variability.” Fairly large changes in that interval, and changes that vary smoothly from one beat to the next, link to cardiovascular health, improved immune system function, and elevated mood.

Mindfulness of the Body: Exercise #4
Another method for parasympathetic nervous system relaxation: mindfulness of the body. Since the parasympathetic nervous system deals mainly with internally directed activities, bringing attention inwardly – but not in a worrying way – activates parasympathetic nervous system networks. Plus mindfulness is generally relaxing, which also activates the parasympathetic nervous system. Have you had some formal practice with mindfulness of the body (e.g., while meditating, doing yoga, in a stress management class)? Like those forms of mindfulness, just be attentive to physical sensations. You can focus on some sensations in particular, such as the breath in general or even localized to the area around the outer nostrils and upper lip.

Yawning: Exercise #5
Another method for activating the parasympathetic nervous system – try yawning! Yawning activates the parasympathetic nervous system on inhalation and the sympathetic nervous system on exhalation. Taken as a whole, it sure feels like a net parasympathetic nervous system intervention.

Meditation: Exercise #6
Meditation activates the parasympathetic nervous system for many reasons, including pulling attention away from stressful subjects and activities, sitting quietly, relaxing, and bringing awareness into the body. An interesting, possible additional reason has to do with a common method of meditation: paying attention to the sensations of the breath around the nostrils and upper lip. In your brain, the olfactory bulb – which receives sensory signals from the nostrils – sends neuronal projections directly to the amygdala, probably due to the evolutionary importance of detecting disgusting, frightening – and sometimes, pleasant – aromas. When you bring your attention to the breath around the nostrils, you activate the sensory networks in that area, including the olfactory system. As a result, you are flooding the amygdala with information that has a neutral quality to it, or a positive quality if you meditate with incense. That would tend to crowd out unpleasant information within the amygdala. It could also sensitize the amygdala increasingly over time to neutral information, leading its processing to be increasingly dedicated to neutral information compared to negative information. This is not the place to give instructions about meditation, which you’ve probably been exposed to already. And you can get good information from the books of Christina Feldman, Jack Kornfield, Jon Kabat-Zinn and many others. Meditate regularly. Even for just one minute a day. But every day.

Positive Emotion: Exercise #7
Positive feelings activate the parasympathetic nervous system directly by lowering cardiovascular reactivity. They also do so indirectly by priming a person to experience life in more optimistic and pleasant ways, and the effects of that include reducing the sensitization of the amygdala to negative events. Anything that gives you a positive feeling – especially of a more relaxed sort, like contentment, gratitude, lovingkindness, or tranquility – will usually arouse your parasympathetic nervous system.
Yes, sometimes it is hard to have positive emotions. And that difficulty alone can cause some negative emotion! But just do what you can. There are two great wings to psychological growth and spiritual practice: being with and working your inner and outer worlds. While being with is primary, there is still a great role for working with, including the cultivation of positive feelings.
If you like, experiment with cultivating positive emotion for a few moments, and
whatever you experience is really fine. Perhaps focus on what you feel grateful for. Or feelings of lovingkindness, perhaps for yourself or some people you are close to. And to really reap the rewards of experiencing positive emotions, help yourself by taking them in.

Fiddling the Upper Lip: Exercise #8
Last, here’s a cool but kind of goofy method: fiddling with the upper lip, including
producing that “blub blub blub” noise kids love to make. The evidence for it is
anecdotal – mainly from people who work with horses or with troubled children who bite – but interesting.
This method could work by:
• Stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system nerve fibers that innervate the lips, and thus send activating reverberations throughout the whole parasympathetic nervous system.
• Triggering positive emotions associated with nursing, feeding in general, thumbsucking, etc. Note that children and even adults can comfort themselves through touching their lips.
• Stimulating salivation, which is controlled largely by the parasympathetic nervous system.
• Simply distracting yourself from stressful stimuli through its sheer absurdity.

Create An Image of Hands Holding Treasures

This can be a drawing or photograph, but the idea is to really study hands and what might be in the hands. What do you treasure most? If it's not a material thing, how would you express it in this exercise?

This idea was originally found on ShutterSisters where you can find links to a lot of hands holding treasure.

Hale Dwoskin, over at the Sedona Method, has some very helpful downloads which are free. If you ever feel as though your life could do with a bit of releasing and tidying and even perhaps a bit less anxiety, you will find the introduction to the program very helpful. There's usually another free download on this page as well. This week it's about releasing fears around money issues.

Fellow art therapist, Susan Anand, works with cancer patients in Mississippi. These patients expressed a desire to do more, to share more, to be a more creative, supportive community. I began sending Susan my zines which she printed up for her art room. The patients enjoyed reading about round robins, mail art, artist trading cards and art swaps and thought they would like to try some of these kinds of activities.
They began to work more collaboratively, creating Wisdom Books, small books made with traditional book-binding techniques, which were passed around so that each group member could add some embellishment and bits of wisdom. The books were filled with shared gifts and became real heart treasure. Retablos were created with cardboard boxes, craft paper, paint, and small clay objects to represent the patients prayers, hope, sources of strength and inspiration. They created Hope Vessels, little pinch pots decorated with beads, feathers, and other embellishments and prayer sticks, adding prayers to each others sticks with ribbons and charms.

Try this:
Create a small bowl or pouch which can contain pieces of paper with your hopes written out on them. Decorate the outside with twine and feathers and beads, symbolizing the things that sustain you in difficult times. If you can, try sharing this activity with a friend, adding something to each others' work.

There's quite a lot of interesting evidence-based research out there about the effects of our environments upon us, particularly in medicine. Roger Ulrich and Craig Zimring analyzed more than 600 published articles, reports, and research programs and were able to establish a strong link between the physical environment in which patients receive care and patient outcomes.

They list five key factors that are essential for the psychological well-being of patients and their families, including:
• Access to nature
• Reduced or eliminated environmental stressors
• A sense of control
• Positive distractions
• Social support spaces
They also list specific recommendations that embody these principles:
• Access to nature or views to the outdoors
• Harvested daylight
• Healing gardens
• Use of materials that evoke nature
• Positive distractions such as therapeutic art and sculpture
• Private rooms and increased patient privacy
• Noise reduction and elimination of overhead paging
• Patient-controlled lighting, acoustics, and audio/visual electronics
• Cafes, family resource areas, libraries, and health-related retail shops

Well now, if these things are good for patients, and increase their ability to heal, so much so that hospitals are hiring architects who understand these principles, then it seems to me that these things would be good for all of us, and that they would encourage our well-being. So I'll be getting right to work on my healing environment!

Do you know Frank Warren of the PostSecret project? Or Someguy's 1000 journals project? I suspect they have some really good ideas about freedom, expression, and flow.

Both of these men got it into their heads that we could use our art and thoughts to communicate in a new way. There's an element of release in both these projects. You either share your secrets like gifts or you give your art and thoughts to a traveling art journal, again, like a gift. I think there's a great Art Release challenge in that. There is something in it that is very generous and free. It's been my experience that acts of generosity like these, generate all kinds of creative thoughts. So watch these two short videos and then proceed to the art challenge.





Taking a page from Someguy and Frank Warren, try this. Create two of these message-in-a-bottlethings and make them gifts, really beautiful bottles, altered and dressed up, like the moms in Texas, filling the bottle with sand and shells and inspiring artists thoughts. Find a secret place to leave one, like your favorite cafe or maybe even the library, and keep one for yourself.

Free yourself of your monkey mind and become who you already are.

Start small, declutter a corner of your life first, enjoy that, revel in it. Then go for something lager, a room or two, your office... Once you start you may not want to stop.

Find a space or area of your life or home that lends itself to being peaceful. Clear out anything that doesn't belong there and turn it into an oasis or retreat. If home clutter is an issue Dr. Kathleen Kendall-Tackett suggests in “The Well Ordered Home” that people should set realistic goals rather than attempt to tackle an entire house at once. The goals should be simple and easy to achieve. Sounds good to me!

Sally Turlington, a wonderful artist that I met on line, thinks it encourages others when she does her very best work in swaps and trades. (Having been the recipient in a couple of round robins with Sally, I tend to agree) She calls it heArt treasure, and says it is created by paying attention to the invisible layer and the inner life, where meaning is found and made. Her work often has religious or spiritual content, and while part of me is a little nervous of proselytizing I do know that her spiritual life is most important to her. Positive Psychologists suggest that in order for us to learn to be more resilient and weather the storms that life can provide, we need to attend to things of the spirit, that invisible layer. We need to see ourselves as a part of the universe rather than an isolated, totally independent character floating in our own little life story. I believe that Sally’s attention to spiritual concerns in her art work and life are the way she imbues her life with meaning and grounds her work in something larger than her own tiny story.

Try this:
Create some time for yourself to make some HeArt treasure! Try working with the invisible layer and the inner artist. See what happens if you go a few steps further than required, how ever you interpret this. Find a way to work these things into various aspects of your life, not just your art.

Feed Your Mind

Just as our bodies needs self-care, so do our minds. Think about a subject that has always puzzled you, or that research project that you never had time for and just get started. Google can be a great research tool, as can public libraries, or your nearest university library. Look for local free or inexpensive workshops of interest in your area. Can't find one? Create it! Sometimes learning to teach the thing you want to know more about can be exactly what the doctor prescribes.

I saw this post on ZenHabits and wondered what it this look like as an art journaling exercise. Read on.

Let the World Pass You By

“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” - Bertrand Russell

Post written by Leo Babauta.

I was sitting outside my new home yesterday (we just moved last week, and we love the new place), watching the world go by.

There were people in cars, in a hurry to get to their next appointment. There were birds flying by, insects just as busy as the people in cars, plants and weeds thriving in the humid Guam climate.

Inside the house, my children were also busy, as ever, making a mess of the house (which my wife and I would soon clean up), getting into things, their natural curiosity overpowering our previous pleas for them not to play with lotion or take things apart.

The sky was slightly overcast and there was a cool breeze, quite strong and pleasant actually.

It’s not often that most of us just sit quietly, and allow the world to pass us by.

Why not?

What is so important that it can’t wait until later? What email must be answered right this moment? Do we really need to read all those articles online, all those messages from others, all those newspapers and magazines? Do we need to have the television and radio and Internet on all the time?

Is life passing us by as we keep our minds super-busy? Are we missing out on the beautiful world around us as we constantly think about the future — what we need to do, our anxieties about what might happen — and the past — what we did wrong, what someone else did to us, what we said, what should have happened?

When was the last time you just sat, and observed? Why not do it today?

So here's the challenge: Take your art journal out with you to a place where you can sit quietly and let the world pass you by. It will take 20 minutes of time set aside to actually feel this. Check out the beautiful would around you for that period of time, just sit and observe. While you do that, or maybe in order to do it, try a little contour drawing. For those who feel they would rather work with a camera, then macro-photograph would be a way to try this.

If neither of those work for you, create an entry in your art journal which would best illustrate letting the world pass you by just for this moment, just for now.

How might our work bring light to the world?

'lighter or darker' from Nic Askew on Vimeo.

I became familiar with generous, egalitarian artist/choreographer/educator, Liz Lerman while teaching at the Whole Schools Institute in Mississippi, one summer. She had several very provocative questions that got me thinking.

She asked “Who gets to dance?” And I started to think, yes, “who gets to make art?”

She asked what is the dance about? Is it about something meaningful, is it real? I asked myself, “What is this art about? Is it meaningful, is it real?”

Lerman questioned, where is dance happening; in exclusive studios and theaters? So“Where is art happening? In people’s homes or in exclusive galleries?”

And finally she asked, “Why does the dance matter?” If she can’t find the answer to that question, she won’t perform the dance. I can ask, “Why does this art matter?” And if I can’t find a good answer, I don’t have to do it.

She described making a dance about the death of her mother and that it mattered a lot to her. It had meaning; it was what Kramer and Dissanayake would call “making special” and it reflected good things back to her. Now she only wants to do work that means something. If she can’t find the meaning of a dance, then she doesn’t have to dance it. If I can’t find the meaning in what I’m doing then I don’t have to do it any more.

Try this:
Find that hidden layer, the meaning in your work. Expand on it. Find new ways to do things with meaning. There’s gold here.

Here's your question for week 5.

"What old belief about yourself or your past would you be willing to release?"

Here's a lovely list of things that promote self-care. I especially like #14. I might have to make it the 15th secret for a happy artist's life.
Options for Ayurvedic Self-Care

by Karyn Chabot, MASSAGE Magazine Self-Care Tip
(These ayurvedic self-care tips will help pacify the vata dosha within your body. Vata is also known as the wind, or ether and air elements. When vata is elevated in your body, you could experience anxiety, insecurity, indecision, confusion, fear, tremors, paranoia or loneliness. Physically, you could experience constipation, dry skin, gas, bloating, chills, indigestion, hypermetabolism, palpitations, lack of appetite and other symptoms.)

The tips below will help keep your vata in a balanced state.

1. Eat your meals at the same time every day (or at least one meal).

2. Plan your meals to avoid becoming anxious, cranky and hungry.

3. Stay quiet during each massage session; be an active listener.

4. Walk slowly, unless you are exercising. Walking more than two hours will irritate vata.

5. Think positive thoughts and read daily affirmations.

6. Avoid chatty people and long phone calls.

7. Eat warm, unctuous foods, especially on cold, windy, dry days.

8. Avoid scary movies.

9. Avoid being in confused relationships.

10. Stay warm.

11. Go to bed at or before 10 p.m.

12. Get a weekly massage with warm, organic, edible oil (i.e., sesame, sunflower or castor oil).

13. Give yourself a daily oil rubdown (abhyanga).

14. Surround yourself with soft things, such as pillows.

15. Avoid being late or rushed.

16. Avoid over-exercising.

17. Surround yourself with friends who make you laugh.

18. Adopt a personal daily restorative yoga routine and pranayama breathing.

19. Avoid carbonated beverages.

20. Avoid excessive mouth breathing while giving a massage. Instead, learn ujjayi breathing in and out of the nose.

21. Create more structure in your life.

22. Slow down, and meditate for at least 20 minutes each day.

Karyn Chabot - http://www.sacredstonehealing.com

Do you know the "Beyond Chocolate" folks? They are the non-gurus who have written a non-diet book, with the following principles:
1. Tune in
2. Eat when you're hungry
3. Eat whatever you want
4. Put it on a plate, sit down and focus
5. Enjoy
6. Stop when you're satisfied
7. Own your body
8. Move
9. Support yourself
10. Be your own Guru

It's a pretty nifty non-diet program with workshops and chocolate fairies, but mostly it's great self-care principles! So here they are again with explanation:

Tune in
This is the starting point for learning to have a healthy relationship with food. Most of us have lost touch with ourselves and our bodies. Tuning in can be used to gather so much important information: tune in to find out how hungry you are, tune in to know what will leave you feeling truly satisfied. The more we are in touch with our bodies and understand our physical sensations, emotions and thoughts when we tune into them, the easier it is to identify situations that trigger us to overeat and tempt us into dieting mentality. Awareness is 50% change!

Eat when you’re hungry
The best way to avoid gaining weight is to eat when you are physically hungry. But how do you know when you are hungry? We are so out of touch with our bodies that many of no longer know how to read the cues. Learning how to do this and overcome the practical obstacles that stand in the way of eating when we are hungry is a fundamental part of Beyond Chocolate.

Eat whatever you want
The diet mentality has taught us that some foods are good and some are bad, this is often based on how ‘fattening’ they are. What is truly fattening is to deprive yourself of the food you really want. Deprivation leads to cravings and bingeing – it has been scientifically proven. Beyond Chocolate will be showing you how to know what you want and eat it. And if you’re worried about not having a healthy diet, then think about it this way – yo-yoing between deprivation and overindulgence has been proven to be more harmful that being overweight! By knowing that EVERYTHING is allowed you actually have a chance to choose healthy foods if you want to, without feeling deprived!

Put it on a plate, sit down and focus
When you sit down, you are acknowledging to yourself that you are eating. If you eat on the go or while doing a thousand other things you miss the experience. You are then likely to eat more and you will miss the signals which let you know when you’ve had enough. If eating is THE activity you are much less likely to binge, graze, nibble, pick etc… How easy is it to munch though a packet of crisps in front of the TV without even noticing? Putting the food on a plate and using cutlery is a way of acknowledging that we are eating. It’s so easy to eat and eat and eat with repeated trips to the fridge or sitting at the PC at the office. We all deserve to make time to satisfy our hunger and Beyond Chocolate will show you how. To know when you have had enough and to really taste the food you are eating, you need to eat slowly and focus on the food. This way you will be able to tune in and find out what the food you’re eating really tastes like and how much of it you want to eat.

Enjoy
Food can be a delicious, nurturing, sensual experience. Why deprive ourselves of this pleasure! Make each meal a feast and follow the Beyond Chocolate Gourmet Fairy on her mission for the perfect gourmet goodies.

Stop when you're satisfied
Knowing when to stop is vital. If you are hungry to start with, your body will let you know just how much is enough. This is how you learn to stop overeating. Notice we say satisfied, not full, Beyond Chocolate will show you how to understand the difference between these two.

Own your body
If we truly want a healthy relationship with food, then we also need to develop a healthy relationship with our bodies. Motivation for change does not come from reminding ourselves daily that we are unattractive and unlovable. By criticising and judging our bodies we bash our self esteem, which often leads to more eating… We can learn to feel good about ourselves and our bodies even when we think that they are far from perfect. Starting to connect with the body you have NOW is the best way to ensure that you get the body you want.

Move
Think of it as movement rather than exercise. That word is often far too loaded! Moving our bodies is vital for our health and too often we see exercise exclusively as a means to weight loss. Learning to disassociate exercise with weight loss is the key. If we can see beyond the need to have an exercise regime, with the aim of losing weight and toning muscle, we stand some chance of finding ways of looking after our health and maintaining an appropriate level of fitness that is not only good for us but also satisfying. Beyond Chocolate will show you how to get a flush on your cheeks.

Support yourself
As women we are so good at supporting everyone around us and we forget that we too need support. We are constantly under pressure, overwhelmed and over-stimulated by demands at home and at work. We expect ourselves to be superwomen and everyone else does too. For many women, this translates into having an unhealthy relationship with food. The only way we know to give ourselves a break or a pat on the back is to eat something nice. Finding ways to support ourselves, whether it’s asking others for help or making time our busy your lives for some time out, means that we will be less likely to turn to food for comfort.

Be your own Guru
We tell ourselves that others have all the answers. The dieticians, nutritionists, diet books, celebrities, doctors all proclaim that they know what we need. We have been told for so long that experts and gurus know exactly what, when and how much we should eat when in fact we are the only ones who have the answers to these questions. The truth is that we know best. Beyond Chocolate will help you to ask the right questions so that you come up with answers that are tailored to you. Tune in This is the starting point for learning to have a healthy relationship with food. Most of us have lost touch with ourselves and our bodies. The more we are in touch with our bodies and understand our physical sensations, emotions and thoughts when we tune into them, the easier it is to identify situations that trigger us to overeat and tempt us into dieting mentality. Awareness is 50% change!

from www.beyondchocolate.co.uk

Try this:
Embellish your life. This could be embellishing something you use every day, like the computer, telephone, or even a pair of old shoes. Why should these objects be devoid of art? Turn them into art objects. Let them make you smile. Smiles are good for us.

Kramer says art is about “making special” - taking something humble and turning it into something more than itself, so that utilitarian, functional objects can be works of art with a little embellishment and investment.

According to Kramer, art is a gift. She believes in Greenacre’s concept of the artist having a love affair with the world, and that the artist creates art as a way to give a gift to the world that they are in love with.

Kramer hypothesizes that the artist works intuitively and carefully enough to get positive feedback from the work at hand; a type of positive mirroring so that the kindly part of the superego says “you have done a good job”

In order for artists (ourselves included) to have this satisfaction and joy, there must be an internal experience and dialogue with our work and that this might be separate from the world around us. It seemed we could all benefit from that approving inner voice that tells us we have done a good job.

So try embellishing your life, and feel the positive feedback from that kindly part of the superego. Need some inspiration? See Rheingold's Paint Your Shoes. If you can embellish and paint your shoes, you can embellish and paint anything. Why not?

Steps to Elicit the Relaxation Response

The following is the technique reprinted with permission from Dr. Herbert Benson's book
The Relaxation Response pages 162-163

---

1.
Sit quietly in a comfortable position.

2.
Close your eyes.

3.
Deeply relax all your muscles,
beginning at your feet and progressing up to your face.
Keep them relaxed.

4.
Breathe through your nose.
Become aware of your breathing.
As you breathe out, say the word, "one"*,
silently to yourself. For example,
breathe in ... out, "one",- in .. out, "one", etc.
Breathe easily and naturally.

5.
Continue for 10 to 20 minutes.
You may open your eyes to check the time, but do not use an alarm.
When you finish, sit quietly for several minutes,
at first with your eyes closed and later with your eyes opened.
Do not stand up for a few minutes.

6.
Do not worry about whether you are successful
in achieving a deep level of relaxation.
Maintain a passive attitude and permit relaxation to occur at its own pace.
When distracting thoughts occur,
try to ignore them by not dwelling upon them
and return to repeating "one."

With practice, the response should come with little effort.
Practice the technique once or twice daily,
but not within two hours after any meal,
since the digestive processes seem to interfere with
the elicitation of the Relaxation Response.

* or any soothing, mellifluous sound, preferably with no meaning.
or association, to avoid stimulation of unnecessary thoughts.