I will be reading from my new book of poems, Under My Skin (Wordtech Editions), at the following locations in March and April:
May 17, 2012: 2:00 pm Bookmamas, inc., 9 S. Johnson Avenue, Indianapolis, IN 46219
April 10, 2012: 7:oopm Hussey-Mayfield Public Library, 250 N. 5th Street, Zionsville, IN 46077 (as a guest of The Village Poets)
April 23, 2012: 12:00 noon Indianapolis Artsgarden, 110 West Washington Street, Indianapolis, IN 46204
The books are here! UPS just dropped off a box of them on my doorstep. After over 25 years of writing and relationships, and 6 years spent bringing the manuscript through various stages, Under My Skin is complete!
The poems in Under My Skin speak of mothering, marriage, sex, divorce, crossing city-streets, and sharing grocery lines with strangers. Through these various interactions, the conflict-filled tension between a woman’s need to love others and to tend her inner life is expressed. And while the relationships, people, and places within the poems are complex yet ordinary, the primary relationship explored within every poem of Under My Skinis a woman’s relationship to her own persistent and unremitting longing which she must hear, acknowledge and answer – not to silence or subdue this longing – but to learn to feel at home within it.
Copies of Under My Skin can be purchased through Amazon, and more information and sample poems are available on the publishers website:
http://www.wordtechweb.com/hyatt.html
BOOKMAMAS, inc.
9 S. Johnson Avenue
Indianapolis, IN 46219
Information/Inquiries Email: info@bookmamas.com
Telephone: (317) 375-3715
www.bookmamas.com
My art therapy studio is now located in the new Lawrence Art Center !!!!!
4437 N. Franklin Rd. Indianapolis, IN, 46226
As one of the teaching artists for the new art center, I will be offering classes on Monday evenings and Saturday afternoons this fall. You can read descriptions of all of my upcoming classes below, and can register for these very affordable classes and also learn about many others offered by different artists by visiting: www.lawrenceartcenter.wildapricot.org
October’s Classes
Monday, October 10, 6-8pm: Introduction to Art Therapy
Students will learn ways in which art making can be used for personal growth and healing and will practice several art activities that can be used for self-reflection.
Saturday, October 15, 3-5pm: Find Your Creative Fire Through Intuition, Mindfulness and Play (*)
Students will learn how to trust the creative process and let go of attachment to making a “good” finished product. We will practice simple and fun ways to be more spontaneous and “in the moment” as we create. This class is for anyone who wants to become free from what blocks or inhibits her/his creativity.
Monday, Oct 17, 6-8 pm: An Altered Book for an Altered Life (*)
Students will learn how to turn an old book into an image journal and a work of art. Through the process of altering a book, students will find ways to document their own life-journeys and to creatively express feelings, thoughts, and experiences of growth. (After you register, Liza will contact you with suggestions of personal supplies you can bring to this class.)
Monday, Oct 24, 6-8pm: An Altered Book for an Altered Life for Teens (*)
Students will learn how to turn an old book into an image journal and a work of art. Through the process of altering a book, students will find ways to document their own life-journeys and to creatively express feelings, thoughts, and experiences of growth. (After you register, Liza will contact you with suggestions of personal supplies you can bring to this class.)
November’s Classes
Sat Nov 12, 3-5pm: Find Your Creative Fire Through Intuition, Mindfulness, Play (*)
Students will learn how to trust the creative process and let go of attachment to making a “good” finished product. We will practice simple and fun ways to be more spontaneous and “in the moment” as we create. This class is for anyone who wants to become free from what blocks or inhibits her/his creativity.
Monday, Nov 14, 6-8pm: Introduction to Art Therapy
Students will learn ways in which art making can be used for personal growth and healing and will practice several art activities that can be used for self-reflection.
Monday Nov 28: An Altered Book for an Altered Life for Adults and Teens (*)
Students will learn how to turn an old book into an image journal and a work of art. Through the process of altering a book, students will find ways to document their own life-journeys and to creatively express feelings, thoughts, and experiences of growth. (After you register, Liza will contact you with suggestions of personal supplies you can bring to this class.)
December’s Classes
Saturday, Dec 10, 3-5pm: Creating a God Box or Personal Altar
Students will begin decorating a box or small altar space that can be used to deepen their personal relationship with the sacred. This is a class for anyone who wants to focus on the spiritual, rather than the material, in both this holiday season and in the coming year.
Monday, Dec 12, 6-8pm: End of Year Reflections through Art Journaling
In the midst of holiday bustle and stress, this class offers participants two quiet hours in which to write and create meditatively in order to honor the past year’s growth and welcome the coming year.
Monday, Dec 19, 6-8 pm: Gathering Family Stories through Creative Writing and Storytelling
Students in this class will learn to interview family members and gather family stories that can be written or told aloud as part of a family tradition.
* Classes with stars can be taken once or more than once. Consider these classes a regular opportunity to reflect and to stoke your creative fire.
Creative and Spiritual Renewal for Social Service Professionals
Much More Than Just Another Burnout Prevention Workshop!
8 sessions, one per month, second Thursdays - next session starting Oct. 13 2011, 6:30 – 8:30pm
$400, providing 16 CEU’s
An 8 session community studio workshop that meets monthly and teaches deep replenishment of self through life-long creative practices.
Through experiencing – within community – the soul-centric processes of creativity, we continuously heal ourselves and so more maturely serve others and the world. Participants will discuss and explore experientially the interrelated core concepts within depth psychology, existential philosophy, art therapy, mindfulness meditation, and creation spirituality and will practice hands-on art meditations that lead to a deeper knowledge of the creative process. Each month, participants will receive a guided meditation CD focusing on one of the core aspects of the creative process. Between meetings, participants will receive a mid-month email contact to support and enhance personal creative contemplation and self-renewal. The foundation and focus of this program is to create community in which we nourish our own creative soul life so that we can give the same support and nourishment to those who come to us for healing.
Two additional ways to participate in this course:
For those unable to attend due to travel and time limitations, a home-study, on-line community version of this course is available.
And, if there is sufficient interest, a second session of this course can be organized to meet in the studio monthly on Wednesday’s from 1-3pm.
To enroll or request more information: contact Liza at lizahyatt@sbcglobal.net
The Indiana Behavioral Health and Human Services Licensing Board has approved this organization to provide Category 1 Continuing Education for LSW, LCSW, LMFT, and LMHC. However licensees must judge the programs relevance to their professional practice.
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. – Plato
The opposite of play is not work, it is depression. – Brian Sutton-Smith
2011 Workshops At Enbarr Art Therapy Studio
Liza Hyatt, ATR-BC, LMHC
lizahyatt@sbcglobal.net
9am – 3pm
$120 providing 6 CEU’s
Friday, May 13, 2011 – The Body and Play – Topics explored: How we are adapted to play; how play is part of lifelong brain development, immune system functioning, learning, memory, responding to stress, physical health
Saturday, July 9, 2011 – The Psychology of Play – Topics explored: Why play is essential to human well being, creativity, innovation and life-long vitality
Friday, September 23, 2011 – The Spirit of Play – Topics explored: How play is spiritual, as felt in such practices/concepts as meditation, prayer, calling, the divine spark or dance, inspiration, enthusiasm (en theos)
Saturday, October 29, 2011 – The World of Play – Topics explored: How play is needed for vital communities, relationships, change, social systems, and how play is inherent in evolution, bio-diversity, and the human-Earth relationship
Discounts available for those who attend more than one workshop. These workshops are interrelated but amply rewarding if you can only fit one into your busy schedule. Those interested are welcome to attend one workshop, and invited (encouraged!) to attend more than one workshop. Consider giving yourself a year of extended playful exploration with ongoing community support by committing yourself to attending all four workshops.
Each workshop is highly experiential, with ample time provided for creative improvisation with art materials, movement, writing and group collaboration. The patterns and personalities of play will be explored in each workshop, allowing participants to develop new play styles and practices that can be integrated into personal and professional life.
The Indiana Behavioral Health and Human Services Licensing Board has approved this organization to provide Category 1 Continuing Education for LSW, LCSW, LMFT, and LMHC. However, licensees must judge the program’s relevance to their professional practice.
Books, images, dreams, affirming messages are coming into my life, seemingly randomly, synchronistically. These threads are being woven, are still loose and unfinished…this writing will leap from idea to experience to image… more is being given than I can yet know.
While waiting at the mall for my teenage daughter and friend to be done shopping, I wander the bookstore, come upon the book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown, MD. (2009) In this book, I read “Properties of Play: Apparently purposeless (done for its own sake), Voluntary, Inherent attraction, Freedom from time, Diminished consciousness of self, Improvisational potential, Desire to continue. (pg. 17) And later, in the same book, in a discussion with biologist Bob Fagan about why animals play: ”In a world continuously presenting unique challenges and ambiguity, play prepares these bears for an evolving planet.” (pg. 29)
Like the bears, I am responding to the challenges and ambiguity of ever evolving life, by playing.
In my therapy practice, I am developing a program for trauma survivors with eating disorders. In Peter Levine’s book In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, I underline page after page with nuanced and inspiring statements about how healing from trauma needs to be approached “from the body up.”
I am drawing an image from a favorite folk tale about a girl who dreams of touching the stars. I draw her over and over, not satisfied. I need to keep drawing the arc of her reach so that I can feel my own body reaching for my dreams. I make a chalk version of this image. Still frustrated, I use the camera to look at the chalk drawing from different angles, different cropped views, trying to see what is essential in this image of reaching for the stars.
Reach For
The morning before a day of play, I have a dream. I am asking an artist this question: How do I change direction in my art making – when I know I am stuck in a rut – without shutting down my process through being overly critical of myself? I wake before the artist answers.
Instead of drawing more dancing women, I start the day talking to myself in the shower. ”Body of play, body of work, body politic, body image, embodied, disembodied, corporate, corporeal, body of Christ, anybody, somebody, nobody.”
I dance in the shower. An idea for a new direction comes to me. Draw lifesize dancing women.
But not yet, something says, not yet. I need a break from drawing. Don’t rush this process – don’t force. I write in my journal. I doodle. I read. Books that inspired me years ago recross my path.
Doodle 1
From The Reenchantment of Art, by Suzi Gablik: “The emerging new paradigm reflects a will to participate socially: a central aspect of new paradigm thinking involves a significant shift from objects to relationships. It is what the philospoher David Michael Levin describes as ‘the rooting of vision in the ground of our needs; the need for openness, the need for contact, the need for wholeness.’” (pg. 7)
From Studio Art Therapy: Cultivating the Artist Identity Within the Art Therapist, by Catherine Moon: ”A relational aesthetic is characterized by a concern for the capacity of art to promote healthy interactions within and among people and the created world.” (pg. 140)
A few days later, a free evening, unexpectedly. A friend has introduced me to the music of Baaba Maal. I down-load some of his music and it makes me want to dance. So I dance. Years ago, as a kid with childhood rheumatoid, I danced to 45′s, hit singles from the early 1970′s. Hours of dancing. Later, in college, in the early 80′s, I was in the middle of the crowd at every dance party. When my daughter was little, a toddler, we danced, sometimes both of us naked in our living room. I wasn’t going to let myself get too busy, too grown-up to stop dancing. But the times between dancing get further and further apart.
It feels so good to be dancing again. Why have I waited so long to let myself do this? I close my eyes and move. I start to feel it happening – this shift I have felt since I was that young girl dealing with an illness that scared me. The way the music becomes part of my body. The way my body becomes reverent while dancing. Elated and reverent. And the way I almost see – definitely feel - other dancers, ancient ones, a ring of them encircling me, protecting me, when I keep dancing, keep my eyes closed, go deep enough into the music. The guardians of the dance.
I realize I want to make something to honor them.
Doodle 2
Another Wednesday arrives. I tape a large sheet of butcher paper to the wall. Use my new Crayola markers, in a pack of 50 colors with 12 scented ones. I draw a large Guardian figure, fill of movement, energy, welcome.
I have kept most of my doodles and sketches out of sight after making them, feeling that it is too soon to let others see my play creations. I leave this bold, bright, big guardian figure up on the wall of my living room. I don’t want to curl the paper up and put it away – doing that would take some of the life and energy out of the process.
Since making her, I have found myself increasingly aware of how grateful I am for this time to creatively play. It is essential to me. Having lived without it, having found my way back, I know now how absolutely essential it is. I don’t want to stop – in between times of play, I am preparing for when I can return, I long to continue, I look forward to what happens next. I love the improvisation. The relationship. With myself, with more than with myself. With the process. With living.
I find myself thinking: I must guard this, protect this, cherish this. I must be the guardian of my own dance!
Guardian 1
Work and career are aspects of my life that I enjoy and take pride in. However, I have always struggled to find a satisfying balance of work, family, and my need to create, to be an artist. I won’t go into the long story of how hard this has been. Let’s just say blocking out time on my calendar to make art is guaranteed to result in everyone else in my family being home sick with the flu on the long awaited day (like last Wednesday) or the worst ice-storm in decades shutting down the entire city (like today).
So, here I am, on my designated day to stay home by myself to make art, sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop trying to write while my 13 year old daughter and her neighborhood friend are watching a movie a few feet away and my fiance is on the other computer in what was supposed to be my office. (The house is small. The living room is also the art making space. My only option would be to retreat to the dimly lit bedroom. But I do not have the kind of personality that can tune everyone else out and plunge wholeheartedly into my own art. I need solitude. I need to know that there won’t be kids circling around looking for something to eat and someone to cook it for them and there won’t be a man coming over to tell me his latest discovery on Ebay.)
Ever since my daughter was born, for the last 13 years of my life, this struggle to find non-negotiable time for solitude and creativity has been a problem I have never resolved. I have tried various approaches. And have come to learn that there is no easy or clear-cut solution and there never will be. This conflict between my need for creative solitude and my need for relationship and meaningful work will always exist. I can’t sit around waiting for a more peaceful existence, with less to do and people who want nothing from me than that I go into a spacious studio and make art. Instead I have to be determined and tenacious and make my creative life a priority that I commit to in whatever imperfect way is possible, every week.
Last fall, after a year of spiritual discernment in preparation for becoming an Associate with the Sisters of Providence, I wrote the following commitment statement: I will protect at least 3 hours/week for playful creative expression in order to open to divine inspiration and experience Providence as a generous collaborative partner. I will explore artistic play as a sacred process and as prayer which deepens and restores my relationship to self, others, world and Providence.
And I reorganized my life so that, every Wednesday, I have at least 3 hours while everyone else is away at work and school. And as soon as Christmas vacation ended, I began doodling, sketching, experimenting, scribbling, showing up for my creative play dates! The first Wednesday, I was feeling a bit under the weather, but I began and soon felt so grateful the stars had aligned and a beginning had been at last been made. The next Wednesday, I picked up where I left off, getting not quite 3 hours in before taking my daughter to a dentist appointment, and doing another hour later in the week. Then next Wednesday, I was physically exhausted, but again showed up, with no expectations or demands of my time other than that I play with the art materials. I have been doing my best to observe my process, to not demand finished products too soon, to see what imagination and play will lead to if I got out of the way and let things unfold. And despite recurring judgements that what I am doing is silly and worthless, I was beginning to feel some momentum and a feeling of hope. I was looking forward to what the next week would bring.
And then the flu hit, and the ice storm. During flu week, I managed to make a sketch I really want to continue with later. I’d hoped to play with it today, but since we are all housebound in a suburban igloo today, I have decided instead to write this blog post. I want and need to chronicle my creative efforts. And to share some of my reflections with others in this blog because I am sure there are other working-parent-artists out there like me searching for their own determination and tenacity to stay creative.
Here is what I’ve learned so far:
As an artist, I need to create a body of play. I have plenty of work in my life. Even the thought of making a body of work shuts me down.
My sketches and doodles are most frequently of dancing woman, moving women, big, active, sensual women. They surprise me. A long time ago, I imagined myself making soft, peaceful, impressionist landscapes. But I remember my mother looking at my elementary school drawings and saying that I did movement well. I like to move. Movement is part of play. I often feel crowded out by all the other demands of my life. No only do I need to make a visual body of play, I need to live in a body that is playful.
I like to stand up when I draw. I want to work on large paper.
The dance is ever changing.
There will be more time to create soon! Yes, soon!
Please click on the orange links below to open brochures describing workshops starting at Enbarr Art Therapy studio this fall.
These workshops provide wonderful opportunities to slow down, relax, create, play and learn!
Beyond Burnout Prevention: Creative and Spiritual Renewal will meet October 2010 – May 2011 on the second Thursday of each month from 6:30 – 8:30 pm. Growth and self-care need time, quiet reflection, and ongoing encouragement to develop and thrive. This program allows participants to meet on a regular basis for an extended period of time to revitalize personally and professionally. BeyondBurnoutPrev
Fall Friday Workshops: Each workshop focuses on a different art form and provides a day long retreat once a month. This fall we will be exploring mosaics, mandalas, altered book journals, and poetry. To view the brochure about these workshops, click here: fallFridayworkshops2010 Also, longer descriptions of each Friday workshop can be found by clicking on the Friday Workshop page tab in the column on the right side of this blog home page.
Thanks for your interest and hope to see you soon at Enbarr Art Therapy Studio!
birth
I recently taught an Introduction to Art Therapy undergraduate class at Herron School of Art and Design here in Indianapolis. Toward the end our summer session course, I drove downtown with a very loose plan in mind for what we were to do that day. I knew that I wanted the students (adept at visual art) to explore how movement, voice, poetry and story were also healing arts. I knew that, months ago, when creating the class syllabus, I had listed “mandala” as the in-class art activity. And I remembered other expressive therapy mandala-making that I had facilitated over the years. Each of these experiences had been very different, with a large element of spontaneity and unpredictability. And so, this day, I intentionally left my plans open, waiting to see what would unfold.
As I parked my car and walked to the art school, I was pleased that the morning was less humid than the days before, the kind of morning that made me want to stay outside. And so I realized the day need us to be outside as part of the class. And then a one of the poems I have recently learned by heart came to mind as a perfect way to start the day.
The school is located across the street from a large city park, and so when the students arrived, we walked over to a shady spot under a catalpa tree in the park and stood in a circle. I explained that I would say a poem and then we would stand in silence and be mindful of our breath, the sounds of nature and city, the sky, the earth, all that was present in and around us. Then I shared “Eagle Poem” by Joy Harjo, which starts: “To pray, you open your whole self to sky, to earth, to sun, to moon, to one whole voice that is you. And know that there is more that you can’t see, can’t hear, can’t know, except in languages that aren’t always sound but other circles of motion…”
childhood
After several quiet minutes, I invited the students to stay outside and to create mandalas, a circular drawing through which one’s current relationship to wholeness can be expressed. An hour later, we gathered inside the classroom and I asked the students to not talk about the experience, but instead, to arrange the mandalas into a circle, deciding as a group how to connect our individual creations to each other.
We then stood in a circle facing our mandalas. I asked the students to imagine a sound that belonged to their mandala, and then share that sound aloud. I went first because most people, including me, feel awkward and self-conscious making wordless sound in front of others. I tried to be relaxed, playful, silly, while doing my mandala’s “aaaahhh!!” sound. I asked the group to mirror back my sound, and then we went around the circle, each student choosing a sound and hearing it mirrored back by the group.
We then added a movement to the sound and mirrored this back for each other. We laughed as we went around the circle. My “aaaaaaaahhh!!” became longer and deeper as I lifted my arms in the air and lowered them as in a head-to-toe release.
The next step was to name the mandala with a word or short phrase, spoken aloud with the same movement and sound we’d already discovered for our mandala. I was surprised that the word “Now” flowed out as name for my mandala, but it felt good to say the word with the long, releasing breath of my “aaahhh!!”
By starting with sound and movement and limiting our use of language, my intention was to help us shift out of our habitual linear and rational way of thinking to our more ancient and mythic mind. And so, after naming the mandalas I asked the group to consider what story the mandala circle we surrounded might be telling us. Someone said that they saw “the elements” expressed within the mandalas. Another student said she saw “the stages of life,” and she pointed to each of the mandalas identifying the stage she saw in it: birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, death.
I sensed this idea resonating with the group and so invited the students to talk about each other’s mandalas, not explaining our own mandala’s original intention, but describing what we saw in them now in light of the “Stages of Life” story that was unfolding. We were surprised how much we saw in each other’s mandalas that was not placed their consciously, but came from some other source. For instance, in our collective story, my mandala had been identified as the stage of life “death.” While making it, I had begun by making arcing white shapes, and then felt the urge to meet these at a central point. Then I became immersed in creating a mirror world behind the white arcs, one day, one night. I felt I was responding the the feeling of newness in the fresh inviting morning. Yet, even while creating it, a fleeting awareness passed through me of a former client’s art made in response to a near-death experience. As we talked, I felt goosebumps for how this mandala that evoked for me letting go, release, and the name “Now” was somehow unconsciously an expression of the letting go and release of death.
adolescence
As we talked, we noted that in “Birth” we saw shapes and colors that reminded us of the current tragic oil spill in the Gulf, an ongoing disaster that had been on our minds and emerged in our art and discussions repeatedly in the previous weeks. Because we were looking at the mandalas as telling a community story and because the student who made the mandala had told us it’s name was “Catalyst,” I asked, “What if, the birth this mandala is expressing is not simply an individual human birth, but a birth for our culture. Perhaps the oil spill will incite us to leave behind old ways that are harming us and take on the creating of a culture that values ecologic sustainability. A cultural rebirth, a renaissance.”
adulthood
Responding to this question, the group looked again at the five mandalas as representations of the stages of growth that we will go through as a changing culture. We saw in “Childhood” a reconnection to nature, to knowing ourselves as part of the natural world. We saw in “Adolescence” a journey toward community that honors the feminine. We saw in “Adulthood” a maturing wisdom and treelike rooted presence. We saw in “Death” the passing away of the old era and the promise of a new day, a new mindful way of living.
To bring our story to a close, we went around the circle again saying our mandala’s name, with expressive sound and movement, this time being conscious of the deeper collective story that the mandalas had given us. The self-consciousness we felt at the beginning of the our sharing was no longer with us. Now we spoke and moved with a calm reverence, a quiet awe.
Before leaving for the rest of our busy days, I shared with the students that
death
I had had no expectations that what we did that day would unfold in the way it did, that I had planned only to set the stage, invite the creation of mandalas, and see what followed. I told them that I was surprised by the depth we reached. And yet not at all surprised. Given that we made mandalas in nature and community. In such a process, what else would we connect to if not the Circle of Life? It wasn’t really that we stumbled upon something new and unexpected. Instead, we changed ourselves. We stepped out of the limited awareness that is our cultural habit, and entered the wholeness that is there always.
The First Rose of Summer
A friend recommended the book Saved by a Poem by Kim Rosen and I have been, not simply reading it, but incorporating its many rewarding practices, suggestions, questions, and meditations into my own poetry life. The book describes the power of taking poems into your life and learning them by heart, “writing them into your bones” and speaking them aloud. Being able to say poems, rather than reading them from written text, has been something I have known for some time that I needed to do. But I have dreaded the process of memorizing and have doubted that, even if I did memorize a poem, it would stick in my brain for very long. Rosen’s book gave me the courage to begin and renewed awareness of the power of spoken, felt, lived poetry.
I drive at least an hour or more every day for my work, and this summer, the highway I need to take regularly is under major reconstruction, so there are often traffic problems. I decided, instead of feeling trapped by this undesired driveway, I would use the drive to learn poems. I started with the CD that comes with the book, and then began to gather poems that have been favorites at various stages of my life since high school. Using my Zoom H2 digital recorder, I recorded about 30 minutes of poetry, 12 “old favorite poems” by Mary Oliver, Rilke, Joy Harjo, others, and 12 of my own poetry.
Now, as I am driving, I am chanting lines from poems, embedding them in my heart. I am driving more slowly without feeling stressed by the agressive drivers all around me. I am getting places early, because instead of leaving home at the very last minute possible (or later than that), I look forward to the time with poetry that the drive brings so I leave home earlier and without regret. Last week, rush hour afternoon traffic was worst than usual, with traffic backed up not just on the highway, but on all the suburban roads leading home. I actually found myself glad that traffic was moving slowly because it gave me more time to learn the end of a new poem. I arrived home feeling meditative, relaxed, without need to destress after the commute!
For anyone who loves poetry, I highly recommend this book.
