Matters of the Heart, Art & Mandala Healing

October 9th, 2011

I was away from this blog for a few weeks, too much to do.  Two art shows (one I was in charge of and it poured rain all day), my garden on a garden tour, a mandala art workshop, garden designs and installs, and other commitments all added up to three weeks and weekends of extreme busyness.   The end of all this was a visit from an out of town friend.  After our visit I went home to rest.

The rest I envisioned wasn’t what happened, instead it turned into a trip to the Emergency Room and a day in the hospital. As I went to rest, I noticed my heart beating too fast.  No other symptoms, just too fast.  An hour later I was in the trauma room of the hospital having my heart shocked to get it to beat normally.  A day later I was home and doing fine, sort of.

My body was fine, but I needed to process the whole experience, and heal from that.  A week of rest and no appointments, except Doctor visits, helped.  Working lightly in a garden I designed helped a lot. Meditating, praying and yoga helped. But the deep healing was, and is being, helped by art.  Both mandala art and beautiful art.

First Making Mandalas and Journaling
I needed to be honest with my thoughts, feelings and processing of all that happened.  Making a mandala and journaling helped.  Some of the journaling was on plain journal paper, some as words on my mandalas.  I found the Egyptian ieb symbol, a symbol for the heart comforting.  It is vessel shape with two handles on the side.  It holds something inside.  To the ancient Egyptians the heart was the center and holder of the mind and soul.
Why was my heart racing so fast?  Too much to do, too much caffeine, too much done to help others with their dreams but not taking care of mine?  What was, or wasn’t, being held in my heart?  The line from the Langston Hughes poem came to mind:

What happens to a dream deferred?

I needed to revisit my dreams, know that they were still in my heart, honor them and not defer them.  My mandalas with the ieb in the center helped. I could feel my dreams in those vessels.

Another mandala I found that I had created years ago with an image of a mother and infant and their radiant hearts helped.

Healing Hands

For some reason I needed to find art that showed gentle beautiful healing hands.  I felt this art would heal me.  I visited the St. Louis Art Museum to slowly view these kinds of hands.

I found them in paintings and sculptures.

They comforted me with their grace and helped intensify the gratitude I feel for the healing hands of humans and the divine that saved my life only a few short days ago.