You’ve Got Soul!

Have soul and be well.

Maybe you don’t take it with you—the verdict isn’t in yet for me– but you’ve got soul. Keeping it central to daily life can be a path to a sense of wellness. Soul is a state of feeling whole, alive, and in the here and now. It’s those moments of soul that help you feel well in this often-unhealthy world.

When I was a young child, I learned via Catholicism that my soul was as important as my mind and body. I would look in my bedroom mirror, narrow my eyes, and imagine the aura I saw around my body was my soul leaking out around the edges. I actually did not know any other definitions of soul until I was a teenager. One of my friends would do a fabulous impression of Soul Brother Number One, James Brown. I had never heard soul music before, but I knew immediately that it made me feel alive and free. After that, I knew that soul was something more than I was told—it was something that brought joy, authenticity, and creativity.

//

Like soul, the healing arts are not a hard science. They may never be and the mystery of why we humans continue to make art, sing, dance, act, and play may never be fully understood. I can’t tell you that making a painting, dancing your heart out, or writing a poem will cure your life or what ails you. But I can say they might make you feel a little better, given that wellness is not disease- or disability-dependent. Feeling well is a state of being whole, engaged, and present, no matter what cards we are dealt. Its about “having soul.” And when we have a lot of soul, we have a zest for life, palpable energy, and a deep sense of well-being.

James Hillman equates soul with imagination, your potential to dream and create. It’s self-medicine that helps you to find new ways of seeing and being in the world. If you take the time to engage in the arts, you might just escape the soulless techno-trance of your PDA, laptop, or large screen LCD TV for a few moments. Making that third phone call in the organic food market, elevating email to the centerpiece of daily life, and pushing those Blackberry keys like a lab rat hoping for a food pellet all steal the human experience of soul as surely as any hungry ghost in the bardo.

Don’t fret about whether or not you have a soul. Lighten up, for heaven’s sake– make a drawing on that Post-It note, let James Brown thunder from your stereo, and dance as you like and die happy. The good news is this: We’ve all got soul.

Originally published April 7, 2008

© 2008 Cathy Malchiodi

www.cathymalchiodi.com

Art Matters

“Arts to the rescue“

Some of you are probably wondering why Psychology Today would have a blog called “The Healing Arts.” My worldview of health and healing grew from more than two decades of working as an art therapist and an expressive arts therapist, a practitioner who uses all the arts [visual, music, dance and movement, drama, creative writing, and play] as modalities to help people recover, restore, and revitalize. Working with individuals of all ages through the arts and making art an almost daily practice in my own life, I have come to believe that art and imagination are equally as important to health and well-being as balanced nutrition, regular exercise, and meditation.

I believe all the arts– by experiencing them and engaging in them– can return you to what it means to be truly human. The arts integrate what is most opposite in life: joy and grief, clarity and bewilderment, humor and absurdity, hope and despair. They are present in our lives to cultivate intuition, inspiration, and spontaneity. In the increasingly technological trance we encounter each and every day, art and imagination are there to awaken us to consciousness and to naturally repair ourselves, maintain our balance, and recover what it is to truly feel. We cannot argue with thousands of years of humans engaging in art making activities that often have no monetary or similar payoff. We humans engage in creative expression for reasons that extend far beyond the art gallery, theater, or concert hall. When we suffer the inevitable wounds to heart and soul, arts are available to come to our rescue, having always served as a healer during times of trouble.

So I hope this blog provides something that completely shifts your impressions about the psychology behind the arts, creativity, and imagination and makes you think about how these forces awaken our inner world of feeling and personal authenticity. My intent is to try to articulate my impassioned [and on some days, creatively chaotic] vision for how the arts and imagination restore emotional health. This vision will be conveyed through actual real life stories and, on other days, you’ll read about some of the emerging research that supports those anecdotal, first-person stories of recovery though the healing arts. Because I try to practice my mission by engaging in the process first-hand, occasionally I’ll share some of the entries that emerge in my visual journal that you see on this page. To me, art does matter.

Originally posted on March 20, 2008

© 2008 Cathy Malchiodi

http://www.cathymalchiodi.com