The Role Non-dominant Writing Plays in My Life

Over the years many readers have written to me about how creative journaling with their non-dominant hand has put them in closer touch with nature. Some of them have done written dialogues with a tree, a plant, or an area in nature has spoken to them through their non-dominant hand. They've received guidance from how these elements of nature have been wanted to be respected and nurtured. They've also received messages that seemed to come from their soul through the element in nature they were communicating with. They have received wise guidance, comfort, and inner peace from these dialogues with nature.

Our own Shiila Safer, a graduate of Creative Journal Expressive Arts and certified instructor in my methods, has specialized in nature applications of my work. She has included nature work in workshops and even authored books on the subject. Here is Shiila's story about her discoveries of the power in nature through her non-dominant hand.


The Role Non-dominant Writing Plays in My Life 

I was in the second graduating class of CJEA. At the time, non-dominant writing was a healing tool for me personally. I wrote volumes processing my divorce, my dreams and my aspirations for future relationships. Soon after graduating, I began teaching workshops, and it was an invaluable tool for assisting people to express their emotions and shadow voices.

In my own journaling, non-dominant writing became my avenue for writing poetry. It opened a portal for channeled messages to come through. Messages from the trees or the creek, or the wind, or my Higher Self. I still use it this way after more than 20 years! My inspiration always comes from Nature. And Mother Nature speaks to me through my non-dominant hand.

My first book, Born of the Earth: Your Journal, Poetry and Meditations in Nature, published in 2010, is an introduction to non-dominant writing. It is a journal, with beautiful nature photography, poetry, meditations and blank pages. I encourage people to try non-dominant writing in response to the meditations. This book was also the first book we published in our publishing company, 2nd Tier Publishing. Since then, we have published about 25 books. If you have a book in you, I am happy to assist you in giving birth!

My second book, Intimacy with Trees, published in 2015, is a compilation of poetry, stories, channeled messages and meditations by authors and illustrators all over the world. Once again, my poetry and messages were received through my non-dominant hand.

This is a message I received last week from Grandmother Oak, I call it Oak Wisdom. I am happy to share it here with you.

There will be many corrections in order for Earth to find balance. Many lives will be lost. Floods, fires, tornadoes are becoming the vehicles bringing this balance. It is more important than ever before for you to keep your heart open. Listen to the messages coming to you. Stay connected to the trees, plants and water. Cultivate your relationships. Be like a strongly rooted tree; solid, stable, connected. Humble yourself. You are part of the circle of life. Embrace your fellow travelers with lovingkindness. 

My current forms of creative expression are nature-based creativity coaching and Eco-printing and Eco-dyeing silk scarves. I am in partnership with two other women in our business Eco & Indigo Fiber Arts. We print directly on silk with leaves & flowers. We present our products to you as a co-creation with Mother Nature, hoping you feel her embrace when you wrap yourself in a scarf. In this way, we invite you to explore a joyful and more intimate connection with all the trees and plants in your daily lives.

Shiila Safer
Shiila@CreativityinNature.com
Wimberley, TX
To see our scarves, visit our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/EcoIndigoFiberArts/ and Instagram @ecoindigofiber

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Lucia

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www.luciac.com
www.visioningcoach.org
Order The Power of Your Other Hand (Conari Press 2019) at Amazon.com

Creative Journal and Nature: Co-Create a Spiritual Experience by Liberating the Inner Child

Our guest blogger this week is Charlotte Yonge from England. Charlotte is a Certified Creative Journal Expressive Arts facilitator and Visioning® Coach who works with individuals and groups of all ages. She has done a great deal of work in nature, as reflected in this post.

Using the Non-Dominant Hand to Hold the Imaginative "Stretch" of Visioning®, Accessing Deep Levels of Grief with Nature as my Inner Teacher

Left and right hands play together in Creative Journal: "Life must be lived as play." ~Plato

These Creative Journal activities are part of my journey to recover my Inner Child and restore some effective Inner Parents. They are all created from experience, rooted in dreams and memories and, like stories, take on their own life as anecdotes in conversation becoming shared understanding of common human issues.

Early in my CJEA training I depicted my Inner Critic and told it to go using my non-dominant hand. All around the picture are the words I remembered from childhood that made me feel shame and guilt. I realized that they came from adults and my parents and I contemplated their own dilemmas of bringing me up in an alien continent: Africa.

My mother's sharp tongue was crafted from the deep vulnerability she felt with two toddlers alone in a house while my father was on the road. At our first house I was 2-3 years old, and she reflected on the garden she created which became an oasis for birds in that very dry landscape.

My mother died in 2017, and a month or two before that I had shown her the Wilderness Mother collage card, although by then she was not responding well and I did not know what her reaction was. Her last words to me were to tell me she loved me.

My grief processing with the non-dominant hand brought to memory her love of dance and Nature. I found I could reflect on the gifts she gave me of her love of gardening, wild nature and of woodland. I tapped into my own Inner Artist, so long rejected, and began creating many cards, one of which was called Wilderness Mother.

So I tapped into the wild in England, and brought all my early experiences to bear upon my sense of loss for it to become a part of my new Inner Artist persona. A big stretch of self-affirmation was fueled by grief and gratitude together, and a whole pack of 67 cards.

As I dialogued with Nature, and the memories of wild gardens in my African childhood, all sorts of metaphors arrived in my intuition about the direct experience of Nature and its challenges. The difficult emotions were represented in the landscape for me, and so I became more familiar with my own gut responses as creative allies.

For me the vision of my artistic self became real after dedicating my dialogue with Nature to my mother’s fiercely held dream of life cracks you open, and her positive response by growing new life. Through my non-dominant hand I drew a witch face for my Inner Critic, and this helped me explore how my difficult relationship with my mother’s fierce interactions with me as an adult were necessary survival behaviors that had kept me safe in very disruptive times of living in two continents.

I was brought up in Africa as a semi immigrant, loosely connected to a home country (UK), but deeply bonded to the African wilderness. Over time my mother created gardens in semi desert areas; her courage made her a fierce life affirming person with early experiences of dance and movement before the war threw her into facing the worst of challenges in a hostile, primitive environment.

Charlotte Yonge
creativeliteracy@gmail.com
www.cliacoaching.co.uk

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Lucia

Let us know what you think of this post in the comments below. Follow us and be updated by email when new blog posts are published.
 
www.luciac.com
www.visioningcoach.org
Order The Power of Your Other Hand (Conari Press 2019) at Amazon.com