Our guest blogger is Leah Pinck, a Life Coach and candidate for certification in Creative Journal Expressive Arts (class of 2022). This is an excellent example of a CJEA intermodal process in which art exploration in any medium is followed with two-handed dialogues for gaining deeper insight through words.
Clay Play and Dialoguing with Both Hands
by Leah Pinck
For this work, I used a combination of clay work and journaling based on The Art of Emotional Healing and dialoguing from The Power of Your Other Hand. I experienced the clay play, and then journaled about it. After that, I felt like the piece had more to say so I dialogued with it using my dominant hand to ask my questions, and my non-dominant hand to answer for it. It was really interesting to see what came up.
The basis of working with clay to access what we are feeling comes from Lucia Capacchione’s book The Art of Emotional Healing (pg. 114). This work consists of using clay, preferably the air-dry kind that does not need a kiln for it to dry properly. (It is easily found in art supply stores like Michaels.)
Usually it is best to go into the session without any preconceived notions of what the clay will express. However, for me, when I started the work, I had an intuition that I had some pent up anger that was just under the surface and would want to come out.
I started by focusing on my breathing. There is a prompt to think about the ocean’s tide coming up thru your feet. Energy of the world coming in and out, up thru my feet, as I breathe in and out. When the tide comes in as a breath, and then goes out, it takes all the stress out of my body. I could imagine that and felt the tension release and my muscles were able to relax.
As I continued to breathe, I held the piece of clay (that I had cut from a brick of air-dry white clay) in my hands. As I held the clay, I focused on observing it, feeling the weight, the temperature, and the dampness of it. I did not feel connected to it, so I moved on to the next step.
I put the clay down on the table, and put my hands in a bowl of warm water that I had next to me. The water felt nice after holding the cool clay. I tried to become more receptive to what was in front of me and explored the piece with my eyes closed. I was only supposed to feel what was there, without changing anything, but I found it very challenging not to adjust or “fix” it. Kind of like me in life — having a hard time with letting things “Be.” I prefer to fix things, even if they’re not mine to fix, so this was a really good exercise for me.
I kept my eyes closed and continued, but this time I was actively exploring it. I got to smoosh it, and knead it, rip it apart and put it together again, and in general just played with it. Kind of like with a stress ball, but messier. And more fun!
I had put on some music in the background, but at this point it was disturbing my focus on connecting with the clay, so I turned it off and took a sigh of relief.
As I worked the chunk of clay, I noticed that it felt too big. I didn’t know where that message was coming from, but I went with it and took off a piece and put it to the side. I continued working it, and that feeling came up 3 more times, and each time I took off some more (see figure #1). Then it felt like it needed to be bigger, so I added back a small piece. Once it was being worked in, it didn’t feel right, so I took it off and it felt better. This was the first time I had experienced “listening” to an inanimate object. It did feel a bit strange, but it got my curiosity going to see where it would take me.
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| Figure 1 |
Now I shifted into the part of the activity called “creating the self.” This is accomplished by saying or thinking to yourself: “This clay is me and I am creating myself. I am always the same yet constantly changing.” This is from page 114 in The Art of Emotional Healing by Lucia Capacchione.
I focused on feelings that were coming up and worked it out in the clay. The clay started out being hard to work with. It softened up as I worked, until it was so soft and thin it was breaking. The feeling that came up with it was that I am spreading myself too thin. It felt so pliable, but without boundaries. So I had to reinforce it by folding it over on itself. It needed its boundaries strengthened, just like in my emotional life.
I whacked the clay on the table really hard, so it sprayed me and the table with small splatters of clay. This was my underlying feeling of anger coming out. It felt good, but I felt guilty for throwing the clay. I remembered what Lucia had said during a recent training, that the clay doesn’t get hurt — no matter what we do to it. So I ended up throwing it a few more times; it felt good, but still somehow wrong. I don’t like feeling angry in general, but I allowed the feeling to come out as well. Oh well, I have to acknowledge to myself that the old anger I feel is still here, and I will attempt to see it, sit with it and let it Be, until it works its way through me and then out.
At that point I started to sense a direction the clay wanted to be taken in. (yes, it still sounds strange to me, but that was the experience). Still with my eyes closed, I sensed there needed to be a ball, which would be surrounded by a flat surface. That felt like my core talking. However, it didn’t feel safe. It felt like it needed protection, so I folded the flat pieces up and around the center. To envelop it in safety until I felt it was finished (anger does not feel safe to me).
It was uncomfortable to express my anger, but the piece was interesting and felt like it needed more dialogue. So I had a right hand/left hand conversation with it (see figure #2).
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| Figure 2 |
My dominant hand (DH): Who or what are you?
My non-dominant hand (NDH): Your heart
DH: How do you feel?
NDH: Vulnerable
DH: Why or what makes you feel that way?
NDH: I’m too spread out. Something can get in w/out my permission. I thought it would be safe to let my heart be seen, even just a bit. Now that I look at it, it feels too open and scary.
DH: Thank you for sharing that with me. What do you need from me? (to feel safer)
NDH: Keep me hidden away to keep me safe.
DH: Is it ok with you if I share a picture of you with others to show them how valuable this work is?
NDH: Yes. But you can’t let a/o (anyone) else hold me. That would be too scary.
DH: Thank you for that and I will take good care of you!
After that I journaled some more to process what had come up.
This was an interesting insight for me. I see that I was actually able to be a bit more open, at least with myself.
The clay piece I made is a very small one. I think that because that is all my heart wanted to open up it only allowed a small bit to be seen. As I compare this to the first one I did a few weeks ago (image on right, figure 3), I can see that even though it is smaller, it is not as solid and inflexible as the first one was. It also has a bigger space that opens into the center, which is my heart (see figures 3, 4 and 5).
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| Figure 3 |
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| Figure 4 |
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| Figure 5 |
I take this as a sign of my continuing growth one little step at a time. I discovered that I can open the protection around my heart, so that I can see what’s hiding, protected inside, just a bit more. Doing the clay work was an eye-opener for me. But then when I added in the R/L hand dialoguing and journaling, it brought me much more insight than if I had just worked with the clay. All in all, this is an awesome, tactile, 3-dimensional way to work through feelings.
Now I am off to put that little clay piece of my heart away in a safe place.
Leah Pinck
leahpinck@gmail.com
Certified Life Coach, Candidate for CJEA Certification 2022
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