Category: Creativity Corner

Joyful Noise

Intuitive singing is one of the funnest ways to restore happiness, health, and connection. 

Intuitive singing means letting your voice do what it wants to do, without trying to follow a pre-written melody. Intuitive singing is a form of vocal improvisation, which means you’re playing, making something up spontaneously. It’s very, very gratifying once you let yourself do it. 

The potential to use our voices, letting them unfurl freely without direction as made-up songs, is a true gift from Source, or whoever/whatever you believe made human life. 

The benefits of singing are many: lungs, immunity, and heart are all strengthened with singing. Singing also brings peace and safety to the nervous system (vagal nerve stimulation and parasympathetic activation all the way). Singing, furthermore, brings solace and celebration in equal measure into our emotional worlds. 

Done in groups, singing is unifying and creates powerful bonds of connection between people. It is also a way of making “joyful noise”, a way to show Source we are grateful for our lives. 

So why don’t we do it more?

Reclaiming Voice

Too many of us were told we can’t sing. That is a lie. All humans can sing, and we are allowed to, whatever our voices are like. 

While it is true that some humans are especially accomplished at singing, some are endowed with unusually beautiful voices, and some have worked for many thousands of hours to perfect their singing gifts, we all have an utterly unique, special, and beautiful-in-its-own way voice. 

This is the voice that life gave us, and we are allowed to use it as we see fit. Not to please anyone else, but to please ourselves. We can make ourselves happy by giving the natural gift of song-making back to ourselves. 

We might need a little help remembering how to do it!

Here are some ideas to help get us flowing again. 

Intuitive Singing over A Drone

For many, the very easiest way to sing intuitively is to sing over a sustained note played by another instrument. 

This is called a drone. Here is a playlist of drones played on the cello: 

If you listen to a drone and sing along with it, letting your voice free flow and explore, quite naturally you will attune yourself to the key signature. Very likely what sounds nice and feels good to you as you sing freely will be loosely in the key signature of that drone. 

Make Your Own Drone Note

If you have an instrument, you can create a drone yourself by playing a single note repeatedly. You can do this with any instrument, except the ones where you can’t sing at the same time, like a flute or trumpet, in which case you need to record your drone first and then sing over your recording. 

To make a drone note, hold any note as long and sustained as possible, and repeat the note once it has faded. While the note stays steady you can then sing intuitively over it.

In truth you can repeat the note in any steady rhythm – it could be short notes repeated swiftly, but the easiest way to sing intuitively when you’re first starting out is to do so over long, sustained notes.

If it’s possible to play several octaves of the same note at once, as you can easily do on a piano or harp, that’s helpful, as it makes the drone richer.

You may want to record your voice, to hear back your own special song. If you do this with the drone playing in headphones, leave one ear of the headphones so that you can also hear your own voice resonating acoustically while you do this, as this helps the recording sound better. 

Next Step up from a Drone – 1 chord Song

If you feel like singing over a drone is feeling easy enough, you may want to move up to playing over a single chord, over and over. This is easily done on piano, guitar, harp, and other instruments designed to plays chords. Hold a single chord, or repeat it in a regular repeating rhythm, while your voice is free to roam. 

Chords are made up of multiple notes played at once. If you want to play in the key of C, you can play a simple C chord (that’s C, E, and G played all at once), while your voice moves wherever feels and sounds and good to you.

Reflect on Your Intuitive Singing

What do you experience as you play around with intuitive singing? Can you remember your natural right to use your one, unique voice to create joy for yourself through found, remembered, and made up songs?

Like all the arts, poetry can be used as medicine for your soul (https://poeticmedicine.org/about/). No training, experience, talent or skill is required when you use poetry as medicine, because the point of doing it is solely for you to express and heal yourself. No one needs to ever read your healing poems but you. 

Want to try it out? 

A Poem that Points towards the Divine In Us

Many poets of the past have created works that speak to the deeper, truer realms inside us. We can use these poems, those that capture our imagination and move our emotions, as starting points for exploring poetry as medicine. 

Today we’ll play with a lovely piece by the 14th century Persian lyrical poet Hafiz called “A Golden Compass”. 

Have a read for yourself and see if anything resonates for you: 

A GOLDEN COMPASS
by Hafiz, translation by Daniel Ladinsky

Forget every idea of right and wrong any classroom ever taught you
Because an empty heart, a tormented mind, unkindness, jealousy and fear
Are always the testimony you have been completely fooled!
Turn your back on those who would imprison your wondrous spirit
With deceit and lies.
Come, join the honest company of the King’s beggars –
Those gamblers, scoundrels and divine clowns and those astonishing fair courtesans
Who need Divine Love every night.
Come, join the courageous who have no choice but to bet their entire world
That indeed, indeed, God is real.
I will lead you into the circle of the Beloved’s cunning thieves,
Those playful royal rogues, the ones you can trust for true guidance –
Who can aid you in this blessed calamity of life.
Hafiz, look at the Perfect One at the circle’s center:
He spins and whirls like a Golden Compass, beyond all that is rational,
To show this dear world that everything, everything in existence
Does point to God.

Interpret the Poem through your own Experience

Anything speak to you? I personally like the lines “Come, join the courageous who have no choice but to bet their entire world/ That indeed, indeed, God is real.” I also like the paradoxical phrase “this blessed calamity of life”, and the ending line “everything in existence/Does point to God.” 

I resonate with Hafiz’s characterization of himself and his friends as those who “have no choice but to bet their entire world that indeed, God is real.” I relate to that position of having no choice but to rely on Higher Power – that speaks to the truth of the recovery path. 

Finally, when Hafiz describes “playful rogues” it makes me think of the fact that AA meetings are often full of laughter, filled with people who have had colorful lives. It is not a holier-than-thou kind of crowd, as people there span the full spectrum from darkness to light.

What do you relate to? 

Poetry Medicine Exercise: Your Own Version of “A Golden Compass”

Remembering the goal is soul medicine, not good poetry, write your own version of this poem.  You can do whatever you want of course, but two helpful creative constraints are:

Guidelines

1. Use your own name at least once. The poem should be from you to you. The original poem is written, apparently, to himself, as the line, “Hafiz, look at the Perfect One…” suggests (many of his poems are). Do the same, make sure it is for you and from you. 
2. Be encouraging, offering some kind of an inspiration or nudge. Lead yourself, your attention and your focus somewhere, invite yourself to look at something wonderful. Tell yourself what you need to hear, about what you should turn away from, and what you should turn towards. 

The Process

Step One: Freewrite on Jumping Off Points taken from the Original Poem

Set a timer for 12 minutes, then start freewriting anything that’s coming to your mind, beginning with the phrase “Forget every idea you’ve had of…”

My example line, so you get the idea: Forget every idea you’ve had of what a good life is, dear Holly Mae, and come back to the origin of all things. Seeds sprout, they grow, they want to live, and so do you. Is that such a bad thing? It is not. It is a good thing….  

When you feel this jumping off point has been exhausted, try writing lines that start with “Turn your back on…” and then “Come, join the….”. 

Feel free to follow your own intuition and feeling as it flows, there isn’t a right or wrong way to this, these are suggestions more than rules. 

Step Two: Harvest Lines from Your Freewrite

After the timer goes off, look back over what you have written and underline any lines that seem interesting or intriguing to you for any reason. You will take those lines, change them as you see fit, and use them to make your poem in the next step.

Step Three: Shape It Into a Medicine Poem

Now create your poem using the harvested lines as inspiration (which you can feel free to change.) At this stage, do not worry about your poem directly referencing or mirroring the original poem. Maybe it does, or maybe it doesn’t. 

My example: 

The Fearful Seed  (Poetry Medicine Response to “A Golden Compass” by Hafiz)

If you find yourself splitting
open helpless and wet
like a seed soaked in rainwater

something green in you
reaching skywards

Do not be so scared, Holly Mae.
Growing is a good thing
is it not? 

You have known for a long time
what you are. You like to see saplings growing.
It’s your time
to be a tree. 

May your poems be meaningful to you!

Art as Medicine

As the inspiring author Shaun McNiff explores in his work, art has the potential to create energetic medicine

Within our own psyches, we can find, dream up, and fashion antidotes for what has stung us. No matter what the poison, we are capable of finding a personal, home-made cure, that starts in our imaginations and then comes into “the real world”, where we need the cure.

Art Therapy for Boundaries: Create A Skin for Your Soul

Today we’re going to play with how to create an energetic medicinal for the topic of “holding”, which relates to our struggles with boundaries. This technique is offered in answer to the question, “How we can have a strong, resilient identity in the world?” Through better boundaries!

The goal of any human being is to be our true Core Essence in this world. That means expressing the beautiful specificities of who we are, sharing our love with others, and having transformational experiences in this physical world.

To be able to do this, we need to have a strong enough “container” for our Core Essence. Container is just what it sounds like, a place for our Core Essence to be. A good container keeps wanted stuff in and keeps unwanted stuff out. Our Core Essence ideally has something to hold and protect it – an energetic boundary. 

It’s Never Too Late to Have a Happy Childhood

In best case scenarios, babies are given time to develop their psychological skin in part through being held, which gives the somatic experience of being contained in a safe way.

“Held in a safe way” means receiving attuned warmth, comfort, nurturing and togetherness, but not being intruded upon or used by another. It also means being appropriately protected from threats to our being.

Appropriate holding is an essential experience that many of us did not quite have, and our core wounding will match what we experienced as babies. Perhaps we were not nourished and held enough, or perhaps we were intruded upon and hurt (and often it’s both).

The Art Therapy Medicinal To Help Hold Your Core Essence

The Art Cure for holding/boundaries trouble is to draw Core Essence being held within a larger, positive container, so that we are discretely contained in big, beautiful, loving, safe, soothing energies.

Materials: 

• Colored Pencils or Markers
  
• Paper of any size 

Three Steps to a Cure: Draw Your Energy Being Held

1. Draw a large oval shape that fills up most of your paper. This large oval is your personal bubble, your auric egg, your kinesphere, or your human bioenergetic field – however you like to think of it. It maps to the space immediately around you, within a couple of feet in any direction of your physical body.
2. Draw a smaller sketch of your physical body, fully inside the oval. Pay attention to how you feel while you’re doing this, and make sure that the size relationship between the smaller body and the larger egg feels generally right to you. Allow yourself to change or redraw your egg until you feel satisfied and safe when you look at it.
3. Color the larger oval shape in with nice colors and patterns, only good things. Allow yourself to free-draw, using qualities, shapes and expressive lines that feel soothing and nice to you. 
4. Spend some time defining the shell of the egg itself. What colors are there? What kind of materials does the shell boundary want to be made of? Is it thin and gauzy, or perhaps thick and gold-plated? You can make it be however feels right for today.
5. Finally, if you want to, identify a few things that belong outside of your egg shell. For example, you might write things down like “other people’s judgements of who I am” or “work stress” – anything that you would like to decide does not belong inside your personal being at this time.  

You may experience first that you don’t like how it looks – the eggshell is too thin, too dark & heavy, lopsided or the wrong shape. If you sense that, fantastic! 

That dissatisfaction is your psyche telling you something about what happened to you, and I promise, whatever it is, it’s common enough. The picture of what was wrong is also the seed of what the solution is, so use the wonky egg you drew first as a reference to make a second, better egg that shows what you actually want and need to feel good. 

The process of caring and investigating in this way is important in and of itself. This way you say, Hi soul, I know you needed to be held and contained in a loving way, and I can do that now. 

May it be healing & helpful.

The Attitude that Shifts Our Mood

Gratitude famously changes our mood in an instant. When we’re able to allow ourselves to recognize what we already have that we dearly appreciate, something opens up in us. The body relaxes, the heart blooms, and good feelings flow. 

It really is that simple – that’s why an Attitude of Gratitude is good for recovery, not because being grateful makes us a better person than someone who isn’t grateful, but because gratitude feels good from the inside. 

Gratitude lists are among the top tools for people in recovery for a reason. But why stop at lists? There are many ways to spend extra time experiencing the benefits of gratitude. We can make music, draw pictures, express our gratitude out loud to ourselves and to each other, in the moment. We can make gratitude deeper and richer by deliberately spending more time in that space. 

Receiving Graciously

I have a friend who loves to eat a good meal, and it is a pleasure to make him dinner, for that reason. Since he enjoys being fed, I feed him more. I believe Spirit works the same way – if we enjoy the gifts that Spirit sends us, then Spirit will be pleased and send us even more gifts, because it feels good to give when someone lets you give to them. 

The recognition of receiving the gift requires awareness of it – that somebody or something is right here with us, giving us a gift, be that gift physical health in the body, a breath of fresh air, the gift of attention, or a little bit of beauty. 

How might we be better receivers of what Spirit wants to give us? Through recognition and attention of all the ways that spirit is trying to gift us! We need, essentially, to say thank you. 

Gratitude Season

As Thanksgiving draws near, we have the invitation to explore feelings of gratitude. One symbol of plenty is the Cornucopia, also known as the Horn of Plenty. In antiquity, the horn of plenty of represented connection to the divine, through which abundance can always reach us. 

Rather than sealed off in our own world, untouched by the divinity from which we originally sprang, we always have openings and connection points where abundance can bubble up from what lies underneath us all. 

Express Your Thanks By Visualizing Your Abundance: Gratitude Cornucopia

This art therapy exercise is a way to play creatively with your feelings of gratitude and abundance. You will draw a cornucopia to hold all that you are grateful for. 

Materials: 

Paper (the larger the better) & something to draw with. This exercise will work with just a pencil, but will probably be more fun with some colors, so see what you have that you can bring in. Alternatively, you can do this exercise as a collage if you have access to some inspiring images you can cut up (from a magazine or printed off the web).  

Step One: Writing Exercise Warm Up

Brainstorm on the following questions. The suggestion is 12 answers to each of the following prompts. I like the number 12 in part because it is big enough that we may get stumped part way through, and have to push ourselves to think of something out of that void of stuckness, and then we’re pleasantly surprised. 

What comes after the blankness of I don’t know what to say now is often the most interesting thing of all, because it is something fresh and unconsidered (until now). So don’t worry if there are some pauses or feelings of temporary nothingness in your process. From that place of pause, the next thing will be summoned up and will arrive on cue. 

Good Things In My Life Inventory

Find 12 answers to each of the following prompts. 

I have enough…

I have plenty of…

I have a glorious abundance of…

I am undeniably rich in…

Step Two: Draw A Cornucopia

Draw at least one (but make as many as you like) cornucopias, then fill them with symbols, representations, and/or words naming all the things you have, referring to your lists for inspiration. 

If you don’t want to use the horn shape, you can also draw a basket or Thanksgiving table instead. The more important part of the exercise is to take time to represent all the good things you have enough of. 

Step 3: Look at it Daily 

Place your image somewhere visible and look at it throughout the month of November, to remind yourself of all that you already have. 

Blessings & have fun!

Wishes are Seeds

While they don’t always come true in the timeline we might prefer, our wishes for a better life and a better world are important pieces of our true life direction. They’re clues to who we are in our deepest nature, as well as what our gifts and struggles are.

Each wish is a fertile seed that could someday grow into a fully flowered living manifestation if it is truly in alignment with life and if circumstances are supportive for this particular wish to grow. Wishes are sacred material.

Try Wishing and See What Happens

There’s only one way to find out whether our wishes will make it in this world, and that is to try planting them and see what happens! By planting them, I mean give them a chance, nurture them and do our best to help them succeed. 

As someone who knows a lot about protecting my heart for fear of further disappointment and pain, I know how hard this is! It can sometimes seem easier to hide our wishes away.

It’s not an easy ask, to fully commit to help a wish on its way, knowing there’s no guaranteed outcome, only a journey. 

But it is, also, in all honesty, fun to wish. So even if that’s all it is, a little fun making up wishes…it’s worth a go! How about we try it and see what happens?

This exercise plays with the wonderful Beach Boys song, “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.”

Write Your Own Version of Wouldn’t It Be Nice by the Beach Boys

Step One: Gather Your Wishes

Set a timer for 7 minutes and start journaling in a freewrite style, starting every sentence with “Wouldn’t It Be Nice if…”

Like this:

Wouldn’t it be nice if I owned my own house. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if I had a nice stand-up bass guitar. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could go to New Zealand.

Step Two: Identify Why You Want those Things

In the original song, Brian Wilson sings, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older? Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long.” So he expresses his wish as well as why exactly he wants that wish to be true. 

So with your wishes, the second step is to add a follow up line that explains the payoff. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if I lived out in the country? Then I could wake up each day listening to nature’s sounds, like the sound of wind rustling in pines. 

Use lots of sensory details to make your wishes rich and juicy!

Step Three: Turn Your Wishes into Lyrics

Looking over what you write, highlight and underline any lines you particularly like for any reason, that seem like they might be fun to play around with as song lyrics.

Now take a look at the structure of the original song now, begin to rewrite it for yourself, to express your own dreamy wishes. 

Follow the rhythm and format of the language as much or as little as you choose, and do not force yourself to rhyme unless you enjoy rhyming. If on the other hand you do enjoy rhyming, you might want to avail yourself of a rhyming dictionary such as this one: https://www.rhymezone.com/

Here are the original lyrics for you to change up. 

Wouldn’t It Be Nice
by The Beach Boys

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long 

And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong

You know it’s gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new?
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through

Happy times together we’ve been spending
I wish that every kiss was never ending
Wouldn’t it be nice?

Maybe if we think, and wish, and hope, and pray
It might come true
Baby, then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do
We could be married
And then we’d be happy 

Wouldn’t it be nice?

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But let’s talk about it
Wouldn’t it be nice?

Good night my baby
Sleep tight my baby 

Step Four: Sing Your Wishes!

Now that you have your lyrics, sing your version of the song. Singing your wishes is a powerful way to make them more likely to come true for you, as you flesh them out with breath, consciousness, and aliveness! Wishes, just like babies, love music and singing.

There are several ways to sing your song, depending how deep you want to go. One way is to just sing it a cappella, (without any musical accompaniment). 

Another way is to sing it along to a karaoke backing track, such as this one: 

https://open.spotify.com/track/0HRwuSDDmxTwXOHjiHX0aN?si=96354ac4a9f44b5d

Maybe you’d even like to learn the song, if you play an instrument. 

Here are the guitar chords and tab:

https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-beach-boys/wouldnt-it-be-nice-chords-16805

There are many piano sheet music versions available online, as well as video tutorials. 

Finally, the Beach Boys are known for their amazing harmonies – maybe you even want to try multitrack recording and making harmonies of your own? 

Whichever way you choose, sing your wishes song, and remember, since this song is now yours, there’s really no wrong way to sing it. You get to make it all up, changing even the melody and the chords if you so choose. Songwriters reinterpret each other’s songs all the time, sometimes almost unrecognizably changing them. You are, in other words, free to do whatever you want to do here.  

Happy singing and happy wishing!

Why We Stopped Singing

All children love singing. If we don’t love singing anymore now that we’re adults, it’s because we lost our ability to feel safe and loved enough to really let ourselves sing like we used to. We’ve become too wounded, too shy, or too scared of exposure. 

Our voices, whatever they are or are not, contain the unique voiceprint of our personalities. In the qualities of our voices, any loving listener can hear the true nature of what we are in the most truthful parts of ourselves. 

Our voices hold information about who we really are on the inside. That also explains why many of us keep our singing voices hidden, from ourselves and everyone else. Because we stopped believing we would be heard in a loving way, we stopped singing.

A Woman’s Voice Tells Her Story

In a woman’s voice you can hear the timeless, the eternal, and the specific, all at the same time. No voice is exactly the same as another’s.

Our voices hold our stories, and tell the listening ear of what happened to us, good bad and ugly. Where we restrict, where we go deep or soft, where we hold ourselves back or push ourselves forward with strain – all of these qualities reveal what we have been through, how we responded to those events, where we sustained a wound and where and how we healed. 

Learning to Let Ourselves Sing Again

The following vocal play exercises can help us learn to relate to our voices in a loving, encouraging way, such that someday we may sing out into the world again.

1. Humming

When you hum with the intention of loving your voice, humming heals. In this exploration we hum with different vocalized letters, feeling where in your body the vibrations happen. 

Where do we feel the buzzing? Placing hands on our lips, noses, cheeks, we can feel the vibrations more. 

Begin with a big belly breath in, placing your hands on your belly. Then let the air slowly flow as sound, as humming. Start with any pitch that feels comfortable, but feel free to move the pitch and volume up and down, as though testing out your sound system. 

• Mmm
• nnnn 
• vvvvvv
• zzzzz
• zhhhhhh (like the s sound in the word vision)

2. Singing Syllables

In the next step we play with vowels paired with letters, creating little syllables. 

Take one big belly breath in, and on a single out-breath, move through syllables fluidly, following what feels interesting to try out. 

You can use any of the letters of the alphabet, so these are just some examples to start with, of syllables to sing and play around with: 

Ma Me Mi Mo Mu

Va Ve Vi Vo Vu 

Nya Nye Nyi Nyo Nyu (like the n in onion)

Nga Nge Ngi Ngo Ngu (like the ng in singing)

Tha The Thi Tho Thu (both ways, like the th sound in them, and like the th sound in teeth).

3. Call and Respond to Yourself

Call and response is a great connection exercise. 

Make a sound, then make the same sound again, mimicking yourself. Experiment with gradually longer pieces of sound/song. Sometimes you’ll get it right and sometimes you won’t, that doesn’t matter, the benefit is in the trying. 

This works especially well if you sing close to a wall or other reflective surface so that you also hear your voice bounced back to you. Other fun options can be to try singing through a tube (like a paper towel roll tube) or into spaces with different acoustic properties, such as a tiled bathroom or a walk-in closet.  

4. Sing Your Truth

Try singing the truth of how you feel in short, simple lines that you repeat several times. To start, in any melody at all (doesn’t have to be pretty!), sing a line about how you feel right now. For example “I feel grumpy…” 

Sing that one, truthful line about how you feel, over and over in different ways, melodies, intensities, pitches, for as long as you want, and until it feels like maybe you have something else you want to say. Feel free to change the line at that point. 

The goal here is to make loving contact with your voice through a simple exercise, but also, while you’re at it, play with using your voice to express a simple, present truth. 

Have fun, and don’t forget to appreciate your one-of-a-kind voice while you play!

Anger Misunderstood

Anger is frequently considered to be a bad thing. I disagree completely.

Anger can be bad in cases where it is expressed poorly, in its most raw and unprocessed form. When anger explodes suddenly and violently, it can be as savage as a volcano, laying waste to those around us. 

But it doesn’t have to be like that. Volcanic anger is only violent because we have suppressed it for so long that it has to explode dramatically to get recognized. Anger, especially women’s anger, often has to yell to be heard.

Anger is a Good Thing

At its core, anger is a positive life energy. It has a function, like all things in nature. Anger’s function is to define boundaries and say no to things that aren’t good for us. 

When something approaches us that isn’t good for us, the body generates a physiological response of anger to give us the energy to fight off the intrusion or create space between us and the bad thing.

In its simplest form, anger is simply a message from our physiology that says, “No thank you, that is not good for me.” 

Women’s Anger

How many of us, especially women, have struggles accepting the presence of anger within us?  Do we even know when we’re angry? Do we know why we’re angry? Is it ok, in our own eyes, to be angry? Or do we talk ourselves out of our anger? 

The following Art Therapy exercise is for helping those of us who want to get in touch with our anger but may need to do it in a safe and titrated way. I offer it as a way to experiment with befriending our own potency.  

May it be helpful!

Anger Frame by Frame

Supplies

Five pieces of paper, regular-sized paper or larger, and some pens or colored pencils

The Process

Step One: Create 5 Frames on 5 Separate Pieces of Paper

On each of your five papers, you will draw a single frame (sort of like a drawing of a picture frame, you make these by drawing a smaller rectangle inside a slightly larger rectangle). Leave white space in the middle of those frames for now. 

Using three sizes (small, medium, and large) of frames, you will draw two small frames, two medium frames, and one big frame. 

Start with making your two small frames (each on a separate piece of paper). These are small, post-it-sized frames. 

On another two pieces of paper, draw two medium-sized frames, each around the size of a large postcard. 

On the final piece of paper, make only one frame that is almost as large as the paper itself.

At the end of this step of the process, you have five total papers, with each paper having a frame drawn on it. Two papers have small frames, two have medium frames, and the last one has a big frame. 

Lay them out in this order: 

1. Small frame
2. Medium frame
3. Large frame
4. Medium frame
5. Small frame

Step Two: Draw Your Anger in 5 Frames

Begin by setting the intention to work with your sacred anger energy. 

If you happen to be feeling angry about something, use that. If you are feeling peaceful, you can still do the exercise just by setting the intention that you will make positive, loving contact with your anger to help you get to know it.

Starting with one of the small frames, express the feeling of your anger energy in any color and line, allowing yourself to scribble freely, but only inside of the small post-it-sized frame you drew. When you’ve expressed as much as you care to inside that small post-it-sized frame, set it aside and move on to your first medium-sized frame. 

Inside the medium-sized frame, again express yourself in any way you feel by scribbling with color and line (or whatever feels right), but keeping to the medium-sized frame’s limits. 

Now do the largest frame, drawing as much as you care inside that largest frame, really getting as much anger energy expressed there as you can. 

Now move back down to the other medium-sized frame as you begin to modulate and make the anger smaller again. 

End with the smallest frame, allowing your anger to be contained and expressed inside a small space again. 

Journal: What was that like for you? What did you experience? What was it like to make it bigger and then smaller again?