Solid Mission with a Global Vision

We are a non-profit on a mission to inspire, nurture and heal the entire human being – body, mind, and spirit- through creative expression, breathing techniques and meditative practices.

Healing Icons® vision is to inspire growth in the lives of adults by nurturing the human spirit – one person, one story, one community at a time.

By serving our global brothers and sisters through public events, exhibitions, on-line classes, workshops and retreats, Healing Icons® provides relief, reduces suffering, and makes positive change in people’s lives! We cultivate small inspirational communities to transform trauma into opportunities for growth, and fulfillment.

Join us and connect with others through the restorative language of creative expression.

Together we can begin...

Within our communities, we

  • Diminish our aloneness
  • Lessen anxiety and stress
  • Alleviate fears and frustrations
  • Ride our emotional rollercoasters
  • Learn to feel, what we feel, when we’re feeling it
  • Find connections with others
  • Stumble upon fulfillment where we least expect it
  • Become friends with uncertainty and most importantly begin to see beyond

Why create from life’s uncertainties and struggles?  
When we repress emotions and silence our stories, our ability to become whole is weakened.  Creativity offers us the safety to unearth and express all that we think and feel.  As we creatively shape these thoughts and feelings, we begin to cope more effectively with the roller coaster of emotions that  life triggers.

Healing Icons® offers the tools needed for creatively journeying through life!

Restorative & Life Changing Offerings Serve

All Chronic Diseases +  Life Disruptive Events + Individual and Community Healing
Let a few cancer survivors show you how.
Million
Yearly Diagnoses

It is hard to imagine what 14 million people really look like but one in every four might be easier. One in every four people in our world will face this arduous Cancer Journey, a grueling journey physically, emotionally, spiritually. If you’re a cancer survivor, you get this.  If you are not, let us introduce you to a few of these millions of courageous survivors. Let them show you how art helped save their lives.

Ramifications

We invite you to put yourselves in their shoes. Follow them through their doctor’s appointments, their chemo & radiation treatments, their pain & nausea, fatigue & sleeplessness, their body scars & loss of hair, their fight for life!

No one chooses this path but everyone needs a helping hand through it.

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We gather together in solidarity bound by what the creative process brings.

Finding the Right Kind of Support


Overwhelmed by what is happening to our bodies, it can be extremely difficult to even identify what is being felt on the inside. A participant once said, “I feel as though I have un-namable overwhelming sensations that whirl around inside my head and my body but they are not speech ready.” Not Speech Ready.

How do we experience what is happening in our lives when we can’t put words to it…when Sometimes Words Are Not Enough.

This is where Healing Icons® comes into play.

Art as Healing

Healing Icons

What is a Healing Icon®? The word icon comes from the Greek word eikon, meaning likeness. So a Healing Icon® is simply visually representation of the cancer survivor’s journey, each one being uniquely personal and intimate.

Creative Expression

This is art making that comes from the gut, honest & raw.  It is not about talent and right or wrong.  It is simply about learning another language and trusting where this silent powerful language of color and texture and line leads us.

Awesome Sense of Freedom

Most importantly we experience an awesome sense of freedom while having loads of fun getting messy, getting lost and getting very curious. As you begin to get lost in the process of art making, slowly your creations will begin to speak to you, giving voice to what was once unspeakable.

Healing Icons Student Mandalas
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awesome-sense-of-freedom

Post Treatment

After treatment many survivors feel strangely alone and abandoned especially if a cancer survivorship plan has not been put into place. As the journey forward begins, there are many quality of life issues to face. Post-treatment challenges such as the short and long term side effects of treatment, stress of years of follow up appointments, fear of reoccurrence… In other words, transitioning from active treatment into recovery isn’t easy. Healing Icons classes offers support during active treatment and beyond.

Proving It

Research shows

Research from the Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine shows that mindfulness meditation coupled with art therapy can successfully decrease stress symptoms- Yay! We knew this already but nice when studies point to what we know and love!  Our mindful art-making practices produce the same benefits as meditation, improving your ability to handle and recover from stress while lowering stress hormone levels.