Community Healing: The Monks Are Coming!

The Tibetan monks are ready to begin our community mandala.

    A Video Captures Our Story Our community needed healing.  Three weeks before the Tibetan monks were to arrive from the Drepung Loseling Monastery, our city was devastated by a”100 year flood.”  Extremely heavy rains caused our rivers to overflow, which caused many dams to break, which caused huge devastation throughout our community.  Homes were destroyed. Our water…

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Tibetan Inspired Community Art: Mandalas, Talismans and Prayer Flags

Talisman of Healing

  Tibetan Inspired Community Art For our 20th anniversary exhibition, Circles of Life: Making Art, Creating Communities of Hope, I wanted to pay tribute to the Tibetan Culture, as they had influenced the design of my creativity practices for at least 15 years. Curious why Tibet?  Read our earlier post – Travel Inspiration: Stumbling Across the Tibetan Sacred…

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Make Art: Creativity is Our Birthright

What is Art? In describing the work that we do at Healing Icons, many times I am fearful of using the word ART, as it can be intimidating. It conjures up images of hushed museums and galleries with stark white walls, where everyone is dressed in black, looking very pretentious and serious. Art has become more…

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Finding a New Whole: Self-Portraits

Each spring, I like to dig a little bit deeper into who I am, face some fears, uncover a long-forgotten aspect of who I truly am and hopefully move one step closer towards my personal quest for wholeness. In Jungian psychology, this journey is referred to as the path of individuation, a process where we learn and…

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Cultivating Optimism During Difficult Times

Nature is Magnificently Creative and Inspiring If you are not familiar with Bing, it’s a wonderful search engine that presents a different, stunning photograph on their landing page every day. The images are always wonderful, guaranteed to delight and inspire. Today’s image was the incredible photograph of Jersey tiger moths above. Talk about nature as an inspiration for visual…

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Calming Practice: Creating Mandalas

When I arrived last Wednesday to set up for our new Lunch and Learn Series, Mickey and Linda were already there, setting up the registration table. Our “greeters” Donna and Mae arrived soon thereafter, and Evelyn was not far behind. These five women are our ambassadors. They are experienced, seasoned participants who are well on the…

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Perpetually Stressed?

Overwhelmed? Overloaded? Over-scheduled? Overstimulated? We are bombarded every single day with information from a multitude of sources, and our minds have been trained to absorb this onslaught, this rapid-fire of words and images and sounds. As if this isn’t enough to overwhelm, most of us also have an insane To-Do List. Much is expected and…

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Speaking from the Heart: On Mourning

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. – T.S.  Eliot, “Four Quartets” No matter where you are in your cancer journey, life has changed. Overwhelmed by the resulting uncertainty, we often become metaphorically frozen in time, unable…

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Don’t be Afraid of Drawing

  I stumbled upon this article on Buzzfeed about a graphic artist and her four-year-old daughter who draw together. It reminded me of the surrealist’s game exquisite corpse, which is a fantastic, playful way of drawing collaboratively. Try this when you are feeling down, stuck, or uncertain how you feel:  Gather a couple of pals or family members, and don’t…

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