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| 'digging for gold' with Seth Apter |
What fun! It's time again for Seth Apter's Buried Treasure blog hop. Each year the Seth asks bloggers to share a favorite post from the past. And every year many creative, inspiring individuals answer the call! This is not your average blog-hop & you might be surprised by the variety and quality of posts that people share. Additional blog links will be added from June 12-16th - click here to see what everyone is sharing.
Today my time machine is taking us back to the summer of 2010. Dr. Laura Koniver (artist, author, physician, mother) popped by to share her thoughts on creativity and health. Dr. Koniver had shared her art and home here before in an interview and studio tour and kindly agreed write a guest post.
A quick note before we blast to the past, a couple of the links shared (those to her art/etsy shop, blog and facebook) are no longer active. You can now find all of this info and more at Dr. Koniver's website IntuitionPhysician.com.
How The Simple Act Of Creating Must Create Physical Health by Laura Koniver, MD
I met Laura on Etsy last fall when she offered to sponsor a Thursday Giveaway & Saturday Studio Tour on this blog. (Click the links to visit those posts. Also, if you have a moment, stop by her online shop http://www.koniver.etsy.com). A kind, talented and very interesting person, Laura describes herself as "A former physician turned artist and homeschooling Mama..." She is also a thought provoking writer. If you get a chance check out her blog, http://heartsongfineart.com/blog. It is a peaceful place full of insight and eye candy.
Lucky for us Laura stopped by to share her thoughts on creativity & health. After you've read this piece please take a moment to leave a comment. I think we could get a fascinating dialog going here. Now I'm going get out of your way. I'll meet you at the bottom of the post where I have some info about a new random drawing. (By the way, All photos are courtesy of Laura Koniver MD.)
How I view health now...
or... how the simple act of creating must create physical health.
or... how the simple act of creating must create physical health.
I took the scenic route in becoming an artist. The really looooong way around. The kind of path that took me through medical school, residency, and a bit of clinical practice as a physician before I had children and realized my heartsong was to be a mommy and an artist. That kind of long way around.
For many years, I tried to merge my two lives... there must be some way (I kept banging my head against the wall) to be an artist who can still heal people medically. Right? It should make sense. I thought about becoming an art therapist. Maybe medical illustrating? I invented some new medical/art therapies including casting the human body and then painting it as a work of art mounted on a canvas. Labels... labels... Must. Label. Myself. Something. Am I a physician-turned-artist? An artist with a medical degree? A temporarily side-tracked doctor?
And finally, FINALLY, I realized what I intuitively knew all along... creating *is* healing. Cut out the middle man, no need to invent a new medical therapy... To create at all, in any form, is to create health. The very act of creating allows health to flow.
Creating is life. Being alive is to create. There just isn’t any other way around it. All you have to do is sit there and breath, and you are creating.
Because never, in the history of ever, has there been another person like you, living this moment of time, breathing this breath of air that you breathe... so everything you do is new and unique. And never, in the history of ever, will there be another being exactly like you, living this moment of time, breathing this exact breath of air... So the very act of being alive is to create something new and irreplaceable.
But, you can take it a step further and a step further every moment. Because the more you create, the more life force you draw through you. So even though just taking a breath is a creative act, creating something more out of the moment will draw more life in you and through you, and more health to you.
For many years, I tried to merge my two lives... there must be some way (I kept banging my head against the wall) to be an artist who can still heal people medically. Right? It should make sense. I thought about becoming an art therapist. Maybe medical illustrating? I invented some new medical/art therapies including casting the human body and then painting it as a work of art mounted on a canvas. Labels... labels... Must. Label. Myself. Something. Am I a physician-turned-artist? An artist with a medical degree? A temporarily side-tracked doctor?
And finally, FINALLY, I realized what I intuitively knew all along... creating *is* healing. Cut out the middle man, no need to invent a new medical therapy... To create at all, in any form, is to create health. The very act of creating allows health to flow.
Creating is life. Being alive is to create. There just isn’t any other way around it. All you have to do is sit there and breath, and you are creating.
Because never, in the history of ever, has there been another person like you, living this moment of time, breathing this breath of air that you breathe... so everything you do is new and unique. And never, in the history of ever, will there be another being exactly like you, living this moment of time, breathing this exact breath of air... So the very act of being alive is to create something new and irreplaceable.
But, you can take it a step further and a step further every moment. Because the more you create, the more life force you draw through you. So even though just taking a breath is a creative act, creating something more out of the moment will draw more life in you and through you, and more health to you.
The healthiest thing you can do is to create and allow your life force to flow through you.
One form of creating is no better or superior at creating health then another form of creating. Being a painter or an author or a poet is no more healthy or creative then creating a new meal, decorating a room, cutting your son’s hair. All work can be creative. All work can be meaningful.
In fact, classic artists like painters and sculptures can be the worst at using creativity in their daily lives. As pointed out in the book The Path Of Least Resistance, Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life by Robert Fritz
, artists typically sequester the act of creating to just their chosen art form. But creating is something we all do, we need to do, just as naturally as we need to breath. It can not be sequestered away. It can not apply to only one area of our lives. It is life.Most people live with a problem solving mind frame. And even though this is extremely effective at what it does (solving problems) what you are left with is the absence of a problem. This is far different then creating something that wasn’t there before.
To create is simply to make something new where there wasn’t anything before.
If you are going around problem solving your life... you will be left with a void... no problems, everything solved... but nothing created.
And what usually happens when you have an empty space to fill? Our minds are great at jumping right in with *helpful* things like nagging suspicions, nit-picky chatter, jealousy, gossip, finding something else to be dissatisfied with... even a new symptom or a re-emergence of an old disease pattern comes back once the problem is solved, because you have not actively *created* something to take it’s place. In short, you are creating a new problem to have something else to solve.
What if, instead of solving a problem and getting rid of something, you decide instead to create. To make something new that wasn’t there before. To bring into your life, and this world, a new situation that is exactly how you want it to be.
This is not staying still, battling off problems, living in the defensive. This is taking a step in the direction you want to go. This is creating. This is art. This is filling a blank canvas with what you want to fill it with. This is healing. This is the flow of health.
Creating allows life to move with you and through you and allows health to flow.
Back to basics. You can’t *not* create. You being alive fulfills that contract. If you are alive, you agree to be creating in every moment of your life, every fiber of your being.
So what do you want to create? If you block creation by problem solving, your energy stagnates and creates dis-ease. If you create instead of problem solving, you allow the flow of life to sweep you off your feet and into the future of your dreams.
So, what do you think about Laura's ideas? Please leave a comment - I'd love to hear your feedback. Also, your comment will enter you in the newest random drawing (to be announced here tomorrow). So, be sure to pop back & check out the new prize donated by Laura. You'll also be given a chance to have a second entry in the random drawing (which will be held on 7/15).
Laura, thank you for stopping by today with these intriguing ideas. I have one last question before you go: What are you creating now?
LK: I'm finishing up a new children's book on this topic, the flow of health and joy, geared towards younger children. It is a picture book, written and illustrated by me. It is called Jake. A Guinea Pig Finds Adventure. and will be released this fall.
To stay informed of this book, sign up for Laura's Facebook fan page - http://facebook.com/heartsongfineart.
Other places to see what Laura is up to next include:
http://koniver.etsy.com
Love, love, love this post!! Thanks for sharing as I didn't see it first time around.
ReplyDeleteI'm in 52-pickup and think you are too?
xo