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AHN NEWS: FALL 2008
This issue of AHN News is dedicated to HEALING ADDICTION. I interview author and creativity coach Eric Maisel about his lastest book, Creative Recovery. Tristy Taylor reviews the book, Chi and Creativity by Kaleo and Elise Ching, and includes a statement by them about working with chi to heal addiction. Lastly, I include links to the Addiction Recovery Foundation and an aritcle they published on the healing benefits of writing.
May this issue be a healing tool for those who are seeking to transform addictive patterns. Wishing you all much joy in the creative process.
-Mary Daniel Hobson, Director, Arts and Healing Network
AHN Interview: Eric Maisel
“It has been long known that making art can heal. This represents a time-honored understanding of the power of creativity and it explains why the arts have always found a place at the table wherever healing, rehabilitation and recovery are promoted.” –Eric Maisel
Eric Maisel, PhD, is an internationally known expert on the creative process, a workshop leader, a bestselling author, a psychotherapist and creativity coach. His books include Creativity for Life: Practical Advice on the Artist’s Personality and Career from America’s Foremost Creativity Coach, The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression, and Fearless Creating: A Step-by-Step Guide to Starting and Completing Your Work or Art. His most recent publication was written in collaboration with Dr. Susan Raeburn and is called Creative Recovery: A Complete Addiction Treatment That Uses Your Natural Creativity. Eric also produces two blogs and two podcasts, which you could learn more about on his web site at www.ericmaisel.com . Mary Daniel Hobson interviewed Eric about his most recent book, co-authored with Susan Raeburn, on helping creative people recover from addiction.
Mary Daniel Hobson: How is the creative person's recovery from addiction a unique path?
Eric Maisel: It’s my and Susan’s belief that the very individuality of the creative person is a risk factor for addiction. If you are basically conventional and can buy into the norms and activities of your society, you will have less trouble with meaning and less anxiety about your place in the universe, and so be at a reduced risk for using addictive behaviors or substances to deal with those problems. On the other hand, if you are born individual, see meaning as a challenge and a problem and not a given, and experience anxiety about your place in your society and in the universe, you are also likely to feel the need to meet those challenges with some behavior or substance that takes your mind off of them.
Mary Daniel: Can you talk about how art and the creative process can be used to heal addiction. Why, in your view, is creativity such a potent healing force?
Eric: It has been long known that making art can heal. This represents a time-honored understanding of the power of creativity and it explains why the arts have always found a place at the table wherever healing, rehabilitation and recovery are promoted. Trauma victims are encouraged to make art. Patients in mental institutions are encouraged to make art, to such an extent that their efforts have led to a branch of art known as “outsider art.” The field of art therapy sprang up based on the twin ideas that art media can be used for diagnostic purposes and that the use of art media promotes insight and healing.
Creating in this simple but important sense—expressing yourself with pastels, writing in your journal—is, among other things, action; and, in the context of healing and recovery, taking action in the service of your recovery is better than brooding about your situation. It can be liberating to get your worried thoughts and feelings out as your fingers, heart, and mind work in tandem to produce a quilt, a song, or a poem. It can also open your eyes, as art therapists believe, because you may learn something about your situation when you examine the finished quilt and discover that its pattern and imagery actually reveal something important about your situation.
Mary Daniel: In your book, you describe creating as "a danger that a creative person must risk." What is dangerous about creativity in the recovery process? And why is it nevertheless essential?
Eric: Active recovery provides you with the opportunity to do decades of creative work while sober. This may not seem to you like a blessing in the first months of sobriety or even in the first year or two, as you struggle to work your recovery program and wish you had a few drinks or a fix to help you with your current novel or painting. Ultimately though, as you find the way to access your emotions, go deep without fear, and tackle the challenges of the creative life without recourse to addictive substances or behaviors, you will discover that you have not only saved your life but saved your creativity as well.
Jeff Tweedy, founder and lead singer of Wilco, described his relief in learning that sobriety had only helped his creative life: “Since I went through the process of being in the hospital and getting healthy, its been a huge anxiety for me to know if there was some kind of zero-sum game that would be played out in terms of can I create without this tension, this anxiety within myself? When we first started recording and things began happening in the way they’d always happened, lyrics came the same way they had always come for me, songs just felt like, wow, where did that song come from? Things started happening and once everything became apparent that things would be the way they’d always been, that I didn’t have to trade health for creativity, it was an enormous relief.”
That you are in active recovery doesn’t, however, mean that you won’t experience depression, anxiety, emotional ups and downs, relationship difficulties, and have the shadowy parts of your personality reappear with a vengeance. That you are in active recovery doesn’t mean that it won’t frustrate you to spend two years writing a screenplay that never comes alive, that it won’t make you want to tear your hair out to have your excellent novel remaindered because of poor sales, or that it will inoculate you against doubts about your talent or your imaginative powers. Recovery may save you from drinking yourself to death but it doesn’t save you from life. Life—the good and the bad, the easy and the difficult—inexorably continues.
The act of creating presents many risks to recovery: your current novel may frustrate you; the adrenaline you turn on in order to perform may be hard to moderate once the performance is over; the “grandiosity” that allows you to think that you can produce something new and brilliant can slide into a grandiosity that allows you to think that you can drink with impunity; and so on. But while these risks are real and must be reckoned with (especially in early recovery), they should not be allowed to stop you from manifesting your creative nature. Recovery is your first priority; but recovery without creativity is a paltry thing, as creativity is one your primary meaning-making outlets. So you want to be careful but you also want to carefully get creativity back into your life.
Mary Daniel: Your book has a number of interesting exercises, such as “Creative Addiction Replacement” - please share a little about how this exercise works.
Eric: As you live your life in recovery, one of your jobs is to engage in activities that replace the activities associated with your addiction. Previously, you spent six hours every night at the bar. Now, what will you do? Previously you spent every waking hour compulsively looking for sex. Now, what will you do? Finding meaningful replacement activities is one of a recovering addict’s hardest challenges, as it will not satisfy him to merely plunk himself down in the front of the television set or serve him to veer in the direction of some new harmful obsession. One of the satisfactory things he can do is to use creating as his signature replacement strategy.
The Canadian painter Robert Gen explained: “Replacement ‘units’ can be tailor-made to the previous addiction. A cigarette, for example, burns down in about eight minutes. The idea is to make eight-minute poems, paintings, or whatever. These units can be repeated in about the same frequency and timing as the previous addiction. This is habit management and it can be a lot of fun. It's important not to give yourself time to think. A bad habit is simply replaced by a good one. Materials at hand are the only prerequisite-- freshly squeezed paint, that sort of thing. This system is called CAR - Creative Addiction Replacement. It's a proactive way to keep the mind from the depressing stuff. Like pulling a cigarette out of a packet and lighting up, it requires an action without a lot of thought.”
In order for this replacement strategy to work, you need to get into the kind of relationship to creating that allows you to move right to creating without a lot of resistance. If you have a lifetime habit of resistance and blockage and have done relatively little creating up to this point, then this replacement strategy will prove just another frustration. If, for instance, you’ve never found it easy to write every day, it is unlikely that you will suddenly find it easy to write for eight minutes many times a day. Still, the neatness and simplicity of the idea of replacing addiction-related behaviors with creativity-related behaviors may even help with your resistance and blockage. You are not asking yourself to produce great art but “simply” replacing an unwanted behavior with a wanted one.
Mary Daniel: One of things I have so enjoyed in your writing about the creative process is your conversation about artists and the creation of meaning. Could you talk a little about why the creation of meaning is so essential to an artist, particularly one who is recovering from addiction.
Eric: One of the main aspects of being a creative person—and of striving for individuality—is that you feel responsible for making meaning of your life. Where this honorable stance leads is to regular meaning crises, since the activity you had invested meaning in—your singing career, your research career—will on some days be rendered less meaningful, or even meaningless, because, for example, no one is recording you or no one is funding you. Creators are prone to addictions because an addiction is an ineffective but tempting way to handle these recurrent meaning crises.
Why is your relationship to meaning such a risk factor? Say that you find little meaning in your day job. Your novel isn’t going well, which is a second meaning drain. The hard work of creating is wearing you out, as is the hard work of filling up your seconds, minutes, and hours with meaning. You feel at odds with your culture and at odds with your world. A drink seems to help. Many drinks seem to help more. Drinking becomes an obsession, showing up at the neighborhood bar becomes a compulsion. Especially if you are burdened by extra risk factors like a biological propensity for addiction and early developmental traumas, you are staring an addiction straight in the face.
The answer is to learn how to effectively handle meaning crises when they occur. The primary way to do this is to shift from the idea that there is meaning to find and adopt the stance that there is only meaning to make and that it is your responsibility to keep the meaning in your life afloat by making conscious, mindful meaning investments. If the meaning leaks out of your current novel, you reinvest meaning in it or you mindfully abandon it and quickly invest meaning in a new creative project. The better you get at taking charge of the meaning in your life, the better armed you will be to keep addiction at bay.
Mary Daniel: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Mary Daniel Hobson: Susan and I believe that Creative Recovery presents the first complete addiction recovery program for creative individuals. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel: recovery programs that are already available tend to be strong and serve many people. But they also tend not to recognize the special risk factors of creators and their special needs in recovery. We hope Creative Recovery builds on the programs that already exist and adds something useful for the millions of creative individuals for whom addiction is a real danger—or a current reality.
To learn more about Eric Maisel and his books and coaching practice, please visit www.ericmaisel.com.
FEATURED BOOK:
Chi and Creativity: Vital Energy and Your Inner Artist
by Elise Dirlam Ching and Kaleo Ching,
Reviewed by Tristy Taylor
In 1988, Kaleo & Elise met and had their first date visiting a Tai Chi class. From that day forward this dynamic and creative couple have been writing, creating, teaching and performing together. Chi and Creativity is their latest collaboration.
Chi is the vital life force energy that affects our physical, emotional, spiritual and energetic bodies. Drawing on their many years of practice, study, and deep understanding of Chi, traditional Chinese medicine, massage, and creativity, Elise and Kaleo Ching have developed a creative, healing process that engages the body, mind, and spirit in a complete and transformational way.
In Chi and Creativity, we learn this process of transformation through step-by-step instructions in working with meridians, pressure points and other ways our Chi can flow, as well as personal stories, creative projects, and invitations to go further, bringing self awareness, empowerment and healing of the self and community. Many instructional pictures help the reader to try different positions and exercises at home. Also included in the book are inspiring photos of creative projects that students of Kaleo and Elise have created in classes and workshops.
There are layers upon layers to be explored in this book. Much like a companion on an inner journey, the pages of this book can be used like a friend for reflection and encouragement as well as a source for new ideas and tools to experiment with. All the exercises can be done again and again with new insight coming through with each experience.
This is a great book for spiritual seekers, healers, martial arts practitioners, artists, writers, performers, therapists and anyone who is open to taking both an inner and outer journey with their consciousness and healing.
This softcover book has 320 pages and was published by Blue Snake Books in 2007 . To order a copy through Amazon, please click here. Or learn more about their work online at www.kaleoching.com.
Kaleo and Elise’s Thoughts on Using Chi and Creativity to Heal Addiction
Tristy Taylor recently wrote to Elise and Kaleo Ching and asked them to share how they felt the concepts in Chi and Creativity could help heal someone with addiction. Below is their response.
“The principles in Chi and Creativity can be helpful to a person working with addiction by encouraging the cultivation of Chi awareness and creative self-expression and introducing practices that guide one's Chi to flow in a life-enhancing way. The result can bring a sense of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well being that is healthy and natural. Specifically, the following aspects of our book may be of benefit.
*Many of the practices in Chi awareness help to open the Micro/Macrocosmic Orbits, facilitate the healthy flow of Chi in the organ-meridian system, and harmonize the chakras. Engaging the chakras helps one to find emotional balance, receive wisdom from the heavens, ground and center with the earth, and seek healthy intimacy with self and others. When the chakras and the meridians are open, we have found—both in one-on-one and in group journeys through hypnotherapy/guided imagery and art—the results are more powerful. The client or student is more open to receiving information, images, wisdom, and communications from the subconscious. There is more openness to conflict resolution, forgiveness, and letting go of emotional blocks for moving on to more empowering endeavors. Hypnotherapy/guided imagery is a way off accessing the subconscious realms. Art is a way of processing and manifesting the discoveries, of releasing stagnant Chi and bringing clarity. We have seen this happen through journaling, collage, and maskmaking—all alchemical process of transforming mud into gold.
* Zhan Zhuang and other Chi meditation practices help to relax the body and open to heaven and earth. They help not only to cultivate emotional balance but also to connect with a deep spiritual presence. They help the practitioner connect with ancestors, spirit guides, totem animal, and one's personal muse, so that one comes to feel more supported and guided in one's life and to trust in divine wisdom and timing.
* The Chi Kung Tiger's Breath form and acupressure are powerful practices to build Chi, enhance the immune system, and detoxify the body. They detoxify and cleanse the internal organs and meridians, balance the endocrine system, increase blood in the cardiovascular system, enhance the respiratory system, pump the lymphatic system, reprogram the nervous system, lubricate the musculoskeletal system, and move the gastrointestinal system. They help to move stagnant Chi and free blockages, including blocks to creativity. They enhance energy in a relaxing way and facilitate access to subconscious messages.
* Five element principles and practices facilitate an understanding of one's relationship to their guiding forces within one's body and being and in one's relationship with others and the environment. The resulting perception of the interacting five elemental influences brings a deeper appreciation of one's interconnectedness with all and encourages a valuing of self, others, and nature. The five element inner sounds help to release stuck excessive emotions that keep one from moving on in life and to balance the internal organs so that they function more efficiently. When the internal organs function better, the emotions are digested, processed, and either evacuated from or assimilated into the person. Understanding the five elements also brings more clarity and emotional balance. For example, metal chooses what is important to bring in and let go; water supports one's will to proceed through challenges; wood encourages one to find meaning and purpose through work and action in the world; fire urges healthy connectedness with others; earth grounds, nurtures, and promotes self-acceptance. The five elements also help to bring balance to one's creative endeavors—balance among the intention of metal, the subconscious processes of water, the creative manifestation of wood, the sharing of creative expression with others through fire, and the conception of a new creative embryo in earth.
Since we are physical, emotional, energetic, mental, and spiritual beings, all these aspects of ourselves are cleansed, processed, and balanced. The result is more focused and intentional awareness and presence in all our creative life's endeavors.”
FEATURED LINK:
Addiction Recovery Foundation
As their web site home page reads, “Welcome to the charity's 'online newspaper', created to promote, support and enhance long-term sustainable recovery from addictions/dependencies of all kinds. We are delighted to receive and disseminate constructive comments, blogs, articles and research…The Addiction Recovery Foundation provides both professionals and the recovery community with free resources on how to recover.” Their site includes a blog and the posting from April 2007 features a nice article on the use of writing to help with healing addiction. As the author explains, the positive impact of the writing practice was affirmed. “Clients comments included: ‘It is a different activity which is really helpful to help me see what my creativity has to offer that day’ and ‘the work I did round my Dad might be the best work I have done.’ Another wrote ‘It provides me with a much-needed outlet. It is also beneficial for my self esteem when I am occasionally surprised by what I write.’ One said, ‘I love writing and realized from this group I have a talent.’”
Arts and Healing Podcast
Don’t miss the chance to hear the live voices of healing artists who are making a difference in the world. The Arts and Healing Podcast has featured audio interviews with the following outstanding artists and visionaries.
Wendy Johnson, author of Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate
Aviva Rahmani, Eco-artist and activist
Reverand Tristy Taylor on Dreamwork and Creative Ministry
Rachel Bagby, vocal artist and recipient of the 2008 AHN Award
Susan Leibovitz Steinman, environmental artist and co-founder of WEAD
John Fox, poetry therapist and author of Poetic Medicine
SARK, artist/author of many books including Make Your Creative Dreams Real
Sharon Siskin, community-based artist and teacher
Interviews with Recipients of the AHN Award from 1997-2007
Alli Chagi Starr, dancer and activist
Mary Daniel Hobson, artist and director of the Arts and Healing Network
To subscribe to the Arts and Healing Podcast via iTunes, please click here. Otherwise, please click on individual links above to hear each specific podcast.
The Arts & Healing Podcast is produced by Britt Bravo .
READERS RESPOND
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