Embodied Mark Making creates space for MATTER
and SPIRIT to be expressed in unison.
Before learning to form letters, symbols and images, we all began making marks. Whether with a stick in the soil, splashing in water, using a crayon on paper, dragging a seashell in the sand—we made boundless marks directly from our Creative Heart Space. Boundless marks remain alive in us and connect us to all forms of expression.
The following boundless marks were made by four year old Ashton
while responding to a wild violet.
At Creative School for Integration we honor and are inspired by many sacred traditions and by many innovative trail blazers. We dive deeper into this on our membership site and in our Creative Sessions—nonetheless, click below to read a bit about the core beliefs and trail blazers that support what we are up to.
Betty Edwards; a North-American art teacher who is now 99-years old wrote her globally acclaimed Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain in 1979. In this book, Edwards focused on the creative capacity of the right hemisphere of the human brain to SEE what unfolds each moment via light, matter and shadow. In her book, she also commented on how creative people describe connection, timelessness, a lack of anxiety and a sense of close attention to shapes, spaces and forms when said shapes, spaces and forms remain nameless. For example, instead of instructing her students to draw a "hand," Edwards would coach the student to let go of what the "hand" was called and instead have the student simply draw the shapes and spaces that made up its form.
In addition to Edwards' research of the brain's intuitive right hemisphere, at Creative School for Integration we ALSO acknowledge that there are neural cells in our heart and gut. AND that the vagus nerve, the longest nerve in our body, conveys information from our brain to most organs in our body and vice versa. This means we have an integrated body and mind—or Bodymind as supported by the ground breaking research of, Dr. Candace Pert who passed away at the age of 67 in 2013.
Dr. Pert's book, Molecules of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine explains the biochemical connection of our Bodymind and provides the opportunity to heal the separation of the Spirit and the Flesh that was concretized by the 17th century French philosopher René Descartes and other dudes going back to Plato (428—347 BCE). One might say the philosophical separation of the body from the soul was a strategy to make people feel "less than" and thus need an ordained intermediary to provide a valid connection to one's own body, soul and/or higher power. At Creative School for Integration each participant explores connection in their own unique way while releasing self-judgment and re-learning to trust their intuition.
Dr. Pert's findings also support that we are ALL made from ONE Ecosystem that originated with Starstuff — pure consciousness, a field of infinite possibility and creativity—and that this is what we return to.
Edwards and Pert help us reclaim what we already know deep in the cellular wisdom of our bodies—Matter and Spirit are NOT separate. We can CHOOSE to trust our creative responses to the natural world in ALL of its Macro and Micro magnificence.