Article Highlights:
- I’m asking for prayers
- My new art practice
- Healing a tooth ache with art
- Igniting your kundalini fire
As we begin today, I wanted to clarify that the toothache mentioned here was by now a couple weeks ago. But I do want you to know that next week, on Wednesday, Oct 25, I’m having fairly extensive oral surgery. I wanted to ask those of you who might remember, and feel inclined, to help clear the drugs from my system afterward and facilitate excellent healing and a new infection free me.
Your prayers are powerful and I would love to have you at my back as I go under the knife 😀 . I’m really looking forward to having this surgery and getting my teeth taken care of at last. And putting an end to a long storied personal and family and ancestral oral history. Amen to all that!
I’ve mentioned here, briefly, that I’ve begun an art practice after being nudged to do so by Wisdom for more than 18 months. So in November of 2021 I jumped in the deep end and created some pieces to give to family when we got together for Christmas. They were well received.
I wanted to keep the art energy going so I decided to pick up art doodling again which I’ve done from time to time over the years while watching videos and such. I decided to think of it as art journaling and myself as an art dabbler. That allowed me to keep it casual and not start having a lot of mental ideas about why Wisdom was asking me to do art.
You know how the mind is: Are you changing careers? What’s this about, what does it all mean? What are you supposed to do with what you create? Why bother if you’re not doing anything with it? The mind can be such a pill, right? I avoided that by calling it journaling.
I set a few guidelines to help with that too. I didn’t want to be trying to be good, getting into the cycles of ups and downs that can come when you’re judging by proper art standards.
So my first guideline was: let every stroke, line, dot, color choice etc come from delight and personal preference. Not from color theory or composition, or any grown up idea about art. I decided to let it all be fun experimentation or creative impulse, not productive outcome.
I loved playing with crayons and paints as a child and that’s my aim – to be in a free, childlike place, immersed in the fun and joy of doing it. I’ve had soOoo much fun with it, taking it in any direction I want, doing anything I please. Including drumming-art-chant for the world, as you know. And now, a little art healing. Which is why I’m telling you all this today.
I had a recurrence of tooth pain on a weekend somewhat recently. My dentist wasn’t available so I was taking other measures to make it through until the Monday. One night I decided to try a little art therapy on it.
It may seem counter intuitive to try to paint while in physical pain because pain makes it hard to concentrate and one feels the need to lie about moaning. But, I reasoned, art is known to be therapeutic. I’d noticed when I was art journaling that it not only felt great mentally and emotionally, but my body was also responding positively to the art process. Maybe it could help the pain, which was keeping me from sleeping anyway. It seemed worth a try.
It was 3 a.m. when I laid out a piece of art paper, a brush or two, water and some acrylic paints I hadn’t done much with before. I turned on a playlist and my song Breath of Fire came on, so I painted to that song. It’s a healing song, by the way.
It’s an energetic, fairly primal song… breath fanning the inner fire, creating life. It always reminds me of lava and fire and steam and new land forming. I played and painted for several repetitions of the 5 minute song and gradually – as you’ve likely guessed – it began to work. I was soon pain free and went to bed, sleeping well until late morning.
Since then I’ve been playing with the potential of the art process for this and other things. Within it all, what I’m really doing of course is using this visceral and physical activity of painting to ignite my creative power, the Kundalini fire within. It feels great!
There was such wisdom in the nudging of spirit that inspired me to amplify my creative energies in this way. Many fun things are happening as a result. I’ve enjoyed sharing the process of it with you today and maybe some of you will be led to discover your own ways of igniting your creative Kundalini fire.
The photo today is the tooth pain painting I did while listening to Breath of Fire. I’ve never done anything like it, isn’t that fun? It delights me.
Artful yours,
~ 💖 Mayet Leilani
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