Wabi Sabi Fiber Art ~ Healing The Heart With The Hands...

"Healing is a journey deep within oneself -- a search
for soul, the essence of the self. It seeks to balance
the inner and outer worlds, to connect and to
integrate. Healing is the reuniting of the body,
mind and spirit."

~ Diane Mariechild, Motherwit ~

The thing is that somehow or another we have moved up so far in our physical bodies we live in our minds. I think this is the cause of many problems today, inconceivable ongoing depression, a lack of connection with our physical bodies causing eating disorders and obesity, a general listlessness followed by periods of thinking so hard for so long on so many things that we are as if a head floating around without a body. I believe this is a central cause in today's Great Disconnect, and we'd better heal it soon.

I know about this first hand. First, I was abused as a child for a very long time. The outcome is that I have been floating about for most of my 53 years like a head whose body was bumping about on the ground behind me, I, totally disconnected from the fact that it physically existed. Whether I gained weight or got hurt didn't seem to phase me because I was living in my head. But we can't just live in our heads. Now after 3 decades of talk therapy I am on the right medications (which took five years to figure out with my doctor, as far as which meds in which dosages) and I don't care what anyone says, they work and I'm living proof. Now the next step, once I started to re-enter my physical body, was to learn how to keep me there.





I am primarily a writer. That didn't help one whit as far as creating the body/mind balance because it just means I live in my brain 24 hours a day to the point that I can get little else done and don't sleep well at night. Then came fiber art.

I have knitted since I was young, but I was an adult when I began to weave, handspin yarn, and do myriad other fiber genres and I learned something startling. When I stop the world around me and just pick up my fiber art I become wholly absorbed in the work of my hands, my physical body, in what I am creating. I am inside myself and outside of my head. The beauty about being an intuitive artist is that you aren't following patterns (too much slipping back in your head mode) you are following your hands propelled by your heart, your feelings, your intuition. And nothing has been as freeing as crochet for me. I am now working on several pieces. The one you see here and at the top of the page looks to be the first in a line of crocheted jewely I would like to sell, I am also working on the piece you've been seeing all along but as it is getting bigger and moving more slowly now I will stick it in, here and there, as there are significant, noticeable changes. And I am working on a piece of Freeform for our year long FreeForm exchange on my Women's Artistic Soul list where we exchange pieces with new partners each month, and will have a years worth of finished pieces to make something of, with a little list show early next year. Lots of fun and opens your channel to your creativity exponentially.

So once again, I am crocheting for my life. I am adding in beads as I go. I am planning to add in other things. I am beginning to be more mindful about shape with the jewelry pieces so that they are the correct size for the pieces, but even then, there are infinite possibilities for the work.

And so you can begin to see that once you pick up a new craft, it will start floating you downstream through a beautiful landscape of infinite possibilities, and as my hands work, I am in my body, and as I am focused on my body and my hands, my grey matter relaxes a bit, and I am all the more at peace as I feel the myriad pieces of myself finding their way back together, being woven into one great tapestry, my body, my mind, my heart, my soul, my hand, all of a piece. And once you feel this you start to feel many deep shifts as your body and the world around you and your relationships begin to change. You don't effect one thing without affecting them all. Be very gentle with yourself as the ripples of change through your body and life start happening inside of you. It is not only worth whatever comes your way, it is the only way to live and survive.

Find your way to an artform that calls to you. Do it everyday. You'll never be sorry that you did and you will undergo a transformation that will change your life for the better.

Blessings and love to each and every one of you. Now I'm back to my crochet....

Maitri