 |
Finding the Gift in
Illness: The Body as Storyteller
by Lucia Capacchione, Ph.D., A.T.R. |
Our world sees physical illness as an
enemy: something to be gotten rid of. No one wants to be
sick or in pain if they can help it. Whether we have an
acute condition or chronic one, our first reflex is to
make it go away. The body wants health. We want to feel
good. Our natural instinct is toward health. And never
before in history have their been so many methods for
removing symptoms, deadening pain and treating all kinds
of maladies.
But what if the illness doesn’t leave so quickly? What
if it is considered a life-threatening disease, like
cancer? Or a chronic one, like Muscular Dystrophy or
Arthritis. Maybe there is long-term treatment to endure.
Or perhaps the medical professional cannot diagnose the
condition.
My own experience with a mysterious illness that doctors
misdiagnosed and were unable to treat was this: illness
is my teacher. I discovered that there were treasures to
be mined in the midst of fear and physical pain that
came with my illness.
What, you say? How can illness be a teacher? Illness
usually hurts. It can debilitate us, or both. It
sometimes leads to treatments and medications with side
effects worse than the original disease. That was my
dilemma when facing the mysterious condition mentioned
earlier. I was thirty-five, a professional woman,
divorced, the mother of two young children. The doctors
didn’t know what I had, but my gut instinct told me the
complete fatigue that sent me to bed for weeks was
symptomatic of a serious disease. If we didn’t get to
the bottom of this, I knew in my heart that I would die.
After scores of visits to specialists at an HMO, taking
all kinds of medication (to no avail), I stumbled into a
discovery that would save my life, change it forever,
and give me the greatest gift I have ever received. I am
speaking of the revelations that emerged in a blank
book. It was a sketch book that I turned into a personal
journal. On its unlined pages, I gave my body a voice. I
allowed it to speak to me, to tell me its story and
eventually to heal me.
That sketch book that morphed into a personal diary has
led to hundreds of volumes over my lifetime. I later
called it my Creative Journal. On the unlined pages of
this Creative Journal I found myself drawing and writing
my feelings, dreams, experiences, memories, questions,
concerns and my true heart’s desires. The art in my
journal bore no resemblance to the work I did as a
professional designer and graphic artist. It was
child-like, primitive and full of feelings and symbols I
could not understand.
When I expressed myself in my journal, with complete
honesty and without holding anything back, I felt
better. It happened every time. Eventually I fully
recovered from my illness (later diagnosed as an illness
in the family of lupus) and found my life’s work, which
included teaching the Creative Journal method.
Upon becoming an art therapist (after careers in art and
child development), I noticed that clients and students
with chronic and serious illness were flocking to my
work. I showed them what I had learned about talking
with my body and finding inner wisdom there. Invitations
to teach at pioneering cancer support centers, like the
Wellness Community, began pouring in. This was all
happening in the late 70s and early 80s when the idea of
cancer patients sitting around telling their story was
revolutionary. It was an honor and privilege to be part
of that early movement to give patients and their
illness a voice. It was empowering for all of us.
The most effective way that I have found to let the body
speak its truth is through drawing and writing. The body
actually becomes a storyteller. First we draw an outline
of the body with felt pens or crayons. An unlined blank
book, sketcher’s diary or notebook are best for this
work. Talent in art is absolutely irrelevant here. We’re
not making Art, but diagramming our bodies. These
silhouettes usually look like Gumby figures. That’s
fine.
The next step is to color inside the body outline
indicating any areas of pain or discomfort or even
pleasure. This allows us to create our own inner map, an
X-Ray of sorts, showing our sensations. We translate
them into colors and shapes. An inflamed area might be
colored red or orange. A cold body part might appear as
blue. Numb areas often show up as gray or even black.
There is no right or wrong way to do this. Colors
choices are strictly personal and individual. Follow
your instincts. Find the healer within.
The drawings look child-like. That is the whole idea: to
feel our bodies the way we did as kids. And to express
what we feel both physically and emotionally using the
language young children use: drawing and coloring.
After we draw the body sensations out into the body map
we then have a chat with each body part that was colored
in. There are four healing questions that I have come up
for getting to the inner truth buried under pain and
illness. The questions are asked with the dominant hand.
The answers are given with the non-dominant. This opens
up the right brain emotional centers and seems to help
us access physical sensations more readily. It is a
whole brain approach that yields amazing answers.
This dialogue must be done on paper, writing with both
hands alternately, in order to get the results I have
been seeing with clients for thirty-five years. It
cannot be done on a computer or in your head.
The Four Healing Questions
Who or what (body part) are you?
How do you feel (physically and/or emotionally)?
Why do you feel this way? (What caused this?)
What can I do to help you?
There is an optional fifth question to ask if the answer
to it doesn’t emerge automatically (which it often
does). The fifth question is:
What are you here to teach me or show me?
I invite you to embrace the Inner Teacher that lives
within pain, illness and discomfort. Your body has so
many stories to tell, so many feelings to share, so much
wisdom to impart. It has so many answers waiting inside
to be heard. There are treasures buried right inside you
own body. Uncover them!
©2011 Lucia Capacchione. All Rights Reserved.
Books
by Lucia Capacchione:
(by purchasing books from Amazon.com you are helping to support Soulful
Living)
Lucia Capacchione, Ph.D, A.T.R, is an internationally known art therapist,
corporate consultant, trainer and best-selling author of 12 books including,
Recovery of Your Inner Child, The Creative Journal, and The Power of Your
Other Hand and her new title, Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of
Your Dreams (Tarcher/Putnam).
Dr. Capacchione conducts public workshops and trains professionals
internationally through her Creative Journal Expressive Arts Certification
Program. Her books have been translated into several languages and her work
has been endorsed by such experts in the health field as Joan
Borysenko, Bernie Siegel, Louise Hay, Gerald Jampolsky and Norman Cousins.
Recognized for her ground-breaking discovery of the healing power of
writing and drawing with the non-dominant hand, Dr. Capacchione is a pioneer
in healing and recovery through expressive arts. She has been the subject of
many magazine and newspaper articles and frequent guest on radio and
television. She is director of the Creative Journal Expressive Arts
certification training program for professionals.
An inspiring speaker, workshop leader and director of spiritual retreats,
Dr. Capacchione engages audiences with playful, hands-on experiences. Widely
acclaimed for her ability to catalyze innate creativity and inner wisdom, her
methods are being applied in education, medicine, mental
health, the arts and the entertainment industry.
Website address: www.luciac.com
P.O. Box 1355, Cambria, CA 93428 USA
Phone: (805) 546-1424
|
