Haramaki, Creativity, Art, Healing

 Haramaki

This is my attempt to try out the theory that wearing a haramaki (belly band) keeps you warmer. There's a whole host of reasons to try haramaki and you can read about them here.

I had never heard of haramaki until Terri Bibby mentioned them in a Facebook comment to me.  I googled about and became intrigued with the concept - and hopeful.  One little extra layer to achieve more warmth! I'm all for that.

But alas, I cannot afford to order any of the haramaki I saw online and I didn't feel like waiting to get one or make one.  So I picked up this Noro Kureyon felted piece (too felted, it was originally intended to be one of my Short-Row Wedge Wraps), wrapped it around my waist and wore it about the house for several hours.
I felt warmer.

And the other night, when I had to venture forth in bitter cold to facilitate Lit Night for ArtReach, I decided to further test my makeshift haramaki.

And I felt warmer.  And cosier.

I might try to come up with a better haramaki than felted Kureyon! Though I like the symmetry of using my favorite Japanese yarn for this Japanese concept, and love the asymmetry of the points peeking out from beneath my shirt,

I'm afraid even my devotion to Noro does not make Kureyon bearable for long on bare tummy skin. 

Tutorial for making your own haramaki.
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Creativity, Art, Healing
I get an email newsletter called Healthy Aging (not sure just where I signed up for it!) The other day, it featured a link to an article entitled “Creativity Can Keep You Healthy.”  If you know me or have read my blog for awhile, you know that connections between art, creativity, and healing are of huge interest to me.

 I immediately went to read the article, but wound up being very disappointed with it.  Not just because it’s a sound-bite type piece -  sometimes brief and cogent bits of information are very useful.  I was disappointed  because it left out something that I believe is fundamental and promoted a notion that I think is harmful. 

About a third of the 500 or so words reinforced a dichotomy between work and play, under the guise of recommending ‘balance.’  The piece equated work with productivity and creativity with leisure.  It aligned creativity with “fun” and, therefore, work with, well, not fun.   It seemed to limit the definition of creativity to artistic hobbies and endeavors, making creative activities into things to ‘add to your schedule’, activities for which you need to ‘take time,’ to ‘block off some time.’  Now that’s not fun.

It reminded me of the dichotomy I ran into all the time as an unschooling homeschooler, the notion that education and fun are separate. That if you’re having fun, you can’t be learning the Important Stuff.  It’s an idea that’s so ingrained in our culture, that my son Shaun asked to do a standardized test when he was 14 and had been homeschooling for two years, after six years of schoolschooling. 

His reason, “I’m having so much fun, I’m afraid I’m not learning what I’m supposed to learn.”*

My point is that just as we’re learning much of the time, and not only through ‘not fun’ activities, so we can be creative much of the time, even with not-fun tasks - even if it’s just in figuring out how to do the not-fun things with a modicum of cheer and grace. Bringing creativity into more spheres of our lives does mean taking time. But it is taking time within the activities we’re already doing, taking time to bring a bit of creative thought and action into the task. 

And that’s the fundamental I found missing in the article - that creativity (and its health benefits) can be integrated into daily life and doesn’t have to be scheduled like a dentist appointment!

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*We went ahead and let him take such a test. And, yes, he did quite well. No surprise to me, reassuring enough to him that he never took another until the college admissions SAT.
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As if to make up for my disappointment with the above-mentioned article, yesterday I got word that the new issue of Arts Illiana Spectrum, the quarterly publication of our local arts organization, is out.  In it, there is a nice long feature on Art and Healing.

In addition to a good general overview of the subject, it includes some thoughts from me, as well as others I work with on The Maple Center programs.

And, a bonus for me, one of my poems is published in this issue - I’d forgotten I’d submitted a few for consideration.
It’s published in hard copy, but they also have a link on their site to download it in pdf form:

artsilliana.org

namaste,

'zann

My Broken Heart (Mended)

My Broken Heart (Mended), 2009

Wool roving, wool yarn, hand-dyed, crocheted, needlefelted, 5"

My Broken Heart (Mended), verso

This is one of the pieces I worked on this week. As I worked, it seemed to me that one side was for Patrick and one side for my mother. It was very healing to create this, to be holding the idea that I was making a visual representation of my hurt heart, and my healing journey.

A year ago today, Valentine's Day, my mother died.
I awoke this morning in the dark and felt wide-awake, thinking of Mom. I looked at the clock. It said 6:45. That was about the time she died. At 6:55, I was called by the nurse who said she had just died, and that she had been with my mother, had heard her last heartbeat.

The note below has been by my phone for at least two years now. I put it there to remind me how I wanted to act and be when my mother called. Dementia often made phone conversations and visits turn into horrible interactions that left me feeling small, frustrated and ashamed. This note helped me to prevent that many times. I haven't been able to bear to remove it, but I think that today might be an appropriate day to let it go...

Love. Love. Love.

Zann

Loss / Arts Workshop

Tomorrow!
Haven't written about this much here, which is a bit weird, since planning for this began back in July, and somehow I wound up being co-chair of the planning. I'll be leading a writing workshop and making an opening presentation, too.

This is the second such workshop we've done and it's part of the work I do with the Maple Center in honor of my son, Patrick. The first year we focused on dealing with grief after the death of loved ones, but this year we wanted to broaden that to loss in general, to reach others that can benefit from learning ways to use art and creativity to cope with loss. I was especially thinking of all those who lost so much in the floods here back in June, and now there are also people dealing with loss due to the economic situation.

I still have a lot of things to finish up today. I plan to take some time, though, to sit a moment with my own losses and look for some things I need for myself tomorrow. I feel like lately I've been rushing through the days and perhaps not tending my grief as I should.

'Tending my grief'- I've used that phrase in recent months and I think it really conveys some things I've come to know about loss and grief. Mine anyway - I've also learned enough to know that everyone's grief is different. It's not that I want to make a showplace garden of my grief, but it's a like a little secret garden that must be cared for, tended. If not, it can grow wild and tangled and scary....

Namaste,
Zann