Day 25: Your Hands Have Always Known The Way Home

Hello,

Welcome back.

I'm Jocelyn and this is Day 25.

This whole series was started from a sub stack that I wrote called The Evolution of a Soul Art Journey.

This journey has been so profound and it has been longer than I think almost any other soul art journey I've done.

I'm still in it.

I haven't finished my spirit action.

And every day,

Something new is coming to the forefront.

And I'm using my awareness,

My consciousness,

My tools,

My writing,

My expression to really work with the insights that are coming through.

And that's what I'm giving you here.

Today,

We're going to talk about expression and the arts and such.

Let's just start with getting grounded.

Really,

We're going to ground a different way today.

So yeah,

You can close your eyes if you want,

Or you can just keep a soft gaze.

And I want you to bring your awareness to your hands.

Bring your awareness to your hands.

Your knuckles,

Your fingers.

Your fingertips.

Both thumbs.

First fingers.

Second fingers.

Third fingers.

And fourth fingers.

You might want to bring your hands together and gently rub them.

Feel the friction and the heat.

That comes from this.

Breathe into your hands.

When you're ready,

Take your hands and you can place them anywhere on your body.

I'm going to place mine on my heart space.

The center of my chest.

I want you to just feel the heat from your hands.

The weight of your hands,

Wherever they are in your body.

This is the oldest creative act there is.

A human being touching their own existence.

You might silently say to yourself,

I am here.

I am here.

Take a breath in.

And let it out.

One more time,

It's really delicious this morning.

Take a breath in.

And exhale.

And when you're ready,

You can open your eyes.

Clothes racks to go up to the mannequin centers and become a mannequin and kind of add to the story that the mannequins were already telling.

And I would,

I would do this every time we went into a department store or a mall or something,

Whatever.

I would do this every time.

My parents would walk by and they'd say,

Oh,

What a beautiful mannequin.

Oh,

Did you see what that mannequin is doing?

You know,

They would,

They would act it out for me and then I would run through the clothes again and then would go to the next mannequin station.

I love to hear my parents.

Notice me.

The first time I had one,

I remember the store I got it from,

I remember the book itself.

I was drawing one of the cartoons because back then they were all about the cartoons.

And the first time I made one and it actually looked somewhat like the cartoon,

I remember looking down and being like,

I can do this.

I think that was the first real nudge of confidence of something that I had done for myself.

Kids naturally embrace expression and stories and arts and all their forms.

As I got older,

I began to sing,

I was a singer.

And then I was a dancer,

And I danced with Gabrielle Roth starting at 12,

All the way through my mid-20s.

And then when I was dancing,

I think I had been going through a lot in my life.

I had a lot of ups and downs,

Especially in my teens.

And working with Gabrielle Roth,

I understood that my body had its own language.

And dancing through rhythms and dancing through shapes.

All of the different elements of Gabrielle Roth's work taught me that my body sometimes knows things and how to heal things before my mind does or my mouth even knows how to speak it.

I did that for many years.

I traveled to go to her workshops and I was so enamored with that work.

And then I worked with Twyla Tharp as a modern dancer for a little while.

I went to school originally for that,

And then I switched to musical theater.

And then I started later in life.

I went to get my master's in expressive art therapy intermodal.

Because I was so taken with psychodrama and drama therapy,

Telling stories,

Right?

But I ended up going intermodal because I thought I was really interested in all the arts,

And that's what intermodal is.

When I was in college and further on in my career after that as an expressive arts therapist,

I really leaned into that intermodal shift,

Which means going from one art form to the next.

I worked with a lot of different populations,

Particularly for a long time with sexual trauma in teenage girls and domestic violence.

And a girl would come to me with a story.

She'd tell me the story.

We'd start bringing it into visual art and then poetry.

And then we'd have people bring in elements of psychodrama and drama therapy so she could see the story told back,

Right?

That intermodal shift is from one art form to the next,

Right?

One art form to the next.

And then I got to do creative co-ops for my kids when I started homeschooling.

When I had all of my kids,

I created collages so that I could hold them in my hands.

Before I could hold them in my hands,

My son was born asleep.

I would go to the bar every night.

I wasn't even really drinking,

But I would go to the bar every night and I'd go with a journal and I'd sit down and I'd open my journal.

And I didn't even write anything profound at all.

I just would write lists of nouns and verbs,

And I'd connect them,

And I would just write statements with the noun doing the verb.

I had three journals of this,

Because I did it for three months straight.

It was the only way that I could deal with what was going on.

Everything felt out of my control,

But I sure could write nouns and make them do verbs,

And so I did that.

When my parents died,

I wrote a book,

And I just published it a few months ago,

And it's my fictional and life works.

That I learned from my grief of losing my parents 7 days apart.

Probably three years old,

Probably even sooner,

Even before that.

I,

That's got to be over 45 years at this point.

And I have been naturally doing it.

I have found my way.

I have made my path through expression throughout my life and it has held me.

It has become my home.

It has not saved me.

It has brought me back to myself.

Okay.

And our hands are Tools of expression.

They are tools of expression.

Many of us think that the arts.

Dancing,

Theater,

All of this,

Visual art,

All of that is something that just the artists do.

It's become gatekept in a way.

I am here to tell you that your hands have been expressing for you in so many other ways.

And you are showing your creativity and your stories and your expressions in ways that may not be what a typical artist would be,

But it's just as relevant for you.

You might be taking care of plants and gardening.

You might be cooking and you might be maybe journaling at night for yourself.

Any kind of expression is a way to show up for yourself.

Expression is a lens,

Right?

When we express something,

When we're going through something,

We are able to take it out of ourselves and see it and understand it.

And change it and transform it and we can create beauty out of it.

A smaller example,

When my parents died,

You know,

Before I said I wrote a book,

But before that,

When my parents died,

I took care of little jade clippings.

And I took care of them relentlessly.

I now have huge pots of jade all over my living room because for months I took care of those jade plants and I expressed my love for my parents into those jade plants.

And now I get to see the beauty of what I created.

But I needed a place to express my love.

And those jade plants became them.

It's all the same conversation.

Expression is so important.

To honor it.

For me,

It's been an artistic life,

And I've worked with expression for so long,

Right?

But for you,

It might be other things.

When we stop beginning to hear ourselves and our stories,

You know,

Expression of some way,

Shape or form is how we can begin to tap that back online.

It's the making,

The expressing,

The daring to let something move through your hands.

And this is how we hand everything back to us.

Because we can take it out of us.

We can see it.

Our hands move it.

And then we can begin to create change and transformation.

Expression,

Expressiveness,

Stories,

I've been doing that for a really long time.

And I love to walk people through the arts processes.

I love to work with that intermodal shift.

I love to be there.

Hands dirty in the expression that someone's trying to build and have and be and grow with,

Right?

But not everyone has to do it that way.

But notice what your hands do.

I'm going to take us on a little journey,

Just a small journey today,

Just so you can feel That sense of that intermodal shift,

How important it is.

To begin to feel how something moves.

Close your eyes for a minute.

Can you picture yourself?

At a time when you were fully yourself.

You don't have to think about it,

Don't judge it,

Just allow it to come up,

A time in your life when you were just fully yourself.

Maybe you can sense where you were,

What you were hearing,

What sounds were around you.

What was the quality of light?

Were you saying something?

Did you have a coffee in your hand?

Like,

Whatever,

When you were fully yourself.

We're not judging it,

Just allow the image to come up,

Don't force it.

A time when you were fully yourself.

It doesn't have to be the most fullest time you were yourself,

Just a time that you were fully yourself.

It can be way back when,

It can be yesterday.

Ah,

Just feel it.

See yourself and see what your body is doing.

Now for a minute.

Let your actual body,

The body here and now,

Take over.

A part of the shape.

Of what you were doing in that moment.

So maybe you were looking up at the sun.

So wherever you are right now,

If that's you,

Raise your chin up.

Allow your body to take on that look up toward the sun.

Or maybe you were standing,

So maybe you want to get up and stand for a minute.

With your feet apart.

Maybe that's how you were standing.

Maybe there was a repetitive thing.

Maybe you were talking with your hands and you can feel the repetitive movement of your hands while you were talking.

Go ahead and pick that up.

Whatever it is.

A shape or repetitive movement from when that time you were fully yourself.

And just breathe into that shape.

Breathe into that movement.

You might let it get bigger.

You might let it get more expressed.

Feel it in your body right now.

Breathe into that shape.

Maybe your chest was open.

Breathe into that.

You And while you're here,

I want you to come up with one word or one sound.

It doesn't have to be the perfect word.

It doesn't have to be the right word.

It doesn't have to be anything.

Just the first word that rises or the first sound that rises.

And you can let yourself say it out loud,

Silently if you want.

Maybe it's a hum.

Maybe it's a deep breath.

Maybe it's a word.

Maybe it's a line of a song.

You don't have to share it with anyone.

You can let it out loud or bring it in silently.

This right here is showing up for yourself.

From the inside out.

That's what expression is.

That's how easy it is.

You go to that moment.

You visualize it,

You're there,

You see it,

You take on one piece of it,

Just the tiniest little piece of it.

Breathe into it.

Let it get bigger.

Give it a sound.

Give it a word.

That's intermodal shift two different times.

Now you might want to go right about it.

Or you might want to just let it go,

It's totally fine.

Just breathe for a second,

Inhaling.

And sighing it out.

I'm going to give you a few questions.

You can take them,

Pass them off,

Whatever you'd like.

What is the earliest memory?

That you have of expressing yourself fully before anyone told you whether it was good or not.

What were you doing and how did it feel?

What form of expression have you abandoned that used to hand you back to yourself?

What would it feel like to return to it?

Even for 2,

3,

4,

10 minutes.

And where in your life are you not expressing?

Something that needs to move,

What's sitting inside of you that hasn't found its form yet.

And one last bonus question today,

If expression is the most direct route back to yourself,

What would it mean to treat it as essential instead of extra?

As an aside,

One of my favorite things I love to do when I'm feeling feisty and I've got stuff kind of bottled up inside of me is to take paint and water and mix them,

Take paintbrushes and throw paint on a canvas.

Maybe it's just something you want to do for fun.

Maybe it's something that you want to do to begin to do in the mornings or at night.

Thank you so much for coming along,

My friends.

Namaste.