The Power of Connection

Connection: My heart medicine

Part of the reason I love running workshops and offering the space for people to connect with their creativity, is that connection gives me, and others, meaning and purpose in a world that can be full of content overload and confusion, which can lead to feeling out of place and lost.

Connection offers perspective, understanding, empathy, feeling that you are not alone in the world, and being reminded of things we may have forgotten.

Positive psychology has created 5 categories for understanding and measuring happiness and fulfilment. While I feel like there are so many different ways of looking at happiness, and that my perspective is that happiness is one of many human feelings that we experience and not necessarily on the top of the emotions hierarchy, I do find some value in the PERMA model. You can read more about this model in the link below, and is a very powerful way of looking at what will increase your wellbeing.

*Source: http://positivepsychologymelbourne.com.au/PERMA-model

Engagement and relationships to me relate to connection with others, which in term helps me find meaning in my life, drives me to follow my dreams and accomplish what I want, which increases my positive emotions.

Creative Arts Therapist Networking Group

Today I came together with 10 other arts therapists to connect and share what we are doing and share ideas, resources and encouragement.

We each made a series of ‘tags’ with inspiration or reminders and gifted them to one another at the end of the session, so we each left with a reminder that we are all in this together, and are not alone in bringing our creative visions out to the world, that we share many challenges, ideas, dreams and also have varied paths, interests and ideas.

Tag swap

Witnessing and being witnessed.

The group that I run for journaling offers strong connections too, which is partly why the groups are so fulfilling and meaningful. To see each person share part of their vulnerability, their soul, their unique expression in the world allows me to connect with so many parts of myself that relate to everything that is shared, and also allows me to see how varied our life experiences can be. It intrigues me how we all come to be together in one place, to share and learn form one another, and be brave enough to step outside our comfort zone, dare greatly and show parts of ourselves that no one may have seen before. Witnessing is a very powerful transformative process, and the simple practice of being present to another can move metaphorical mountains.

Questions for today:

What is connection for you?

Who or what do you feel most connected to?

How can you create more connection in your life? (action).

• Write about these in your journal, create art/draw/paint
• Comment below