...using creative arts therapies and
holistic health education to inspire
healing of mind, body, & spirit!

You may already be in a state of “dis-ease”–you can’t change the fact that it happened.  But since illness has already happened, why not choose to let it be a catalyst for positive transformation in your life?  What if you could find meaning and purpose in your pain and use it as a way to actually improve the quality of your life?  The body is a wondrous, miraculous intelligence.  What would happen if you decided that the sole purpose of your illness is to guide you closer to your soul purpose?  If you are ready to get a new perspective on disease and healing then you are ready for Imagine Health: Using Disease as a Catalyst for Positive Transformation.

Imagine Health is a creative, holistic, therapeutic group process designed for people with chronic illness and disabilities.  This we believe: in order to heal our physical body, we must also pay attention to our mind and spirit.  By adopting a holistic view of health, we can reach levels of well-being we never dreamed possible.

Participants will:

• Learn to become aware of the body’s signals that some aspects of their life need attention.
• Begin to understand how core emotional issues and behavioral patterns relate to their physical condition and may manifest as symptoms.
• Work with the grief and loss that accompanies life-changing illness.
• Utilize creative therapeutic approaches such as writing, art, drama techniques, movement, and guided imagery exercises to delve into unconscious emotions, beliefs, and thoughts that may be greatly affecting health.
• Imagine and “become” the holistically healthy self they aspire to be.

• Develop hope that they can heal.

It’s time for you to imagine health!

Imagine Health is being offered at the Body Mind Spirit Wellness Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  It is a seven-week class meeting on Thursdays from 1:15 p.m.-3:45 p.m., February 18, 2010 through April 1, 2010.  Cost is $245.00 plus $25.00 for the workbook.  Pre-registration is required.  Email kristi@creativespirithealing.com or call Kristi Davis at (734) 253-2650 to register or inquire.  Click on Imagine Health for more detailed information about the program.  (A long-distance course can be offered through email and phone for those of you too far away to attend in person.)

I just attended the Arts Alliance Convergence 2009 Conference at Eastern Michigan University, where a dazzling variety of artists, dancers, performers, musicians, and art advocates from Washtenaw County, Michigan gathered together to promote and discuss the importance of the arts and creativity in the revival of our local and global economy.  Did you know that the “creative economy” is responsible for bringing in a staggering amount of revenue as well as  many new jobs?  Not only that, but people generally want to live where there is music, dance, theater, art, and delicious culinary creations.  I know I do.

Where would we be without the arts?  The arts give us a chance to express ourselves, to make sense of our world, to create beauty and release pain.  They bring us plenty of pure pleasure, too.  The Arts Alliance recognizes that this is the perfect time to start thinking and acting creatively in order to transform our lives and our world.  So create art, enjoy art, and make art a central part of your life.   It’s important, and so are you.

There seems to be a lot of stress in the world today and lot of people claiming to be “stressed out.”  But how do we really know what to be stressed about?  “Duh!  War, the economy, job loss, sickness, traffic jams,” you might reply thinking I am a complete idiot to even ask such a question.  Of course, those are real life situations which are causing a lot of us a lot of pain.  But can we really be so sure that all of these situations will ultimately turn out to be bad?  If we were really able see “negative” personal and world events in the grand scheme of things, would any of them actually be the catalysts that lead to new growth, creativity, and the positive changes that our world desperately needs?

“But we can all agree that job loss is a terrible thing!”  I don’t wish it upon anyone to lose a job they wish to keep, but is job loss necessarily bad?  For some people, it is just the push they needed to get them to start the business they had always wanted to start.  They hadn’t taken the risk earlier, because they couldn’t justify leaving their lucrative  job.

“Surely you’ll allow me to be stressed out about illness!”  There are even people out there with serious illnesses who say it was the best thing that ever happened to them, because it transformed their life.  It helped them to get their priorities straight, heal relationships, and live life more purposely.

“What about traffic jams? They stink!”  Do they? How about the person who got stuck in a traffic jam and missed his airplane flight which crashed?  I’ll bet he has a whole new vision of traffic jams.

The point is that stress or lack of stress has a lot to do with judging a situation as “good” or “bad,” and we can’t say for certain that a “negative” life event is not really a blessing in disguise.  If we can refrain from automatically judging a life event as bad, we can avoid a lot of stress.  And if we can find a reason to be grateful or find the gift in the situation, we can help ourselves to handle seemingly tough times with greater ease.