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What is Visual Journaling?
There aren't many rules to visual journaling, and you don't need to be an artist--just willing to try the creative process!
The essence of Visual Journaling includes using art processes and materials to intuitively express something you are feeling or want to explore about yourself. This allows access and expression to the right side of your brain. Then, we include creative writing to draw out more from the image that our left side of the brain can understand and make sense of.
These practices are all done in one sketchbook, this allows for you to witness the evolution of your inner process, and give some support and ability to "closeup" something once you are done exploring it for the moment. It can also be meaningful to decorate the cover of your visual journal to fit the chapter of life you're in.
I love how I can quickly release a confusing emotion, get more clarity on my inner longings and wisdom, and meet myself with more compassion through this process!
This process is a beloved one in the art therapy world, and was taught to me by my professors at Eastern Virginia Medical School in 2013. You may have a practice of your own very similar!
What is the Wheel of the Year?
The Celtic and Norse people, along with many other indigenous traditions, lived so aligned with the rhythms of the year, that they honored the turn of each season. This includes the 4 solar festivals (solstices and equinoxes) and the 4 fire festivals (halfway between the solar festivals).
Living in alignment with the Wheel of the Year is both a physical practice and one of practicalities--eating root vegetables in winter, planting in the spring, harvesting in late summer--and an energetic one--tending our energy in winter, celebrating our achievements in summer.
In our modern lifestyles and from the impact of dominator systems (where land, feminine, bodies, color, queerness and more were feared and hence oppressed), we have become disconnected by what these rhythms mean for us.
As a cultural Mennonite, I am grateful for having grown up with a sense of the impact of the seasons on my life, and more recently, am learning to more deeply align my external life (schedule, choices, lifestyle etc) to my inner rhythm and consequentially, the rhythm of earth. I have gratitude for those who have not lost the connection to earth, despite the persecution for it.
