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  • Amaterasu Coloring Page

    Amaterasu, Amaterasu-ōmikami or Ōhirume-no-muchi-no-kami is a part of the Japanese myth cycle and also a major deity of the Shinto religion. She is seen as the goddess of the sun, but also of the universe. The name Amaterasu derived from Amateru meaning “shining in heaven.” The meaning of her whole name,Amaterasu-ōmikami, is “the great august kami (god) who shines in the heaven”.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaterasu

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  • Experience is embodied

    “We only believe those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.” W.B. Yeats

    This quote reminds me of a book by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson who presented an opinion that the mind is ‘embodied,’ and our mental capacities, such as categorization and metaphor, grow out of bodily experience. They believe we build up complex representations of the world out of basic level categories (of objects, actions, emotions, social concepts, and so on). These basic level concepts result from bodily experience in the world in which we move, eat, sleep, experience and live.

    For example, Lakoff and Johnson report that spatial relations concepts ‘are at the heart of our conceptual system.’ Examples of such concepts are the Container Schema, the Source-Path-Goal Schema, and bodily projections (such as above-below, in front-behind). The body itself is experienced as a container, with an inside and an outside, and we project this experience of ‘container like-ness’ onto other people and objects (a car, a building).

    The child gains a bodily experience of these schemata from the first moments after birth when he/she (a) moves to the breast (Source-Path-Goal) and (b) opens and closes the mouth around the nipple, sucking in the milk (Container). In fact, infants have a habit of putting almost anything they can get their hands on into their mouths. In this way they learn the differences between inside and outside, ‘me’ and ‘not-me’. Later the infant learns to crawl towards objects in space as well as to stand, walk and run, all of which give new experiences of the ‘Spatial Self ‘.

    One of the primary developmental tasks of the first year of life is achieving a sense of the wholeness of one’s own body, achieving a relationship to space (objects in the space above the crib; mother who comes and goes…). The basic cognitive elements of thought derive from bodily experiences before the emergence of spoken language.

    Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark (1999) Philosophy In The Flesh: the Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought. Basic Books.

    Lakoff, George (1987) Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind. University of Chicago Press

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  • Balsam Root Coloring Page

     

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  • Freeform Dance in Nature

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  • Acraea Moth Coloring Page

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  • A Child’s View of Sensory Processing

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  • Baltimore Oriole Coloring Page

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  • Fred and Ginger

    “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.” Ann Richards

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  • Canada Arctic Coloring Page

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  • Ways of moving

    I have learned a lot about the Creative Arts and Dance Movement Therapy in particular over many years (38). I have come to know the far reaching effects that movement has in discovering one’s own feelings. I have come to recognizing others feelings by witnessing their movement as well.

    In one situation I spend time directing a group of clients to move in ways that expressed relaxation for them. Ten people moving in ten different ways, all expressing the same thing. Later the group shared their experience first with a movement and then with verbal processing. The clients discovered new ways of relaxing and being relaxed by exploring and witnessing others move and share.

    We can all learn new ways of moving and being moved by witnessing others. As children we learned patterns of movement from our care givers and from our culture. As adults we add to our developmental movement patterns by incorporating the uniqueness of who we are. As we mature and age, our movement patterns change again to reflect where in our lives we are.

    We all move, everyone of us. With our breath, our smiles and frowns, our heart beat, and more. It is what we have in common. It is who we are.

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