Artist, Expressive Arts Therapist, Life-Cycle Celebrant
Welcome to the Goddess of Many Arms- My New Blogpost!
What do you do?
I’m guessing a lot.
The old truisms still apply-
“A woman’s work is never done”
“If you want to get something done, ask a woman”
We are busier than ever, with our careers, home-lives, relationships, self-care, political activities, educations, socializing, medical care, pet care, exercise, spiritual/religious, cultural activities, civic duties. It’s rare that we sit down, except perhaps in front of our TV sets, where we can zone out and give our brains and bodies a break.
Yoga and meditation sound nice, as does having a healthy diet…those take discipline, don’t they. I am a frequent dropout when it comes to those activities.
When I think about my own life over the years and now, I can honestly say that I try to do all of the above, as well as create time for some beauty or magic for myself, or others.
Although I no longer work full-time or have responsibilities for caring for children or older relatives, I am still swamped for time. My calendar easily fills up with things I want to do and those that I must.
So after pondering this modern dilemma, I came up with the idea of the goddess of many arms as the title for my Blogpost.
She is based on one of many Indian goddesses who I had the pleasure of exploring while co-teaching in India, this past February. As I began to move to the goddess Pavrati, I became enamored of the fact that she had so many arms.
She seemed the perfect symbol for women across the world. In my travels, I have seen them everywhere, carrying water, branches, and food on their heads, walking for miles to their homes to prepare meals, feed, clean, care for others. So much, too much is expected of women in many cultures.
I wanted my blog to reflect this fact and the honor the millions of things that women do on a daily basis all over the world. I wanted to call them/us goddesses, emphasizing their grace, beauty, power and capacities in ways that lift them above the daily grind of things they/we have to do. I realize that my perspective comes from a very privileged perch; where I can say this, presume this.
We have to start somewhere and I do hope that your contributions with expand my vision and that of others. I welcome you- the goddess of many hands into this space.
This past week, I had the pleasure of conducting a workshop on the Labyrinth at the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC) in Washington DC. Not knowing anyone I would be working with and wanting to present something that would be easy to do yet have a deeper meaning for each participant, I decided to teach them about the labyrinth and specifically to have them wall a finger labyrinth.To warm up and get to know each other, we created a central altar simply consisting of a scarf given to me by a Shaman in Peru, a candle and ‘touch’ stone, which I had created earlier. We also used the Native American talking stick as a way to ensure that each person would have his or her ‘space’ to talk and be heard. When it was someone’s turn to introduce him or her-self, she would simply reach in the bag and take a stone and read what it said. (Each stone was hand-painted and had a word or phrase on it, such as, Unite, Brave, Beautiful, Breathe). The stones were placed on the ’altar’.
Each participant was given a printout of a Labyrinth. We did a silent meditation and relaxation, with some writing and artwork leading up to a question, a thought, and a wish for each intention. The goal was to be fully present to release, receive and return as our fingers walked the labyrinth, in silence. After the ‘walk’, participants was invited to write or draw, in response to what had happened on their ‘walk’. They were then invited
to use colored pencils to design their labyrinth as they wished.
As you can see from the images above, everyone had a unique and meaningful experience.One participant, a young woman from Syria wrote: Thank you very much for your time last Tuesday. It was a great opportunity to think deeper and more bring self -awareness into our life.
I was happy that ours lives crossed on her path and that she felt so positive. It made me think of all the ways we walk on our paths, alone and together.
