Frame a Moment for Healing

Some pitch art with the intention to someday be featured by The New York Times Style Section. I’m not dismissing that lofty goal. Sign me up. But then, their product becomes the next big trend. Maybe they are sought after and replicated, then mass produced. Mindful Art is an entirely different experience. Mindful art is the aesthetic of people, places, and things, precisely as they situate. Think Jean-Michel Basquiat’s graffiti across Lower Manhattan before he was referred to by last name only: Basquiat.

When I permit myself to pause long enough (from heavy days, these pandemic and acute-culture-clash days, as a psychotherapist in traditional health care), I acknowledge more beauty than not. I change the channel from the static that average twenty-first century standards perpetuate. I choose to pause. My favorite mode is art making. Such a powerful word, too often overlooked during these tumultuous times: pause. Pausing feels almost as out-of-grasp as art making. But I wish to challenge that belief.

“Pause, it’s a verb,” I like to tell my clients.

Tara Brach explains in her motivational masterpiece, Radical Acceptance, “In a pause, we simply discontinue whatever we are doing—thinking, talking, walking, writing, planning, worrying, eating— and become wholeheartedly present, attentive, and often physically still” (p.51). Demands, arbitrary expectations, and clutter swirl around us. Behind us, people may judge. Before us, some fear hangs heavy. And over there, that’s something we shoulda-coulda known if only we woulda remembered. Because of our biochemistry, we often crave the familiar over the healthy. Pausing might not be the automatic choice these days, and yet, it might be the most critical option we have.

We don’t have to enter an hour-long meditation to pause.

Yeah, who has time for that (even though we all could benefit)?

Have thirty seconds to spare?

Then, you have enough time to pause.

And inspire art making.

Join me. Find a tilted frame. Nearby, there is probably one. Don’t you dare straighten it. Don’t. You. Dare! Notice the frame. Honor how it situates, just as it is. Belief systems, memories, and lessons from someone else’s value system may have told you to straighten the frame. Please, do not react to those impulses.

Pause with me.

Let the frame be.

Instead, look a bit closer. Pay attention to the details, and perhaps a thing of beauty appears, otherwise missed in a moment of fix-it fixation. Pause a bit longer. Let the noted details be inspiration for letting go and showing up to a new moment with a Beginner’s Mind.

In Mindfulness, a way of maximizing the present moment’s influence by quieting the volume on past ideas or future dilemmas, we find a philosophy that trickles throughout world religions and sprinkles itself across spirituality. When we are in a Beginner’s Mind, we let go of preconceived thoughts, feelings, and sensations. We do not cling to previous circumstances or biases. We anchor in the sensory experience of now: sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound. Mindful art brews from a Beginner’s Mind.

I have found solace in tilted frames, a Beginner’s Mind, and Mindful Art making. Honoring the way things are, rather than should be, a healing process emerges based on authenticity. This healing extends to those I engage with through art and therapy; both, of the contemplative and not-easily-defined.

A few years ago, I organized a Mindful Art making group and titled it, “Reframe Your Artistry.”  We evolved, transforming ordinary nature or objects into something at which to marvel. We repurposed non-recyclables and prioritized our share time as a nonjudgmental space to exchange ideas. The group took place, in the flesh, in a room no larger than what some would consider bathroom size. We placed materials upon an elephant decorated fabric from Thailand that previously served as a means for privacy when I provided therapy in homeless shelters. Crossing our legs around the fabric, we passed about materials and tips. With accessible items like dried flowers, toilet paper rolls, or scrap-paper, I wanted to create a safe space through art and allow art to begin a conversation for self plus community growth.

My office sits along a business strip of yogis, foodies, and healers. The group was offered to the entire community, a spot in Pennsylvania that intersects White suburban sprawl with a predominantly Black and Hispanic rural enclave west (way socially west of) Philadelphia’s Main Line. Only tweens and teens showed up. I refuse to call them kids. They’d find that demeaning, I suppose. Instead, I call them the Next Gen.

The last meeting before the pandemic hit, Antwone shared a poem. He asked that I feature it on the platform’s blog without typing it up. I said, “you’re an inspiration, a truly Mindful Artist.” We should all be struck by his authentic voice and his appreciation for something important, framed just as it situates.