Moving Between The Worlds
By Topaz Weis, REACE®
How do you name that place where you go when you are so immersed in expression that you lose track of time? What path do you take to get there?
I like to think of ‘that place’ as being between the worlds; a middle ground between conscious and unconscious, between the roaring crowd and the silent studio, between the rational mind and the embodied spirit. It is not a static or cluttered place but a wide open space of possibility. Magic happens there. My journeying there always begins with breath; a huff, a sigh, a deep inhale.
Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Topaz Weis. I am a REACE®, a registered expressive arts consultant and educator. I facilitate intermodal expressive arts experiences to help people engage their creativity and imagination so that they can live less stressed, more productive and innovative lives. My work is very therapeutic, but it is not therapy. It aims to help people find their unique magic. A magic that they may have lost, or at the very least, forgotten lives inside of them. The work helps people remember how to play. It helps them find the quality of wholeness which can help them survive in a world that has been broken, distorted and often makes little sense.
Let’s go back to the middle ground; the in-between place where the imagination and creative spirit open the floodgates to personal expression, meaning making and truth. I think of this destination as a land of metaphor where an embodied soul can merge with all that is. Visiting this place alone can be soul-enriching. Travelling with a group, getting to hang out between the worlds with others, can build an intimacy unlike any other. You may not know any details about the other people’s lives, and yet after an experience such as this, the group becomes bonded in such a unique way, that they feel as if they have touched souls. Often in my studio, at the end of a 2.5-hour expressive arts experience, formerly total strangers are laughing, crying and embracing one another as if they were long-lost friends. How does this happen?
As a facilitator, I am not generally inviting people to share the details of their lives. I may ask in the beginning for people to briefly share what it was about the workshop or expressive arts session that inspired them to join or what they hope to get out of the experience. Sometimes a bit of personal information will come out in their answer, but I specifically try to stay away from the sharing of personal details. Our life stories and personal identifiers are concepts created by our rational minds to try to make sense of past embodied experiences. Once the experiences have happened, all the rational mind has left is the memory of those experiences, which become nuanced over time with the rational mind’s need to make sense of the images it has stored and the felt sensations stored in the body. Ultimately it must interpret that information through the filter of the moment and make a judgment call as to what it all means. I find these details can sidetrack us from engaging in and building relationships with the art.
The arts have their way of making sense. When we trust them to hold us, mould us, and inform us, we can gain access to the mysteries of life. There is something sacred about this journey. I believe that the art's modalities work for us as guides and allies on a path which takes us out of the mundane, ordinary world and into a sacred non-ordinary place of wonder and mystery.
A key to building a relationship with the arts is to suspend judgment and open our playful imaginations to the possibility that we can allow Movement, Painting, Writing and Sounding to be entities deserving our respect and attention. Entities whom we can ask questions to and hear answers from. I like to say that my studio is a judgment/interpretation-free zone. I encourage people to refrain from judging or interpreting anyone’s words or artwork, including their own. I also urge everyone to ask the Inner Critic to take a walk outside. There is an understanding that if it comes back into the room to check in with them, they can acknowledge its presence, but then ask it once again to please leave. Without the Inner Critic, the participant is free to explore their creative expression unhindered by learned or old beliefs of self-limitation.
In my series of workshops titled “Dance, Paint, Write!,” participants follow a pre-designed form. We meet in a circle and breathe together. I offer a brief grounding meditation, then we pull oracles (Tarot, Angel, Touch Drawing cards etc.) from my portable altar.
The images and words we receive on the cards will act as our companions as we move through the experience. I do not encourage people to interpret the images or figure out the historical meanings. Instead, I invite the participants to notice if there are places in their bodies that resonate with the images or words on the cards. I invite them to breathe into those places and notice if they detect a spark of movement in that area. If a spark is detected, I encourage the participants to allow it to help guide them into the next stage of the process. We then move to music for twenty minutes. If there is no resonant spot in the body, participants are encouraged to breathe until they feel a movement stirring or let themselves be inspired to move by the music. The companions may dance alongside, or from within the body or watch from the corner. There is no wrong way to have an oracle accompany you through a process. I encourage people to trust that their imagination will know what to do.
There is an ever-changing soundtrack that plays throughout the rest of the form. The task is to allow the movement to dance the dancer. No training is required. Formal dance training can make surrendering to the whims of the movement more difficult. One must listen deeply and follow Movement’s lead. If the dancer finds herself efforting to dance, my suggestion is to slow down, find stillness and allow your heart to seek out what would feel right to the body in this moment. Sometimes sitting and breathing is all the movement wants. Allow yourself to be informed by your breath, the music and the flow of life force within your body. Movement, stillness, level/speed changes and sound-making are all welcome choices.
We dance our dance, but we also dance together as a group. I invite participants to use both their inner and outer eyes. If they see someone else moving in a way that intrigues them, they are invited to try that way on and play with it until once again returning to their authentic dance. In this way, the dance portion progresses until the timer goes off and we transition to 30 minutes of painting.
Participants fill their palettes, choose a pre-tacked piece of paper on the wall and begin to make marks. The prompt is to allow the paintbrush to dance the colour onto the paper. Coming to the paper with a predetermined idea of what to paint pushes out the Mystery. My encouragement is to allow the mark-making to be the guide. Follow where the marks are leading, listen to what they are asking for, which colours, how bold, and which directions. Allow the paintbrush to dance onto the paper.
With the aid of music, it is easy to get into “the zone” during this process. It sometimes takes a few minutes to move back through the membrane into non-ordinary processing after filling a palette with paint. But once the brush starts marking the paper, if you permit yourself to be curious and stay in the metaphor, this process will feel as if you are moving between the worlds.
After 30 minutes of painting, we pull up chairs, take out our journals and free-write for 20 minutes. The goal is to get words on the paper. Therefore it doesn’t matter if a person writes stream of consciousness, or a conversation with their painting or their laundry list. The key is to have words or phrases that can be harvested to write a poem, a haiku, a once-upon-a-time story or whatever form of writing prompt I am inspired to offer after the free-write is completed. This is where the gold nuggets emerge. As if by magic, this extraction and rearrangement of words on the page offers a window into the mystery.
Flying into the deep portal of wisdom
The bright light sleeps
It is hovering, hovering, hovering
Floating on ancient waters
Flying into the space between spaces
Primordial receptive Earth
I shelter in the illusion of your safety
When I remember gratitude,
I can reach into the moving
stillness of what is. My tears
and the infinite are merging.
I fill my every breath with
the mystic that I am.
Often, an uncanny sense of group mind emerges, as similar themes are articulated by multiple people. We can see this also in the painting. Though most people are focused on their painting and not looking at anyone else’s, there will be similar themes, forms, and images throughout the group's artwork. At times there is a conceptual wave progression that seems to start in a painting on one wall and travel through all of the others until it crescendos in the painting at the end of the next wall. When we see these things, we all get goosebumps. The Mystery revealing itself in this way can make us laugh, and often it makes us cry. Depending on the size of the group we will take time to embody the paintings and/or poems by creating multi-modal sculptures. Or, we’ll divide the room into movers and witnesses to move our own or each other's artwork. There is a myriad assortment of profound play explorations which we can use to stay with the art and engage with what has been created, without talking about it.
The Dance, Paint, Write! form culminates back in the circle. Now we talk. Each participant has the choice to share any reflections of their experience, their artwork and/or writing. They can ask for feedback and those in the group who want to offer feedback will give witness from a place of “When I witness your painting/your words I feel…, I see…, I am curious about…, I am inspired to…”.
The witnessing might sound something like this. “When I witness your painting, I feel excited. I see those red feathery lines which look to me like wings and I want to put them on my shoulders and fly high up into the sky. I imagine that I can see far beyond the mountains from there. When I imagine this, I feel exhilarated.” In this way, the artist can feel seen and heard and not be subject to anyone’s judgment or interpretation. They can rest in their point of view and feelings while being offered perspectives to consider that may be different from their original experience. Hearing the words of the witness can be meaningful to everyone, not just the artist. Although the creations may come through one person’s body, they are sourced from a universal well which can speak to us all. An insight shared can transport any of the participants into an understanding that had not occurred to them before. There is also the chance that one witness’ impressions are merely their unique impressions which stand on their own as having been voiced. In this share-and-witness way of processing, all perspectives can be heard and validated. The sharing often deepens our connections to our truth, our heart space and our shared humanity.
Dance, Paint, Write! moves us between the worlds. It causes us to feel as if, in some sacred way, we have touched the light of the divine. It broadens and deepens our experience of what we call reality and the liminal plane.
One regular participant has said, “Dance, Paint, Write! is my church. It is where I go to connect with the Divine.” It truly is a divine process.
Topaz Weis, REACE® is a Registered Expressive Arts Consultant/Educator, Co-Chair of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association’s REACE® Professional Standards Committee, a Certified Soul Collage® Facilitator, artist, speaker and Founder of Expressive Arts Burlington. Topaz offers highly personalized, custom designed intermodal expressive arts facilitation and training to individuals, organizations, businesses and private groups in person and on virtual platforms.