THE ART OF HEALING

Creativity, contrary to what many think, is not just a gift that belongs to
a few fortunate ones, but rather, it is a state; of a basic need
inherent to all human beings.

When we are born, we are pure potential, our sensitivity is intact, our breath is
complete, when we dislike something we express it with a perfectly staged cry - the
children can cry for hours without their voice getting tired or strained, the gestures are direct, not
feigned, let's say they are pure expression, without yet being aware of what is beautiful and what is ugly, of what
it is good and what is bad, without guilt, without blocks or shame.

We are all born with a creative tendency, like a kind of ancestral imprint that drives us
push strongly to manipulate the environment in which we are born, to shape our being in it and
transcend, through play, painting, sounds, touch...

What happens is that as we grow, we start to relegate this profound life impulse to a
background, placing it in a location far from us, when in reality, it is a
fundamental ingredient for life. It is the essence of our being, beyond the limits
of the ego, functioning as a channel capable of transporting messages and symbols from the
unconscious into the conscious and thus be able to integrate it.

Although it may seem easy to carry out, at its core it is a quest for freedom.
interior and in the confidence in one's own drive. Thus, in the pursuit of true creativity, there is
implied a work of boundaries, of breaking the boundaries of the ego, understood as introjects that us
we have been swallowing to survive, to be loved and at the same time they curtail our
capacity, our freedom, ultimately what we are in essence, that which Jung
called 'self' or 'myself'.

Out of fear, shame, or need at a given moment, we tend to not stray too much.
of what our parents and educators have marked us, losing the opportunity to explore to a large extent
our true identity. With the messages we receive from a young age about how
what is right, what is wrong, what is ugly or beautiful, what should be feared or not, let's go
shaping our ideal Ego that responds more to the 'have to be' in a certain way than to the
what we truly are, need, and desire.

The norms, messages, and introjects serve as a container, setting limits and order.
which surely has served us in the past. The problem arises when everything that
what served us in the past is obsolete in the present, it is no longer useful to us and not only that but
interrupts and makes our lives difficult. Those messages from the past that we continue to respond to,
they need to be updated in the present.

In this regard, the illness is related to a blockage of some emotional aspect of the
a person who is not integrated and cannot find a healthy way out. To understand the illness is
it is necessary to locate it within the existential totality of the subject and not place it outside of oneself, like
the Western medical discourse proposes to us. An entrenched emotion finds its manifestation in
through illness and thus somatization appears. In therapy we make use of creativity
to transport healthily that which we consciously cannot integrate, brings us closer and
release that which blocks and makes us ill.

At the moment of creating - a painting, a figure with clay, or expressing something with words -
the introjects appear: 'I can't, I'm not capable, this is nonsense, how bad, it's not worth it'
nothing..!" are messages that we have integrated in such a way that they are already part of us and
they confine our expression and spontaneity. Both in front of a work of art and in front of life, just
At the moment of expressing ourselves, the ego assaults us with its messages.

Art is closely tied to our emotional world. The impulse in feeling a

emotion, -the word emotion is composed of 'e': a prefix meaning outwards and
"motion": to move - it's what truly moves us, what leads us to express ourselves. There lies the
art therapeutic: giving oneself to the game of creating necessarily involves setting aside, overcoming all
those old messages that assail us, trusting in the impulse of our world
emotional.

Zinquer in his book: The creative process in Gestalt therapy finds a point of union between
creativity and psychotherapy which are at a fundamental level: transformation, the
metamorphosis and change.

Thus arises what Zinquer calls 'creative therapy', in which the therapist is the artist in charge.
to accompany the artwork that is the human being, to shape itself as it truly is
needs and to discover its creative nature.

Exploring our creativity in a therapeutic environment, bringing awareness to everything.

that interrupts us is gradually moving towards life, making us increasingly more
confident, more spontaneous and more self-assured.

Unlike other concepts or ways of understanding creativity or art, in psychology of

humanist current as occurs in Gestalt art is understood as a process that only
In the present, in the here and now, it is a moment where there is no judgment or limits.

Gestalt therapy works with everything that shapes us: physical body, emotion, intellect, and spirit.
It has a phenomenological approach, focusing on what is present in the here and now, the past is gone and
The future only exists in our minds, so only the present is real. It is about then
to bring into the present everything we carry with us, where there is a series of situations
inconclusive, of locked emotions that prevent us from living comfortably or relating healthily
with others. As we said, creativity allows us to access that hidden world of
ourselves.

The world of dreams gives us a good account of that world and our creative potential.
unconscious. It constitutes a rich material for therapy. When we sleep we give free rein
let our creativity flow without the constraints of the ego and a lot of information filled with
symbols, signals, emotions... In Gestalt, we work by acting out each part of the dream. Start from
the premise of: we are everything that appears in it, we are every character, every inanimate being, we are
the air, the emotion, we are the landscapes, the mountains, the stones, the castles, we are the colors,
the sounds... Instead of intellectually interpreting each symbol as psychoanalysis does, in
Gestalt allows the person to act and identify with each part of the dream, narrating it in
first person, allowing to connect with their own emotions and their own information
internal symbolic and so on; go integrating the different parts in the present at a conscious level.

All dreams are potentially revealing and contain parts of ourselves. They are
like doors to our interior.

The fact of not remembering dreams is a sign of ego repression. When we awaken the ego
appears again with its defenses and its censorships, erasing in many cases any trace of the
dream.

It is important to be close to dreams, and a good exercise to get closer to that world is
write. If we don't remember the dream itself, we can try to write down the feeling that
let's have in the morning: confusion, a feeling of blankness, perhaps we will remember some color,
So we are "calling" to the dreams and little by little, by giving them space, they will come.
appearing.

Ultimately, creativity is not limited to a specific moment when, for example, we paint a
or we write, but it extends like an integrating cloak over our entire life.

Creativity describes more of a state, a way of being in the world and recovering this
energy greatly depends on our well-being, our relief, and our fulfillment.

Awakening our creative flame, being able to give ourselves to the creative process without worrying.
of the final product, it has a healing effect.

Creating eases the soul, it is an expression of the soul.