Teaching in the Arts: A Muscular Metaphor

My dear friend Susan is a muscular therapist by trade, and she tells me that as people get their bodies worked on, their emotional "stuff" comes up. She explains that emotions live tucked into the body pains; shoulders, hips, face muscles, the body carries it all. These knots get loosened when Susan works on them, and the physical and emotional pain is released. She can't ignore or abandon what surfaces from her clients as she helps release the pain in their muscles. This emotional element is part of her work, whether she wants it or not, and sometimes what surfaces from a body is a torrent of grief, or anger.

This also happens to anyone painting, drawing, writing, acting, etc. The emotional stuff surfaces like rocks in the spring soil. We have to attend to it, and the creative and emotional work is all part of the whole person living, of a human who is building and making a life. Of course when our emotions are agitated and the drama is loud within ourselves, demanding all of our attention like a roomful of screaming infants being vaccinated, it can distract us from seeing that other people need healing too. This is why we must try to be clear and honest in our work, to brave the pain, so we can be accurate reflectors for those around us trying to see themselves through our help and example.

For me, teaching in the arts means helping kids develop life-long emotional rescue tools, so they can go to their notebooks and sketchbooks and write and draw to release their pain and to heal. They are struggling with more than we can even imagine; empowerment through these tools of expression is the best thing we can give them. An expressive society is a healthy society.