Healing through Art with Beth Woessner

Healing Through Art with Beth Woessner

Healing after betrayal can feel exhausting. Sometimes you are tired of talking, analysing and trying to find the right words for what you have experienced.

In this episode, Jane speaks with artist, educator and betrayal trauma coach Beth Woessner about how creativity can offer another pathway towards healing.

Beth brings together a lifetime of artistic practice, her own experience of trauma and healing, and her trauma-informed training. She explains how art can create a calming, embodied experience in which the nervous system is able to let down its guard.

This is not about artistic skill, producing something beautiful or getting it “right.” It is about curiosity, play and giving yourself permission to choose.

Beth describes art as a bottom-up approach to healing. While education, conversation and talk therapy help us process experiences through the mind, creative activities also engage the body and the senses. Choosing a colour, making a mark or noticing how a material feels in your hands can become a gentle way to practise listening to yourself.

These small choices matter. Betrayal can undermine your sense of voice, agency and self-trust. Creative play offers a low-risk space to notice what you are drawn towards, make a choice and allow that choice to be enough.

Jane and Beth also explore the connection between tenderness and resilience. True resilience is not built by demanding that we try harder or “get over it.” It grows through compassion, nourishment and the steady message: I believe in you. You can do this.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The difference between art as a skill and art as a healing experience
• How creativity can support reconnection with yourself
• Art as mindfulness, spiritual practice and embodied expression
• Why the nervous system needs experiences of calm, pleasure and play
• The difference between top-down and bottom-up approaches to healing
• How simple creative choices can rebuild voice, agency and confidence
• Making art without judgement, pressure or a required outcome
• Why adults need play just as much as children do
• How self-compassion helps us become more resilient
• Beth’s art-based support group, Tender Resilience

Beth also guides listeners through a simple creative experience designed to encourage calm, curiosity and present-moment awareness.

You do not need to consider yourself artistic to benefit. You can begin with whatever is available: crayons, pencils, markers, paint, Play-Doh, collage materials or even activities such as gardening, cooking, sewing, crochet or embroidery.

The invitation is simply to notice:

What helps my body soften?
Where do I feel able to be myself?
What am I curious about?
What would it be like to create without needing to perform?

Healing requires many different kinds of support. Creativity may become one more safe and gentle place in which your nervous system can rest, your confidence can grow and you can begin to reconnect with yourself.

To download Beth's free art lesson "Painting a Cone Flower", click here.

To join the Tender Resilience group in October 2026, click here.

To join the monthly art healing support group, click here.

To see Beth's art and other offerings, click here.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello friend, you're listening to Confident Again, your place for hope and healing after the devastating impacts of intimate betrayal. I'm your host Jane and if you're curious about expanding your healing toolkit with creativity, this episode is for you. With my special guest Beth, we'll be talking about incorporating art into your healing toolkit. You know, the journey of healing after betrayal is arduous and overwhelming. We just feel exhausted from talking about it so much, or maybe you don't even have words yet to express how things are for you. And maybe you're just over it and you feel like everything is too much, it's too hard, it's too tiring, and you just can't do another therapeutic thing. But today, Beth is going to teach us how art can not only be an enjoyable respite from the malay of chaos of post-betrayal, but also actively contribute to our healing. So if you are tired of wordy approaches to healing, this episode will be a resource for you. Beth is an art professional who also coaches people healing from betrayal and facilitates an art-based support group. She brings together the power of her own healing, her trauma-informed training, and a lifetime of immersion in art to provide a unique healing context for nervous systems in Overwhelm. She's also a beautiful person, insightful and authentic. It's really my privilege to have you on the podcast, Beth. Thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you, Jane. Yeah, I remember the first time I met you, I noticed the paintings in the background and just the colors and the shapes and the topics, so many flowers and birds and beautiful scenery. And it just always feels good to be on a Zoom call with you where I get a little peek into your studio and the things that you do with your art. Yeah. So can you tell us a little bit about your personal connection with art and healing?

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Yeah. Well, I'll start with um art. And art has always been a big interest of mine since I was little. Um, and about 20 plus years ago, I was able to turn it into a business that started out real small and it's just grown as I've had more time to put into it. But it's something I love to do and share with others. I teach classes, I do commission work, which invites me into people's very um important moments or places or people, in which I feel so honored to be invited into the commissions that way. Um, and I set up my art at my local farmers market. I've been doing that about 20 years in um so it's always been something that's a passion of mine. I think I believe I was born with that interest. I fully believe that art is a skill that anybody can learn if they want to put the time in, because it is a skill. So it takes time if you want to get proficient. But what I have recently leaned into a whole lot more is art, just for art's sake, and listen to that calling of something they're interested in and not worried about results. When you're in a group of people who also are interested in art, you're like with your tribe, you have this energy of like, I'm with my people.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Yeah, I really appreciate that you're talking about two things really. One is art as skill and product, and the other is art as enjoyment and curiosity. And I'm guessing that when you talk about art as healing, it's that second piece around enjoyment and curiosity. Can you tell us a bit more about that and your connection with that?

SPEAKER_00 4:24

Well, I mean, something that happens in my classes a lot is I will have retired women that are newly retired and they've signed up for a class, and they say, I've wanted to take a class my whole life. And I'm so happy they're there, but I'm also so sad that they had to wait till retirement to do that. So I think it's super important for us to listen to those itches of interest or curiosity of like, I wonder what it's like to do whatever gardening, cooking. Like, it's so important for us to um listen to ourselves and treat ourselves to what those God-given desires are. I I did a um, I used to be part of a art ministry group at my church, and we would have themes that we were invited to create from, and people could create in poetry, photography, stories, art, art, whatever they wanted to. It was really, really interesting and enjoyable. But one of them was worship, and I really um thought long and hard and did some research in my own understanding of God and what worship means to me. And I really think worship is saying thank you to God, thank you for what He's created, and what He has created is also me, and He created me with certain desires, and so when I am following that and I'm painting or doing something artistic, I'm in an act of worship because I'm I'm doing what He created me to do, He He gave me that, so that's a a way of sh of appreciating, of being thankful and using how He created me.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

I mean, I'm hearing art actually as a spiritual practice, not just spiritual in terms of the formality or structure of spiritual practices, but also as a sense of deeper connection with myself and my and my longings and desires, and that that whatever's planted in my heart that needs expression, that's part of what's been given to me by God, but also not just as an end to itself, but also in connection to this is was given to me by God. So there's a bigger than myself element in it that feels very spiritual to me. And you're describing that as worship.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

I think it's super important for us to, and part of the uh trauma healing is really coming back to ourselves and who who are we? What do we want? What do we like? What are our longings? And to honor that. I mean, that's a huge piece of just anchoring back into ourselves. And so, um, and I don't think art is for everybody. I don't think that's everybody's longing, but whatever it is, you know, it's really important for anybody, but I think especially on the healing journey from trauma to really tune in to ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah, I think um that was also coming up for me around what you're talking about is that self-connection piece that is the real hard work of trauma recovery because trauma disconnects us from ourselves, it fragments our sense of self. Is there a part of me that is longing to express myself through the use of artistic means? And could that be part of my healing? And if I leaned into that, would that give me a little piece of self-connection that can plant that seed for the deeper healing work that I really that I really long for and then deserve?

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Yeah, yeah, and it's a way to nurture yourself and it's that's important.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Could you expand on why that's important to you personally?

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Um well I would say I've always heard and read about the science behind art being healing, and I've believed it because I believe science, but I don't know if I ever had a real tangible experience as it being healing. It's always been very enjoyable to me. Um, but I had a very tangible experience. Uh, a year and a half ago, I had a severe flair from lupus where I was in horrible pain um constantly. And I I had classes on the books that I was teaching, and I didn't want to cancel them. So I thought I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna bear through it. I'm gonna, you know, the old stories of pull yourself up by your bootstraps and I'm just gonna fake it till I make it or whatever. But I started teaching the class and I was doing the art. I demo, I'm demoing, and 20 minutes in, I was like, my, my pain was gone. It it disappeared, and it was gone the whole rest of the class, and then it came back later and was back to where it was, but it was such a literal experience for me of my body being healed during the time I was doing something artistic, doing something I enjoy, being in the zone of what art can put you in, of this mindful space. Um and so when that happened, I just really double down on that part of art, especially because of my own trauma and being so passionate about that as well for women, other women to find healing. And what I am bringing is my own art history and experience of being in the as an educator of art and um doing art personally with trauma, um, experiencing trauma myself, now also being on the professional side of healing trauma, and I'm just mixing that together kind of in my own version. It's not art therapy, the way I understand art therapy. I think it's a lot about trying to understand our feelings, and we can't express them verbally, so art can be a way to tell the story and connect to it. My direction that I'm going with it is as an experiential place to have a calming experience to give our nervous systems this calm. Like when I was going through this lupus flare and getting all kinds of healing modalities, I was going to a nutritionist and I was going to acupuncture and I was doing Reiki meditation and doing all the things to try to help myself heal. Um, one of the um directions from the nutritionist that I was going to was find those things that for you are calming to your nervous system. People, places, things, there's certain people that you're with that you recognize after a while you're just your shoulders are relaxed, you're not having to think about what you're saying, you're just you, you're just it's easy, you're comfortable. Where are those places that you feel that way? That's when your body is getting a break. It's it's the nervous system is experiencing some calm. And in betrayal trauma and all kinds of trauma, your body is revved up and often we don't even know it is. It's just like in constant, hyper-vigilant, not calm. And so I think that's super important to find those times and places and people where you can experience and also just that paying attention and tuning into what is my body experiencing when I'm with this person or when I'm with that person, or when I'm doing this activity or that activity, like that's really uh important for us to grow that awareness and connection to our bodies. And um so for me, art is one of those places where I experience just where I can feel like I can just be relaxed, be me. Yeah, it's just it's an easy space. That's what I want to bring to people. I want to bring those experiences um as just another opportunity for healing and a space for healing, because I think it takes all kinds of spaces and places and things, not just one.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

I've experienced that too, actually, with art. Arts being part of my own healing journey, not as art therapy, um, but more as when I'm really concentrating on painting a bird, everything else falls away, all those hyper-vigilant feelings, all of those thought loops, they're gone. I'm just focusing on where's my brush on that line and how is it flowing in the water? All of that just really gives me a space to intentionally place my thoughts and have my body all in the same place. And use this word before, but it's like this is a mindfulness strategy.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah, very much.

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah. So I heard you talk about art being a bottom-up approach. Can you tell us more about why what that is and why that's important?

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Yeah, well, the bottom-up approach. Um, so top-down would be like talk therapy and being in our head and being um uh being educated in verbal and it's just a processing in our head, being bottom down, which is really important. We need that too. That's books and podcasts and um talk therapy, and um I think you know, super, super important. We need that. And then we also need the bottom-up, and the bottom-up is not trying to figure things out from our head, it's being connected to our body um and doing things physically. Um, it's even, you know, the somatic work. Um it's tuning into our bodies um to connect with that part, which brings us also to strengthening that awareness and muscle to understand safety as well, because our bodies are going to tell us when we're safe before our minds are gonna really register whether we're safe or not. And our minds can also talk ourselves out of safety. We've had these messages that we've hung on to, um, you know, distorted beliefs or other things that take us away from what our body is telling us. So the more we can connect to our body and listen to it and trust its signals, the safer we're going to be putting ourselves in places. And to strengthen that, I think is anything you can do with your body. And so, art, because you're using your hands, it's a tactile thing and it's a it's an experience of the body that it's it's the bottom-up experience. It's just another way to tap into tuning into your body and to um listening to yourself because it's also with some of the exercises that I like to focus on is a lot about voice and choice, which is another part of what we lose in trauma, and to look for opportunities where we can practice that and build that up. And so even just like maybe if we're doing um skill-based art where you're painting a bird and you know it's a blue bird, well, you know you need to use blue, so you're using blue, but in a art experiential um experience that I'm focusing more on is like choose whatever color you want for for whatever the exercise is. So it's like strengthening that tuning into yourself, listening, like, oh, you know, don't think too hard on it. Just grab a color and trusting that that's like that's the color. It's not right, it's not wrong, it's just what you chose.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

That sounds like confidence development to me. Yeah. That that self-trust of whatever color I'm drawn to, that's the color I'm going to choose. And I'm going to be good with that and believe that that's what I needed in this moment. And it seems small, but it's confidence is built through those small choices to listen to myself and move towards what I need in ways that align with my values. And so the choice of a color is a very safe way to practice that. Yeah. So there's probably people listening who are like, oh, art, I could like, no way. Um they like, I can't even draw stick figures. Um, maybe they've got art wounds from their childhood or other places where they tried to do art and they were criticized, or some unkind words were said to them and they feel not good enough in this space. So, what are your thoughts for people who might be in this space with what you're offering here? And yeah, are there some people for whom this might not be helpful?

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Um, that is real. People have these messages from a teacher or someone that just said you're not good at this, or and then they just anchor into that for the rest of their life that they they aren't, that's not their thing, and they're afraid, and there's that fear of judgment. And so, I mean, all that's very real. And I think this can be a space, uh, because we're not drawing a bird uh or anything real specific, there's not that expectation for it to look like anything. So it's just about the experience of mark making and choices of color, and like you don't even have to show what you're doing. It's just tuning into yourself and playing with art supplies. And what does it feel like to use a crayon? And what does it feel like to use a marker? And just a, you know, a textile body experience of choice and color and play. And so I want to say, you know, in this direction, it it's there's no pressure for it to look like anything. And and I also think if there is a curiosity of any kind, give it a try and see what you know, what kind of experience you have with it, you know, listen to that curiosity. I wonder what that's like. Um, and I also think it can be helpful for um several of the women have said like they've done art and they've gotten away from it and they they want to get back into it. This can be a way too of just a step towards what they used to do, you know, just kind of reawaken that curiosity and that uh focus on art materials. And most people have that um excitement of opening a brand new box of crayons with all the colors and just like the the uh opportunity and invitation of that, of just these all these choices and just the potential of a brand new box of crayons. And you know, if that's ever been something you've like leaned into or thought about as pleasure, like then you know, this is something to try, um, for sure. Um and it's very basic art supplies, it's it's whatever you have, very simple. Um, so it's it's not an expensive uh endeavor to jump into an a Again, like if whatever you have will work.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Yeah. It's interesting that you talk about um the connection with childhood experiences, and maybe you've gotten disconnected from that, and maybe there's an opportunity to come back to that on the healing journey. And that really resonates with me because I think my most positive school experiences have mostly to do with creativity. Um being, I remember finger painting, being in the clay room, rolling plasticine. Um even like my sewing class, and like I think that sense of being 100% present with creating something was something as a child that I really resonated with. And then I, you know, I got older and I had to connect with more practical. And you know, and then my story um contained pain that needed healing. And it's interesting that on my own journey, I reached for art as the thing that might give me a space to reconnect with that childhood joy.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

There was a um lady that took one of my classes. Well, two things I want to say. I only teach adults because I'm very passionate about adults taking time to play and give themselves permission to do something that's not uh productive per se, or um, you know, may not have a real purpose other than just joy or pleasure. And it's so hard for adults to do that. It's so hard. We have so many responsibilities. And but we will sign up kids for classes, art classes all summer long, and because we know it's good for them and we want them to have that experience. But, you know, if someone adults need that too. We need play, we need joy. And when someone signs up for one of my classes, I'm just so proud of them. Like they're doing something for themselves. Often I'll say, What brought you to this class when we get ready to get started? And one lady said, Well, it was her uh cardiologist who brought her to this class because she um was having some heart issues, and the prescription from her doctor was to do something you enjoy. And she says, Well, I've always wanted to take watercolor classes, and then the nurse was like, Well, I know somebody who does that. And she happened to know me, and so she was in the class for her heart, for her heart condition. And, you know, again, another um circle back to it being healing, literally to your body. Um, and it's all connected mind, body, spirit.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

Yeah, and I think that, you know, I don't know, there's a Western mindset, or maybe it's just being super practical, but we're like, what a, you know, we feel like it's a waste of time. It's very extravagant to go do art andor any other creative endeavor because what's the use of that? And what we're saying is actually, I love that you've introduced the word play, that the opportunity for us to play as adults and especially play in the context where we need healing, is actually creating the environment in which we can heal. You know, I also want to connect it to brain science and the rewiring of neural pathways that are stuck in loops and that experience of play, it's permission for our brain to experiment with something that doesn't, it's not high stakes, it's very low risk. Um, but to have those positive experiences of enjoyment and creativity and even maybe even producing something we like. So, your support group is called tender resilience, and it blends the use of art with the topic of resilience. So, can you unpack for us what is the connection between art and resilience? And maybe even how art can help somebody reclaim confidence when they've experienced something traumatic.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

You know, you hear the term um when things are hard, try softer, be more gentle with yourself. Um when things are hard, don't push yourself harder, be softer, be more gentle, be um more tender. And so the tender resilience is like I think we can think of resilience as like you know, strong strength, but it's really our nurturing tenderness towards ourselves that makes us stronger. It's a six-week um group that um has a theme each week, and the overall theme of all of it is self-compassion and really listening to yourself and being really kind to yourself, and um where are those spaces and places that that happens, and how do we talk to ourselves and um you know listening to emotions as messages of ways to take care of our needs, and how can we take care of our needs, and um just really tuning in to yourself and what you need, and um, and and then there's a art experience each week um that helps us tune into ourselves and the themes of each week, and so it's not a lot about discussing the betrayal trauma with each other like a typical support group. Um it's um, you know, a lot of education around self-compassion and invitations of different ways to experience self-compassion and then tuning into ourselves with some of these guided theme art experiences.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah. And talk to me a little bit more, if you can just maybe be a little more even specific around why does this build resilience?

SPEAKER_00 28:20

It's about um really being kind to yourself, you know, reparenting ourselves and talking to those messages that we have stuck in us of not being kind. And um and it's it's the love that makes us stronger, not the beating ourselves up. That's not what makes us stronger. It's the love and kindness that makes us stronger. So it builds that resilience to handle hard things in life, to to be in this world that's hard. And so the more opportunities we can learn how to be kind to ourselves, just building this life that supports us makes us resilient.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

Yeah. The image that's coming up for me is if you've been in an accident and you've broken bones and you've had internal organ damage, you don't get up and do physiotherapy the next day. You you're in ICU, you've got to have surgeries to fix that. And when you're in the healing process, it's the tenderness to yourself that actually creates the healing. It's getting enough water, it's having enough sleep, it's taking the medication, it's doing the gentle exercises that brings back the strength. And if we try too hard, we actually do more damage to ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 29:54

Talking about how it can build confidence. And you know, if you just think about if you uh say to someone, you know, or to yourself, come on now, get your act together, you know how to do this. That doesn't go as far or long in building resilience and confidence in us as the message of, I believe in you, you've got this, you know how it's there. It's kind of saying the same thing, but really different. And like I can just even feel it in my own body saying both of those things out loud. The first time saying it, I feel stiff and hard, and and then saying it the second time in a different way. I'm I'm my body feels softer and like you know, say that to ourselves. I believe in you, you can do this. That's confidence building.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah, a hundred percent. Yeah. So if I'm curious about this and I want to try this out on my own, what are some tips for putting this modality to work?

SPEAKER_00 31:04

You know, get out your kids' art supplies, or get out if you have art supplies with dust on them, dust them off and pull them out and just start experimenting and playing with them. And what do these two colors look like when I mix them together? Um, or what happens when I do layers of these different colors of crayons over the top of each other? Or, you know, just start experimenting with what you have and being curious about what they're gonna do. Watch all the gazillion YouTube videos that are out there of examples of things to do and follow along and look in your local area for art classes and take an art class. Go to an art exhibit, an art museum. There is science that has shown it's calming for our bodies just to look at art. Um, so um give these things a try, you know, um, even kids' books, coloring books, um paint by numbers, uh, and even, you know, any kind any other kind of tactile artistic thing, um, doing embroidery or crocheting or um gardening, cooking, all of that's creative. Um, and can give you that opportunity of voice and choice as well. Like, oh, what flowers do I want to plant here? How close do I want to put them together? You know, and then even just having your hands in the dirt or your hands in dough or, you know, all those things are just good for us. Good for us.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Yeah. I love that you're expanding this to so many other ways to do adult play.

SPEAKER_00 32:45

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even like play-doh, that's so tactile and can be um easy to set up, clean up, doesn't take much. Play-doh's cheap. You can make homemade play-doh and just playing with that and creating, you know, whatever. Let me create a flower out of this play-doh or let me spell my name with it. Or um, if you have grandkids, you know, sit down with them and do these things with them and just be curious about it. Write your name and all the different color gel pens, you know. Yeah, buy some stickers. And when you mail a letter to someone, fill it up with stickers on the outside. I mean, just be playful and like when you see those little things at the store, buy it. Get it.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Yeah. I know. I love that so much. All right. Well, can you um walk me through a little art exercise right now that can sort of demonstrate what you're talking about?

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah. So um a real simple one that can be done almost anywhere with just a pencil, a pen, uh, but you can do it with a crayon or a marker. But it's a calming um um bilateral tactile experience. And you just you can, I think you have markers there, you can just choose a color and on your paper start making a figure eight. Ah, and you can do it any size you want, but I would tune in to going slow, not fast, as you're making this figure eight, and also loose like pay attention. Like, what does it feel like? The marker on the paper. Do you hear any sounds? Is it making like a squeaky sound? Is it smooth? Is it are you on a table that's rough underneath and you can feel the bumps under the marker as you're making your figure eight? Can you change how you overlap the eight, like make it bigger, then make it smaller? But it's it's not about a completion of like how fast you can do it or how many strokes you can do. It's just about that bilateral back and forth movement, and also like tuning into it. Like, okay, now I'm gonna switch colors and I'm gonna overlap it with this other color.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

Yeah, so I've started doing my figure eight, and I'm using red, but it's I'm noticing that's not that red, it's actually quite pinky, a pinky red. And um I'm just gonna try the first time just tracing over the exact one I did the first time. And maybe I feel like what I'm wanting to do is thicken the line slightly by just slightly going off center. But there's something about the concentration of this, and I can also see how the paper that I'm using is showing through where the crayon is, and also feeling the urge to go a little bit fast, like maybe getting into a bit of flow here with this, like a rhythm or maybe even a fast slow, you know, like fast on the curves and slow on the straights. Yeah, because I have to actually be more clo more careful on the curves because they're a little bit more difficult. You can change directions. Oh yeah, oh that's I'm gonna do that with a different colour. Okay, I'm getting a blue and try and go in another cut colour, and it requires a bit more concentration actually, because I've never drawn a figure eight in this direction before. Which is funny, right? And I'm using my blue to outline the red, which I actually really like the look of that too. But there's a there is a hand-eye coordination that's quite absorbing with this. Just watching where the crayon's going. And this is how it's working for me. So I'm gonna put I'm gonna actually now do a figure eight going in the other direction. So now my picture looks more like a four-leaf clover. And I'm gonna try the same thing, but then I'm gonna use the blue as the base color and come back with the pink, the pinky red. And I can hear that it sort of sounds a little bit like a skateboard park, just much quieter.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Yeah, paint tuning into any sounds you hear, any feeling, you're you're touching into your senses. What do I see? What do I hear? What do I feel? Even smell, you know, like crayons. Boy, they have a certain smell, and markers have smells. Yeah. Um, paint has smells. Yeah. And if you, you know, we're not really making anything specific, but if you keep turning your figure eight into an overlapping, uh, pretty soon you could have a flower.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah. I mean, I almost it's like a a knot, actually, at the moment. Because it's got the and actually my arm is getting tired. I must be pressing quite hard, actually.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Oh, see, that's a great notice right there, Jane. Yeah. Like, okay, now just adjust that to try it different. Like go much lighter.

SPEAKER_01 38:48

Oh, yeah, that's true. Because with crayons, you know, I feel like I have to press hard to get the benefit of the color. But what if I didn't press hard? What would that be like? Yeah. And I can pick up a pale yellow, and it's going over the top, you know, it it alters the color. Um now put a little bit of green over my blue.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

And this is a calming thing that you can do, like as a regulation exercise. If you don't even have a pen or a marker, you can do it with your finger on your hand, on the palm of your hand, and just do a figure eight uh with your finger. And just that touch of your hand and that repetitive bilateral movement can be a calming moment when you notice you need a calm moment.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

Yeah, I love that. I'm gonna show you my picture.

SPEAKER_00 40:02

Um yeah, yeah, the yellow. I could see the the green or the yellow over the blue there.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Yeah, just being thank you. That was so simple, but there's something about that that's very calming. And what's also interesting about this activity is that I did some training a few years back as in educational therapy, and the figure eight um was that was the core activity for retraining the brain in education in the educational therapy training that I did. But and it wasn't just on paper, it was actually on a big chalkboard, and you use the large. So I wonder what it would be like to do this, but to get my sidewalk chalk and do it outside on a cement wall or on a big board or something like that, and just play with that and with that have a different impact using the large muscles as well as the fine muscles. So yeah, thank you, Beth. That was so interesting.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Yeah, you're welcome. I mean, even like, you know, making me think like the hose this time of year, we're watering all the time, and on the uh sidewalk or the driveway with your hose, you know, doing a figure eight as your big body and yeah, movement of your whole arm and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Um yeah, there's so many ways to that this could play out as play because it is about play. Once I start to think about as therapy, then it's almost like, oh, therapy, you know. But if it's like, oh, I get to play and tap into the sparkle of play that I see in little children, there's something about that.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

Yeah, I think there's also a way to look at it as medicine for your body, because I think you can look at this as like, well, what is that? How is that even helping me? I mean, what it took a few minutes and we're just scribbling, like what is, but if you're taking your body to this place of rest, it is like medicine for your body because it's just giving it like if you think about a car when you let off the gas and you let it idle, like it is it is not using fuel and you know, engine inju energy, it's just idling. So even just giving our body a minute or two of idle is really good for a car that's racing around the track fast, yeah. And there's something about the mindfulness of it too, like right, and it's a great exercise of tuning in um to the moment you're in, exactly what's happening right here, which is what mindfulness is, and it's it's uh helping us pause and yeah, it's just another way to grow a healthy part of this healing journey.

SPEAKER_01 42:54

Yeah, it's about being a hundred percent present. So for someone who's listening who's in the middle of it right now, feeling the pain, maybe the confusion, what is the big message, the main idea you want them to get from this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Nurture yourself, treat yourself, take care of yourself, listen to yourself. Um, and sometimes people don't know what that is. So try different things. Try it. Maybe you know, you you discover that um gardening is your thing, or you discover that art is something that takes you to a mindful, enjoyable place. And so, yeah, the message is really just pay attention to who um who you are and the places and spaces and people that give your body calm and increase opportunities for that to happen.

SPEAKER_01 43:51

Yeah, and thank you for what you shared about art being one of those modalities that we might use to tap into play, to tap into nervous system regulation and calm, and to practice mindfulness. Yeah, all in the spirit of self-kindness and compassion.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

So if our listeners want to find you, Beth, where can they get a hold of you?

SPEAKER_00 44:19

Yeah, well, um, actually, I have starting in August, it'll be a free monthly art group online on Zoom. Um, it'll be an hour-long art experience, and it's for um women in going through betrayal trauma as a place of to experience what we just talked about for an hour. Um, it's starting in August, the second Friday of every month. Um, I also will be doing this six-week Betrail Trauma support group that I was describing. It will start in October. It'll be on Tuesdays. You can reach out and connect with me personally for any of these experiences to set up with me. Um and so yeah, it's it's Beth Westner art, is how you can find me on social media. And um, my web, my website is Beth Westner. And um, I also have a we're gonna put in here a um little 12-minute video on how to paint a cone flower in watercolor. And so that's on my website as well.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Thank you. All of those links will be in the show notes. So if you didn't catch that, you can go to the show notes and find them there. Thank you so much, Beth, for taking the time to introduce us to art as a healing tool. The incredible story you told us about being in a state of flow when you had a lupus flare-up and experiencing um that relief from pain through art is that's a really powerful story about the power of art to bring about pain, relief, and healing. If one of our listeners, if you're listening to this and you've been helped or encouraged by today's podcast, please rate and review the episode and share the love with others. And I'd love you to check out my website, quietwisdom.com.au. I've got a free gift for you there, four creative ways to process your feelings. So have a look at the show notes to get your copy. So thanks again, Beth, for being here. And until next time, to all my listeners, gently does it with your beautiful self.