Creative Practice:
Creativity and storytelling as sources of healing, connection and renewal
With Kayhan Irani
In a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming, it’s vital to remember the power of creativity and storytelling as sources of healing, connection and renewal.
Our guided session with Kayhan Irani beautifully illuminated this truth. She invited us to pause, listen to our bodies, hearts and minds, and express ourselves through writing, storytelling, creative reflection and doodling.,In the nurturing space she created for us, Kayhan reminded us that creativity is a pathway to return back to ourselves and to one another. Through creative practice, we can reconnect to our inner and ancestral wisdom and find the grounding we need to navigate the complexities of our lives and the world around us.
During the session, we explored what it means to welcome our histories and experiences with openness and curiosity. Reflecting on cherished artifacts, we considered the sources of unconditional love, rootedness and belonging that have and are shaping us. We also explored the fractures created by displacement assimilation into dominant cultures and systems of authority, and in some regions of the world, individualism. These forces can distance us from the core of humanity and practices of love, tenderness and care. Creative practices offer ways to move back and forth across these ruptures and to mend what has been fractured, and move forward centering love, lifeways, and sources of sustenance that nourish us.
As we held our artifacts and felt the ground on our feet, we were guided through a series of reflective questions that opened up space for our stories to surface. We noticed, felt, breathed, and wrote. We then shared our stories and reflections with one another. It was beautiful to witness one another!
The session reminded us that:
Sharing our stories is a vital act of nurturing the connections that allow us to grow, heal, and cultivate possibilities together. Each narrative we share strengthens the bonds between us, fostering a sense of community and belonging.
We invite you to watch the recording of this wonderful guided session and let your stories surface. Additionally, Kayhan has generously shared a self-guided Creative Pause practice you can come back to and do in any context of self-guided writing and reflection.
Here's a poem we created together:
Resources:
Self-guided Creative Pause you can come back to and do in any context of self-guided writing and reflection. (please cite and credit if used with a group)
There is a Portal - the larger healing justice and community building artwork and pedagogy this work comes from. See description slides here.
“In these times what we need to do is turn towards each other, towards ourselves, turn towards all the creativity and life that has watered us, fed us, through immense changes, that have made a path for us to be here and created a sense of rootedness, home and belonging for us to walk our path and for our dreams to flourish, even when we didn’t know what our dreams were. To remember that there were and are human and non-human beings that believed in you”
“The way one cares for a child is fundamental to the continuity of culture and community. And altering the ways that one cares for a child or is able to to care for the child is fundamental to oppression and transmission of historical trauma” When talking about being assimilated into various cultures of authority and displacing love, tenderness and care.”
“Even in the little fragments [of stories] we can find grounding and each other, and that is enough to grow something new”