Shelley Klammer-Expressive Art Therapy

Welcome

I live and love with my partner Ondrea and my 14 year old daughter Hadley in Vancouver BC Canada. I am in the process of finishing my Registered Counseling Designation and I work full time as a therapeutic art instructor for elders with Alhziemers and Dementia. I have also led art therapy groups for adults with acquired brain injuries and youth in prison. I teach a method of Spontaneous Collage in the Vancouver area and offer you who live far from Vancouver - these online courses available on this site.

 

Our Personality is the Map of our Limitations

We all have a personality that is based on our childhood and the experiences that shape us. Usually we live in this box of limitations and self-protective mechanisms for our entire lives without even realizing it. It is what spiritual teachers call the "conditioned mind".

 

It is hard to even know that we have a much larger, grand, magnificent self behind our everyday thoughts. This grand self is our unique flavor of love that is meant to be expressed in the world. I often catch glimpses of people's essence as it awakens from it's spiritual slumber and it is always surprising to me. Often what I see is that someone's essence is quite different than what they express on a daily basis form their conditioned mind.

 

Our Larger Self is Not Fearful

If you wonder who you might be in your greater essence consider who you would be if you felt no fear. I discovered the unique tone of my "larger self" when my daughter was a baby. I had a traumatic birthing during which I almost died. During that time my marriage also ended abruptly and I underwent a time of personal crisis when five close members of my family died suddenly within the period of about a year. That multifaceted crisis in my life intensified my awareness of a deeper unfolding and opened up a window to a self that was infinitely larger than my regular everyday self.

We Need to Be Conscious of all Parts of Ourselves to Evolve

That period of my life marked an explosion of spontaneous creativity. I fell in love with my life/spirit partner of 12 years, Ondrea. I wrote visionary poetry. I painted intuitive paintings all night long. I hardly slept. I felt very little fear. I trusted life to unfold and it did. Everything just came to me as it needed to. Love, support, money. I did not struggle. Then after a few months, my old conditioned mind began to seep in and I lost my free flowing uninhibited, visionary creativity. I remember feeling a sense of sadness as my higher reality began to slip away. I did not understand that as we evolve we have to address every aspect of our character. Every conditioned fear and doubt that was crystallized in my mind that blocked my access to my divine self came up for clearing - and that is in divine order.

Visionary Creativity can be Accessed in Small Daily Ways

As I moved into my limited mind states again, I could not fully accept it anymore and thus began the excavating, the releasing, and the teaching of myself how to come back to my fullest possibilities. I find spontaneous collage to be a good way to easily bypass my ordinary mind. It helps me open up to possibilities beyond the everyday and provided a small daily door into my innate visionary state.

 

The richness of a spontaneously creative life begins when we can let go of most of our thinking. We cannot listen to the creative abundance of life through our regular mind. We have to move into the feeling sense of the heart and when we do we gain little insights into the spiritual secrets of life. Most of us do not fully realize that there is an entire creative world unfolding beneath our habitual thoughts.

There is Great Creativity Beneath our Everyday Thinking

When we fall into a state of spontaneous creativity we have to be willing to no longer recognize ourselves. Our conditioned minds want to control everything. Most thinking is a reaction, a defense, a protection, a desire. Our everyday minds most often work against a creative life.

 

Our rigid, habitual thinking runs a personal interference pattern against the greater unfolding that is happening at all times. Our unconditioned mind however is behind our regular thinking. Our quiet mind is simply listening to the flow of life and is spontaneously following our rightful path and purpose with innate wisdom. We need to find creative ways to let go of our regular ways of thinking so that we can participate in life creatively and spontaneously. Who we are in our greatness often bears little resemblance to who we have been.