You Invested in Rest
Thank you! For those of you who were able to donate, no matter how much, we have a hearty thank you!
We raised $4,126!
We wanted to say a big thank you for your recent donations! This summer, we held our very first fundraiser and managed to collect just over $4,000 thanks to wonderful people like you. While it was a little short of our $5,000 goal, the support we've received will make a huge difference in what we're able to do next.
Your generosity truly means the world to us!
Summer Exhibition - Last Week!
Our exhibit July 1-August 27 at the Vancouver Community Library in Vancouver, WA is almost over!
Visit before it’s gone!
Want to find out about all of our events? We’ve moved to a separate newsletter format for most news and events. Weekly (ish) emails will be sent.
From Consuming to Creating: How Art Transforms Chronic Pain
Philip Yassenoff, Guest Author and Board Member
If you have experienced the ludicrous tenacity of chronic pain, you know that it limits your quality of life, your activities, social patterns, mood, and sense of identity.
Chronic pain impacts roughly 20% of all adults. It is usually hidden, and in a society still stifled by puritanical stoicism, it creates a class of faint people, quietly suffering and pensive.
The complexity of chronic pain defines the challenge of working with it. It is not just a physical phenomenon. Most methods, medical, or alternative, focus on coping with the pain, but not on transforming it. As any chronic pain sufferer knows, the anxiety it creates about the future is as life inhibiting as the pain itself. Part of the misery is dealing with the onslaught of what ifs and projections about where the pain may lead. Will it end? Will it get worse? What if I can’t cope? Does the pain signify a problem I’m not even aware of? What if I can’t get access to: my meds, my support system, my rational thought, etc."?
There’s a saying I heard via a Systema (martial art) teacher. “Fear means: Future Events Appearing Real.” Our wonderful imaginations, if trapped in a vortex of worry, become a weight too much to tolerate. Staying in ones head, allowing the fears to promulgate, will only amplify the perception of pain. No one wants to be locked up in that closet.
So much of chronic pain, both physical and mental, is an internal process. Knowing that, we can be guided to an alternative approach. Allow me to oversimplify. We can generally break down our existence into two oppositional but complementary experiences.
Consuming. This is all that we take in through our senses, our material/sensual appetite, learning, being entertained, our passive social interchanges, and, in some ways, the experience of pain.
Creating. This is all that we make real, or bring into the world, through our vision, initiative and actions. When we are creating we are transforming our inner world into a shared experience with the outer world. Creating applifies a sense of agency.
I am pleased to be on the board of a non-profit, called the Chronic Pain Project (CPP). It’s purpose is to move pain from consuming to creating. Those with chronic pain create art pieces in various mediums, in response to the pain. It’s a way of taking action, that decreases isolation by speaking through the language of the arts.
When one is creating, the focus in more outward. The what if’s recede, and ones own spirit and hidden voice is made manifest. Creating can entirely change the meaning of the pain. The CPP is a community of individuals whose pain brought them to a choice. It is a choice to express ones reality, however challenging, through art. It makes it possible for chronic pain sufferers to share that experience through their own unique creative process. I fully support the CPP because of it’s insightful and beautiful way of helping those with chronic pain to re-connect with the world, and make some impressive art while doing it.
These articles are not meant to replace medical advice. Talk to your doctor about your specific situation.
That’s all for this month. Reach out with any ideas, or questions or just to say “hi”!
Janna Kimel, Executive Director
www.ChronicPainProject.org
