The Felt Sense

A virtual space for witnessing, reflecting, & embodying the human experience -Please dont repost my art 🫶🏼-

[rileighsartistry]

Seven Sins by Ren

I’ve never shared something like this before: the art that comes from the felt sense in my being when I listen to music I deeply feel.

This is what I do when I experience another human’s soul deeply. Their art to my art- their right hemisphere to my right hemisphere. Or as Bonnie Badenoch says “the sacred space between.” This is how I process that exchange of energy. I wanted to authentically transmute whatever felt sense was in my body into a visual form- in maybe a different way of a “reaction” video. I never understood the point of reaction videos until I found Ren. And then I got it. To so deeply feel something, you need to find others who “get it.” So here’s my “art reaction.”

Seven Sins is probably my favorite song out of everything. There are several deeply felt lines in there that I have already started attempting to draw.

But this line especially: “Tell me how it feels to be buried while you breathe?” Just hit me. Because truly. To me, when you’re drowning with the overwhelm of existing, it feels like you’re being buried alive. and yet I’m breathing. and yet I’m being actively buried. and yet I’m attempting to just take a fucking breath.

It’s quite a paradoxical phenomenon. and this is the human experience.

[rileighsartistry]

Today was a difficult day. A 12 hour “experimental training” centered around integrating perceptions with a trusted mentor and group. I was struggling with judgments around not being able to recall simple memories or events that happened with people recently- literally like the night before. The details alluded me.

Halfway through this, after having some success with recalling and integrating, something happened with a facilitator (not usually part of this group) that made me feel very, very small. My essence and self disappeared and it felt like I was only an outcome to this person. There was no space for me to be me, no understanding or listening. It felt like my humanity and my confusion was met with rigidity, harshness, dismissal, and a large sense of feeling unheard. The charge that was activated in me so suddenly and violently was actually the charge that I was working on integrating... It was supposed to be a small charge. But it quickly turned into a very, very big charge.

This surprise activation sent me into a place…. Sent me to a place I don’t think I’ve been for a very, very long time in my life. I still don’t quite know. I do know I cried and froze, and basically did whatever until I could escape the moment. It was hard to talk. To breathe. I felt like what was demanded from me was a performance. It seemed to last an eternity. My animal brain took over for the remainder of the training. I didn’t know what to do because I wasn’t expecting it to happen in a space that is usually regarded as sacred and safe.

I still don’t really know what happened, why the universe felt like that was necessary for me to experience, or what to do about it. I feel I need relational safety to help me navigate this, and I’m not sure when I’ll find that for this. Perhaps in that 9 month course I’ll be starting soon… again, I don’t know.

I created this piece as a reflection of what that terrifying moment felt like to me. The confusion, the overbearing nature of a demanding “authority,” the denial of my authentic experience… and me, very small, trying to survive. A sense of loss of connection to self.

I just wanted to document this for my journey.

[rileighsartistry]

“Cradled”

I feel more ready to share this now. Turns out I just needed a different song to add in order to embody it better. 🙂

Over the past few months, opportunities to attend a few different trainings arose. They were not related to each other, but nevertheless became a “path” it seemed the powers at be needed me to follow. As I followed this path, I discovered a story within myself that I had been unaware of, and have been slowly making sense of.

Long ago, little Rileigh had two homes.

In one home, a part of her was awakened and accepted.

But in the other home, she had to shut down what was opened in order to survive.

It wasn’t out of cruelty this happened, but out of misunderstanding and generational living- a reaction that induced shame nonetheless.

Every time she switched between the two, it was a push-pull of parts of self. A confusing struggle for little Rileigh who didn’t understand why she couldn’t just show up in this world as herself.

Eventually over the years, she found that “opened” part of her to be shameful and very embarrassing- too much, too sensitive, too deep, too weird, etc- and so it was shut down and buried very deep inside of her. Rileigh had always felt like an outsider, so different from everyone else. This was also confusing because she tried so hard to just be quiet and good, so she could fit in. The pain of never quite being accepted and the loneliness that comes with that was also buried with the “open” part of her.

Little by little though, roughly 25 years later, Rileigh has just begun to find those parts of her that were once rejected, shamed, and buried. And she began the work of sitting with those parts, feeling with them, offering them solace, and grieving with them. Rileigh is still doing this slow and exhausting work. But little by little Rileigh’s parts of self will be found, held safe, and accepted for who they are.

“I see you little one/hidden for so long/it wasn’t safe./it wasn’t safe./it’s safe enough now/I have found you/you are found/you are seen/you did not deserve that/I’m sorry/come here/let me cradle you/I see you now/I’ve got you.”

[rileighsartistry]

“…To be alive is to be capable of being creative; the essential self-assertion of children is to affirm their own existence in the world through creative living: Play is the means of expression of our creativity. When we lose the capacity for imaginative life, for play, then we "die" to ourselves, we experience a living death which is often masked by a compliant outer shell…Authentic existence is poetic existence; it is the affirmation of my ownmost possibilities in the world. When I forget my capacity to dwell poetically, I lose myself as well. I become caught up in the social whirl, in flight from the anxiety of being alive, of being mortal.” (Poesis, Steven Levine, p. 37)

This art piece is my attempt to strengthen my capacity to dwell poetically, as this week I became “caught up in the social whirl, in flight from the anxiety of being alive.” I literally started it with my clients Saturday as they were doing their art, and stayed two hours after work to finish it. It’s made with the crappiest of oil pastels on giant, thin drawing paper 😂 it was more of a- I just need to create so whatever’s around will do- moment than a planned out finished piece…

Also can I just say- It truly amazes me that if I’m just willing to listen to my whims of where to direct my attention, I seem to *always* find the exact thing I need to ground me & make sense of what I was experiencing (the above excerpt I just literally read randomly) to help me close out the day or week. Like really. Trust the process. This experience humbles me ever. Single. Time.

[rileighsartistry]

“Surrender”

Abstract

Oil pastel on sandpaper

9x12

Hello fellow humans!

I created this a few days after we got home from my synergetic play therapy training in Canada- you know the one that changed my life? Actually on the night of Mother’s Day.

I was so distraught this night. I felt such intense emotions of sadness, loneliness, and frustration with my thoughts going very, very dark. It was like an intense wave came over me. I was tempted to start getting angry at myself for being “so ridiculous” and feeling these feelings over something I felt was so trivial. But instead of dwelling in shame over the what I was feeling, I decided to “trust my process” and attempt to transmute my inner world externally while just accepting this is what I was feeling.

So here’s what my raw emotions of intense “lows” and darkness, or rather the whirlwind of feeling such intensity.

Enjoy! lol

I tried to upload a video of my creating this. Maybe I’ll do that later.

[rileighsartistry]

Having a rough time with just accepting that I’m not always going to feel that stillness and attunement with myself. I journaled that until about 4 am. While I was doing that, a song came on called “Art of Life.” It wasn’t until I got to a point of my journaling where I didn’t know where or how to conclude my thoughts that I looked at what was playing… then came to the realization that… well, this is the “art of life.” I have to lose myself in order to be able to find myself. I can’t have one without the other. There’s a felt sense of sadness and acceptance/resignation at that thought.

This afternoon though, I became overwhelmed again. And was feeling sad about that loss of connection to self, becoming irritated that connection to myself is so easily lost while being so-hard won. I opened this fortune cookie randomly from my daughter Cecilia’s food bag. I didn’t even eat panda nor wanted panda. She would *not* relent on panda though, so we got Panda Express for her and some other food for us.

And lo and behold Cecilia wanting panda lead to me randomly, without thought, (I always wait until the end of my dinner to open fortunes!) grab a cookie and eat it first- and this was the fortune.

The feeling of sadness and struggle went away and the stillness and acceptance of the journey came back.

The art of life. I am where I am. It is what it is.

[rileighsartistry]

A piece of my journey to share.

I share now, mainly for me as a way to process and have this all in one place.

But I also recognize the power that a shared journey might have. I’ve experienced this several times, and have found healing in witnessing other’s journey’s.

Do I Exist?

Thoughts and art over the course of the past week, closing and opening a gap simultaneously in my journey to find self attachment/self.

The book “Poiesis” by Stephen Levine has been life changing and so extremely grounding to me for this last little bit of self work. Especially the pink highlights. It’s a random book I found on amazon, after hearing Marshall Lyle’s talk about the concept in a training a few months ago. On a whim, I got it, and then on another “random” whim I took it with me to my training. And started reading the intro randomly on day either 2 or 3- but turned out to be the exact time I needed to read it to help me with the self work at that moment.

Turns out listening to those “weird” or seemingly “random” felt senses of thoughts/whims weren’t random at all- that’s attunement to self. To not only notice and hear but to also follow those brief moments of idea and follow it. That’s been a really powerful discovery for me on my journey.

Ive never actually felt those and intentionally listened to those until this training. It’s life altering.

I’m still trying, and will probably forever be trying, to be in my body enough to feel these moments. I call it “the path of attunement” and want to create art around that someday when I get a better felt sense of it.

But for now, I am in the working stages of feeling myself, and attuning to myself- owning my existence so I can be grounded and foster deeper self attachment.

Here’s to the journey that my ancestors and parents could not integrate, and so here I try to continue the work. I know I’ve passed this onto Cecilia, before I was even aware that it existed. So we, together, are trying our best to heal together in this dance of attachment.

[rileighsartistry]

Breaking through the noise of the world

[rileighsartistry]

Felt sense of “I don’t know what to do anymore” I guess

I was struggling to make the head - as one does when they're not used to making or drawing the human form.

But talking to my nice neighbor about art & play & just connecting as humans helped me relax & not think too much and then all of a sudden the head just formed. It's not proportional but it's better than what I was doing before lol.

There's a lesson in there somewhere, I'm sure

[rileighsartistry]

Hello everyone out there:

Here’s my first attempt at this concept in my head. It did not turn out the way I liked! It did not turn out how I had envisioned.

Yet I share it anyways. Because I’m in search of myself. I am in search of making sense of my thoughts and my experience in this life. And this is the process of being human.

Hopefully as I keep working on this concept, I will find the right way to express it.

And when I do, I will tell the story of how this felt sense came to be.

Thanks for reading. 👋🏼