Kim Hermanson's Blog, page 39
August 13, 2013
Free Tele-class Wednesday August 14th! "The Transformative Power of Metaphor"
Your heart holds wisdom that goes far deeper than your rational mind… and the primal language of your heart is metaphor.
The power of metaphoric images is that they bypass the linear mind, fundamentally shifting our perceptions and outlook. Once we’ve “stepped into” whatever metaphoric image is presenting itself, we often find that whatever was bothering us is gone. We are in a different space.
Please bring an issue, concern, or creative arena in your life in which you would like to have clarity or shifts. We’ll be doing a writing exercise, so having paper and a writing utensil would be helpful.
Class Details:
Wednesday August 14th, 10 am – 11 am pacific standard time
Phone number: (424) 203-8405
Access code is 167232#
“You’re doing great work! The ten-minute exercise was a multi-layered mirroring for me that indirectly revealed my inner nature and my heart’s desire. Thank you.”
-Pamela Jay, Singer/Songwriter
“I’m blown away with this work! I’m amazed at how easily the images/metaphors opened up understanding–they really did bypass my conscious mind.”
-Mim Kohn, MA, Educator
“Kim has a way with imagery, imagination, and transformation. Her simple but profound approach is a breath of fresh air. I experienced her as a very present, intuitive, and gentle guide to the source of my own wisdom.”
– Dr. Aninha Livingstone, psychologist
“All the images and metaphors that we’ve identified and discussed over the past few months have truly provided me a lifeline for working out my life concerns, as well as hone my creative work.”
– Juliette Brown, writer, graduate student at Pacifica Graduate Institute
August 5, 2013
Our primal, instinctual language
25 years ago I critically injured my spinal cord in a head-on collision on a rural highway in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I could tell that I’d broken something in my back, and I had no feeling or movement below the waist. I was subsequently airlifted to one of the best spinal trauma units in the country, where the doctors gave me less than 5% chance of walking again.
In the days that followed, I listened carefully to these esteemed physicians, asking them questions about my condition. But despite my prognosis--I not only had broken vertebra, my spinal chord had been displaced by 40 degrees--what they were saying never really registered. Even with their brilliant educations and considerable experience, I did not feel they were giving me a “truth.” Some part of me knew that I would walk again.
Education and science were highly prized in my family. Both of my parents and both grandfathers received college degrees in the sciences; my sister is a physician, my brother an engineer. I was young and had no training or experience in disbelieving experts. After all, these were esteemed physicians at a prestigious medical center. Why did I not believe them? Why did I have an internal “knowing” that was different from what I was being told?
I wasn’t feeling resistance toward what they had to say. I was not blocking out their advice and information and I wasn’t proclaiming that I would “do my own thing” and prove them wrong. I was not locked into a battle with them or the information they were providing to me. On the contrary, I was open to their advice and wanted to learn whatever I could from them. What was happening for me was a knowing on some other level--a level where I could understand and process their information, but then make my own determination about what to do with that information. The “knowing” did not come from my rational mind, but from some level that I could not see or explain. I just knew.
Another unusual thing was that in the six months prior to the accident, I was focused intently on rigorous physical exercise. Every night after work, I played two hours of intensely competitive racquetball with my male coworkers, followed by an hour of lap swim. Although I’ve always been an active person, this period of time involved an abnormal amount of highly focused daily exercise…as if my body was preparing for what was to take place. Again, this was not a rational knowing. I was simply following some unarticulated inner wisdom.
In both instances, I was trusting in something that I could not see. I can’t explain why I get frazzled by minor traffic tickets or bad hair days, but when face-to-face with the best medical doctors in the country telling me that I would be permanently paralyzed and unable to use my bladder again, I was unfazed. I simply did not believe them. After several weeks in the hospital, I was able to walk with the use of a cane. Twenty-six years later, no one would ever guess at the extent of my injuries.
In my work with clients, I tap into this deeper way of knowing through metaphor. Metaphoric wisdom is ancient, powerful, and non-verbal. The earliest humans did not have verbal language; they communicated metaphorically by gesturing and drawing pictographs on cave walls and tuning into the natural world around them. In a metaphoric, synaesthetic feeling way, the earliest humans learned from and communicated with the raging river, thunder and lightning, sunrise, plant life and animal creatures. They knew things about the external world in a way that was not “rational.”
Metaphoric wisdom is what I was accessing years ago in that scary situation, and it has been my friend and companion ever since. It is our primal, instinctual language.
June 29, 2013
Drop below the surface of your mind
Do you ever feel that there is so much more to you and you don’t know how to tap into it? Or do you spend too much time of your precious time lost in confusion and overwhelm? Here’s a quote from John O’Donohue that beautifully describes my work in Doorway Sessions:
"Sometimes on a human journey a person can stay marooned on the surface of their minds, suffering the devastation of doubt, confusion and great turbulence, while the whole time just a couple of inches deeper, there was a vast world within them, a wonderful interiority, an eternity of great life and vision and memory and possibility, nesting in the deep clay of their hearts, that they never even knew was there." [from "Wisdom from the Celtic World" CD]
Metaphoric images are the language of this deep clay realm. Metaphors naturally arise in our speech (“stuck,” “lost” and “overwhelm” are all metaphors!); but to experience the transformative power of metaphor, we need to open space for it to show up. One method I frequently use is fairy tales…. fairy tales are naturally metaphoric, and they open a pathway for us to enter the ancient, “clay” world that O’Donohue speaks of in the quote above. Once a metaphoric image has arrived (no matter how vague or simple) we can follow the path that leads to its wisdom.
Metaphoric images have beauty, grace and elegance. As individual paths of healing, we might see ourselves “standing on solid ground,” “weaving a beautiful tapestry” “deeply immersed in rich soil” or “flying freely on the back of a spectacular multi-colored bird.” Our minds aren’t creating these images for us. Instead, we have to let go and open ourselves up to whatever the metaphoric realm has to say to us. When we do that, we receive the specific images that shift us into a new place of expansiveness and possibility.
One metaphoric image that comes up frequently in Doorway sessions is a spacious, loving circle. It might sound quite simple, but experiencing its presence is profound and beautiful, and “stepping into” the circle invokes shifts, healing and transformation. To hear what the circle has to say, here is writing from a recent Doorway session:
I am a spacious circle.
I am very gentle,
that's what people don't know about me...
my gentleness.
The gentleness comes from love.
There is no forcing here,
it is about holding things
in their natural, beautiful state.
When people allow me to hold them like this,
their natural beauty expresses itself.
That's where all the hidden beauty is,
in the hearts of these people
who are letting me hold them.
If you'd like to find out more about Doorway sessions, click here: http://aestheticspace.typepad.com
Kim Hermanson, Ph.D. is adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. She is the author of Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination. 
Do you ever feel that there is so much more to you and yo...
Do you ever feel that there is so much more to you and you don’t know how to tap into it? Or do you spend too much time of your precious time lost in confusion and overwhelm? Here’s a quote from John O’Donohue that beautifully describes my work in Doorway Sessions:
"Sometimes on a human journey a person can stay marooned on the surface of their minds, suffering the devastation of doubt, confusion and great turbulence, while the whole time just a couple of inches deeper, there was a vast world within them, a wonderful interiority, an eternity of great life and vision and memory and possibility, nesting in the deep clay of their hearts, that they never even knew was there." [from "Wisdom from the Celtic World" CD]
Metaphoric images are the language of this deep clay realm. Metaphors naturally arise in our speech (“stuck,” “lost” and “overwhelm” are all metaphors!); but to experience the transformative power of metaphor, we need to open space for it to show up. One method I frequently use is fairy tales…. fairy tales are naturally metaphoric, and they open a pathway for us to enter the ancient, “clay” world that O’Donohue speaks of in the quote above. Once a metaphoric image has arrived (no matter how vague or simple) we can follow the path that leads to its wisdom.
Metaphoric images have beauty, grace and elegance. As individual paths of healing, we might see ourselves “standing on solid ground,” “weaving a beautiful tapestry” “deeply immersed in rich soil” or “flying freely on the back of a spectacular multi-colored bird.” Our minds aren’t creating these images for us. Instead, we have to let go and open ourselves up to whatever the metaphoric realm has to say to us. When we do that, we receive the specific images that shift us into a new place of expansiveness and possibility.
One metaphoric image that comes up frequently in Doorway sessions is a spacious, loving circle. It might sound quite simple, but experiencing its presence is profound and beautiful, and “stepping into” the circle invokes shifts, healing and transformation. To hear what the circle has to say, here is writing from a recent Doorway session:
I am a spacious circle.
I am very gentle,
that's what people don't know about me...
my gentleness.
The gentleness comes from love.
There is no forcing here,
it is about holding things
in their natural, beautiful state.
When people allow me to hold them like this,
their natural beauty expresses itself.
That's where all the hidden beauty is,
in the hearts of these people
who are letting me hold them.
If you'd like to find out more about Doorway sessions, click here: http://aestheticspace.typepad.com
Kim Hermanson, Ph.D. is adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. She is the author of Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination.
June 8, 2013
Do you think like an artist?
“. . . artists are the harbingers of the future mentality required both by science and by the imperatives of living in our precarious times . . . we now truly stand in need, not only as scientists but as a civilization, of the artists’ cognitive capacities,” wrote physicist Arthur Zajonc. From my 20 years teaching creative process courses, I think these are the eight most important “cognitive capacities” that artists teach.
1. Artists show us how to “not know” and be open to new perspectives.
Our current social world is set up in a way that being a “learner” is not considered hip or desirable. Think of the words we use for learners: “neophyte,” “wet behind the ears,” “plebe,” “a beginner.” Our goal as adults is to become skilled and knowledgeable—to lose our beginner status so that we can gain in social standing and prestige. But the problem is, once we “know” something, we lose the space inside our minds for new perspectives, solutions, or possibilities. (Our minds like clarity and structure, they don’t like to be confused.) The ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “It is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.” “Knowing” is a closed loop. But the artist is not stuck in that closed loop, because the creative process forces him or her to be open to anything and everything that might facilitate and support new creative work.
2. Artists demonstrate the ability to dwell in ambiguity.
The creative process is ambiguous—when you’re in the creative process, you’re not following a clear path. The thing you are seeking lies in a murky, in-between place that hasn’t been discovered before. It requires “feeling your way” through ambiguity and confusion.
3. Artists show us how to stubbornly pursue an inner vision.
Great artists trust their inner voice . . . even when pursuing ideas that other people view as crazy, naive or stupid. It’s challenging to pursue something that no one else “gets.” And when you’re in the middle of pursuing your vision and have nothing to show, there’s no way to fully convince other people of what you’re doing. Adding to the challenge, pursuing an inner vision means you don’t know ahead of time exactly where you will end up. You are immersing yourself in mystery, and there’s no clear way to determine when you’ve arrived at your destination or how long it will take to get there. Pursuing an inner vision without the support of your family, friends, and community, requires persistence and stubbornness.
4. Artists demonstrate how to foolishly play and explore the limits of what is possible.
Great artists have a proclivity for play. For example, think of Picasso’s art, Robin Williams offbeat humor, or a few Beatles songs (like “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” or “We all live in a yellow submarine”) Great artists are not afraid to look foolish, because by risking foolishness, they often come up with something brilliant. Foolish play gets us out of “one-way” thinking. It gives us the freedom to make impossible juxtapositions, combine disparate elements to form new patterns, and shape wild hypotheses. Play gives us brilliance.
5. Artists show us how to look at things in new ways.
Leonardo da Vinci believed that to gain knowledge about the form of problems, you begin bylearning how to restructure it in many different ways. He believed that the first way he looked at a problem was too biased toward his usual way of seeing things. He would restructure his problem by looking at it from one perspective and then he would move to another perspective and still another. With each move, his understanding would deepen and he would begin to understand the essence of the problem. Artistic work requires that we put distance between ourselves and our subject–making the familiar…strange.
6. Artists demonstrate how to connect the unconnected.
Leonardo da Vinci forced a relationship between the sound of a bell and a stone hitting water. Creative thinkers find and make connections between dissimilar concepts or entities, holding incompatible subjects together until they see a relationship or pattern. Artists work with metaphor, which is a bridge between two dissimilar things. For example, when someone says, “Ted is a freight train,” the listener is forced to hold two dissimilar things (Ted and train) together, which is an impossible task for our thinking minds. But our imaginations have no problem creating a scenario in which the statement “Ted is a freight train” is true. Aristotle considered metaphor a sign of genius, believing that the individual who had the capacity to perceive resemblances between two separate things and link them together was a person of special gifts.
7. Artists show us how to work with images.
Einstein claimed that words did not have much to do with his thought process. Instead, it was visual and kinesthetic images that assisted him in formulating his mathematical and scientific concepts, while words had to be “sought for in a secondary state.” Many scholars believe that the explosion of creativity in the Renaissance was tied to recording and conveying information in drawings, graphs and diagrams–as, for instance, in the renowned diagrams of Da Vinci and Galileo. Galileo revolutionized science by making his thought visible with diagrams, maps, and drawings while his contemporaries used conventional mathematical and verbal approaches. Making something visual—whether it is making a “vision board” or developing a visual map of a particular project, gives you the ability to think and share information in new ways and has transformative power.
8. Artists teach us that it’s OK to go against the norm and step into new terrain.
In order to creatively solve a problem, artists must often abandon their initial approach—which stems from past experience and re-conceptualize the problem. By leaving “what they know,” great artists do not merely contribute new work to existing artistic arenas; instead, they develop new arenas entirely.
May 22, 2013
The imagination is alive
More than anything else, creating something new requires space. Our rational, thinking selves believe that “creative space” means making time in our schedules and physical space in our homes or offices. (You could call this “linear space.”) But the truth is, the creative process works on a different level and requires a different kind of space—imaginal space.
Imaginal space looks like this. Let’s say you have an important event coming up… like being asked to sing on stage for the first time ever, and the event planners are expecting an audience of 300. This recently happened to me and I was terrified. Many years ago at the end of an improv workshop, I was required to participate in a public performance. On stage in front of the audience I froze, and all I could do was walk off the stage… painfully shamed and embarrassed. The person who I was supposed to perform with was upset because I ruined her moment in the spotlight as well. After this event I never “performed” on stage again. I’ve taught seminars and given book talks, but for me, teaching is different terrain. In my view, singing is like acting, and I feared that I would once again freeze with stage fright.;
When I work with imaginal space I use a method called Doorway Sessions. During the Doorway Session around my singing performance, I saw myself—with ‘imaginal vision’—drawing a BIG circle and I realized that all I needed was the infinite space inside this circle. With this circle, I had space to have anything, be anything, forgive anything, and let go of anything that wasn’t serving me around public performance.
Now you might be thinking… an image of a circle. That’s ridiculous! That is WAY too simple to resolve serious stage fright. How can a simple image of a circle (one could call it child-like) have ANY transformative effect on the psyche of a grown adult? I would say this. Metaphoric images from the imaginal realm ARE simple. If they were complex, they’d be coming from the mind, not the heart. The language of the heart is simple; its wisdom is not complicated.
Second, working in the imaginal is a holistic, whole-body, synaesthetic (multi-sensory) feeling of stepping into something new. Shifts come from whatever unique movements are happening with the image, as well as the feeling that you get when you become the image. I could feel ;what it felt like to be a big, spacious, beautiful, carefully-drawn circle. Being this circle was peaceful, loving and healing and in this infinite circular space, stage fright was no longer an issue. I had space around me.
Since these images are not coming from our minds but from our imagination (which is a real place), it’s quite possible for us to step into them—we can become them. After the Doorway Session, it’s not necessary to go back later to remember and analyze the image… because you’ve already stepped into it. You’ve already become it.
Try it right now. Ask your imagination for an image, whatever healing image you might need. Be patient and welcome whatever shows up (when we’re new to the imaginal realm, it’s easy to discount or brush aside its simple language.) It doesn’t matter if you don’t consider yourself to be a “visual” person, because this is synaesthetic, holistic knowing—so the image can arrive in many different forms. You might kinesthetically feel it, or hear it, or simply sense it, rather than see it. Whatever image you receive, imagine stepping into it. For example, let’s say you received an image of a tree rooting itself in the soil, or a ship resting on calm waters, or you saw yourself tying a rope together. What does it feel like to root yourself deeply into nurturing soil, or rest on calm waters or tie something together? This synaesthetic, multi-sensory feeling is wisdom and it's where transformation comes from.
Transformative work (and all creative work is transformative) requires imaginal space. It’s a truism that once we imagine something, it can happen, but the problem is—our rational minds are limited in their capacity to imagine. The power of the imagination comes from the heart and its ability to speak in its own language. Creative, transformative shifts happen when we dive below the surface of our very smart thinking selves…to a place that is murky, messy and full of nurturing, interesting, dynamic metaphoric imagery. One could say it is alive.
And just in case you’re curious, here’s the video of the first song I have ever sung on a stage:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTFOUMRRJxw
April 16, 2013
Five things you didn't know about the creative process
It’s fierce. The creative process will make you face your greatest terrors. In the late 1980s, Chicago promoted tourism to its great city by claiming that Chicago was “not for sissies.” The creative process is not for sissies either. If you have a vision or dream, you can rest assured that you will be asked to face your fears along the way. All of them.
The darkness is where the juice is, not “the light.” As humans, we are forever looking around us, in search of the next idea, opportunity, recognition, reward. But the truth is, when it comes to the creative process, mulling around in the dark muck is where real life lies. If you need nourishment, ideas, or inspiration—go to that place of dark muck…wherever that is for you. For me, it’s imagining myself as a deep root immersed in dark, fertile soil. In that dark place, I can’t “see” with my regular eyesight, I can only feel my way.
The creative process is the core of who we are as humans, it’s not a leisure activity. For many, creativity is viewed as a supplemental luxury—something they do once in a while (take a pottery class, start a garden) when they have a free evening or weekend. But the truth is, all of human endeavor is a creative process—learning is a creative process; social change is a creative process; the natural world is a creative process. Creativity is not supplemental.
The creative process wants you to slow down, rather than speed up…but it’s a certain kind of slowing down. The creative process does not want passivity, it wants quiet alertness. Eckhart Tolle describes the condition of “extreme wakefulness” as one similar to a cat’s state of mind—when she waits for hours watching the mouse hole for the mouse to appear. The cat is not moving, it has slowed w-a-y down, but it is far from passive.
The creative process is destructive, fierce, dark, mucky and ornery (polite people might call it “non-linear”). It demands and deserves our respect.
Five Things You Didn't Know About the Creative Process
It’s fierce. The creative process will make you face your greatest terrors. In the late 1980s, Chicago promoted tourism to its great city by claiming that Chicago was “not for sissies.” The creative process is not for sissies either. If you have a vision or dream, you can rest assured that you will be asked to face your fears along the way. All of them.
The darkness is where the juice is, not “the light.” As humans, we are forever looking around us, in search of the next idea, opportunity, recognition, reward. But the truth is, when it comes to the creative process, mulling around in the dark muck is where real life lies. If you need nourishment, ideas, or inspiration—go to that place of dark muck…wherever that is for you. For me, it’s imagining myself as a deep root immersed in dark, fertile soil. In that dark place, I can’t “see” with my regular eyesight, I can only feel my way.
The creative process is the core of who we are as humans, it’s not a leisure activity. For many, creativity is viewed as a supplemental luxury—something they do once in a while (take a pottery class, start a garden) when they have a free evening or weekend. But the truth is, all of human endeavor is a creative process—learning is a creative process; social change is a creative process; the natural world is a creative process. Creativity is not supplemental.
The creative process wants you to slow down, rather than speed up…but it’s a certain kind of slowing down. The creative process does not want passivity, it wants quiet alertness. Eckhart Tolle describes the condition of “extreme wakefulness” as one similar to a cat’s state of mind—when she waits for hours watching the mouse hole for the mouse to appear. The cat is not moving, it has slowed w-a-y down, but it is far from passive.
The creative process is destructive, fierce, dark, mucky and ornery (polite people might call it “non-linear”). It demands and deserves our respect.
March 23, 2013
Don't know what you're doing? You're probably on the right track
When I started teaching professionally, I was faced with a dilemma: Try to look and act the part of the “expert” and present information in the prescribed manner or on the other hand, honor my own creative process. I tried my best to do the first option and it didn't fit me at all. I can't follow a schedule no matter how hard I try, and I spend way too much time musing about odd things when I should be working. My mind and heart do not operate in a linear way, and frankly, doing things conventionally is just not interesting to me.
Grungy stuff that’s off-the-beaten-path is what intrigues me. Rough, unkempt people, wild places and obscure things offer me all kinds of inspiration for creative “play.” Stuff that no one else is interested in seems to be my route into inspired creativity, giving me ways to engage and have “conversations” that I can’t seem to have with things, people and places that are already polished and perfect. With perfect things, my heart can’t seem to find a way to penetrate the veneer. But if it’s less-than-perfect, I feel right at home.
But naturally, I want to act the part of a “professional” educator--my life and livelihood depend on it. So I wrote a book in order to help me understand how someone like myself could successfully live and work in a messy, creative way and still earn an income as a “professional.” I titled the book Getting Messy: A Guide To Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination for Teachers, Trainers, Coaches and Mentors. In case you’re wondering, “messy” doesn’t mean literal mess. (I’m actually a neatnik.) Messy means plunging into the unknown--befriending things and people that don’t follow established rules, navigating through confusion and perplexity. Contrary to sane reasoning, I feel most alive when I’m in situations where I don’t know what I’m doing. Perplexing situations give my rational mind an opportunity to “get lost,” which in turn opens space for something more imaginative to come through. When I’m confused or don’t see a clear path, I get to rely on something greater than myself. That’s when I feel most alive.
Getting Messy offers those of us in service professions a way to stay in the juice, inspiration, and “messy muck” (for lack of a better word) and still hold the title of “teacher” (or counselor, coach, mentor, manager, etc.) But after I finished it a funny thing happened. I realized that Getting Messy wasn’t just for teachers. It’s for anyone who wants to live an interesting, creative life. And it’s for people like myself, who simply can’t follow the linear, respectable, polished path, no matter how hard we try. If you read it, I hope it gives you both inspiration and sanity. Please let me know.
Learning to be simultaneously a “teacher” and “authentically me” at the same time has been a path of growth and learning. But the truth is... as teachers, what we point to is more important than what we actually say. Good teaching is not about "look at me"; it's about "look beyond me." Thank goodness.
